Build Wealth Canada Podcast

Today I have Jessica Moorhouse on the show, who is an Accredited Financial Counsellor, an award-winning blogger, the host of the 'Mo Money Podcast, and the founder of the Millennial Money Meetup. You might have also seen her on CBC News, The Globe and Mail, The Financial Post, and many other news channels and publications here in Canada. In today's episode, you'll learn the highest impact actions that we Canadians can do to really make a dent in increasing our savings. We cover how to best manage your money and day-to-day cashflows, and the different types of tools and systems that you can use to help you manage your finances. We also talk about investments, and how Jessica actually invests her own money. Last but not least, I consider Jessica to also be a very successful entrepreneur, and so if you are considering starting your own business, or are looking for ways to take your existing business to the next level, we talk about how Jessica was able to grow her company so successfully, and what lessons we can learn from her, to propel our own Canadian businesses to the next level. Resources and Links Mentioned: Check out Jessica's site and valuable resources over at: Jessicamoorhouse.com Get Free Tickets to the Canadian Financial Summit The top personal finance and investing tools guide mentioned on the episode can be received for free by signing up on the main page over at buildwealthcanada.ca. The how to invest videos mentioned during the show can be found at buildwealthcanada.ca/invest. That's also where I can answer your investing questions. You can get your financial planning questions answered for free for 30 minutes by speaking with our resident financial planner John Kalos. You can get your mortgage questions answered for free by setting up a free call with our resident mortgage broker, Sean Cooper. Canada's Top ETFs Guide & Top High-Interest Savings Account: In this guide, I go over what I personally invest in, why I invest in it. The investments that I talk about ​are literally where we have almost our entire net worth (apart from our house), and is what we are primarily living off right now in our early retirement. At the very least you'll learn about some great ETFs to consider for your portfolio, and if you are new to ETFs, it'll give you a nice list of some top ETFs to consider from the thousands that are out there. The guide is available for free to any listeners that that use my special link to sign up for a free savings account with the bank that I personally use, EQ bank. The reason that I personally use EQ bank, is that they have one of the highest interest savings accounts in Canada. At the time of this writing, they are anywhere from double, to over 30 times higher than most of the banks in Canada. It's also free to sign up and keep an account with them, so you're not paying a monthly fee like you do with many of the other banks out there. You also get unlimited transactions, unlimited Interac e-transfers, and can take out your money at any time if you need it, and there are no minimum balances. Because of those reasons, I've been with them ever since they launched in Canada years ago, and it's where I keep my entire emergency fund and spending money. To get the free high-interest account and the free guide on the top ETFs in Canada, just go to buildwealthcanada.ca/eq, open the free account, and once you're done, forward any email that you get from EQ to bonus@buildwealthcanada.ca and I'll send you the full comprehensive guide for free. Questions Covered: As an Accredited Financial Counsellor, I'm sure you deal with many Canadians that are either struggling financially or would like to really amplify their savings so they can invest more, and eventually retire early.What would you say are the highest impact actions that us Canadians can do to really make a dent in increasing our savings, whether it's to pay off debt, save to buy a home, or have more to invest for retirement? When it comes to financial management and managing your day-to-day cash flows, what sort of system or process do you personally have in place and use? Is that a good starting point for those that are looking to gain more control over their finances? Or is there something simpler you recommend for those just getting started? We all know that we should get our finances in order, optimize our investments and manage our money carefully, but we're all busy and it's easy for things to slip through the cracks.When it comes to staying organized in your personal life, finances and business, are there any tools, systems and workflows that you depend on and that work really great for you? How do you personally invest your money and what's your thought process behind that decision? (ie. Robo vs asset allocation ETF vs individual ETFs vs something else?) I notice you've done a fair bit of work and teaching with students. Student debt is a big concern for many so when someone is debating between paying off student debt vs saving for a home vs investing in their TFSA or RRSP, what's your stance and thought process on how they should decide which to focus on? (let's do this from a qualitative and quantitative angle) I definitely see you as a successful entrepreneur, so let's shift gears a bit and talk about your life as an entrepreneur, for anybody that wants to eventually work for themselves like you, or have a side-hustle to generate some extra income. As an entrepreneur, I find it's really easy to take on too much and get burnt out. Reading your blog, I noticed you've run into this issue too. Do you have a daily routine that works well for you to balance business with personal time so that you don't burn out? As a successful entrepreneur, I noticed that you work with a lot of big brands in your business. For somebody looking to start or grow their existing business, how do you personally approach such companies and close these deals?It's obviously easier to do this once you're established, so would your strategy change if someone is just starting out vs already having an established business? When it comes to partnering with the different companies/brands how do you determine what to charge them and what to offer them? You are in a lot of different channels and seem to have a pretty wide array of revenue streams for your business. What channels or projects have you found to be the best return on your time invested? How do you prioritize which projects/opportunities to work on? Thanks for coming on the show and where can listeners learn more from you? Don't miss future episodes, giveaways, and free in-depth guides by signing up for free to the Build Wealth Canada Newsletter

Your credit score is a very important thing to manage as it lets you get the lowest possible rates on your mortgage, car loans, lines of credit, and any other debt that you may wish to take on now and in the future. In Canada, the best loans with the best terms are reserved for people with high credit scores. So, even if you don't need any sort of loan now (like a mortgage, car loan, or a line of credit), it is something that you should keep an eye on and strive to improve, as you don't want to be overcharged on interest payments if you ever do need some financing. Even though we no longer have a mortgage or any debt, I still use a free tool to monitor my own credit score, just to ensure that the best loans are available to me in case I ever need them, and to help protect myself against identity fraud. For example, if somebody got a hold of my credentials and tried taking out credit cards or loans in my name, I can quickly catch that and report it, instead of letting them gradually destroy my credit score over time. I like sharing the apps and tools that I personally use on the podcast and the free tool that I use to do all of this is called Borrowell. So today on the show, I brought on the CEO of Borrowell, Andrew Graham so that I can ask him some questions after using his tool for almost a year. We cover things like: How to increase your credit score The key things that can cause our score to decline How to read the credit report so you can see if there are any issues How to fix issues on our credit report that are negatively impacting our credit score and much more. Resources and Links Mentioned: The tool that I use to check and monitor my credit score for free is over at Borrowell. You can learn more about Borrowell Boost here. Free tickets to the Canadian Financial Summit: To get the free tickets, just sign up anywhere on the main page of BuildWealthCanada.ca and I'll email them to you once they are ready. Questions Asked: Your company offers free credit scores and reports from Canada's largest credit bureau, Equifax. For anybody completely new to all of this, who is Equifax and why should we care? To help further answer the question of why we should even care about our credit score; from your experience, how big of a difference have you seen in the interest rate offered to Canadians who have a low vs a high credit score? Many of us have heard about how if our credit score gets checked too much by companies, it can actually lower our credit score. This leads us to the subject of hard vs soft inquiries. Can you talk about what those are? If we need a loan and are shopping around, how do we ensure that we don't get too many hard inquires? I've been using your tools for a while now and one of my favourite time-saving ones is how you automatically calculate our credit utilization score. Can you explain what that is and what credit utilization score we should aim for? Does our credit score improve the lower our credit utilization percentage is to 0%? Or do we really just need to ensure that we're under the specific number? When we receive our credit report (whether it's through you guys or someone else), what specifically should we be looking for and analyzing while going through it? I realize your tool actually does custom suggestions on how to improve our credit score once it pulls our information, but what are some best practices that anybody can apply when it comes to increasing our credit score? At what point is our credit score in that top tier where we are already getting the best possible rate and so it's not worth the effort in trying to improve it any further? How important is it to close down accounts that we still have open but don't use anymore? (ex. credit cards, lines of credit, etc.) If there is an error or discrepancy on our credit report, what's the best recourse that we have as Canadians? Ex. do we contact Equifax? Do we contact the company that put that blemish on our credit report and ask them to fix it? If somebody has no loans and doesn't use credit cards, is that actually bad if you ever do need a loan since lenders want to see that credit history? (ex. A homemaker where their spouse does all the purchasing and their debts are under the working spouse's name?) I'm a big fan of online tools that help me optimize and manage my finances, and you guys have one coming out that I'm pretty excited to try out. Can you talk about the new Borrowell Boost app that you have and what it does? If you liked the episode sign up for free to receive all new episodes as they get released, news on giveaways, and the free guide on the Top 5 Personal Finance and Productivity Tools.

Today we're going to cover how you can best automate the management of your investment portfolio, while still paying the lowest possible fees. We also share best practices when it comes to sticking to your investment plan. To help us discuss this, I have Brendan Wood on the show who is one of the founders of Passiv, a Canadian fintech company that builds tools for DIY investors. I'm a long-time user of their tools and they've saved me many hours of tedious work when managing my portfolio. So, I thought it would be great to have him on the show especially since Canadians can now get the premium features of the tool for free. Questions and Discussion Points Covered: I'm excited to share how I use Passiv because it's saved me many many hours at this point and makes checking up on my investments super convenient. But, I'm curious to hear from you how others are using it. Are there certain features or use cases that you see being used most often? What are some of the new features that we now have access to and how should we best use them? Using limit orders vs market orders when buying investments? What's important to look at when examining the performance of your investment portfolio? Dealing with different currencies when investing. What is the cheapest way to convert currency if we want to buy US-listed investments? What is dollar-cost-averaging and your thoughts on using it, especially when the markets are volatile? The impact of COVID-19 on investors. What have you noticed? Investing during down markets. Speculating on markets vs specific companies, and what to do when getting a "hunch" as to where the markets are going.

In this episode, we cover the types of debt tools available to us Canadians, and how to get the lowest rate on them. In other words, what debt options do we have in our Canadian toolbox that we can potentially use, and what are the pros and cons of each? My goal for you is that by the end of this episode, you'll know what your options are in Canada so that if you ever do need a loan, you know exactly what's available to you, which types of loans have the lowest and highest rates, and which ones are the easiest and hardest to qualify for. And Sure, we've all heard of mortgage and credit cards, but what other types of loans are out there that we could potentially use? Today's Expert: To help me answer these questions, our guest for this episode is Scott Satov. He's a CA, a CFA, and the founder of LoansCanada.ca which was Canada's first and today's largest online loan search and comparison platform. So I figured, if we want to know what types of loans are available to us Canadians, then why not get the first and largest Canadian loan search and comparison provider to help us with this since it's clearly their job day in and day out to know what's out there. Links and Resources: You can do your loan comparison shopping over at Scott's company: LoansCanada.ca. They also have a lot of educational resources on the site so you can definitely learn a lot there, even if you aren't looking to immediately take out a loan. The top personal finance and investing tools guide mentioned on the episode can be received for free by signing up on the main page over at buildwealthcanada.ca. The how to invest videos mentioned during the show can be found at buildwealthcanada.ca/invest. Questions Covered: While ideally, we as Canadians want to have no debt, the reality is that most Canadians don't have enough money on-the-side to just buy a car or house with cash, or to fund some expensive unforeseen emergency (whether it's an expensive home repair, something medical that you have no coverage for, or something else). We've all heard of mortgages, but what are the other tools available to us, and can you cover the pros and cons of each along with which ones are the least expensive options here in Canada? What are the different things that are within our control that we can do, to get the lowest rates on loans? Most don't have the cash to buy a new or used car outright, so what have you found to be the best practices for getting the best loan for a new vs used car? Ex. Going through dealer vs the bank vs sites like yours that can pull the rates from different providers. If you need money for an important expense, have you found home equity lines of credit (HELOC) to be the least expensive way to raise the funds required? If someone isn't a homeowner and can't get a HELOC, what type of loan is the least expensive? How do you go about getting a loan and securing it against your car for example (or some other asset) so that it becomes a secured loan giving you the lowest rates? What are the most effective ways of building your credit score? If you have an average credit score, is it worth the effort to try to improve it? In other words, how large are the savings you can get if you do actually work on your credit score and improve it? What are your thoughts on debt consolidation? When should somebody consider it vs not? What are your top strategies for getting out of debt? Especially for those that are struggling or feeling the pressure from the loans that they already have outstanding. If you liked the episode sign up for free to receive all new episodes as they get released, news on giveaways, and the free guide on the Top 5 Personal Finance and Productivity Tools.

There's been a lot of new programs and initiatives put in place by the Canadian government due to COVID-19 to help you financially. In this episode, I'm going to take you through what's out there so that you can make sure you don't miss out on some free money or benefits that can really help you during this difficult time. I've actually gone through everything that I could get my hands on at the Canada Revenue Agency site, so this is all coming right from the source, and this episode's intention is to save you a lot of time by helping you quickly learn what's out there, whether you're eligible, and help you make an efficient decision on which benefits to apply for, and which ones to make sure you receive. The 2nd part of this episode is going to focus on mortgages, the drastic changes in the interest rate that we've seen (which can of course heavily impact your mortgage payments and decisions), what's happening right now as far as the real estate market is concerned, if you can take advantage of these lower interest rates by renewing your mortgage. We're also going to cover the subject of deferring your mortgage payments, if for example you've lost your job and fear that you may not be able to pay your mortgage while we are all in lockdown due to COVID-19. Links & Resources Covered Chat with Sean for free to get your mortgage questions answered by entering your email at buildwealthcanada.ca/sean Check out Sean's best-selling book, Burn Your Mortgage: The Simple, Powerful Path to Financial Freedom for Canadians. New Tool: Get Your Credit Score Checked for Free A big thanks to Borrowell for sponsoring the show and for building such a great free tool that we can use to check our credit score. It has saved me a lot of time when I want to quickly check the status of my credit score (for example, to ensure there has been no fraud or identity theft on my accounts). You also obviously want to make sure your score is as high as possible for any mortgages or other loans that you end up applying for (to ensure you get the lowest rate and get approved). Even if you aren't looking for a loan, I encourage you to at least pull your report for free to help ensure that there are no unauthorized transactions on your accounts. As a best practice, you should be doing this kind of check at least annually. Thanks again Borrowell for building a tool where we Canadians can finally get access to this data quickly and for free. Resources from the Episode: Top Tools and Resources for Financial Independence (for Canadians): All the top tools and sites that I've personally used to help us achieve financial independence in our early 30s. They're also what we use now to optimize and manage our finances, and ensure that we're paying the lowest fees while getting solid returns on our investments. Canada's Top ETFs Guide & Top High-Interest Savings Account: In the guide, I go over what I personally invest in, why I invest in it. The investments that I talk about ​are literally where we have almost our entire net worth (apart from our house), and is what we are primarily living off right now in our early retirement. At the very least you'll learn about some great ETFs to consider for your portfolio, and if you are new to ETFs, it'll give you a nice list of some top ETFs to consider from the thousands that are out there. The guide is available for free to any listeners that that use my special link to sign up for a free savings account with the bank that I personally use, EQ bank. The reason that I personally use EQ bank, is that they have one of the highest interest savings rates in Canada (they are currently offering 2% which is more than double what the major banks are offering). It's also free to sign up and keep an account with them, so you're not paying a monthly fee like you do with many of the other banks out there. You also get unlimited transactions, unlimited Interac e-transfers, and can take out your money at any time if you need it, and there are no minimum balances. Because of those reasons, I've been with them ever since they launched in Canada years ago, and it's where I keep my entire emergency fund and spending money. To get the free high-interest account and the free guide on the top ETFs in Canada, just go to buildwealthcanada.ca/eq, open the free account, and once you're done, forward any email that you get from EQ to bonus@buildwealthcanada.ca and I'll send you the full comprehensive guide for free. Don't miss future episodes, giveaways, and free in-depth guides by signing up for free to the Build Wealth Canada Newsletter

A lot has been happening with the significant stock market declines and coronavirus, so I've been getting lots of questions such as: How am I adapting our portfolio and investment strategy to these declines? Should we be buying into the market at these low prices or selling? Should we be waiting out for the market bottom and then buying? What are the other experts that I listen to and trust saying? With this episode, the goal is to answer these top questions for you. Now, of course, the health and the safety of your family is more important than the temporary performance of an investments portfolio, so that should be the priority. But since I'm not a doctor or medical expert, it doesn't make sense for me to try to give you medical advice. So instead, let's focus on what I do actually have expertise and experience in and shine some light on the investment and financial planning side of things. Enjoy the episode. New Tool: Get Your Credit Score Checked for Free A big thanks to Borrowell for sponsoring the show and for building such a great free tool that we can use to check our credit score. It has saved me a lot of time when I want to quickly check the status of my credit score (for example, to ensure there has been no fraud or identity theft on my accounts). You also obviously want to make sure your score is as high as possible for any mortgages or other loans that you end up applying for (to ensure you get the lowest rate and get approved). Even if you aren't looking for a loan, I encourage you to at least pull your report for free to help ensure that there are no unauthorized transactions on your accounts. As a best practice, you should be doing this kind of check at least annually. Thanks again Borrowell for building a tool where we Canadians can finally get access to this data quickly and for free. Resources from the Episode: Top Tools and Resources for Financial Independence (for Canadians): All the top tools and sites that I've personally used to help us achieve financial independence in our early 30s. They're also what we use now to optimize and manage our finances, and ensure that we're paying the lowest fees while getting solid returns on our investments. Canada's Top ETFs Guide & Top High-Interest Savings Account: In the guide, I go over what I personally invest in, why I invest in it. The investments that I talk about ​are literally where we have almost our entire net worth (apart from our house), and is what we are primarily living off right now in our early retirement. At the very least you'll learn about some great ETFs to consider for your portfolio, and if you are new to ETFs, it'll give you a nice list of some top ETFs to consider from the thousands that are out there. The guide is available for free to any listeners that that use my special link to sign up for a free savings account with the bank that I personally use, EQ bank. The reason that I personally use EQ bank, is that they have one of the highest interest savings rates in Canada (they are currently offering 2% which is more than double what the major banks are offering). It's also free to sign up and keep an account with them, so you're not paying a monthly fee like you do with many of the other banks out there. You also get unlimited transactions, unlimited Interac e-transfers, and can take out your money at any time if you need it, and there are no minimum balances. Because of those reasons, I've been with them ever since they launched in Canada years ago, and it's where I keep my entire emergency fund and spending money. To get the free high-interest account and the free guide on the top ETFs in Canada, just go to buildwealthcanada.ca/eq, open the free account, and once you're done, forward any email that you get from EQ to bonus@buildwealthcanada.ca and I'll send you the full comprehensive guide for free.

I recently realized that I haven't really provided an update on our early retirement story and more importantly, the lessons learned from it so far. Therefore my goal for this episode is to share with you what we did wrong and what I think we did right, that allowed us to achieve financial independence by the time I was 32. Please don't interpret this episode as some sort of showing off, bragging, or an ego boost. I absolutely hate arrogance and hubris (it's actually ones of my biggest pet peeves). Instead, the whole idea behind this episode is to give you some actionable insights based on our failures and successes over the years, so that you can hopefully learn from our experiences, apply them to your own financial independence, retire early journey and hopefully cut down the time that it takes you to get there. That's it. New Tool: Get Your Credit Score Checked for Free A big thanks to Borrowell for sponsoring the show and for building such a great free tool that we can use to check our credit score. It has saved me a lot of time when I want to quickly check the status of my credit score (for example, to ensure there has been no fraud or identity theft on my accounts). You also obviously want to make sure your score is as high as possible for any mortgages or other loans that you end up applying for (to ensure you get the lowest rate and get approved). Even if you aren't looking for a loan, I encourage you to at least pull your report for free to help ensure that there are no unauthorized transactions on your accounts. As a best practice, you should be doing this kind of check at least annually. Thanks again Borrowell for building a tool where we Canadians can finally get access to this data quickly and for free. Other Resources: Top Tools and Resources for Financial Independence (for Canadians): All the top tools and sites that I've personally used to help us achieve financial independence in our early 30s. They're also what we use now to optimize and manage our finances, and ensure that we're paying the lowest fees while getting solid returns on our investments. Canada's Top ETFs Guide & Top High-Interest Savings Account: In the guide, I go over what I personally invest in and why I invest in it. The investments that I talk about ​are literally where we have almost our entire net worth (apart from our house), and is what we are primarily living off right now in our early retirement. At the very least you'll learn about some great ETFs to consider for your portfolio, and if you are new to ETFs, it'll give you a nice list of some top ETFs to consider from the thousands that are out there. The guide is available for free to any listeners that that use this link to sign up for a free savings account with the bank that I personally use, EQ bank. The reason that I personally use EQ bank, is that they have one of the highest interest savings rates in Canada (they are currently offering 2.45% which is more than double what the major banks are offering). It's also free to sign up and keep an account with them, so you're not paying a monthly fee like you do with many of the other banks out there. You also get unlimited transactions, unlimited Interac e-transfers, and can take out your money at any time if you need it, and there are no minimum balances. Because of those reasons, I've been with them ever since they launched in Canada years ago, and it's where I keep my entire emergency fund and spending money. To get the free high-interest account and the free guide on the top ETFs in Canada, just go to buildwealthcanada.ca/eq, open the free account, and once you're done, forward any email that you get from EQ to bonus@buildwealthcanada.ca and I'll send you the full comprehensive guide for free.

Today we're going to cover some of the top financial questions asked by Canadians, including the number one question, "Am I saving enough for retirement?". The way we came up with these questions, is that as you may know, the fee-for-service financial planner that I use is John Kalos, and on my site, I have a page where you can sign up for a free 30-minute consultation with him. And so, lots of the listeners of the show have met with John for free to get their questions answered and he then took the ones that were being asked most often, and we decided to do this episode on them so that everyone can benefit from them. The top question was definitely "Am I saving enough for retirement?", but he also addressed other top questions like "What investments should I be buying for each account (RRSP vs TFSA vs taxable accounts), and how much should I be buying of each?". Enjoy the episode, and definitely feel free to ask him your own questions one-on-one over at buildwealthcanada.ca/john. When you sign up through that page, I've also set it up so that you'll be automatically emailed a guide that I made on the top questions to ask your financial planner. This can help you whether you're looking for a new financial planner, or to test out your existing financial planner to make sure that there is no conflict-of-interest and that they really are as competent as they claim to be. This is something that he's making available on an ongoing basis so even if you are listening to this episode years from now, you can still go there to get some of your top questions answered, privately, and for free. Enjoy the episode. New Tool: Get Your Credit Score Checked for Free A big thanks to Borrowell for sponsoring the show and for building such a great free tool that we can use to check our credit score. It has saved me a lot of time when I want to quickly check the status of my credit score (for example, to ensure there has been no fraud or identity theft on my accounts). You also obviously want to make sure your score is as high as possible for any mortgages or other loans that you end up applying for (to ensure you get the lowest rate and get approved). Even if you aren't looking for a loan, I encourage you to at least pull your report for free to help ensure that there are no unauthorized transactions on your accounts. As a best practice, you should be doing this kind of check at least annually. Thanks again Borrowell for building a tool where we Canadians can finally get access to this data quickly and for free. Other Resources: Top Tools and Resources for Financial Independence (for Canadians): All the top tools and sites that I've personally used to help us achieve financial independence in our early 30s. They're also what we use now to optimize and manage our finances, and ensure that we're paying the lowest fees while getting solid returns on our investments. Canada's Top ETFs Guide & Top High-Interest Savings Account: In the guide, I go over what I personally invest in and why I invest in it. The investments that I talk about ​are literally where we have almost our entire net worth (apart from our house), and is what we are primarily living off right now in our early retirement. At the very least you'll learn about some great ETFs to consider for your portfolio, and if you are new to ETFs, it'll give you a nice list of some top ETFs to consider from the thousands that are out there. The guide is available for free to any listeners that that use this link to sign up for a free savings account with the bank that I personally use, EQ bank. The reason that I personally use EQ bank, is that they have one of the highest interest savings rates in Canada (they are currently offering 2.3% which is more than double what the major banks are offering). It's also free to sign up and keep an account with them, so you're not paying a monthly fee like you do with many of the other banks out there. You also get unlimited transactions, unlimited Interac e-transfers, and can take out your money at any time if you need it, and there are no minimum balances. Because of those reasons, I've been with them ever since they launched in Canada years ago, and it's where I keep my entire emergency fund and spending money. To get the free high-interest account and the free guide on the top ETFs in Canada, just go to buildwealthcanada.ca/eq, open the free account, and once you're done, forward any email that you get from EQ to bonus@buildwealthcanada.ca and I'll send you the full comprehensive guide for free.

In this episode, we talk about how we can set our investments up so that we can live off them in retirement (whether it's a traditional retirement or early retirement). We also cover the important subject of how to stress-test our investment portfolio so that we can help ensure that we don't run out of money in our retirement. You can also use these tools to see (approximately) if you actually have enough to retire now (or to see how much more you need). New Tool: Get Your Credit Score Checked for Free A big thanks to Borrowell for sponsoring the show and for building such a great free tool that we can use to check our credit score. It has saved me a lot of time when I want to quickly check the status of my credit score (for example, to ensure there has been no fraud or identity theft in my accounts). You also obviously want to make sure your score is as high as possible for any mortgages or other loans that you end up applying for (to ensure you get the lowest rate and get approved). Even if you aren't looking for a loan, I ecourage you to at least pull your report for free to help ensure that there are no unauthorized transactions on your accounts. As a best practice, you should be doing this kind of check at least annually. Thanks again Borrowell for building a tool where we Canadians can finally get access to this data quickly and for free. Other Resources from the Episode: Top Tools and Resources for Financial Independence (for Canadians): All the top tools and sites that I've personally used to help us achieve financial independence in our early 30s. They're also what we use now to optimize and manage our finances, and ensure that we're paying the lowest fees while getting solid returns on our investments. Canada's Top ETFs Guide & Top High-Interest Savings Account: In the guide, I go over what I personally invest in and why I invest in it. The investments that I talk about ​are literally where we have almost our entire net worth (apart from our house), and is what we are primarily living off right now in our early retirement. At the very least you'll learn about some great ETFs to consider for your portfolio, and if you are new to ETFs, it'll give you a nice list of some top ETFs to consider from the thousands that are out there. The guide is available for free to any listeners that that use this link to sign up for a free savings account with the bank that I personally use, EQ bank. The reason that I personally use EQ bank, is that they have one of the highest interest savings rates in Canada (they are currently offering 2.3% which is more than double what the major banks are offering). It's also free to sign up and keep an account with them, so you're not paying a monthly fee like you do with many of the other banks out there. You also get unlimited transactions, unlimited Interac e-transfers, and can take out your money at any time if you need it, and there are no minimum balances. Because of those reasons, I've been with them ever since they launched in Canada years ago, and it's where I keep my entire emergency fund and spending money. To get the free high-interest account and the free guide on the top ETFs in Canada, just go to buildwealthcanada.ca/eq, open the free account, and once you're done, forward any email that you get from EQ to bonus@buildwealthcanada.ca and I'll send you the full comprehensive guide for free. Roger's Amazing Educational Resources: Roger's Rock Retirement Club (applicable to Canadians) Roger's Main Site: Retirement Answer Man Roger's Podcast: Retirement Answer Man Podcast Free Monte Carlo Simulation Tools: To help ensure that you have enough to retire, we talked a lot about Monte Carlo analysis. Below are three tools that I use where you can run Monte Carlo simulations for free: cfiresim.com firecalc.com portfoliovisualizer.com Questions Covered: Let's say you created a comprehensive financial plan with a client. You give them the green light to retire and they do so. A year later, we run into a 2008 scenario, or a large stock market decline. When you do your annual/semi-annual review with the client, what's the process that you go through to determine if they are still okay, or if they need to make some adjustments? I've noticed that you're a heavy user of Monte Carlo simulations to stress-test whether someone has enough to retire. For somebody that hasn't heard of this before, can you explain what it is? There are free tools out there like Firecalc.com and cfiresim.com that let people run their own Monte Carlo simulations to see if they have enough to retire. Do you have any advice when using tools such as these? For example, are there any common mistakes that you see people do when using them? I noticed that not all financial planners and financial planning software do Monte Carlo stress-tests like do. The most common alternative that I've seen, is that in the financial planning software, the financial planner just enters what rates of return they expect the client to receive for the different years when doing the retirement projections. When using this alternate method, how should listeners of the show ensure that their financial planners are stress-testing their retirement projections to ensure that they still have enough to retire, even if they hit a major recession shortly after retirement? (i.e. They get hit by a bad sequence of returns) After listening to your podcast for years, I got the sense that you are a fan of the bucket strategy. Can you explain what it is, and can you talk about the default bucket strategy that you like to start with, and then how do you adjust it depending on the client? Do you subtract dividends/interest from that "annual expenses" figure when determining how much cash/fixed income to have? Do you have some sort of rule/process when it comes to refilling the buckets. For example: "If X happens in the markets then I'm selling off equities to generate cash to live from. If Y happens then I use a cash cushion or the bond portion and I refill it when markets are up by a certain percent"? How would your bucket strategy differ when dealing with a traditional retiree (ex. Age 65), vs an early retiree (ex. Age 30s or 40s) Do you have a preferred way(s) of helping clients deal with sequence risk? (please define it too for those that are new to this) When you're working with clients and strategizing on what should be in the fixed income/safe portion of their portfolio, how do you determine how much they should put into bonds vs a high-interest savings account vs GICs (GICs are the US version of CDs)? Are there certain rules or processes that you like to follow to determine this? A lot of the listeners of this show are do-it-yourself investors, and you've built a really great on-line community of do-it-yourself retirees as part of your Rock Retirement Club. Can you tell us more about the Rock Retirement Club, as well as a bit more about your podcast and where we can learn more from you?

Today we have insurance industry insider, Laura McKay on the show, who reveals some of the top tricks and tactics used in the insurance industry, to keep us overpaying. She covers what to look out for, and what we can actually do on our end to make sure that we get the best rates possible, and aren't overpaying for insurance that we may not even need. Laura used to work as an actuary, and is now the Co-founder and President of PolicyMe, which is a great tool for Canadians that you can use for free to see how much insurance you actually need. It also tells you if you are overpaying for insurance, or if you are underinsured and taking on a lot of unnecessary risk in case something was to happen to you. I also really like how it lets you comparison shop different insurance providers without having to fill out countless insurance forms for each individual insurance company that you want a quote from. Enjoy the episode. You'll learn a lot of actionable insider information that can potentially save you thousands of dollars long-term. Resources from the Episode: PolicyMe's free tool to find out how much insurance you need and find out if you are overpaying or are underinsured. The tool also lets you easily comparison shop between different insurance providers to ensure you get the lowest rate. Top Tools and Resources for Financial Independence (for Canadians): All the top tools and sites that I've personally used to help us achieve financial independence in our early 30s. They're also what we use now to optimize and manage our finances, and ensure that we're paying the lowest fees while getting solid returns on our investments. Canada's Top ETFs Guide & Top High-Interest Savings Account: In the guide, I go over what I personally invest in and why I invest in it. The investments that I talk about ​are literally where we have almost our entire net worth (apart from our house), and is what we are primarily living off right now in our early retirement. At the very least you'll learn about some great ETFs to consider for your portfolio, and if you are new to ETFs, it'll give you a nice list of some top ETFs to consider from the thousands that are out there. The guide is available for free to any listeners that that use this link to sign up for a free savings account with the bank that I personally use, EQ bank. The reason that I personally use EQ bank, is that they have one of the highest interest savings rates in Canada (they are currently offering 2.3% which is more than double what the major banks are offering). It's also free to sign up and keep an account with them, so you're not paying a monthly fee like you do with many of the other banks out there. You also get unlimited transactions, unlimited Interac e-transfers, and can take out your money at any time if you need it, and there are no minimum balances. Because of those reasons, I've been with them ever since they launched in Canada years ago, and it's where I keep my entire emergency fund and spending money. To get the free high-interest account and the free guide on the top ETFs in Canada, just go to buildwealthcanada.ca/eq, open the free account, and once you're done, forward any email that you get from EQ to bonus@buildwealthcanada.ca and I'll send you the full comprehensive guide for free. Questions Covered: Can you tell us a bit about your story and experience as an insider in the insurance industry, and what caused you to leave that standard insurance career path? One of the most common tricks that I've seen insurance providers use over the years, is making it sound like everybody needs life insurance, no matter what. What I found different about you guys, is that you actually do a great job explaining why not everyone needs insurance. Can you take us through what kind of person or family would need life insurance, and when they wouldn't? Also, when can we get rid of life insurance so we can save some extra money every month? Another trick that I've heard about is companies telling young people to get life insurance even if they don't really need it yet, because the younger you are, the lower your rates will be. This can sound appealing as it's a way to lock-in those low rates for decades. Can you talk about this strategy and is it worth it? For example, would someone be better off just taking the money that they would be paying to insurance, and instead investing it in their TFSA, RRSP, or paying off debt? One of the types of insurance that I see people get talked into is permanent life insurance. But, out of all the personal finance experts that I've talked to, I have yet to hear anybody recommend it (unless they sell it, in which case they do suggest it because they get paid a commission from it). Can you talk about permanent life insurance vs term insurance, what each of them are, along with the pros and cons of each one. One of the arguments that I've heard for permanent life insurance is that it invests some of the money that you pay them, and that money is able to grow tax-free. This sounds appealing as it starts to sound a little bit like a TFSA. How is this different though, than investing in a TFSA? When investing through a permanent life insurance policy, how do the fees and rates-of-return compare to instead doing index investing using low-cost ETFs or using a robo-advisor? One of the tricks that I've noticed you bring up on your site is how many insurance providers us the "x times income" rule. Can you explain what that is, and how you can end up paying for more insurance than you need if you let a provider use this rule? Obviously there are a lot of things that we can't control that impact how much we pay for insurance, like our age. But, what are the things that we can control that can lower our rates? Under what conditions would someone's premium change? For example, if somebody develops a heart problem after the person has already become insured. Would it be adjusted based on this new information? Should you disclose such things to your insurance company if it happened after the policy is already in effect? Another common trick I see, is companies not telling us when we no longer need that higher coverage. This makes sense of course as the larger our coverage, the more money they make from us. In what cases should we actually lower our coverage, and what's the best process for doing so? (i.e. Kids out of the house, no more mortgage, No debts, other?) If you are a couple, what are the pros and cons of buying one joint policy vs buying two individual policies? Can you tell us a bit more about your tool and what you factor in when making those recommendations on how much we actually need? When you pull the rates from the different providers, how many different providers do you actually pull the prices from?