Build Wealth Canada Podcast

With the multiple interest rate hikes that we’ve been experiencing here in Canada, many Canadians have seen their monthly cashflow take a hit, whether it’s because you have a variable rate mortgage, a line of credit, or other forms of debt.

So what are your options if you’re paying more than you’d like on your interest payments, or maybe you have that mortgage coming up for renewal and you’re going to have to make that multi-thousand dollar decision on how you’re going to proceed?

Should you go with a fixed or variable rate mortgage when interest rates are high like they are right now?

Keep in mind too that if you have a mortgage coming up for renewal, then you won’t be able to get as good of an interest rate upon renewal, as you did when you first got that mortgage years ago, due to all these massive interest rate hikes that we’ve been experiencing.

To tackle all of this, I’ve brought on an expert that deals with these types of interest and mortgage related questions every day, and that is the show’s resident mortgage expert, Sean Cooper. Sean is who I go to and who I send friends and family to for any mortgage related questions. He is the bestselling author of the book Burn Your Mortgage, and he is an independent mortgage broker so he’s not tied to any one particular lender which gives him access to the top mortgages available in Canada.

Sean has also been kind enough to answer for free, any questions that you, the Build Wealth Canada listeners have. I’ve set up a special page for him so all you have to do is go to buildwealthcanada.ca/sean, and there you can send him a message with your questions, or, if you prefer, you can even pick a time on his calendar on that page for a phone or video call to get your questions answered with him live, for free.

Sean is a licensed mortgage broker too, so I definitely also encourage you to reach out to him if you’re looking to get a new mortgage or if your mortgage is coming up for renewal, as at the very least he’ll be able to provide you with a short list of the best mortgages that he’s been able to find across all of Canada from the 60+ lenders that he monitors.

None of this costs you anything, and there’s no obligation to get your mortgage through him or use any of those suggested mortgages.

That link again to get in touch with Sean to get your questions answered, and get his research on the best mortgages that he’s been able to find in Canada is over at buildwealthcanada.ca/sean.

Enjoy the episode. :)

Questions Covered:

1. After pausing rate hikes since January, the Bank of Canada shocked many by starting to raise interest rates again in June. What was behind this? What does the future hold?
2. Some homeowners in Canada are facing a doubling or more of their mortgage rates at renewal. What options do homeowners have?
3. For those in that situation where they’ll be dealing with deciding between a fixed vs variable mortgage, how should they be approaching this dilemma, factoring in the current interest rate environment?
4. When you and I spoke offline, you mentioned that there is a really big missconception that some people have when it comes to mortgages, that could really be causing them to overpay on their mortgages. Can you speak to that?
5. With higher interest rates, it’s not all doom and gloom since tools like high interest savings accounts and GICs are now paying out more to us consumers compared to what they were offering when we had those rock bottom interest rates. Are there any tools or strategies that you are using yourself or are fond of, when it comes to taking advantage of these higher interest rates and how are you investing these days when it comes to the fixed income portion of your portfolio? (ex. HISA vs GIC vs Bonds).
6. Are you buying more shorter-term or longer-term investments? (ex. short term vs longer term bonds/GICs etc.)
7. If any of the listeners have some form of debt, and they suspect that maybe they aren’t paying the absolute lowest amount that they could be paying on that debt (it doesn’t have to be some kind of really high credit card debt, just any debt that they think seems high), what are the tools or options available to them, here in Canada, in terms of taking that higher interest debt and turning it into the lower interest debt?
8. For anybody listening that has questions for you, or would potentially like to work with you or see your research on the top mortgages that you’ve been able to find here in Canada as a mortgage broker, can you tell us more what the process is for Build Wealth Canada listeners to get a ...

It’s graduation season here in Canada, so we thought it would be good to focus this episode on parents with kids, those with nieces and nephews, as well as those that are students or fresh out of school. This week, we cover the topic of how to best set up young Canadians and young adults for success, when it comes to money.

Sadly, if you’re my generation or older then you probably got zero education about money when you were in school or fresh out of school. Yet, those are the crucial years where you either establish good or bad money habits, and there are so many things that can lead a young person astray.

Heck, knowing how to keep your investment fees low can literally save you hundreds of thousands of dollars over your investment lifetime, so why wouldn’t you want to know about these things as a student or upon graduation so that you can set yourself up for financial success?

To help me with this topic, I have Canadian author, Douglas Price on the show. Douglas has written the book “Seventeen to Millionaire” a personal finance book for teens and young adults, specifically here in Canada, aimed to help them become financially literate and establish that strong financial foundation to set them up for success.

Enjoy the interview. :)

1. To kick things off, can you tell us about your book and why you decided to write it?
2. Whether we’re a child, teenager or adult, learning to manage our cashflows is a critical skill that we have to employ our entire lives. What process do you recommend to ensure that we are managing our income and expenses appropriately and not overspending?
3. When someone is entering the world of investing in the markets for the first time (whether it’s someone that just turned 18, or an established adult that is now learning how to navigate the world of investing), where do you stand on using something like a robo advisor vs a single asset allocation ETF vs buying multiple individual ETFs vs other options (ex. mutual funds, using an advisor at a bank, etc.).
   • Follow up question: Do you have any advice on how to prevent overwhelm when teaching someone this for the first time?
4. Your book focuses on helping teenagers learn about money and how it works so that they can have that strong foundation for the rest of their lives, but what are your thoughts about how parents of younger children can best educate them and set them up for success when they are still in elementary school, or early high school?
5. When it comes to kids or teenagers learning about money, what have you found that they struggle with the most, where us parents or educators need to spend some extra time on?
6. What would you say are your top ‘best practices’ that us parents can do to ensure that our kids are set up for success when it comes to their financial lives?
7. The world is obviously a lot different now than it was when you and I were kids. Are there any areas that have changed a lot when it comes to money that us parents need to be cognizant of when trying to set our kids up with that strong foundation when it comes to financial literacy?
8. One of the things that I found impressive in your book, is that you hired high school students to test out your book to ensure that the lessons were communicated in a way that is engaging and digestible for them. Did you learn anything from those feedback sessions when it comes to how to best teach your kids or teenagers about anything, as a parent or educator?
9. I’d really like to thank you for clearly putting in a significant effort to help educate young Canadians when it comes to financial literacy. Can you tell us again where we can get your book and where we should go to learn more?

Our guest today is Arian Beyzaei, the Vice President of Enriched Academy, one of the most successful companies to be featured on the show Dragon’s Den.

Over the past 6 years he has travelled around the country teaching students and entrepreneurs how to get smarter with their finances. He has presented to over 10,000 people and has been the keynote speaker for several corporations.

Arian has also been featured on the Financial Post, The Globe and Mail and many more providing personal finance tips and strategies.

What’s really neat about Enriched Academy is that they are definitely one of, if not the largest financial literacy educators in Canada. They have over 100,000 students, so I thought it would be useful for Arian to share some of the top money saving lessons learned, after teaching that many students, here in Canada.

In other words, what can really move the needle for all of us, when it comes to making a dent in our spending?

What are the highest impact savings strategies that we should be focusing on, to really drastically increase the extra cashflow that we all receive month to month?

1. We talk a lot about increasing our wealth through investing on this show but a higher income, or return on investment, is only one component of growing our net worth. The other of course, is saving and not incurring unnecessary liabilities. To kick things off, why should finding ways to save money be on our radar? As opposed to us just focusing on maximizing our income and returns?
2. When it comes to saving money on things that really move the needle in increasing our financial wellbeing, housing and transportation come to mind as the top areas to optimize. Can you give us some insights and advice on these two areas?
3. While housing and transportation are definitely high priority areas due to their high price, another area that can have a large impact is those smaller but recurring expenses that we sign up for, which end up draining our cashflow on an ongoing basis. Can you give us your thoughts and strategies on those?
4. While mortgage rates are relatively low these days, they are nevertheless a very large monthly cashflow drain for most Canadians. Can you talk about some of your favourite mortgage tactics to help us save money?
5. If someone is looking for a little bit of extra income this year, without an enormous time commitment, do you have a favourite go-to’s that you found many Canadians can benefit from?
6. When it comes to debt, how are Canadians doing vs the rest of the world, and what are your favourite strategies that we can use to lower the interest on our debt?

Resources Mentioned In the Episode:

The free tickets to this year's Online Canadian Financial Summit are here: http://buildwealthcanada.ca/summit

The free assessment call mentioned on the episode is available here: http://buildwealthcanada.ca/call

The Ultimate Phone Script PDF is available for free download here: https://buildwealthcanada.ca/script

The financial literacy for kids educational program is available here: https://buildwealthcanada.ca/kids

The Mortgage Broker mentioned on the episode (to get your mortgage questions answered for free) is available at: https://buildwealthcanada.ca/sean

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(i.e. Is your net worth actually growing to get you closer to that early retirement and financial independence number?).

Tracking your net worth and investments is no longer something that you have to do manually, by tediously entering your numbers from all your different accounts into a spreadsheet. You also don’t have to do that boring data entry over and over again, every time that you want an update.

So for this episode, I brought on the creators of two free tools available to Canadians. The first is a net worth tracking tool called Wealthica. While the second is an investment tracking and automation tool called Passiv (which I’ve already been using for years to manage, automate, and get reports on my investment portfolio).

1. We’re going to be talking a fair bit about tracking our net worth in this interview, and how we can automate it. But before we get into that, how should we be defining “net worth”, and how do each of us actually benefit by tracking it?
2. It used to be that in order to track your investments and net worth, you’d be stuck with whatever your banking or investment provider gave you, and oftentimes you had to use a spreadsheet to get a holistic view of all your accounts. It seems that now, we are transitioning to more open banking where that is no longer necessary. Can you speak to what’s been happening in regards to this, specifically here in Canada?
3. For anybody that hasn’t heard of your tools before, can you each take us through what it does, especially when it comes to saving Canadians time, and helping automate some of the more tedious parts of being a do-it-yourself investor, and net worth tracking.
4. Looking at your sites, there seems to be some overlap in terms of what you each provide. Can you take us through the differences between Passiv and Wealthica? Is there a specific type of investor that each tool is more suited for?
5. One of the big developments that many of us have noticed is that your tools are now integrated with each other. Can you take us through what that means for us the end users? And how does that helps us be more efficient and save more time with our investments and net worth tracking?
6. Brendan, when I spoke with your team offline, they mentioned that users get more functionality if they use one of Passiv’s brokerage partners like Questrade. Can you speak to what users can and can’t do depending on which brokerage they are currently using?
7. Some of us get nervous about using tools where we need to enter our login credentials for the different companies that we bank with or do our investments through. Can you talk about the technology that’s being used here to keep everything safe? And are we potentially breaking the terms of service with some of these institutions we bank with by entering this private information?

You can click here to open up a free Passiv account (Questrade members also get the free upgrade to the Elite Member Plan.

You can sign up to Wealthica for free here.

Free tickets to the Canadian Financial Summit: Sign up anywhere for free on buildwealthcanada.ca to get free tickets to the digital event once they are ready (the annual event is on September 22, 2021).

Your Mortgage Questions Answered: Since it's real estate season here in Canada, we also mentioned our resident mortgage expert who can answer your mortgage questions for free. You can sign up for a free call here (there is no cost and no obligation to select any of the lowest cost mortgages that he's able to find in from the 60+ lenders that he monitors.

Investing Course: The investing course was also mentioned in the intermission, which you can try risk-free for 60 days here.

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 Perso...

Canadian investors are having a pretty eventful time in the markets right now, as the legalization of marijuana is happening today as I record this episode. Also, let's not forget the hit that the markets took last week.

For a long time now we've seen very little volatility in the markets, and it's been a relatively smooth and enjoyable ride. Well finally, last week, we finally got to experience how markets can behave (in the negative sense), and I think how you felt during this period is a good sample of how much you can stomach volatility, and stay invested, when you have some media making it look like the sky is falling.

We can and will experience drops even worse than that in the future, but I think it's a good self-discovery event where you learn if for example, that 100% stock, 0% bond portfolio allocation is something that you really can have and still sleep well at night.

Because of the marijuana legalization and the recent dip in the markets, I thought it would be great to have another Investing Tips Episode like we did last month, where I speak with 5i Research's CEO, Ryan Modesto about what him and his research team are seeing in the markets with the recent declines, as well as address the subject of marijuana stocks and investing in that industry.

Of course, don't miss future episodes, giveaways, and free in-depth guides by signing up for free to the Build Wealth Canada newsletter over at buildwealthcanada.ca. There you'll receive some exclusive educational content that's only available to Build Wealth Canada newsletter subscribers, there's never any spam, and it's totally free.

It's also the best way to ask questions that you want to be answered on future episodes of the show, and suggests any guests that you'd like to come on the show. That link again to sign up for free is buildwealthcanada.ca.

Alright now before we start the interview, today's guest, 5i CEO Ryan Modesto is also offering a 1-year free digital subscription to Canadian Moneysaver Magazine (Canada's largest personal finance magazine) when you sign up for free 30-day access to 5i Research.

There you'll receive over 70 company reports (perfect if you like to sometimes invest in individual stocks), three model portfolios, and answers to over 75,000 investing questions, along with the ability to ask your own directly to Ryan and his analysts.

Ryan and his team at 5i don't sell any investments, and don't get any commissions or bonuses from suggesting stocks and ETFs. Because of this, I've been a long time partner with them as they are one of the VERY few companies in Canada, that are truly conflict-free and unbiased when it comes to their research and suggestions on stocks and ETFs.

You can get free 30-day access to all their research and resources over at buildwealthcanada.ca/research, and as a "thank you" for trying them out, you'll receive a free 1-year digital subscription to Canadian MoneySaver Magazine, Canada's largest personal finance magazine.

I encourage you to check 5i out, it's a great place get some truly unbiased insights on your investments (whether it's stocks or ETFs), and you'll learn an absolute ton.

1. Let's start off with a market update. The markets have clearly been hit pretty hard lately. What's the 5i Research team seeing, and should we be worried?
2. With the legalization of marijuana in Canada, the industry is expected to experience rapid growth. For investors interested in investing in this industry, what should they be looking out for?
3. I sometimes hear investors say things like “I think industry x is going to grow in the future, so I’m going to invest in it”. For example, the cannabis industry, or AI, robotics, etc. What is the error in using that reasoning as your sole decision to invest in an industry? (i.e. the potential growth already being factored into the price)
4. What is the difference between common and preferred stocks, what should an investor consider when choosing between the two, and should a company offer both?

1. The marijuana industry report mentioned is available by signing up to the free 30-day 5i access over at buildwealthcanada.ca/research. As a bonus, you'll also receive a 1-year free digital subscription to Canadian MoneySaver Magazine.
2. The preferred shares article mentioned can be found at