How Canada’s Top Finance Creators Actually Invest Their Own Money

Today I’m excited to have a panel discussion with some of the largest personal finance and investing personalities, here in Canada.

Together they have over 46 million views on YouTube (that’s more than the entire population of Canada), and in this episode, I thought it would be great to pick their brains on how they actually invest their own money, what types of investments do they actually buy? what specific ETFs do they buy and what type of investing style have they found to work best for them?

They also ask me the same questions so you’ll get a pretty diverse view of the different options out there, for us Canadians, when it comes to investing.

You’ll notice too that while some of our styles overlap, we do also diverge in a few areas, and so we also tackle what are the pros and cons of the different styles, allowing you to make an informed and more educated decision, on what is the best fit for you.

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Questions Covered:

1. Let’s start by introducing the panel. Brandon, can you start by telling us a bit about yourself, your area of expertise, roughly how much you currently invest in ETFs, and tell us about the investing style or strategy that you’ve chosen for yourself.

2. To kick things off, I thought it would be good to start with what I consider, one of the easiest investing styles to implement and get started with, while also being extremely effective, very passive, and low cost.

   Brandon, as you can probably guess, I’m of course talking about asset allocation ETFs which you mentioned is your preferred investing style. For anybody new to this, can you explain what asset allocation ETFs are, and then go into why you chose this as your primary investing style, along with the ETFs that you actually buy and why.

3. Let’s open it up to the panel: Does anybody else here buy asset allocation ETFs? Why or why not? And if you do, what specific asset allocation ETF do you buy?

4. Adrian, you like to buy the underlying ETFs, instead of just one asset allocation ETF. For anybody new to this, can you explain what that actually means, why you choose to invest in this way, and can you share specifically which ETFs you like to buy as part of this investing style.

5. Let’s open it up to the panel: Does anybody else invest in this way, and if so, what are your favourite ETFs, and give us some explanation on why you chose them and this style of investing.

6. Are there any negatives that you think are worth mentioning when it comes to this investment style of buying the underlying ETFs?

7. Marc, so far our conversation has been dominated a bit by equities (the stock portion of the portfolio), but of course, fixed income is also something that most investors find to be a good fit, especially since not everyone can stomach having a 100% equity portfolio and dealing with those occasional 30% or 40% drops and just riding those out and not panic selling. You have some focus on fixed income in your portfolio which can help reduce that volatility. Can you take us through your thought process on having these types of investments, along with which ones you like and why?

8. Thanks Marc. Would anybody from the panel like to add anything to the fixed income discussion? Are there any fixed income ETFs that you like to buy?

9. Adriano, let’s talk about your investing style now. Yours is a bit different from the vanilla, total market, index investing strategy that most of us on this panel use. Can you speak to why you chose your particular investing style, the pros, the cons, who is it for, and do you have any favourite ETFs or other investments that you like to use as part of it?

10. Let’s open it up to the panel: Do you have any questions, concerns or comments?