- Publisher |
- Beau Humphreys
- Media Type |
- audio
- Podknife tags |
- Business,
- Interview,
- Investing,
- Personal Finance
- People |
- Country Of Origin |
- Canada
- Produced In |
- Hamilton, Ontario
- Premiere Date |
- 2017-03-02
- Frequency |
- Weekly
- Explicit |
- No
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Submit ReviewEpisode 1 of The Unofficial History of Personal Finance. In this new series, Beau goes back 12,000 years to the beginning of human civilization to attempt to answer the question: "How did we get here?"
Click here to become a patron of The Personal Finance Show via Patreon
Bob Lai (https://www.tawcan.com/) joins Beau at a conference in Washington, D.C. to share his personal finance story.
(Recorded in-person on September 6th, 2019 before the pandemic. Published on April 11th, 2021.)
In this solo episode, Beau attempts to answer the question: How does someone get into debt?
Week 18 of the COVID-19 series features Acquania Escarne.
Acquania is the creator of The Purpose of Money which is a podcast and an online community for women building generational wealth for their families one dollar at a time.
In this episode we discussed Acquania's COVID-19 experience so far and how as a US diplomat responsible for Asia, she has been working on COVID-19 related matters since January 2020.
Acquania will be back to tell her full personal finance story on a future episode(especially how she started saving at 16 and lived in many places around the world), but in the meantime, if you want to hear more about her background, please check out her podcast:
https://thepurposeofmoney.com/podcast/
https://thepurposeofmoney.podbean.com/e/how-i-saved-80k-for-retirement-in-2019/
Week 17 of my COVID-19 series is a solo episode where I talk about my experience being a parent during a pandemic.
I don't pretend to know what it's like to be a single parent, have more than one child, or have older children, but I go through what it's been like for me since Henry was born almost 18 months ago.
Links to the podcast episodes about parenting that I mentioned:
Debt Free in 30 Episode 307 with Julie Wildman: https://youtu.be/pj2K5v5jMpo
Because Money Podcast S6 Ep5 - Welcome to Parenthood: https://becausemoney.ca/s6-ep5-parenthood/
Not directly connected to parenting, but something I mentioned in the episode, here's Alan Whitton aka Big Cajun Man on the Maple Money Podcast talking about the Disability Tax Credit and the Registered Disability Savings Plan: https://maplemoney.com/podcast/disability-tax-credit-rdsp/
Week 16 of the COVID-19 series features my friends Brynn Byrne and Aaron Yeger, co-hosts of the new podcast "That Was a Show?".
We talk about Brynn and Aaron's COVID-19 experience and how the pandemic has affected their personal finances, but mostly I wanted them on to talk about their awesome new podcast. I can't explain it better than them so here's the summary direct from their podcast page:
The podcast about failed or forgotten sitcoms from the 80s and 90s. Many sitcoms have stood the test of time and have millions of adoring fans—but those shows were diamonds in the rough. This podcast is not about those diamonds, it's about the rough. Some sitcoms were briefly popular in their time, some were cancelled almost immediately. You probably won't recognize most of these, and you'll say 'that was a show?'
As I said in the episode, it's important that podcasts promote other podcast, especially those of a different genre. I listen to a lot of personal finance shows but I also listen to shows like This American Life, Invisibilia, "How Did That Get Made?", and other non-financial podcasts. These podcasts are doing fine on their own but there are some podcasts that are excellent but people just don't know about them yet. If you are a child of the 80s and 90s and enjoy talking about television, you will love this show like I do.
PODCAST
Click below to listen to the first 4 episodes and subscribe today so you get the new episodes that are planned to drop every 2 weeks:
Anchor: https://anchor.fm/thatwasashow
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2cmwWJWVBHOYLYSgpe1zqR?si=nXFtZok4ReKQVANhuvnmJA
CONTEST
Until July 31st, you could win a "That Was a Show?" t-shirt, featuring the amazing show cover art by Brian Walker. Head to Instagram to find the details on how to enter: https://www.instagram.com/thatwasashow/
MERCHANDISE: https://www.redbubble.com/people/thatwasashow/shop
Week 15 of the COVID-19 series features my friend Rubina Ahmed-Haq.
Every Sunday for the last 15 weeks, right before I record The Personal Finance Show, Rubina and I record an episode of the Dear Rubi podcast. Dear Rubi is a column podcast where we take questions from listeners and discuss the personal finance issues of the day that concern most Canadians. So if you like the conversation that Rubina and I had today on the show, search for Dear Rubi wherever you listen to podcasts and click the subscribe button.
For Rubina's full personal finance story, check out episode 68 from back in February 2019: https://www.thepersonalfinanceshow.com/e/rubina-ahmed-haq/
Dear Rubi Website: https://dearrubi.com/
Rubina's website: https://rubinaahmedhaq.com/
Week 14 of the COVID-19 series features Danielle Desir.
Danielle is the founder of WOC (Women of Colour) Podcasters, travel and personal finance blogger, podcaster, and author of 2 books (with a 3rd on the way).
In this episode we discussed Danielle's COVID-19 experience so far, starting with her trip to China in December 2019 just before the pandemic; her level of anxiety about leaving the house (which I understand well), let alone travelling anywhere during this time; and, why it's more important now than ever to have a space for women of colour podcasters.
Danielle will be back to tell her full personal finance story on a future episode, but in the meantime, if you want to hear more about her background, please check out this episode of the Money Nerds podcast (hosted by my pal Whitney Hansen):
https://www.themoneynerds.com/danielledesir/
Danielle's Blog: https://thoughtcard.com/
Danielle's Podcast: https://podcast.thoughtcard.com/
WOC Podcasters: https://wocpodcasters.co/
Danielle's Book about Iceland: https://thoughtcard.com/iceland-travel-guide/
Danielle's Book about affording travel: https://thoughtcard.com/affording-travel-book/
Week 13 of the COVID-19 series features Jackie Porter
Jackie is a Canadian CFP, author of "Single by Choice or Chance", financial confidant, and recent winner of the Mackenzie Investments award for "Female Trailblazer of the Year".
In this episode we discussed:
-Jackie's book and the importance of financial empowerment.
-COVID-19 stories from Jackie's financial planning clients and how "we're all in this together but differently".
-The importance of being able to pivot and constantly having "beginner's mind" and learning experiences in business and in life.
-Jackie's personal experience with racism in her industry and personal life and how she has been impacted by the anti-racist protests going on in the world right now.
Jackie will be back to tell her full personal finance story on a future episode, but in the meantime, if you want to hear more about her background, please check out this episode of the Mind Your Business podcast:
Week 12 of the COVID-19 series features Kassandra Dasent.
Kassandra currently lives in Florida, was born in Trinidad and grew up in Canada (Montreal).
In this episode we discuss Kassandra's experience with COVID-19 so far, and how it has affected her ability to see her mother in Montreal, and her step-child in Trinidad. We also discuss the current anti-racist protests around the world, Kassandra's experience with explicit and implicit racism in her own life, and what we can all do to help change the way Black people are viewed in the US, Canada and everywhere.
Kassandra will be back to tell her personal finance story on a future episode, but in the meantime, if you want to hear her story, please check out these podcast episodes:
https://www.journeytolaunch.com/episode114/
https://paychecksandbalances.com/kassandra-dasent/
For more about the Black Tax, check out this interview on Journey To Launch with Shawn Rochester:
Week 11 of the COVID-19 series features Kara Perez from Austin, Texas.
Kara's business Bravely Go was all about live in-person events, until the pandemic hit and she had to figure out how to pivot her business. Kara decided to create an online event called the Financial Feminist Summit, which was at the end of May 2020 and attracted 3,300 registrants. In the episode, Kara and Beau talk about the Summit, feminism, racism, intersectionality, and what the future holds for the events industry.
I resume the global tour in Week 10 of the COVID-19 series which features my friend Eric Wong in Singapore. We discuss his personal experience with the pandemic so far, how Singapore is handling the situation generally, and how Eric's industry, hospitality, has been devastated by this global crisis, and what the future might look like.
Week 9 of the COVID-19 series is a break from the global tour. Matthew Siwiec joins me from his home in Toronto to review the "alphabet soup" of Canadian emergency benefits there are out there. From EI to CERB to CESB to CEWS to OCECRA, among others, we try to make some sense of them. Since these benefits change all the time is a good idea to talk about them as much as possible.
Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the episode:
Matthew's COVID-19 page – look for updates later this week
TPL Event – May 27th 5 to 6pm EST - this coming Wednesday, open to the public
benefits.alpha.canada.ca/en/start">Benefits Finder for individuals – Didn’t get to this in the episode, but it is a great resource
response-plan.html#businesses">Summary of benefits
Week 8 of the COVID-19 series features my cousin Jay who lives in Berlin, Germany.
Every week during the pandemic Beau will find someone in a different part of the world with a different personal pandemic experience to share their perspective and tell their story for others to hear.
In this episode Jay shares his COVID-19 experience so far in Germany, where he currently lives with my cousin Liz and their son Hudson. Jay works for a company called HERE Technologies and Liz is an experienced travel writer, having most recently researched and written for 20 Fodor's guidebooks over the last 8 years.
For Jay, Liz and Hudson, travel is their way of life. Though they are ok financially during this pandemic and acknowledge their privilege in this regard, this doesn't diminish the fact that they may have to rethink how they live and earn in the "new normal" that emerges after the COVID-19 dust has settled.
(As we discussed in the episode, Hudson has his own Instagram account called Hudson in Hotels and can be found here: https://www.instagram.com/hudsoninhotels/)
Week 7 of the COVID-19 series features James Mwombela from North Carolina.
Every week during the pandemic Beau will find someone in a different part of the world with a different personal pandemic experience to share their perspective and tell their story for others to hear.
In this episode James shares his COVID-19 experience so far in North Carolina, which is currently on lockdown but that is changing this week as they enter Phase 1 of "reopening". James was already working from home so his work situation has not changed much. In fact, an interesting effect of this global pandemic is that people who may have been less focused on their finances are realizing this is the time to really figure things out. As a Certified Financial Planner in the US, James is well equipped to help people with their finances during normal times, and the pandemic has provided him the opportunity to reach more people and help them make plans to survive and thrive in the future.
Week 6 of the COVID-19 series features César Tánchez from Guatemala.
Every week during the pandemic Beau will find someone in a different part of the world with a different personal pandemic experience to share their perspective and tell their story for others to hear.
In this episode César shares his COVID-19 experience so far in Guatemala, which has less than 700 cases of the coronavirus and only 17 deaths as of today. For comparison, the global numbers as of today are almost 3.5 million cases with nearly 250,000 deaths. César also explains how there is no employment insurance in Guatemala and how the pandemic is changing the way the people of his country view saving for the future and personal finance in general.
Search for César's podcast, "Trascendencia Financiera con César Tánchez", wherever you get your podcasts.
Week 5 of the COVID-19 series features Tom Drake from Alberta.
Every week during the pandemic Beau will find someone in a different part of the world with a different personal pandemic experience to share their perspective and tell their story for others to hear.
In this episode Tom shares his COVID-19 experience so far, which includes getting officially tested and having to isolate under quarantine law. Tom and Beau also discuss investing during an economic recession like this and what to be careful of at a time when no one can predict how the economy will be affected and for how long.
Week 4 of the COVID-19 series features Jordon Cox of the UK. Beau and Jordon discuss:
-Jordon's trip to Disneyworld that was cut short and for which he's still trying to get some money back
-His recent health issues and how that affects his susceptibility to the virus
-How the UK is handling the COVID-19 pandemic and the rules in place to protect the British people
-How 1/3 of the National Health Service (NHS) workers have been compromised by COVID-19 and the system is overwhelmed.
-How the pandemic has affected Jordon's ability to make money and what financial relief exists in the UK
-That a podcast host should never ask this question during a lockdown: "Where is your boyfriend now?"
-How the British people are excellent at queuing(standing in lines) which is very evident during a pandemic.
In the third weekly episode of the COVID-19 series, Beau calls Australia to speak to Michelle from frugalityandfreedom.com to discuss:
-
How COVID-19 has affected her life so far
-
How Australia and New Zealand are handling the pandemic
-
How Michelle's personal finances have been impacted
-
Financial independence and frugality
-
The live event industry and how it has been decimated
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The importance of staying positive and taking care of your mental health during times like this
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Building other forms of capital other than financial capital to help you adapt to changes in the world or your circumstances
Links to things Michelle mentioned in the episode:
Rich & Resilient Living blog - Looking Beyond Financial Capital on the Path to Financial Independence
Nomad Numbers - Nomad life during COVID-19: exiting Bali and home quarantining in Taiwan
Website & social links:
Twitter @FrugalityFreedm
Instagram @FrugalityandFreedom
In the second weekly episode of the COVID-19 series, Beau talks about:
-
Emergency-fund shaming and how we're in survival mode now and there is no point in telling someone they should have had an emergency fund
-
Hopefully going through a pandemic without an emergency fund will give you the perspective to start saving once you have surplus income again
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What if you are in a position where you have no surplus income so you can't build savings?
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The dangers of relying on credit as your emergency fund
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This new world of video and how we need to be patient with those who aren't familiar with new technology, and how to protect yourself from hacking with online passwords for video meetings.
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How everyone's situation is different and we can't give blanket financial advice at a time like this, or ever, really.
Beau returns from his podcasting sabbatical to provide a personal update and talk about the COVID-19 global pandemic in Canada as of March 29, 2020.
Links mentioned in the episode:
Hoyes, Michalos & Associates Inc.
Debt Free in 30 podcast on Apple Podcasts or YouTube
scaled.jpg">Canada Emergency Response Benefit Infographic by Matthew Siwiec
Podcasts for US Listeners: Money With Friends, Stacking Benjamins
This is the 100th episode of The Personal Finance Show!
My special guests today are Tanja Hester and Kara Perez, the hosts of my favourite podcast, The Fairer Cents, and James Mwombela, who is a CFP and Associate Planner at Grid 202 Partners.
Episode 100 isn’t about someone’s personal finance story. It’s about an important personal finance topic.
Today’s topic is financial privilege.
My goal with this episode was to encourage you to think about privilege and how it affects your life and your finances.
Most people understand obvious financial privilege.
If you come from a wealthy family, you have an easier time than someone who doesn’t come from money.
Having to work as a teenager to pay bills is very different than choosing to work as a teenager to buy the things your parents won’t buy you.
Graduating with student loans puts you in a very different financial starting position from someone who’s parents saved up and paid for their schooling.
Working to save for retirement is very different from working to pay your bills and make the minimum payments on your credit cards.
But as we discussed in the episode, there are also less obvious layers of privilege, like your gender, the colour of your skin, or whether you are an immigrant, which may affect your ability to make money.
Like Darryl Brown from episode 93 of the show who didn’t think that anyone would want him to be their financial advisor because he’s black.
Or Nico Barawid from episode 67 who’s parents were both doctors, but were discriminated against financially because they had immigrated from the Phillipines.
There is still a lot of work to be done to increase Indigenous people's access to culturally relevant financial education resources, as Bettina Schneider and I discussed in episode 95.
Women are 80% more likely to live in poverty in retirement than men, as Saijal Patel mentioned in episode 77. This is not surprising if you consider that women only gained the right to open a bank account in the 1960s. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act was only enacted in 1974, which made it unlawful for a creditor to discriminate against any applicant on the basis of race, gender, religion, national origin, marital status, or age.
Think about that for a second - 45 years ago, it was so normal to financially discriminate against anyone who wasn’t a white male, that they actually had to make a law to tell financial institutions to stop being racist and sexist. On the other hand, white men have been able to open bank accounts and get credit since banks were invented hundreds of years ago. And it’s not like everyone stopped being racist and sexist on the day the law came out. As we discussed in the episode, this discrimination still exists, though it’s not as explicit as it once was.
I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t think this is a problem. There isn’t anyone I know who would explicitly say that they don’t believe everyone should have equal opportunity to make money and build wealth.
So let’s do something about it.
Let’s talk about it on podcasts like this.
If you have the opportunity to use your privilege for good, to help someone who might have less advantages than you, do that.
Remember that privilege is just perception. There’s no logical reason why gender or race or all of the other differences we mentioned should impact your ability to make money. It’s all in our heads and to stop it we need to change our thinking and our actions.
So that’s my 100th episode. I’ll be back soon with new episodes so if you haven’t subscribed to the podcast, please do that now, so you know when the new episodes are up. If you liked this episode, check out the other 99 episodes and please leave me a review on Apple Podcasts. And if you have any questions or just want to say hello, you can always email me at beau@beauhumphreys.com.
Click here to become a patron of The Personal Finance Show via Patreon
Beth MacMillan wants you to prioritize travel.
In 2011, Beth and her husband, Mark, decided to use their saved up money and take a 6 month honeymoon around the world.
You don’t have to save $20,000 and buy round-the-world tickets like Beth did, but if you’re interested in travel at all, you can pick up a lot of tips by listening to Beth’s story.
To be able to travel, you need 2 things, time and money.
Maybe you have the time, but not the money, so you feel like you can’t afford to go anywhere.
Maybe you have the money, but not the time, so you can just fly somewhere for a weekend or a week and it doesn’t seem worth the effort.
There will always be barriers to travel, and if you have disposable income, there are a million things you can spend your money on instead of travelling.
However, if you have the desire to travel, there are ways to make it a priority in your life.
Every time you have extra money, you make a choice to use that money for something that is important to you. It doesn’t have to be a lot of money, as Beth and I discuss in the episode.
For Beth, travel was always top of the list. Maybe you’re the same. Maybe you don’t even realize it yet because you haven’t been anywhere.
Personally I believe every dollar spent on travelling is totally worth it. The “return on investment” of travel isn’t dollars but it’s a higher quality of life.
But that’s just me. And Beth, of course.
P.S. If you want to ask Beth any questions about travel or concussions, you can email her here.
NEXT EPISODE100 - Financial Privilege with Tanja Hester, Kara Perez, and James Mwombela
Click here to become a patron of The Personal Finance Show via Patreon
To register for my next available personal finance webinar click here.
Sarah Li Cain wants you to be open to opportunities and to make independence a priority.
Sarah was born in Hong Kong, grew up in Canada, has lived in Australia, South Korea and China, and is currently in the US.
Sarah worked mainly as a teacher, but the key to her survival and success was to be open to opportunities along the way.
Knowing that she couldn’t be a teacher in the US if she moved there from China with her husband and new son, Sarah looked into ways to make money online.
Sarah ended up finding freelance writing as something she could do from anywhere in the world and focused on personal finance writing.
Today, Sarah makes over $100,000 a year working part-time from home, creating content for financial brands and online publications. It’s not easy to create in-demand content and get paid for it, but her desires to be independent and to be free to spend her time the way she wants, keep her on track.
Sarah is also the host of the Beyond the Dollar podcast, where she has deep and honest conversations about how money affects our well-being.
Sarah joined me from Jacksonville, Florida to share her personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEClick here to become a patron of The Personal Finance Show via Patreon
To register for my next available personal finance webinar click here.
Bridget Casey wants us all to get rich together.
The good news is that Bridget already did most of the work for you. All you have to do is follow her instructions.
You don’t have to spend years studying the stock market and get an MBA in finance. She already did that so you don’t have to.
Bridget took all of her personal finance skills and education and spent countless hours crafting online courses for you.
Her stand-out course is called the Six-Figure Stock Portfolio. She created this course because there’s nothing like it online right now and as you heard in the intro clip, her students are doing very well.
Bridget started her website Money After Graduation in 2012 and today she has over 3,000 visitors per day.
Bridget also makes personal finance videos on YouTube where she has over 6,500 subscribers and over 500,000 views of her videos.
Bridget joined me from Edmonton, Alberta to share her personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEClick here to become a patron of The Personal Finance Show via Patreon
To register for my next available personal finance webinar click here.
Erin Lowry wants you to know that words have power, especially when it comes to your money.
Saving and investing are not the same thing. For example, if someone is saving for retirement, they might not even be aware that they are actually investing their money. Very few people put their retirement money in a savings account. It’s much more likely that if you have your retirement money invested in an index fund, or some kind of portfolio of stocks and bonds that are subject to risk and growth.
But if we keep using the word “save” when we talk about retirement, we miss the opportunity to learn about our investments. If we say “invest” for retirement, you might be triggered to ask “What’s my money invested in?”
You might be thinking, Beau, everyone knows the difference between saving and investing, and people know where their retirement money is invested. Unfortunately, that’s just not true. I read yesterday that 40% of Canadians keep their TFSA contributions in a simple savings account.
Why are Canadians doing this? Well, it’s in the name. TFSA stands for Tax-Free Savings Account. The Canadian government called it a savings account. But it’s not a savings account. It’s a tax shelter. Where the RRSP, or Registered Retirement Savings Plan, was created to save you taxes now, only for you to pay them later when you withdraw money in retirement, the TFSA allows you to take after-tax money you already have and protect it from ever being taxed again.
So the TFSA is not for savings, because savings might grow, if you’re lucky, at 1% per year. You can afford the taxes on 1%. What you want in your TFSA is your highest growth investments. If you have $10,000 in Canadian bank stocks, for example, and you say they are part of your TFSA, and then grow by 10% this year, you pay no tax on that 10%. Not this year or any year after that. That $10,000 could grow to $100,000 and you never pay any tax.
So should this program created to shelter your investment growth from future taxes be called a Tax-Free Savings Account? Absolutely not. It’s a terrible name and it’s confusing Canadians.
Words have power. Like the words "broke" and "poor" are not the same thing.
This is something that Erin and I discuss in the episode, as she has now written two books: the first one is called Broke Millennial and the most recent one is Broke Millennial Takes on Investing. And there’s a third book in the series coming soon, which we also discuss in the episode.
Erin joined me from New York City to share her personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODE97 - Bridget Casey
Click here to become a patron of The Personal Finance Show via Patreon
To register for my next available personal finance webinar click here.
Bettina Schneider wants you to understand the impact your values, histories and life experiences have on your financial decision-making processes.
Bettina has a PhD in Native American Studies and is currently Associate Professor and Associate Vice President Academic at First Nations University of Canada.
Bettina spends a lot of her time contemplating the following questions:
How can we increase Indigenous people's access to culturally relevant financial education resources? How can we reframe the way we talk about financial literacy and personal finance in order to make it more accessible to a wider audience? Bettina believes that financial literacy resources do not always speak to the varied values and experiences of their audience and would like to see more of those resources explore how people's "money culture" impacts the way they relate to money.
Bettina joined me from Regina, Saskatchewan to share her personal finance story
NEXT EPISODEClick here to become a patron of The Personal Finance Show via Patreon
To register for my next available personal finance webinar click here.
Joe Saul-Sehy wants you to learn about money, but he doesn’t want you to think you’re learning anything.
Joe is the creator and co-host of The Stacking Benjamins Show, one of the top personal finance podcasts in North America. Joe also co-hosts a new podcast called Money in the Morning.
The running joke on Stacking Benjamins is that you won’t learn anything about money by listening to the show, and if you do learn something, you should keep it to yourself.
Joe figured out a way to make personal finance fun and entertaining, and somehow got over 130,000 people to subscribe to the Stacking Benjamins podcast along the way.
But Joe’s history with money is not all sunshine and roses. He’s made his share of money mistakes over the years and that’s what makes him so effective as a host of a personal finance podcast.
I’m very happy to have Joe on the show and I’m flattered that he has invited me to be on the infamous Stacking Benjamins roundtable coming up on a Friday sometime in the next few months.
Joe joined me from Detroit, Michigan to share his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEClick here to become a patron of The Personal Finance Show via Patreon
To register for my next available personal finance webinar click here.
Darryl Brown wants you to stop complaining about bad financial advice and do something about it.
If you walk into a bank, give them money, don’t ask questions and do zero research on investing, then you’ve pretty much given up your right to complain if you’re not happy with the results.
Instead of complaining about things, let’s be proactive. This is your money. It’s important. You work hard for it. So why not spend a bit of time on it.
Yes, I’ve said this a lot. I know it’s hard to do the work yourself. It takes time and a personal interest in investing. So it might make more sense for you to pay someone a fee to help you figure it all out.
And this is where a lot of people get confused. They think that walking into a bank or going to a company that sells financial products is the best way to invest their money in a way that achieves their financial goals. They don’t charge upfront fees so that sounds great to most people.
But as I’ve said many times, if a financial services company doesn’t have the product that is best for your goals, they are not going to tell you to go somewhere else. They are never going to make money if they send business away.
If you walk into a Mazda dealer and you start talking about how much Ford means to you and you love Ford products and it becomes really obvious to them that you are going to have a significantly better life if you buy a Ford, they will NEVER say, “I don’t think a Mazda is the right car for you.” As a salesperson, that is possibly the worst thing you can do for your career. They will instead try their best to change your mind and fit your desires into their available range of products.
Darryl started his company You & Yours Financial so that he could provide truly unbiased advice. He is not at all interested in forcing you into a box so that you fit the financial product he sells. He doesn’t sell financial products at all. A quick glance at Darryl’s Twitter feed and you can see that he has no patience for the financial BS that’s out there.
Darryl is only interested in providing you with a completely unbiased opinion and an investment solution that is truly right for you.
Darryl joined me in the studio in Hamilton to share his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEClick here to become a patron of The Personal Finance Show via Patreon
To register for my next available personal finance webinar click here.
Kelley Keehn wants you to feel good about your money.
To feel good about your money, you have to educate yourself, ideally as early as possible.
Before you sign up for a credit card, read a ton about credit cards and how they work.
Before you buy a house or a condo, listen to podcasts about the pros and cons of buying real estate.
There are so many personal finance resources out there today, and people like Kelley, who are dedicated to educating people about money.
Kelley has written 9 books and has a 10th on the way called Talk Money To Me, which will be published in December 2019.
When Kelley was younger, she didn’t have the personal finance resources that we have today. She had to learn about money through trial and error.
Today, Kelley spends a lot of her time trying to change people’s thinking about money so that they don’t fall into the same traps that she did.
Kelley joined me from Edmonton, Alberta to share her personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEClick here to become a patron of The Personal Finance Show via Patreon
To register for my next available personal finance webinar click here.
Robert Brown wants you to not be afraid of a little hard work.
Robert grew up on a dairy farm. His father worked the farm while also working a full-time job at General Motors.
Robert learned about working for money early and also about patience and delayed gratification.
There are a lot of things that we buy today with borrowed money that we could easily put off until we have money in the bank, and we might even get a better deal if we wait.
Robert realized over time that many Canadians hadn’t learned what he did on the farm and as a result they were spending money before they earned it, and doing things like buying houses they actually couldn’t afford. They didn’t understand the concept of compound interest or how to save for the future while still being able to live a comfortable life today.
After over 25 years of working in the restaurant and food service industries, Robert decided to write a book about personal finance. He would write it in a way that Canadians would understand.
The book he wrote is called Wealthing Like Rabbits and it’s now a Canadian bestseller.
Robert joined me from Ajax, Ontario to share his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEClick here to become a patron of The Personal Finance Show via Patreon
To register for my next available personal finance webinar click here.
Sonya Smith-Valentine wants you to be Financially Fierce.
Sonya has an accounting degree and a law degree.
She is a CPA and a lawyer, and has worked professionally as both.
Sonya has worked for legal aid in New York and Maryland, and later started a law practice specializing in Consumer Debt and Bankruptcy, winning cases against credit bureaus, credit card companies, banks, and collection agencies for unlawful activity.
Today, Sonya is a Financial Confidence Expert and as President and CEO of Financially Fierce, LLC her mission is to improve the financial acumen of employees and managers to create financially savvy and highly productive workplaces.
Sonya joined me from the Maryland/DC area to share her personal finance story.
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J. Money wants you to know that Budgets Are Sexy.
That’s the title of the personal finance blog that he started 11 years ago, and even though you may never think budgets are sexy, the point that J. is trying to get across is that personal finance doesn’t have to be boring.
In 2008 J. started posting monthly net worth updates in addition to his regular content. In 137 months, J. has grown his net worth from just under $59,000 to almost $920,000. And you don’t have to wonder how he did it. Just go to Budgets Are Sexy and click on the Net Worth link. You’ll see all 137 posts and can drill down on any one of them.
J. has always been about full disclosure, which is one of the main reasons he still remains anonymous. As we discuss in the interview, I have met him at FinCon, but I don’t know his last name or whether his first name is actually Jay or a name that starts with J and I don’t know where he lives.
Including Budgets Are Sexy, J.’s personal finance projects have reached over 30 million views, but most importantly, J. is just a great guy and we are lucky to have him in the personal finance community. If you like what you hear today, I recommend you sign up for J.’s daily emails. After 11 years, and now a father of 3, J. is still doing what he can to make personal finance fun and engaging.
J. Money joined me from an undisclosed location in the US to share his personal finance story.
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Ericka Young wants you to be intentional and have a plan before you spend any money.
This applies to every single situation that involves money, which is pretty much everything.
As Paula Pant says at the beginning of her podcast, you can afford anything, but not everything.
Unfortunately because of loans and credit cards, we think we can afford everything.
This happens to too many people. They make good money, and can pay the bills, but the bank account doesn’t grow and the credit cards stay at the same level.
When you start out in debt, that’s what you know, and it becomes normal.
But living on credit creates this mindless spending, which can easily get out of control. You make decisions without thinking and sometimes those decisions have consequences.
There are so many people like Ericka who could easily break free of the mountain of debt that they are trapped under, if only they would step back and have a closer look at their financial situation and whether their spending habits align with their financial goals.
One day Ericka looked at her low bank balance and her high credit balance and asked herself: What’s going on here?
The process she went through was so motivating that she knew she wanted to help others achieve the same thing.
Ericka launched Tailor Made Budgets in 2005 and has been helping people change their money habits ever since.
Ericka joined me from Indianapolis, Indiana to share her personal finance story.
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Robert Farrington wants you to think before you click the button and accept your student loans.
Getting an education is an investment and you should spend some time thinking about what you’re investing in and what kind of return your investment will provide.
For example, you may not even need a degree at all to work somewhere you like and that pays well. You may need a degree to get promotions and more responsibility but that might not be until later and who knows, your employer might even help pay for your schooling.
We have been brainwashed over the years that to get a “good” job you have to spend a lot of money on school, and then eat ramen noodles while living in a tiny apartment and work 12 hour days to repay your loans.
After the interview with Robert I realized that some part of me is still brainwashed, and it actually scared me a little.
Robert worked at Target for over 16 years. He mentioned this right at the beginning of the interview and I totally didn’t hear him say that he only stopped working there 2 years ago.
So I kept asking him questions like “So what was your next job” not fully comprehending that he was always at Target until he decided he was making enough from his side hustles and he wanted to spend more time with his family.
I realized that there’s this part of me that still finds it hard to believe that someone would work in retail for that long and it’s scary to think that I have these notions in my brain somewhere, when I don’t actively believe this is true. But on auto-pilot, the notion that guided me to my next questions were that he must have got a better job. No one works at Target for 16 years. It really sucks but it seems I’ve been brainwashed to think that this is not a good job, without even knowing what it is that Robert even did for 16 years.
Of course there are people who spend their whole lives in retail and are very happy. Robert actually ended up with a lot of responsibility, managing several hundred employees and millions in sales. But he shouldn’t be any less valuable to me as a human being if he simply pushed carts and stocked shelves for 16 years instead. Especially when on the side he was building a web empire that now has millions of visitors per month.
Even more ironic is that I’ve been driving for Uber since last September. And I’m sure there are people that think it’s odd that someone with a university degree and 15 years working in accounting and finance would be an Uber driver. But I actually really like it and it fits with my flexible schedule.
I decided that even though it makes me seem like a classist jerk, I needed to talk about this. Maybe you do this too and you don’t even realize it. Talking about it openly is the only way to shake off these archaic notions about what is good or bad, what is the right path and all the other societal norms that seem to only cause us to spend money we don’t have and take jobs we don’t want.
So as Robert suggests, before we just press a button and fund our future with debt, we need to spend more time thinking about what it is we want. Are you going to be able to pay back this debt? What kind of job will you get after you graduate? If you’re going to take on tens of thousands in debt, shouldn’t you at least have a general answer to these questions? Why is the default: get the loan and figure it out later.
Personally I think we have it all backwards. We should try working in jobs in our areas of interest or curiosity, make some money, and then take whatever training or schooling is necessary to move forward in that area of work, if we enjoy it.
Why is a 4 year degree the thing that everyone cares about? Logically it doesn’t make sense.
Most people hire someone who works well with others and then train them how to do the job.
We’re focusing on the wrong things and it’s creating a society that is trapped by huge amounts of debt.
As Robert wrote in a recent post on his site The College Investor, student loans should be your last option. If you do decide that you want to go to school before you have enough money to pay for it, there are so many options to explore before going straight to student loans. If you or someone in your family is in the process of deciding how to pay for school, I fully recommend going to thecollegeinvestor.com and reading everything.
Robert joined me from his home in Southern California to share his personal finance story.
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Stacy Yanchuk-Oleksy wants you to see a non-profit credit counsellor if you have credit problems.
Stacy is Director of Education and Community Awareness at the Credit Counselling Society.
If you’ve listened to episode 76 of the show, you know that I had credit problems 11 years ago. I filed a consumer proposal with a licenced insolvency trustee, under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act of Canada.
My case was severe so I skipped the first step that many take and that’s going to see a credit counsellor first to discuss options.
There are a lot of great people out there looking to actually help you get out of debt.
Whether you see a counsellor or a trustee, most will help you make the right move for your debt situation.
As Stacy and I discuss in the interview, just make sure that you don’t pay anything upfront for debt solutions and don’t just click on the first link in the online search.
There are websites and companies that appear to be offering debt settlement solutions, but they are just payday lenders in disguise.
Make sure you find out about the company that you’re dealing with. The legitimate trustees and non-profit credit counsellors have nothing to hide. They have names of staff and locations and they are active on social media.
Stacy is very proud of the free workshops and educational resources that the Credit Counselling Society provides in order to try to prevent Canadians from getting into unmanageable debt in the first place.
The most important thing to me is that you know what your options are when you’re in trouble. And I fully recommend you take advantage of free consultations with as many organizations as you can handle. Go meet them in person and talk to them about solutions. Everyone’s situation is different and the more information you have from multiple sources, the better you will be at determining which solution works for you and more importantly, the one you can live with.
Stacy joined me in the studio in Hamilton to tell her personal finance story.
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Shanah Bell wants you to lead a happy, unorthodox life.
You can be successful without following the traditional 9 to 5 career path option. It’s true.
But to get there, you have to be open to opportunity and change, and sometimes you have to be a bit of a PITA, which I recently learned is an acronym for Pain In The Ass.
In fact, Shanah’s new book is called The Art of Being a PITA. It guides new adults and recent college graduates through the ins-and-outs of living life the way they want to. The way that no one talks about.
As she tells it, most people believe you are a pain in the ass if you do things that are contrary to societal norms. For example, if you don’t follow this checklist: 9 to 5 job, marriage, house, kids, work until 65, retire and then finally do what you want, society is like, stop being a pain in the ass and just do what the rest of us are doing.
Shanah’s path is a bit different. She figured out how to do many, many different things for money, on her own terms.
Because this show is about her personal finance story, we didn’t spend a lot of time delving into the 56 jobs Shanah has had, but if you’re interested in the details, pick up a copy of the book, where she goes through each job and the lessons she learned from each one.
Since she wrote the book Shanah has added 4 more jobs: dog boarding, cooking classes, AirBNB, and, of course, author.
Shanah joined me from her home in Raleigh, North Carolina to share her personal finance story.
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Sandy Yong wants everyone to learn about personal finance so that their future self can thank them for it.
Sandy figured out early on that if you give your money to the big banks, and don’t know what you want to invest in, they will choose the ones with the highest fees.
Makes sense, doesn’t it? If you went to a car dealership, and said here’s some money, I want a car, and didn’t give them any parameters like fuel efficiency, or speed, or size or anything, they would sell you the car that makes them the most money. In fact, if they didn’t do that, I would question if they are in the right business.
Sandy figured out that if she learned the basics of personal finance, she could invest her own money, have more control over her risk, and save a ton on fees.
She learned so much about personal finance that when the opportunity came up to publish a book, personal finance was the clear subject.
Sandy’s book, The Money Master, will be published in the summer of 2019.
It’s always great to have another voice in the personal finance community to help increase financial literacy and democratize personal finance.
Financial wellness is nearly impossible to achieve if you are having mental health issues. Recognizing this, Sandy has decided to donate $2 from every sale of her book to CAMH, The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. If you’ve heard my story of addiction and recovery, you know that this has a special meaning for me, so thank you Sandy for making this commitment.
Sandy joined me in the studio in Hamilton to tell her personal finance story.
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Ed Rempel wants you to know that the conventional personal finance wisdom most people follow, might not be the best for your financial situation. Unconventional wisdom, as he calls it, might be your path to financial success.
Ed has been a financial planner for over 25 years and a tax accountant for over 35 years.
He is a Certified Financial Planner, Chartered Professional Accountant, and Certified Hedge Fund Specialist.
Ed has spent the majority of his life actually creating comprehensive financial plans for Canadians and continuously building his knowledge base to help his clients reach financial freedom in the most optimal and efficient way.
Ed has so much unconventional wisdom to share that one podcast episode wasn’t enough. We didn’t even get to talk about all of the really interesting investing and tax strategies that he has become an expert in over the years. So stay tuned for Part 2 of this interview in the coming months.
Ed joined me in the studio in Hamilton to share part 1 of his personal finance story.
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Sandi Martin wants someone giving financial advice to be paid by the person who’s receiving financial advice. And the someone giving financial advice should be paid a fee for the financial services they provide.
Sandi worked at a bank for years and her job was to sell the bank’s products.
When people came to her office to ask for financial advice, they didn’t have to pay her anything. The bank paid her. She worked for the bank and not for the people asking for advice. The bank would be happy if the people who came into Sandi’s office purchased one of the bank’s products before they left, and Sandi would be considered a success if she sold as many bank products as she could.
A lot of the time, the products at the bank were not the best products for the people who walked into her office. They weren’t terrible products, but they weren’t the right fit for some of the people. But she couldn’t recommend anything else because she would have lost her job at the bank.
The more she found out about the variety of financial products that existed, she realized that a lot of the best ones for the people who walked into her office at the bank existed outside of the bank.
So she left and created her own financial planning company, which is now called Spring Financial Planning.
She decided she wasn’t going to sell financial products at all.
She would talk to people and find out what they need to achieve their financial goals.
They would pay her a fee to help them make a financial plan that wasn’t tied to any financial products.
When the plan was done and they asked her how they should invest their money in a way that aligned with the goals in their plan, she could point them to a variety of suitable products that they could get from a variety of places. And they would be suitable for her clients because they would help them achieve their financial goals, not because she was getting paid to sell them.
Sandi Martin joined me from somewhere in the middle of the province of Ontario to tell her personal finance story.
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Janine Rogan wants you to know that no one is born with an understanding of personal finance.
Janine got pretty good at making money early. Queen of the side hustle, they called her.
But somehow her bank account was always empty and her credit cards were always maxed.
This is, unfortunately, not uncommon in our society.
Making good money, but somehow the money disappears. Some people tell me this like it’s some kind of unsolveable mystery.
Luckily for Janine, she had a friend who pointed her to the world of personal finance books and blogs, and she was hooked after that.
Today you can find Janine’s personal finance writing all over the internet.
Janine joined me from Calgary, Alberta to share her personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEMichael Kruse wants you to not be afraid of changing your career.
We usually go to school for one thing. One field of study. One industry. Then we work hard to find jobs and build experience in that industry. We become experts. After 10 or 15 years we become well known for doing one thing very well.
Maybe you’ve been in the same job or industry for that long and you’re totally fine. You’re paid well, you enjoy the work - there’s no reason to move on.
After 10 years working as a lighting designer in the world of Canadian theatre, Michael Kruse wasn’t fine. Among other issues, he couldn’t see himself ever reaching a comfortable retirement or financial independence making the money he was making.
So in his early thirties, Michael left his long career in theatre and decided he was going to pursue something completely different...he was going to become a paramedic.
Michael joined me in the studio in Hamilton to share his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEEllen Roseman has been sticking up for Canadians as an advocate for consumer rights for the past 35 years.
If you’re interested in Canadian personal finance, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve already read something written by Ellen Roseman.
Ellen’s been a personal finance and consumer advocacy columnist at the Toronto Star for over 20 years and though she officially retired from the Star in 2015, Ellen agreed to stay on in a freelance capacity to write a weekly column, featuring consumer issues she believes will have the most impact for Canadians.
Ellen has written 8 books, including Money 101, Money 201 and her latest book Back-81-Ways-to-Help-You-Save-Money-and-Protect-Yourself.htm">Fight Back: 81 ways to help you save money and protect yourself from corporate trickery.
Ellen also teaches investing and personal finance courses at the University of Toronto Continuing Studies and currently sits on the board as co-chair of the Canadian Foundation for Advancement of Investor Rights, which we talk more about in the episode.
Ellen joined me in the studio in Hamilton to tell her personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEOwen Winkelmolen wants you to talk to someone...anyone...before you make any investment decisions.
Ideally it would be someone in the personal finance realm. A coach like me, or a financial planner or advisor.
But please just talk to someone, because if you do, you might save yourself from making the huge financial mistake Owen made in his late twenties.
You’ll have to listen to the episode to find out exactly what happened, but let’s just say it was a bad enough experience that Owen decided to start learning as much as he could about personal finance which ultimately led to the creation of his company PlanEasy.ca.
Owen joined me in the studio in Hamilton to tell his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODESaijal Patel wants you to know that women are 80% more likely to live in poverty in retirement than men.
This is a terrible statistic. Seriously, why is anyone living in poverty in retirement.
If someone is retired, that means they have either worked at a job or a business their whole life, or have supported someone else who worked, in one way or another.
And this person now gets to live in poverty? Why is this acceptable?
Saijal doesn’t think it’s acceptable. She started a company called Saij Elle where she helps women build the right money mindset and skills so they can own their financial independence and achieve true financial wellness.
And the thing about Saijal is that she comes from the business world, and knows how to talk to businesses as well as individuals. She knows that the system itself needs to be changed, and one of her mandates is to encourage businesses to build effective financial wellness programs.
Financial wellness takes a village and everyone has to be on board: individuals, companies, the media and the financial industry.
There is a shift in the way personal finance is being delivered to the public and Saijal is leading the way by helping reduce the money stigma and shame many women feel every day.
Saijal joined me in the studio in Hamilton to tell her personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODE78 - Owen Winkelmolen
For this episode, the host becomes the guest and my wife becomes the host!
I decided that after 75 episodes it was time to become the guest and tell my story.
I’ve talked a lot on the show about my history with addiction but just bits and pieces here and there.
I asked my wife, Kaila, if she would take over as the host for an episode and she agreed!
We talked about how I got into my gambling addiction, how I got out of it, and what I learned about personal finance, and life in general, along the way.
It all started with a Super Nintendo…
NEXT EPISODE
For my 75th episode I decided to record a 75 minute episode with 74 1-minute (or less) segments, one for each of the 74 shows published so far (leaving 30 seconds for the introduction and whatever is left for the sign-off).
Each segment has an introduction/commentary and a short clip of the show.
So if you want to experience the evolution of The Personal Finance Show without spending 75 hours, now you can get a taste of the first 74 episodes in only 75 minutes.
NEXT EPISODELarry Bates want you to Beat The Bank.
That’s the title of his new book and it’s all about challenging the status quo of Canadians paying the highest investment fees in the world and believing that the financial industry has their best interests at heart.
You see Larry spent his whole career on the business side of the banking and investment worlds. One day he was sitting up in his ivory tower and a phone call from his sister changed everything.
That’s when he decided to use his knowledge about the financial industry to become an advocate for Canadian investors. Larry is all about transparency and making sure you don’t pay high investment fees and he proves in his book that you don’t need to be an expert to be an investor. You just need to know the basics.
Larry joined me in the studio in Hamilton, to share his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEJohn Lanza wants to help families raise money-smart, money-empowered kids so that they can live happier, more fulfilled lives.
John is the creator of the Money Mammals and the author of The Art of Allowance.
I want to tell you everything about the Money Mammals because I like them so much, but it’s probably best that you listen to the interview and then go to Youtube and search for the Money Mammals. Describing them as puppets who are in a band and sing and play songs about money, just doesn’t feel like I’m doing them justice.
There is a Money Mammals DVD, 3 books for kids and now for parents the new book The Art of Allowance, which provides an allowance framework to find the right way for you to set up an allowance system for your kids. There is also a companion Art of Allowance podcast where John interviews parents about their allowance systems and what’s working, or not working, for them.
The thing I noticed most about all of John’s money resources for kids is how well designed and produced everything is. From the websites to the videos,songs, interactive games, and books, it’s just an amazing collection.
John joined me from Los Angeles to tell his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEThe Loonie Doctor wants to keep new doctors from falling into the lifestyle inflation trap.
The Loonie Doctor prefers to remain anonymous so all I can tell you is that he is a doctor and he lives somewhere in Southern Ontario.
As you may have heard, doctors are always the best at managing their own personal finances and it’s not surprising. I want my doctor to be really good at being a doctor. They have tons of information in their brains and for many, there is no more room for finances.
And it may seem like doctors don’t need help because they make so much money, but the sad truth is that the more money you make, the more debt and subsequent trouble you can get into.
The path to getting your medical licence is often very long. You get your undergrad, then 3 to 4 years of medical school, and then 3 or more years of residency, before you start making what you and I would consider to be real doctor money.
So the shift from the student/resident lifestyle to the doctor lifestyle can be shocking for some and can lead them on a path of spending money they think they have, but really don’t, not tackling their debts right away and not thinking about saving money at all. Often they end up working longer than they need to, and burning out as a result.
The Loonie Doctor decided to start a blog to try to help new doctors get a handle on things as early as possible in their careers.
He joined me in the studio to tell his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODETom Drake is known as the godfather of Canadian personal finance bloggers.
In fact, Tom just hit his 10-year blogging anniversary this month, February 2019.
Originally Canadian Finance Blog, Tom rebranded to Maple Money and now even has a podcast called the Maple Money Show (I was on as a guest in November 2018).
Tom has created thousands of personal finance posts over the years and he did it all while working a full-time job during the week, at a company that he started with 18 years ago and still works at today.
If you’ve listened to the show, you’ve heard me talk about FinCon, North America’s largest personal finance conference. I did Episode 51 live from FinCon 2018 in Orlando. Well, Tom has been to every single FinCon since 2011, and I’m sure I will see him again this year in Washington, D.C.
Tom joined me from Calgary, Alberta to tell his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEMichelle Hung is on a mission to empower women to take control of their finances by providing them the education and support in order to gain the confidence they need to make their own investment decisions.
Michelle has a degree in math, is a Chartered Financial Analyst and worked on Bay Street as an investment banker for 7 years. But instead of keeping all of this financial knowledge to herself and continuing to make buckets of money in IB, as she calls it, Michelle decided to focus on helping others.
Michelle wrote a fantastic investment workbook called The Sassy Investor which was just released in early 2019 . As you’ll hear in the interview, I’m a huge fan of this book. It’s colourful and fun, and you can even colour in it. But it also breaks down personal finance and investing so it’s easy to understand.
As she states on page 6 of the book, Michelle wrote The Sassy Investor to create an inviting and comforting environment for women when dealing with finances.
I like this book so much, Michelle agreed to give me 3 copies to give away to my listeners. To enter the giveaway head to beauhumphreys.com/giveaway before March 31st, 2019. And if you’re listening to this after the giveaway has closed, you can get a copy of the book for yourself at thesassyinvestor.ca.
Michelle joined me in the studio in Hamilton to share her personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEJason Butler wants you to know that you can still have fun and live your life while you are in debt.
Jason graduated from Savannah State University in 2008 with around $25,000 in debt, but due to a variety of factors, which we discuss in the interview, his debt increased to over $72,000 by 2015.
His most recent debt report from the end of December 2018 has his total debt down to just over $66,000.
In 2013 Jason started The Butler Journal, and starting blogging about his debt repayment and side hustles to help him become more accountable with his finances.
He decided he wouldn’t let this huge debt control his life. He would try his best to pay it down over time, but since he knew that would take a while, he made a point to try to enjoy his life as well.
In 2019 The Butler Journal rebranded as My Money Chronicles, and Jason is working on some great things for 2019 at mymoneychronicles.com.
Jason has had a few setbacks over the years, but what I admire about him is that he keeps trying different side hustles, writing about them and helping others find ways to pay down their debts and make extra money with their own side hustles.
Jason is not alone with his large student debt. As of 2018, the total student debt amount in the US was $1.5 Trillion.
Jason joined me from Atlanta, Georgia to tell his personal finance story
NEXT EPISODERubina Ahmed-Haq wants you to know that personal finance can be exciting!
Rubina is a personal finance expert and has been a broadcast journalist for 20 years..
Rubina’s experience in broadcasting means that she has this ability to take dry financial topics and make them interesting.
20 years in broadcast journalism also means that Rubina has some very interesting stories, some of which you will hear in this interview.
Rubina did an excellent job as host of the Canadian Personal Finance Conference this past November and I’m excited to be helping her launch her new podcast called Dear Rubi. Head to dearrubi.com for details on how you can be part of the podcast.
Rubina joined me in the studio in Hamilton to share her personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODENico Barawid wants you to know that personal finance is very different for immigrants.
And it’s even harder if you’re an immigrant who is also a woman or person of colour, like Nico’s Mom.
Nico came to the US from the Philippines with his parents when he was very young.
Despite the fact that they were both medical residents and eventually doctors in the US, Nico’s parents faced a lot of financial discrimination because of their lack of credit history.
And the worst part about this is that it isn’t that they lack credit history entirely, it’s that they didn’t have credit history in the US. They had student loans and credit cards in the Philippines before they left.
So why wouldn’t that credit history count in the US? Good question. It’s because the credit evaluation process is broken. For as long as financial institutions have been around, no one has ever thought to connect the global credit reporting systems in a meaningful way. And all of the local systems are different so good credit in the Philippines means nothing to US banks.
So when the 3 founders of a new company called Nova Credit were looking for their first employee, Nico jumped at the opportunity to help fix this broken system.
Nico is now working with banks and credit bureaus around the world, connecting them one at a time so that one day, immigrants with good credit will be able to bring that credit to the US and Canada, and not have to go through what Nico’s parents went through.
I’m very happy that Nico is doing this and that he joined me from the San Francisco Bay Area to tell his family’s personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEJackie Lam wants you to be proud of being frugal.
Frugal doesn’t mean cheap.
There was a time when Jackie needed to be frugal because she had no choice.
But today, for her and many others, being frugal is really about making sure that her spending behaviour aligns with her values.
It’s about making money decisions that help you live your best life.
But for many years, Jackie was shamed for her frugality. Whether it is actually a symptom of living in poverty or a value choice, many people still judge frugality and praise free spending.
So imagine the validation when Jackie gets to college and meets other frugal minded individuals like her. Finding frugal friends that celebrated their frugality inspired Jackie to create a blog in 2009 called Cheapsters, which morphed into HeyFreelancer.com, her site about keeping your money in check so you can do what you love.
Jackie joined me from Los Angeles to share her personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEDamion Lupo wants you to ask yourself: How can I serve and contribute to others in a deep and meaningful way?
If you’re just chasing dollars without meaning, you could end up rich if you’re lucky, but even if you are one of the lucky ones who makes millions, there’s a good chance you’re going to be miserable.
Damion’s been there. He made millions and then lost it all. And he wasn’t able to get back on track until he found meaning and truth and focused on that instead of just making money.
After going through this experience he and a friend wrote a book called Reinvented Life. Reinvented Life is a process and methodology for stepping into the life you are supposed to be living versus the one you are living today.
Personally, I think we should make it a habit of stepping back from our lives and asking: is what I’m doing adding value to the world? Is what I’m doing fulfilling? Am I making a difference in any way other than lining my pockets?
The most important thing to me is that you’re living the life that you want and that you chose, rather than just following a path or a checklist made up by someone who has no idea what is best for you.
Damion shifted from helping himself get richer to helping others have the life they always wanted. Here is his personal finance story.
(To get the free Reinvented Life workbook head to: http://reinvention.net/)
NEXT EPISODEMelissa Leong wants you to spend smart, save right and enjoy life.
Those are the words on the cover of her new book Happy Go Money, which was just released this week!
Melissa is a personal finance writer, on-air personality, speaker and bestselling author.
You might be thinking, Beau, you can’t say bestselling author if Melissa’s first book just came out.
Well we didn’t talk about this in the interview but Melissa is already a bestselling author. Her self-published paranormal adventure novels, What Kills Me and I Am Forever, written under the pen name Wynne Channing, have sold almost 70,000 copies and soared to #1 on a number of bestseller lists on Amazon.
Melissa is funny and mindful and really just wants to help you manage your money while maximizing your happiness.
Melissa invited me to her home where I got to meet her family, have some snacks and talk about her personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODECal MacWilliam helps developing countries get money when they need it most.
Cal is a senior economist at the World Bank, a global organization that helps to reduce poverty and build shared prosperity in developing countries.
Cal will meet with the government officials of these countries, who have already reached out to the World Bank for loans or grants, and provide them with the funding they need.
OK it's not that easy.
The government officials might need to make a few changes, before they qualify for the loans or grants. These are usually changes that will improve their country in some way. Positive changes.
Sounds like it should be an easy decision, right? Implement policy change that is meant to improve the lives of your citizens and you get money from the world Bank.
Money you asked for. Money that you said you really needed. And If it's a grant, you don't even have to pay that back.
But often Cal will visit these countries after speaking with their government officials and find they haven't made the changes necessary to qualify for the money.
Despite these frustrations, Cal continues to dedicate his career to helping others, as he has since he started at the Canadian International Development Agency or CIDA in the 1980s.
Cal now lives near Washington DC and I was very happy that he agreed to sit with me, when I was visiting earlier this year, to talk about his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEZena Amundsen wants you to know that money is emotional.
One of the emotions often associated with money is fear.
That’s what Zena felt when she separated from her husband for 2 years, with 2 small children and absolutely no knowledge of her personal finances.
It was during that time that she decided to stop worrying about money and start learning about it instead.
Today she is a Certified Financial Planner, Certified Divorce Financial Analyst and a Certified Cash Flow Specialist.
She’s got the financial knowledge but that’s only part of it. Personal finance isn’t just about graphs and rates of return.
Money is emotional but we don’t talk about it that way. Realizing the current financial education system is lacking, Zena decided to write a book called “The Heart of Your Money” specifically to empower Canadian women to build a healthy relationship with money.
Zena joined me from Regina, Saskatchewan to tell her personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEMr. Prairie FIRE wants you to discover something about yourself by knowing your finances.
Mr. Prairie FIRE, let’s call him Fred, is an anonymous Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) blogger in the prairies of Western Canada at prairiefirecanada.com.
Fred calls his discovery of the FIRE movement his financial enlightenment.
After surviving 3 large financial crises in a very short time period, he was determined to take control of his finances.
Specifically Fred was drawn to the FIRE movement and the freedom that financial independence promises.
Fred joined me from somewhere in Saskatchewan to tell his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEElizabeth Naumovski is the host of a new television show called Finance is Personal.
On the show she talks with women who are experts in personal finance, while educating viewers about financial literacy.
Elizabeth decided to make women the focus of her show because she believes we need to change what is referred to as the women's money mindset. Many women are not interested in spending any time on their personal finances and this can be detrimental if there is a need to manage money issues on their own.
There aren't that many women on finance shows and definitely not many Canadians on TV at all talking about the financial issues that specifically affect women.
Having a broadcast and finance background, Elizabeth is very well suited to promote financial literacy to Canadians.
I met with Elizabeth at her office in downtown Toronto to hear her personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEGlen James wants you to know that money doesn’t really matter.
Glen has a very successful financial planning business in Australia and hosts Australia’s top podcast for millennials, called my millenial money.
Glen believes that if you follow your passion, focus on helping others, start your own business and automate everything that you can, then the money will come.
But it doesn’t come overnight. Glen is in his early thirties, but he started in business almost two decades ago, and by the age of 25 had more real life business experience than most people in their 40s. Glen didn’t come from money, and worked hard to get to where he is today.
When the money does come, the thing to do isn’t always extreme frugality and aggressive saving. You have to take care of future you and your fixed expenses, but once you’re covered there, you should have permission to spend the rest and enjoy your life.
Glen wants you to know that the pursuit of money alone won’t bring you happiness. Money gives you options but it should not be the goal.
I didn’t get to connect with Glen during my visit to Australia in July but we were able to meet up later in Orlando during FinCon 2018, where he shared his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODELiz Enriquez wants you to grow and learn and ask questions about money.
By age 21, Liz had travelled to over 20 countries and paid for them out of pocket... By age 22, she paid off her university tuition… By age 24, she saved over $50,000 and bought a house... By age 26, her net worth grew to 6 figures... And this year, at 27, she quit her government job after making $10,000 in one month through her various income streams.
Liz worked hard, kept her costs down and saved a lot to accomplish all of this by 27.. No handouts. No help from her parents. No inheritance.
She realized while going through these financial milestones that there weren’t many resources available millennials like her. And the resources that did exist were scattered and difficult to understand for someone who isn’t a financial expert.
So Liz created ambitiousadulting.com to help Canadian Millennials understand personal finances so they can save more, earn more and reduce stress about money.
Liz joined me in the studio in Hamilton to tell her personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEAt 22, Arian Beyzaei is Vice President of Operations at Enriched Academy and has investments of over $100,000.
At 16 he read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and told his parents he wasn’t going to college or university.
They were not happy with his decision.
That year he saw Enriched Academy on Dragon’s Den and decided he wanted to join their mission to help Canadians learn, understand and control their money.
Though he was young, the founders of Enriched Academy were impressed by Arian’s passion for personal finance and his willingness to learn and let him join the company as an intern at 17.
He was hired on full time after 8 months and since then he has presented to tens of thousands of Canadians and has been the keynote speaker for hundreds of different corporations.
Arian joined me in the studio to tell us his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEDanielle Alexandria wants to help you create true wealth and freedom for the rest of your life.
She believes that creating wealth isn’t just about investing in funds and letting them grow for 40 years. A more holistic approach is needed.
As a financial empowerment coach Danielle will help you overcome your limiting beliefs about money, heal your emotional wounds and help you develop the mindset of the wealthy.
Your thoughts about money might be holding you back. You might think that you can never be wealthy or that attaining financial freedom is not possible.
Well, guess what, if you keep thinking these thoughts, there’s a pretty good chance they are going to come true!
Psychology plays a huge role in finances and Danielle is here to help you break down whatever barriers are between you and financial success.
Danielle joined me in Dufferin Grove Park in Toronto to tell her personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODERobert Gignac wants you to know that you are capable of creating the financial future you desire.
But you can’t create a financial future if you don’t know anything about your financial present.
17 years ago, Robert lost his job in IT and realized he was actually doing ok financially. Sure, the money he had accumulated wouldn’t last forever, but as long as he generated some income to fill in the gaps along the way, he would be fine.
Robert only knew this because he had a financial plan in place.
If you are laid off and don’t have a financial plan, the only thing you can do is wonder if you’re going to be ok. You might get stressed out looking for a new job and panic if you don’t find one right away.
With a long-term financial plan, you don’t have to wonder. You’ll know if you’re ok or not.
But this personal finance stuff is really dull so Robert decided to write a book called Rich Is a State of Mind, to try to convince Canadians that taking control of your money is easier than they might think.
A highly sought-after speaker, Robert delivers dynamic keynote speeches and interactive workshop programs to International organizations, financial industry conferences and private clients.
He also has a podcast called Money, Motivation and More and a TV show called We Talk Money.
Robert joined me in the studio to tell his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODERona Birenbaum wants you to be financially successful.
Rona started out in the financial services industry at a time when sales commissions were huge and the focus was on making money for yourself, and not necessarily your clients.
Rona decided that this was all wrong and in the year 2000 she founded Caring For Clients, Toronto’s best financial planning firm.
At Caring for Clients, Rona and her team do something called Integrative Financial Planning. Sometimes referred to as holistic planning, it means looking at your whole financial picture. I believe this testimonial from caringforclients.com says it best
"Rona and the team at Caring for Clients helped us put together a plan that is far beyond financial advice. Their unique holistic approach had us explore all aspects of our life to ensure that we had all the necessary support in place for our future."
Over the years, Rona realized that paying for a full financial plan from Caring for Clients wasn’t always in the financial best interest of prospective clients. So with the help of new technology, she recently created ViviPlan.com, where you can still get a great financial plan, but for a fraction of the price of a full-blown Caring for Clients plan.
I visited Rona at her office in downtown Toronto where she shared her personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEDarlene Patgunarajah never fit in with the status quo. Darlene is a pioneer.
She started out as a registered nurse, and is currently working at an agency for financial advisors. This is not a very common career path.
Darlene is an excellent example of someone who built her own career path by creating new roles and systems that fit her skills and interests.
Just because you started somewhere doesn’t mean you have to end up there.
Just because a role doesn’t exist, doesn’t mean you can’t make a case for its existence.
It’s ok to reinvent yourself and even take a pay cut rather than stay somewhere that you don’t belong.
It is only by trying different things and making changes that you are able to find your true calling.
Darlene joined me in Toronto in Trinity Bellwoods park to tell the story of her non-traditional career path and how she managed her personal finances along the way.
NEXT EPISODEDavid Jenkins wants to help you learn about investing. But he doesn’t want any compensation.
David wants you to pay it forward. If you learn something from his website, he wants you to make a donation to charity instead. David’s charity of choice is the Sanfilippo Children’s Research Foundation which was created to help find a cure for Sanfilippo Syndrome, a degenerative and terminal genetic disorder that affects children.
To try to simplify the complex world of investing, David created a website called theansweris.ca. It’s a financial education website that provides step-by-step instructions for a Model Long-Term Investment Portfolio containing six low-cost ETFs that are well-diversified both geographically, and more importantly, by economic sector.
But David doesn’t want you to just jump right in - he wants to make sure you understand the service he’s providing - and therefore he made it so that you have to complete a 6 question quiz before you proceed.
Especially if you are new to investing, it can be dangerous to follow David’s 100% equity model ETF portfolio if you don’t fully understand that he wants you to buy and hold for at least 10 years.
It’s also important to understand that the information that he provides is purely educational and is just one option for investing your money. David is a self-taught investor and is simply using this website to convey what he’s learned to whoever wants to listen.
Similar to what I would do as a personal finance coach, David is simply interested in providing you with information to help you make the right decisions for you. Please be sure to read all the disclaimers on theansweris.ca when you check it out.
David joined me in the studio earlier this year to share his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEAfter driving for 20 hours to Orlando, Florida from Hamilton, Ontario, I decided that my 51st episode of the show would be a live solo episode from the podcast studio at FinCon 2018.
What am I talking about for 25 minutes?
Podcasts, of course!
I listened to 18 hours of podcasts during my drive. The last 2 hours I had a live person in the car, Sarah Li-Cain, from the website High Fiving Dollars and the podcast Beyond The Dollar, so I turned the podcasts off and we had a conversation instead!
Many of the episodes I listened to were more than an hour long so I didn’t listen to as many as you might be thinking. In today’s live, unedited, solo episode, I talk a bit about FinCon but mostly about the 7 podcasts I listened to during my 2.5 day road trip. Here they are, in no particular order:
Stacking Benjamins Afford Anything Beyond The Dollar The Money and Media Podcast Mo’ Money Podcast The Fairer Cents The Money Millhouse
You should check out all of these podcasts, but also all of the podcasts nominated for Plutus Awards this year. You can find the list here.
If you need to pick one, I 100% recommend The Fairer Cents. Tanja and Kara are talking about things we should all be talking about and they are really good at it. This is my favourite podcast.
I had a great trip down travelling through 8 states - New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. On the way back, I get to add 2 more states, Maryland and the District of Columbia. See you when I'm back in Canada!
NEXT EPISODETina from Money Flamingo will reach semi-retirement in 863 days.
Money Flamingo is an Australian blog about Financial Independence and Retiring Early, also known as FIRE.
There are many FIRE bloggers on the internet, and I will have a Canadian one on the show in the near future, but Money Flamingo is a bit different and not just because Tina and her husband are Australian.
In May of 2018 they started Project 1000, which is their plan to build their nest egg to $500,000 in 1000 days, then quit their regular day jobs, work part-time for 10 years while their nest egg doubles to $1,000,000, which should provide them with financial independence and the option to stop working.
You won’t find Tina’s picture or last name on the episode cover, because, like most FIRE bloggers, she prefers to remain anonymous. If you had a plan to quit your job in less than 3 years, you might not want your employer to know about that either.
You can check out Tina’s progress at moneyflamingo.com and decide for yourself whether you think their plan is feasible. Many people have achieved early retirement, and there are many ways to get there, depending on various factors like how much you want to spend today and what you intend to need for funds when you do stop working.
But Tina and Mr. Flamingo only started focusing on early retirement recently. A lot had to happen in Tina’s life before she even realized financial independence was possible for her and her husband. Tina met up with me somewhere(it’s a secret!) in Sydney, Australia to tell her personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEBessie Hassan is passionate about helping people find better deals and save money.
Bessie is the Australian Head of PR and Money Expert at Australia’s largest financial comparison site, finder.com.au.
I reached out to Bessie for the Australian Personal Finance Series because I think it’s so important to provide everyday consumers with as much information as possible, so they can make informed financial decisions. Not only does Bessie do that at Finder, she does it in a way that is relatable and accessible and helps promote financial literacy.
I met up with Bessie at the Finder headquarters in downtown Sydney, or CBD, Central Business District, if you’re Australian, where she shared her personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEKylie Travers turns obstacles into opportunities.
During a 3-year period, Kylie Travers lived through spousal abuse and subsequent divorce, she was homeless, robbed of everything including her underwear, she was temporarily paralyzed, had a cancer scare, and on top of all of this had to figure out how to support her 2 girls who had been diagnosed with learning disabilities and needed extra care, which costs extra money.
But Kylie didn’t let any of this get her down. In that same 3-year period, she was a speaker at the first FinCon conference in Chicago in 2011 and won best international personal finance blog at the Plutus Awards at FinCon 2012 and 2013.
Kylie runs her own successful business, where she is consultant, influencer, ambassador, marketer, and is involved in charity work in Australia, which led to her being named finalist for Young Australian of the Year in 2015.
Kylie has written several personal finance books which are available on her personal finance site called The Thrifty Issue and has a ton of free resources and blog posts at kylietravers.com.au.
In July 2018 I travelled to Australia to join my wife, Kaila, who was doing a one month exchange with a Sydney hospital as part of her McMaster University Medical training here in Hamilton. We already had plans to head to Melbourne for a weekend, so I reached out to Kylie, who lives there, and she agreed to meet me in Carlton Gardens to tell her inspirational personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODE
Eric Arnold’s personal finance story is not for the risk-averse.
Eric is what you might call a serial entrepreneur.
Whatever people have in their brain that prevents them from taking huge risks… yeah, Eric doesn’t have that.
What does this mean for Eric?
It means when the rest of us were working our 9 to 5s - making spreadsheets for our bi-weekly paycheques, Eric was building businesses.
Some did very well and some did not.
With success comes failure, but Eric learned something from every business.
Today Eric is CEO of Planswell, a company that provides free financial plans to Canadians. Planswell is doing great, having raised $13 Million dollars to date and so far providing free financial plans to over 100,000 Canadians.
But a lot happened before Planswell was even an idea. Here’s Eric to take us through his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEBoyce Collins doesn’t want you to become house poor.
As a mortgage broker, his responsibility is to get you the best mortgage for you. This isn’t always the case when you go to get a mortgage from a bank. And the best mortgage isn’t necessarily the one that leaves you strapped for cash if the interest rate changes by a quarter of a percent, or leaves you with an empty bank account every month.
If you listen to the show, you’ve heard me say this a bunch of times: banks care about making money. They don’t care about you.
After talking to Boyce for over an hour, I actually believe that he cares about his clients.
A house is usually the biggest purchase of your life. So for the biggest purchase of your life it really makes sense to me to go see a specialist.
Boyce currently works for The Personal Mortgage Group, a brokerage founded by his mom, Suzanne in the early 90s. This brokerage is all about trust, integrity and financial wellness. They have 92 5-star reviews on Google and if you’re in the Hamilton area, you should really check them out.
But Boyce wasn’t always the mortgage expert he is today. Here’s Boyce to tell his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEEngel Jones has conducted over 2,000 interviews since 2016. They were all at least 12 minutes long.
In 2016 Engel decided that he was going to do 1001 interviews in 3 months, using a framework of questions that he came up with that take around 12 minutes and are meant to help you discover Your Own Unique Real Self. He called it Twelve Minute Convos. This was all done from his home in Trinidad with guests from everywhere in the world.
Let’s think about this for a second: 1001 interviews divided by 90 days is around 11 interviews per day.
When I schedule interviews for The Personal Finance Show, I do one, maybe 2 per day. Whether it takes an hour or 12 minutes, interviewing someone takes a lot of energy and creativity.
When the 1001 interviews were completed, Engel released a workbook called Your Own Unique Real Self, a reflective self-discovery guide, which is now available on Amazon.
As if that wasn’t enough, in 2017 Engel decided to try it again! This time focusing on interviewing other podcasters. He got to 813. That’s 1814 conversations in 2 years. My 12 minute convo was episode 1,437.
And as of March 2018, which is the last episode published on iTunes, the episode count is at 1987.
But it doesn’t end there! In June of 2018 Engel and his wife Amanda(who is a registered nurse and published author) decided to leave Trinidad and make a 12 week journey across North America to meet and do follow-up interviews in-person with as many previous guests as possible.
So they are way past 2,000 episodes now - they just haven’t been published on to the podcast feed yet. They are all on Facebook and YouTube if you search for #12minconvos. The in-person interviews are currently at episode 289 and you can find me on episode 106
It was a privilege to host Engel and Amanda at my home in Hamilton, and provide them with a place to stay while on their journey. If you like what they are doing and want to throw them some support, head over to gofundme.com/12minconvos.
Engel agreed to take a break from being the interviewer for a whole hour, to share his personal finance story and how 12 Minute Convos came to be.
NEXT EPISODETom Kuegler graduated from college with a degree in marketing, over $80,000 in school debt (that’s US dollars by the way) and couldn’t find a job in marketing.
He realized that he was good at writing and started taking whatever writing jobs he could. At one point Tom would write 2,000-3,000 words a day at his online writing job and he was only making $15 for every 600 word post. Have you ever tried consistently writing 2,000 words every day? It’s hard. And even harder when it’s about things you aren’t even interested in.
Today, Tom has 23,000 followers on the popular blogging platform Medium.com and that number grows every day. Tom has been so successful on Medium that he launched an online course called The Medium Mastery Academy, where he shows you how to get followers on Medium and how to monetize your writing skills as he did.
But Tom only got to where he is today because he never gave up on himself. I think it’s sometimes too easy to keep a job we don’t like because it pays well enough and there’s $80,000 of debt staring us in the face.
Tom joined me from the other side of the world in Indonesia to tell his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODELeanna Haakons grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. She realized early on that if she wanted to make a living for herself that she had to build skills and take advantage of opportunities as they came to her.
So it’s no surprise that at the age of 30, she is running her own financial services marketing firm, Blackhawk Financial, and is a best-selling author with her new book Young, Fun and Financially Free.
Often we think that we have to sacrifice today to build wealth for the future. And we also think that money management has to be boring and complicated.
Leanna wrote her book to help you realize that you can create a wealthy future and still life the good life today. A lot of it has to do with having the right mindset. And it doesn’t have to be so serious!
Leanna joined me from Vancouver to tell her personal finance story and how she is able to be Young, Fun and Financially Free.
NEXT EPISODEIan Clarke was the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE) for 26.5 years and as of 2017 is the current CFO of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA).
As a CFO, he manages the finances of corporations, but is corporate finance really that different from personal finance?
As it turns out, they are pretty much the same except for the human emotions that are involved in personal finance.
Emotional spending and emotional investing can lead a rational person to spend money they don’t have or gamble money they can’t afford to lose.
But often the way out of a bad financial situation is to put the emotions aside and treat our personal finances like a business.
In a business, you are accountable for your financial actions, as you should be in your personal life.
But what happens instead is that you might decide you want to buy something, before you calculate whether you can afford it. It is this kind of behaviour, encouraged and promoted by the credit card companies, that leads people into real financial trouble.
So have a listen to Ian’s personal finance story, and his experience as a CFO, and hopefully you will see the value in his rational approach to money management, and life in general.
NEXT EPISODEDid you know that it can cost $30,000 to hire someone in the tech industry?
Let’s say you have a company and you want to hire a data scientist or mobile developer. Maybe you’ll pay them a $100,000 salary. Tech recruitment companies could charge you 30% of that first year’s salary to find you the right person.
Why would you pay this much to hire someone? Well, hiring is complicated.
You want to find the right person, but you might not have the network or the resources to do that. You don’t want to waste your time and end up having to settle for whoever’s available, so that’s why recruiters exist. They’re specialists.
Plus, the best people are going to go to the Googles and Microsofts of the world and if you are a small company, they might not even know you exist.
But there’s gotta be a better way than spending $30,000 to hire someone, right?
That’s what Brian Daley thought when he started his new company SmartRefer, which is the first open-source employee referral platform to leverage blockchain technology.
Brian didn’t start out in the recruiting business, or the tech business, but he always had this philosophy of keeping his options open, and constantly building skills and relationships.
Let’s hear Brian’s personal finance story and how his personal philosophy has led him to where he is today.
NEXT EPISODEWhat does a book about quitting smoking have to do with your personal finances?
That’s what I asked my friend Mark Rivard when he told me about his personal finance story.
I know you’re thinking, if you quit smoking, then you save money. Sure that’s part of it, but the money saved on cigarettes is not going to make a huge dent in $20,000 of credit card and student loan debt.
When Mark told me his story, I knew that other people needed to hear it.
You see Mark got a bit too comfortable living off the generosity of others.
We all go through periods like this in our lives. Maybe we’re just figuring things out and a friend or family member helps us get through the low income, or financially difficult times of our life.
But how do you learn to take care of yourself financially, when you’re so used to relying on handouts?
Where does the motivation come from to make a change?
Just because people keep offering you help, doesn’t mean that you should take it.
And this advice also extends to the “help” that credit cards offer you in times of need. Credit cards can often seem like a great tool to fund the life that you want. But they come at a huge cost, which you might not realize until you’re swimming in debt. At that’s the point when you might really need help, but you already used up all of your handouts. What do you do in this situation?
I’m so glad that Mark decided to open up and tell his story. It’s important to hear and I hope that hearing it helps you or someone you know make a positive change.
NEXT EPISODETyler Sheff doesn’t believe that real estate is a “get rich quick” investment. His team understands the value of the old saying that “slow and steady wins the race”.
Many people look to real estate as a way to make some quick money, or guaranteed returns. But it’s way more complicated than that and if you don’t understand what you’re getting into, you can easily lose your shirt, and more, by getting into real estate with a lack of financial intelligence.
Tyler started Cashflow Guys because he knows how challenging it can be to deal with all the pieces of the puzzle. Tyler is so serious about making sure that you are a good fit with his program that he doesn’t just take anyone as a client. There are some people that just don’t have the right mindset to get into real estate right now. And if Tyler notices that, he tells them to keep their money and sends them packing.
This isn’t about Tyler making money while others lose money. His whole business is about connecting the right people and ensuring that everyone involved is successful.
But Tyler didn’t get into real estate until later in life. Let’s start at the beginning - to a small town called Hamburg, New York.
NEXT EPISODE
Mark Podolsky buys land from people that don’t want it and sells it to people who do.
He’s done this over 5,000 times since he started in 2001, and he averages a 300% return on every deal. For example, if he buys a parcel of land for $2,500, he would sell it for $10,000, making a $7,500 profit.
As Mark says:
“There are billions of acres of raw land and only a handful of people doing this.”
So he launched The Land Geek to teach others how to:
“Learn the Art of Engineering Geeky Systems that Create, Grow, and Protect Your Cash Flow.”
When I heard about Mark’s success in land, I had a few questions, and maybe you are wondering these things too:
Who owns land and why do they want to sell it to Mark, and for so little?
Who’s buying this land from Mark and why would they pay 4 times the price?
Why don’t the buyer and seller do this directly? Why do they need Mark to be in the middle?
These and all the other questions you have about buying and selling raw land will be answered by Mark in this episode. But first, let’s hear about Mark’s personal finance story.
FREE PASSIVE INCOME LAUNCH KITMark, is offering his $97 Passive Income Launch Kit for FREE to listeners of The Personal Finance Show. If you like what you hear in today’s episode, just email support@thelandgeek.com and mention that you heard Mark on the show and you’ll get the kit for free.
NEXT EPISODEThis episode is about the Future of Payments in Canada and around the world.
How do you pay for things today, in your personal and business lives?
Cash, cheque, credit, debit, wire transfers, email money transfers?
Maybe you’re living in the future and pay for everything with your phone.
Have you ever wondered if cash and cheques, aka paper transactions will always be around? Did you know that 875 million cheques were written in Canada last year?
That might surprise you if you don’t even have a chequebook.
But many businesses still rely on cheques to make all of their payments. It provides a paper trail, or audit trail, if you always have the Canada Revenue Agency on your mind.
Will it always be this way? What does the future of payments hold?
To understand the future, it might help to understand more about how payments are processed today.
In May 2018, I was at the Payments Canada Summit and interviewed 4 people about the future of payments:
Sue Whitney of Payments Canada - 2:18
Sam Mulligan of Mobeewave - 11:32
Chris Chan of Dwello - 15:44
Laurence Cooke of Nanopay - 30:06
NEXT EPISODE
Gord Stein wants you to build 2 million dollars in wealth over the next 10 years.
If you implement every cashflow savings idea in his book, and then take that saved money and invest it over 10 years at 7%, you will have an extra $2 million.
How does that sound?
Ok, maybe every part of the book doesn’t apply to you, but with 60 different cashflow recipes, you will find some area of your life where you can save.
The point is that, wherever you are spending money in your life, you need to review that spending every so often to see that it makes sense.
Paying $100 a month for a storage locker? What’s really in there? Could you sell the stuff, and invest the $100 a month instead?
Buy your lunch every day at work for $10? That’s $50 a week. $2,500 year.
If you invested $50 a week for 10 years, you would have $38,000. In 20 years $114,000.
This isn’t about giving up stuff, it’s about making little changes in your expenses that don’t really impact your quality of life, but free up small amounts of cash flow.
And if you apply these little changes to all the areas of your life, the little bits add up.
Gord spent 2 years compiling the list for you and put it all in a handy guide he called the Cashflow Cookbook. He sat down with me in Toronto to tell his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEBarry Choi wasn't always a personal finance expert. Back in his 20s he didn't know anything about investment fees or what he should be investing in.
But when someone suggested that he might be paying more than he needed to, he quickly found that it was even worse than he thought.
That incident from 10 years ago kicked Barry into high gear and created the personal finance expert we know him to be today.
Barry is also one of Canada’s leading travel experts and blogs about his travels, and various personal finance topics on his site moneywehave.com
Barry has been published in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Financial Post and MoneySense magazine, just to name a few, and he’s made many appearances on Canadian TV over the years.
Barry joined me in Toronto to tell his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODE
Jeff Cates is the president and CEO of Intuit Canada, the company behind QuickBooks Online, TurboTax and Mint.com.
There are 13 guests on this episode!
Here are the times they all appear if you’re looking for someone specific:
4:55 - Jeff Cates, President and CEO of Intuit Canada
25:34 - Claire Niburski from Knit Technologies
26:50 - Rhys Mohun from FundThrough
27:50 - Christian Ali from Dream Payments
29:43 - Brendan Woods from AutoEntry
31:01 - Paul Abrams from WayPay
31:54 - Geoffrey Gualano from HubDoc
32:52 - Charmaine Cheung from Plooto
33:59 - Lisa Zamparo from lisazamparo.com
35:03 - Elliott Stone from MDTax
36:42 - Cathy Bonch from ACCPro Services
37:33 - Londale Lindo-Sewell from ACCPro Services
38:10 - Vicki Curtis from Curtis-Villar and her new company Digitfy Inc.
I am sooo excited about this episode. If you listen to the show, you probably know that I'm a personal finance coach. I help people organize and simplify their personal finances.
But I also have tons of experience with bookkeeping and accounting so, on the small business side I am also a bookkeeping coach. I help people learn how to do their basic small business bookkeeping. And because QuickBooks Online (QBO) has this awesome program for accountants and bookkeepers, I became a QBO ProAdvisor.
But maybe you don't need a coach like me. Maybe you need an experienced bookkeeper or accountant who knows your type of business. Maybe someone who's done small business tax returns for the last 20 years and understands how to make sure the Canada Revenue Agency doesn't come knocking at your door, and if they do, you’re ready for them.
People ask me to recommend an accountant all the time.
They want someone they can trust.
So I decided to build my new site https://financialaccounting.ca.
Financialaccounting.ca is Canada's Bookkeeping and Accounting Hub and it is live today!
I have featured accountants who I've met and are real people. You will hear from them later in this episode.
There are tons of companies that have created apps that are integrated with QBO. These are apps that make data entry easier, help you get paid quicker and make payroll and benefits really easy, just to name a few. I met some of these QBO partners and you'll hear from a few of them later in the show too.
But first up in the show, I was lucky enough to get an interview with Jeff Cates, president and CEO of Intuit Canada, the company behind QuickBooks Online, TurboTax and Mint.com.
At the December 2017 QuickBooks Connect conference in Toronto we talked about how automation and artificial intelligence are changing the way we manage business finances. There’s some really fascinating stuff coming that is going to ultimately make it easier for the user, YOU, to focus on growing your business, instead of worrying about your accounting.
I put all this together to help you get your business organized. That’s what my new site is about. Whether it’s me or someone else you find on the site, I want to make sure you know where to find the tools you need and the right people to help you. So head over to https://financialaccounting.ca to find all the links that were mentioned by any of the 13 guests on today’s episode.
NEXT EPISODEClick here to become a patron of The Personal Finance Show via Patreon
To register for my next available personal finance webinar click here.
Raj Lala is an investment fund artist.
I talk about exchange traded funds(ETFs) a lot.
How the best portfolio is a diversified portfolio. And how the simplest way to diversify is to buy a handful of ETFs that are built to mimic certain parts of the market.
Robo-advisors, for example will usually have what we like to call “buckets” made up of ETFs that balance each other out to try to achieve an overall return, depending on your level of risk tolerance.
But how are these ETFs built?
Who creates funds and how are they created?
The answer is that there are a handful of people out there who are skilled at taking a bunch of investments and packaging them together in a bundle, or fund.
This is more of an art form than something you can learn about in books.
The art of fund-building is something that is acquired over years of practice, but there’s also a lot of natural talent to start with, like someone who is a great artist or musician. You have to have some talent to start with and then you hone your craft.
Raj Lala is one of these artists.
With his new company Evolve ETFs, Raj is focused on investments encompassing topics that intersect in Canadians’ daily lives.
Products like their North American Gender Diversity ETF, which invests in top North American companies as ranked by Equileap’s extensive Gender Scorecard, which includes 19 criteria of gender balance and gender equality.
I met Raj at the Evolve office in Toronto where he shared his personal finance journey and the idea of investing in financial products that mean something to you.
NEXT EPISODELaurie Campbell is very passionate about improving financial literacy.
When I saw her speak at the Financial Wellness and Retirement Readiness Conference in February of 2018, I was impressed by her devotion to helping people solve debt problems.
Getting out of debt is hard and involves a lot of sacrifice.
But for some people it’s even harder to not get into debt in the first place. There are people, like myself, who had mental health and addiction issues in the past, and that led to an overwhelming amount of debt.
This is very hard to avoid, but as Laurie and I discuss in the interview, you can get out sooner if you reach out for help early. The problem is that there is still so much stigma, shame and embarrassment surrounding consumer debt, and people feel that they need to keep it to themselves and fix it on their own.
What happens is that their consumer debt gets larger and by the time people end up at Laurie’s office, they’re in big trouble.
But as Laurie has found out in her 25 years at Credit Canada, it’s never too late to make the changes to your life that are needed to get yourself out of debt and on the right track.
I visited Laurie at her office in Toronto to learn about her personal finance story and how she ended up as CEO of Credit Canada, a Canadian Registered Charity dedicated to helping Canadians overcome debt problems and improve their personal money management skills.
NEXT EPISODEMatthew Jarvis is not a magician.
Yet there are those that come to him when they are about to retire and expect him to make a small amount of retirement savings last for 30 years.
Matthew is a Certified Financial Planner who’s clients are exclusively retired, or within 5 years of doing so, with at least $500,000 saved up.
Depending on your current lifestyle, half a million dollars might seems like either a lot of money, or very little, to last for 30 years. And that’s the thing about retirement planning. It’s very specific to the individual or couple, and what they intend to do with those next 30 years.
The truth is, everyone’s afraid of running out of money and there’s no shame in that. What’s important is that you talk to someone about it before it’s too late.
Though he is still a young man of 36, Matthew has been able to build Jarvis Financial into a very successful business since he started in the industry in the early 2000s.
He currently manages over $115 million in assets for his clients and has structured his business in a way that allows him to take over 80 days of vacation every year, spending quality time with his 3 kids, while still providing full service to his clients.
Matthew joined me from the Seattle, Washington area to tell his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEHamza Khan had a toxic relationship with money.
Obsessing about saving and spending caused a lot of stress in his family when he was young, so when he started making his own money, he just didn’t want to go there at all.
But when you’re not paying attention to your finances, things can get out of hand, even if you’re making good money.
During this time, Hamza was also experiencing what he now realizes was burnout.
Driven by his need to prove to his family that he could be successful in the world of marketing, he would forego sleep and work insane hours to achieve as much as possible.
But a series of troubling incidents led him to question his way of doing things.
This introspection ultimately led him to write his new book “The Burnout Gamble”. Hamza joined me to talk about burnout, productivity, freedom, mental health and his personal finance story.
“If a budget for your money is a reflection of your priorities, then your calendar is a reflection of your most valuable resource, which is time.” - Hamza Khan
NEXT EPISODEJohn Kalos worked in a bank for a long time.
Over the years he realized that the bank’s mandate was to sell products first and helping people took a back seat to this mandate.
He found himself in a situation where he was being told he had to sell investment products that weren’t right for his clients.
John had enough and decided he could be a financial planner on his own, without the bank forcing sales quotas on him. He could offer his clients the right products for them, based on their individual life situation and goals.
Once out on his own, he could so clearly see that people were still being taken advantage of by the banks, so he created his podcast “Confessions of an Ex-Banker”, which strives to inform Canadians about the important financial stuff that the banks won’t tell you, because it’s not going to help them sell more products.
John is very passionate about actually helping people, and not just selling them a product to get a commission, and then hanging them out to dry, which is unfortunately what many financial professionals have done in the past, leading to mistrust and skepticism of everyone in the personal finance business.
John joined me from Montreal, Quebec to tell his personal finance story and how he’s trying to help people achieve their financial goals.
NEXT EPISODEShannon Lee Simmons wants everyone to have access to unbiased and affordable financial advice.
In late 2010, frustrated that Bay street was only interested in clients that have tons of money, she left her high paying job to start the Barter Babes project. Shannon would offer her financial services in exchange for any good or service that she needed.
Over one year Shannon helped over 300 women and never once accepted cash for her services. Unable to go back to Bay street after that, Shannon realized her only option was to start the best fee-only financial planning firm in Canada.
She called it the New School of Finance and she never looked back.
When she's not helping people at the New School, you can find Shannon in just about every newspaper, and all over Canadian television, promoting her new book Worry-Free Money.
Shannon was nice enough to host me at the New School of Finance where we talked about her personal finance journey.
Shannon was also the first guest to agree to sing on the podcast! Look for that fun segment near the end of the episode.
NEXT EPISODEThere are two main types of investing, active and passive.
Active investing is typically for people who have a deep understanding of the investments they are working with. They are trying to time the market by buying an investment when it is low, and growing it to the point where it's grown enough to achieve whatever profit goals they set, then selling that product for a profit. The classic buy low sell high strategy. You have to be paying attention to what's going on in the world and be ready for quick movement to avoid losses. There are people who are very good at this but it is highly risky and not for everyone.
Passive investment is when you buy something and hold onto it. You pay attention as it grows over the years and you control your overall risk by keeping your investments balanced based on the amount of risk you are willing to accept. A typical passive investment is an exchange traded fund or index fund. Passive investment can be done through robo advisors automatically, they take care of the risk management for a small fee, or you can open a brokerage account and do it yourself.
Typically passive investors fall into these two categories: You just want to keep it simple and live your life so you pay a robo advisor half a percent and they take care of everything. You decide you want control over your investments and also want to try to save money on fees and do it all yourself. Usually this type of person enjoys monitoring their investments and taking a hands on role, at least on a semi regular basis.
But what if you fall somewhere in the middle?
You don't want to spend a lot of time on your investments, but you also want to have full control and try to minimize your fees.
Brendan Wood and Brendan Lee Young fall into this category.
They wanted to invest their own money but realized there were so many tedious tasks that still had to be done manually through their online brokerage.
So they created a tool to automate all the manual stuff. A kind of Swiss army knife for do-it-yourself investors.
Both Brendans joined me from the province of New Brunswick to share their personal finance stories and talk about their new portfolio management tool Passiv.
5 Steps to Passive Investing for Retirement: https://getpassiv.com/blog/5-steps-passive-investing-retirement/
NEXT EPISODEBy day, Matt Matheson is a teacher and assistant principal, but when the day is done he takes on his role of Canada's newest personal finance blogger.
Matt started writing at https://methodtoyourmoney.ca in October 2017 and since then has gotten the attention of some major personal finance publications.
In January 2018 he was published in MoneySense magazine and just recently he was a guest blogger on the popular personal finance site https://getrichslowly.org.
Matt joined me from Edmonton, Alberta to tell his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEEric Brotman understands that a relationship with a financial planner is a multi-generational thing.
I talk about this a lot on the show, but it’s all about a holistic plan that takes into account all the financial aspects of your life, and it’s about reviewing the plan once or twice a year and changing it to match your goals and objectives as they change throughout the course of your life.
This is an ongoing thing. It’s not a one-time plan or a transactional thing. This is a lifetime deal.
In the interview, Eric didn’t list what he calls his “alphabet soup” of designation letters after his name. He’s got a lot of professional designations and that’s not a bad thing, but as he says, you can’t get a diploma in integrity and hang it on the wall. Confidence is something you earn.
So yes, credentials are nice, but never blindly trust someone because they have a lot of letters after their name. Talk to them and make sure that they’re listening to your story and working towards your goals.
And it doesn’t hurt to get a second opinion.
I couldn’t make it down to Maryland anytime soon so Eric joined me online to tell his personal finance story.
NEXT EPISODEDISCLAIMER: Eric offers securities through Kestra Investment Services, LLC (Kestra IS), member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through Kestra Advisory Services, LLC (Kestra AS), an affiliate of Kestra IS. Kestra IS and Kestra AS are not affiliated with Brotman Financial Group or any entity referenced herein. Neither Kestra IS nor Kestra AS provide tax or legal advice. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect those held by Kestra IS or Kestra AS. This is for general information only and is not intended to provide specific investment advice or recommendations for any individual. It is suggested that you consult your financial professional, attorney, or tax advisor with regard to your individual situation. Comments concerning the past performance are not intended to be forward looking and should not be viewed as an indication of future results.
In 2011, Cait Flanders had credit card debt of $30,000, no more available credit, $100 in the bank, and had to move back in with her parents.
Cait decided to reboot the blog she had previously deleted, called Blonde on a Budget, hoping that writing about it would help with her debt repayment and struggles with overspending.
Since that first post in June 2011, on what has now become https://caitflanders.com, Cait paid off her $30,000 in full, got a job offer because of her blog, and came up with this crazy idea of going on a one-year shopping ban.
And then after a friend wrote an article on Forbes.com about her shopping ban, she was contacted by 6 different literary agents asking if she wanted to write a book.
And she did!
It’s called The Year of Less, and it came out in January 2018.
Cait joined me in Toronto’s Trinity-Bellwoods park to talk about her personal finance journey.
Update for 2021: Cait has a new book called Adventures in Opting Out and a new podcast called Opting Out with Cait Flanders
NEXT EPISODECarrot Rewards is a free app for your smartphone or Fitbit that helps you earn your favourite reward points by making healthy lifestyle choices.
What if I told you that you would get a reward every time you went for a walk?
Ok, sometimes I'll reward myself by walking to the donut shop, but I'm not talking about that kind of reward.
My favourite part of the app is the steps section. It tracks the steps I take every day to come up with my average daily steps and then rewards me with a few points every day I exceed my average.
But healthy lifestyle choices aren't just about walking. As I discussed in episode 20 with Canada's Financial Literacy Leader Jane Rooney, financial wellness is just as important as physical and mental wellness.
And let's not forget environmental wellness which is about living a lifestyle that respects our surroundings. For all of these other wellness topics Carrot Rewards sends you offers in the form of quizzes and surveys within the app that take only a few minutes to complete.
Megan Nobrega introduced me to Carrot Rewards at the Canadian Personal Finance Conference in November 217 so I decided to visit her at her office and find out more about her personal finance story and how she ended up at Carrot.
Update: Carrot Rewards now has over 750,000 users in Canada!
P.S. Once you get the Carrot Rewards app, use my code to get bonus rewards: beauh1933
NEXT EPISODESince he was 20 years old, Richard Peddie dreamed about being president of an NBA basketball team.
In November of 1996 his dream became reality when he was offered the job of president of the Toronto Raptors.
In 1998, the Toronto Maple Leafs bought the Raptors and Richard became President and CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment or MLSE.
Richard ran MLSE for 14 years and for 6 of those years, I worked there as Event Accountant in the Live Entertainment department, or as we liked to say, the E in MLSE.
What I remember most about Richard was that he always seemed very approachable. He was always very appreciative of our work in Live Entertainment, and probably the biggest fan of the company band, which I was lucky enough to be part of for 6 years.
I got to play on stage at the Air Canada Centre several times, and one time I even got to do a live performance with Alan Frew from the band Glass Tiger. I doubt that any of this would have happened if Richard didn’t approve.
Richard taught me the importance of having a vision and values in business but also in the rest of your life as well. Knowing my core values helps me feel confident about big decisions I make.
And I believe it’s important that when you’re applying for a job that you make sure that at least a few of your top values align with those of the company.
Since retiring from MLSE, Richard has written two books.
Dream Job is his autobiography and takes you through his journey in detail.
21 Leadership Lessons is his second book and though at first you might think it is a book reserved for business leaders, after reading it I realized how applicable these lessons are to everyone.
I wanted to have Richard on the show because I believe his lessons about values, leadership, integrity, and yes even thank you cards, are important for everyone to hear, and can be applied to your personal life as well as your career.
Today, at 71, Richard is a passionate city builder and philanthropist. He is active on Twitter and regularly writes posts on his website forabettertoronto.ca.
I feel very fortunate to know Richard and grateful that he agreed to host me in his home for this interview.
NEXT EPISODEClick here to become a patron of The Personal Finance Show via Patreon
To register for my next available personal finance webinar click here.
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