It's RRSP season here in Canada. Remember that March 1 is the deadline for contributing to an RRSP, and have it count towards your 2022 tax year.  Also while we’re on the subject, remember that your TFSA contribution room grows every year, and for the 2023 calendar year, you now have an extra $6,500 that you and your partner can contribute each. That's $13,000 total if you both max it out. Last year the limit was $6,000 per person so the government did increase that by $500 per person for...

In this episode, I interview one of the most experienced Canadian financial planners that I know, and who I tend to go to when I have any complex tax and financial planning questions. His name is Ed Rempel, and in this episode, we tackle: How to determine how much you need to be financially independent? What are some sustainable withdrawal strategies that you can use to not run out of money when you’re living off your investments? How to pay less tax here in Canada And much, much more.  ...

Today we have another financial independence case study to learn how a real-life couple here in Canada were able to reach their financial independence number by the age of 34. We talk specifically about the practical tactics, strategies and mindset that you can apply in your own life, to help hit your financial independence number quicker. Or, if you’re already at financial independence, these tactics can further help solidify and enhance your net worth and that extra financial cushion...

Many Canadians tend to dabble in at least a bit of active investing, picking individual stocks, even if they consider themselves primarily total market index investors. As long-time listeners of the show know, I personally only do total market index investing through ETFs, but I think it’s important to stay educated and hear the other perspective of how and why active investors choose to invest the way that they do.  This episode is going to be a bit of a hybrid because our guest today,...

Today we have a case study of someone that was able to pull off an early retirement (we get to learn how he did it, and apply those lessons to our own life). He also wrote a book that I personally consider life-changing, in particular when it comes to financial independence, early retirement, and achieving happiness.  His name is Jordan Grumet, and his book is called Taking Stock, A Hospice Doctor's Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life. I highly...

One resource that I check out every year is MoneySense’s “Best ETFs in Canada” guide. They bring on a panel of experts to find Canada’s top ETFs for DIY index investors (like myself). I found this guide extremely helpful when I was first getting started in investing, and now, many years later, I still read it when it gets updated annually, just to be “in the know” of what’s happening when it comes to index investing in Canada, and to stay up to date on any significant changes like the...

If you’ve done any sort of research on index investing and ETFs, then I’m almost certain you would have heard of Vanguard, as they are one of the pioneers in this space. They have a very impressive massive following in the US and have really established themselves in Canada as well, where they are the 3rd largest ETF provider.  I always wanted to interview them because I’m sure, like you, as one invests, you begin to wonder about certain things when it comes to index investing, and ETFs in...

Today I have Brandon Beavis on the show who runs one of, if not THE largest YouTube channels on investing, specifically for Canadians. He has over 187,000 subscribers, and also runs the channel with his dad who has decades of financial planning experience here in Canada.  Since Brandon and I have each been optimizing our finances and investments for so long, and since we each specialize in this, we thought it would be fun to do a collaboration where we each share how we’ve optimized our...

Today I have one of, if not THE largest financial literacy educators in Canada on the show, and we’re going to go over some practical tips to deal with this horrific inflation that we’ve all been experiencing here in Canada.    These tips and education covered in the episode are of course, applicable right now as we go through this high inflation period. But, even if you end up listening to this episode years after it’s been launched, we made sure that they are still relevant and applicable...

I always thought it would be neat to interview someone, that is actually part of the organization that runs the Toronto Stock Exchange. Most of us have the majority of our retirement savings in ETFs or stocks and so it makes sense to actually have some understanding of the exchanges here in Canada, how they work, and the relationships that exist between the brokerage that you use to actually buy your investments, the stock exchange itself, and the governing bodies and regulators that are...

One question that I’ve been getting asked a lot, both from listeners of the podcast, as well as those in my investing course, is how to deal with and optimize any sort of investments through your work.  Typically, in Canada, when you work for a mid-size or large organization, you’ll either be part of a defined contribution pension plan, or a defined benefit pension plan.  We’re going to cover both types of pensions in this interview, and specifically, some of the things we’ll cover are: ...

Long-time listeners of the show know that I am always on the hunt for personal finance and investing tools that actually work for us Canadians. Too often we hear about some great tool or resource and then it turns out that it’s only for those in the US. With that said, I wanted to bring on two CEOs today. The first is from a tool that I’ve been using and been hooked on for years now, which essentially automates any rebalancing that I have to do in my portfolio (so I don’t have to do the...

When learning how to invest, we are consistently told to conduct our “due diligence” on the investments that we’re considering buying. Yet, almost all of us haven’t actually been trained on how to analyze the investments that we’re considering, so that we choose the ones that are right for our particular situation. To help remedy this, I thought it would be good to give listeners a bit of a training on how to actually interpret the figures and terminology that we see used here in Canada,...

Today I’m extremely excited to have Canadian best-selling author, Andrew Hallam back on the show. His first book, Millionaire Teacher continues to be the #1 best seller in the Investment and Portfolio Management category on Amazon. He is one of the world’s most prolific financial wellness speakers and over the past 16 years, he has given hundreds of talks in over 30 different countries espousing research on financial wellness, sound investing and life satisfaction. He has been investing in...

When it comes to the safe portion of our portfolio, we’ve talked about GICs and high-interest savings accounts before, but one option that we haven’t talked about yet, is one that gives you guaranteed income for life, no matter what the markets are doing, and those are called annuities. So, I thought it would be good for you and me to get some annuities 101 knowledge under our belts, so that we can better understand what’s out there, what are the pros and cons of annuities, and so that we...

In this episode, we cover the rising interest rate environment that we're currently in here in Canada, and how it can impact you financially. We also cover how to decide whether you should go fixed or variable on your mortgage in the current interest rate environment. Next, we cover the subject of how you can take out some of the equity that you’ve built up in your home, so that you can either use it to invest, or deploy it elsewhere (without having to actually sell your home). We also...

On this month's episode, we're going to discuss some of the most frequently asked investing questions that I receive. The first of these is helping you decide if you should just pick one ETF for your entire portfolio (these are referred to as asset-allocation ETFs), or if you should pick and choose multiple ETFs for your portfolio to fine-tune tune it based on your specific preferences.  We also talk about how to determine the asset allocation for your portfolio (the stock to bond mix), as...

Many listeners of the show (myself included) are total market index investors, where we just buy ETFs that are meant to represent the entire market as a whole, worldwide (as opposed to stock picking, or trying to speculate what will go up or down and investing based on that). After you’ve been index investing for a while though, it’s easy to begin to wonder whether you should customize your portfolio a bit further so that it’s more aligned with your particular situation, or so that it holds...

Today I’m extremely excited to have Canadian best selling author, Andrew Hallam on the show. His first book, Millionaire Teacher is currently the #1 best seller in the Investment and Portfolio Management category on Amazon. He has been investing in the stock market for 32 years, having built a million-dollar portfolio on a schoolteacher's salary when he was in his late 30s.  Over the past 16 years, he has given hundreds of talks in over 30 different countries espousing research on financial...

If you’re working with a good certified financial planner here in Canada (a CFP), there are specific categories that they should be helping you optimize. According to FP Canada, which is the organization that issues the Certified Financial Planning designation (the CFP), there are 6 areas that should be covered, as they are critical to your financial health.  For your reference, the pillars are insurance and risk management, financial management, investment planning, tax planning, retirement...

Today we’re going to have a two-part episode. Part 1 will be about the lessons that I’ve learned after being either fully retired, or semi-retired for the past 5 years. I definitely made some mistakes both during retirement and leading up to retirement, and I hope that by sharing these lessons, it’ll help you avoid them on your financial independence and early retirement journey. Part 2 of the episode will be some useful information for all the current and future Canadian small business...

Our guest today is the VP of one of the most successful companies to be on the show Dragon’s Den. Over the past 6 years he's travelled the country teaching Canadians how to get smarter with their finances, has presented to over 10,000 people, has been featured on the Financial Post, The Globe and Mail and many more. In this episode we cover: What are the highest impact savings strategies that we should be focusing on?

Today we’re going to focus on how to best track your investments, as well as your net worth. This is of course critical, as you need this data to determine: 1. How much more do you need to be financially independent and retire? 2. Whether you are trending in the right direction: Is your net worth actually growing to get you closer to that early retirement and financial independence number?).

Today we're going to cover the top ETFs in Canada, specifically for Canadian investors. These findings are based on 8 experts in this field who are part of the Best ETFs in Canada Guide. We talk about what the findings were, we will give you the tickers of the top ETFs according to the panel of experts, and we discuss why those particular ETFs were chosen, and go into detail about some of the nuances so that you can better choose which ETF is better for your situation.

More than half of Canadian adults don't have a will which can cause additional legal costs, family conflict, and unnecessary legal battles. In this episode, we cover how you can get a will done in 20 minutes, as well as what the top mistakes are that Canadians do when creating a will, as well as how and when to properly update it when different events occur in your life.  We also cover designating a power of attorney and how to ensure that your will is actually legally enforceable here in...