More Money Podcast - 036 Side Hustling to Early Retirement - Robb Engen, Blogger at Boomer and Echo

Episode Date: February 10, 2016

Robb Engen from the popular blog Boomer and Echo and I discuss how he started his blog because of his passion for personal finance, and how it evolved into a money-making side hustle that would lead to an early retirement for him and his wife. Long episode description: Robb Engen from the popular personal finance blog Boomer and Echo and I chat in this episode of the Mo’ Money Podcast about how he turned his passion for personal finance into a means of reaching early retirement. I’ve known Robb and his blog for a while, but it wasn’t until I heard him speak at this year’s Canadian Personal Finance Conference that I knew I needed to chat with him on the podcast. Robb started his blog along with his mother Marie Engen, a certified financial planner, in 2010. He read a lot of personal finance blogs and eventually felt compelled to add his two cents with his own blog. What started out as a hobby turned into a second job where he earns thousands of dollars per month on top of his full-time salary. Not only does his blog help provide for his family while his wife stays at home with their two young daughters, but it is also helping them both achieve they’re big goal of retiring early so they can enjoy the fruits of their labour sooner rather than later. On top of blogging, Robb also writes a column for the Toronto Star and offers fee-only advice as a financial advisor on the side. I remember someone asking him at the conference how he manages it all with a young family, and his answer was simple — it’s a lot of work, but he makes the best use of his time. It’s not easy balancing a full-time job with a few extra jobs on the side, but if it eventually leads to more money in the bank and the possibility of early retirement, well, I’d much rather work crazy hard in my 20s and 30s to be financially free in my 40s, 50s and beyond. Props to you Robb! Personal Finance Blogs Mentioned Million Dollar Journey Canadian Finance Blog Money Smarts Blog Follow Robb Engen on Social Robb on Twitter Boomer and Echo on Twitter Boomer and Echo on Facebook Shownotes: jessicamoorhouse.com/36 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, and welcome to episode 36 of the Mo Money podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morehouse. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm super excited to talk to my next guest. Many of you may already know him if you're familiar with the Canadian personal finance blogging world. His name is Rob Engen. He is one half of Boomer and Echo. He writes that blog with his mom, which is super awesome. And he also writes for Toronto Star. He's a public speaker. And he is just the nicest guy. I'll just say that right now. He's like the nicest guy. And so he actually spoke at the Canadian Personal Finance Conference this past fall. And I really enjoyed his talk all about how he kind of developed his blog as kind of just a

hobby and then just, you know, hustled and made it into a side business so he can help to better provide for his family. And so we'll get into all of that and more right now. Thanks, Rob, for joining me on the program today. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. No problem. So the reason I wanted you on the show is because I really, really enjoyed your talk at the Canadian Personal Finance Conference. And so I definitely want to chat with you more just about how you got into personal finance and how you've kind of started your blog and now that's kind of becoming a business and so on. So we'll get into all of that. But I want to start from the beginning and ask you how this all started for you. Good question. I found myself, I changed jobs around age 30.

A lot was going on in my life. I just had a baby and changed careers. I was in the hospitality industry for 10 years, and I moved to work in the public sector for a university. Yeah, those are very different industries. For sure. And I was traveling a lot and working maybe 60, 65 hours a week. And so, of course, with our first baby, you know, I wanted to scale that back and found the opportunity to work at a university. But I found the pace was a lot slower than what I was used to. And, you know, so, you know, I'm done at 430 and come home and we had a really, I was lucky. We had a really good, good baby who went to bed at seven o'clock and slept for 12 hours.

So I don't tell too many people that because we get a lot of death stares. Yeah. So, you know, I found, you know, we're kind of stuck at home and I found myself kind of surfing through a lot of, I was interested in personal finance and found myself surfing through a lot of blogs and was reading, you know, Million Dollar Journey and Money Smarts blog and Canadian Finance blog. And so some of the kind of the pioneers in the Canadian personal finance space. And, you know, I was pouring through the archives of a million dollar journey. And I just remember thinking to myself, like, I could be writing this instead of just sitting here reading it. And, and I was talking to my mom and my mom and I had a great relationship. And she kind of got me started on a lot of money matters. And she was an advisor for many years at TD Bank.

And, you know, so I had, you know, the green machine piggy bank and all kinds of things. So I was always talking to my mom about personal finance and much to the chagrin of the rest of our family. You know, it was kind of our little fun thing that we would talk about and it's boring for everybody else. So us PF bloggers just kind of get that. Yeah, totally. Yeah. We're the only ones that think this is really cool where everyone else is like, it's pretty nerdy.

Yeah, exactly. So I got to talking and kind of suggested the, you know, maybe we could start our own blog and kind of tackle it from the Boomer and Echo generation. I have to credit my mom for coming up with that. Yeah, great name. And yeah, so we just kind of started writing and had no idea what to expect. And so we've kind of evolved with the times, you know, it's been over five years. And yeah, it's been quite the journey.

How do you, I'm curious, because I mean, I find as a blogger, I've been doing this for a couple of years now and I find just, you know, me being the sole owner of my blog, it's hard to kind of have a schedule and keep, you know, posts flowing and everything like that. How do you do that with your mom and how do you make sure you have, I don't know, it all organized? It seems like it almost be a little bit more complicated having a blog with two people involved. Well, I've always, I've heard it from both sides. I've heard you should always schedule your posts and have a set schedule that, you know, your readers can expect something. And then I've heard, well, no, you should only blog when you have something to say. And so I found that we stuck to a schedule right off the bat. And so when we first started out, I wrote on

Monday, my mom wrote on Tuesday, I wrote on Monday, my mom wrote on Tuesday, I wrote on Wednesday, my mom wrote on Thursday, and then I'd do like a roundup on Friday. Wow, that's a lot, actually. And we stuck to that. And so maybe we had a lot to say in the beginning. And so I think for two years, we stuck to that schedule. And it just became like habit.

I just know, you know, on Sunday, I'd write a post for Monday. And I never really worked that far ahead, but I just know in my routine, that's what I needed to do. And I think our readers kind of came to expect that. And, you know, it was, well, some of the older personal finance blogs might have been dying off or slowing down. We kind of just kept it up. And so I think we were able to gain quite a few readers because of that. And it's just helped in our own planning, just knowing that, you know, a post is due today.

Where, you know, I have another blog, which is the Rewards Cards Canada blog, where I do write just when I have something to say. And, well, I just wrote something yesterday, and that was the first time I published since, like, October 8th or something like that. So, you know, you can kind of, uh, get stuck or, or, or, you know, lose, lose track of that blog, I guess. Um, and I think it's harder to build a following that way, you know, whereas others can probably get

away with that. Whereas this one is a little more, the blog is a little more factual based and that sort of thing. So I don't know. I struggle to find, you know, a consistent rhythm in that, with that one. But with Boomer and Echo, we just stuck to a schedule from day one and it seems to have worked. Yeah. Wow. That's, and that's an ambitious schedule. I, you know, props to you. Well, after two years, that kind of died off. Still two years. Damn.

It was pretty good. But now we're down to like Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So that seems like a good... Still keep it consistent. Definitely. So I guess when you started the blog initially, was it mainly just to have an outlet to kind of express some of the things that you were interested in and some of the things that you were learning? Or did you always kind of have an idea that, oh, maybe this could be a business venture down the road? Like I said, when we started, we didn't really know what we were doing. I did have an idea that you could make money blogging.

You know, just reading through the Million Dollar Journeys and Money Smarts blogs, you see the ads maybe at that time because I was a web virgin I guess or I didn't really understand what it all meant but you can kind of as you're reading you can kind of start to piece it together and you know these ads are AdSense and these ads look like they're you know display ads and that kind of thing and so you know I kind of figured once you get a following you could probably make some money. But, you know, literally for the first six months, we, you know, just wrote four or five days a week and for nothing. Yeah. And, you know, so I think we just started out kind of we had something to say about money. And certainly, you know, like I said, my mom and I had those conversations offline, you know, and bored everybody else when we got started on those topics. And so this was like

our outlet for sharing those ideas online and kind of moving that conversation online, which I thought was a lot of fun. And because I was going through a lot in my life, you know, we just had a baby and my wife went on maternity leave. And then we were having discussions about, you know, her staying at home full time. And could we make that work and just paid off a bunch of debt, a bunch of student debt and combined our finances. So there's just so much going on that there was a lot to say. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that reminds me of part of something you talked about,

you touched on during your session at the conference was how you did make the decision for your wife to stay home while you worked, but you also wanted your blog to kind of help with that transition. Did you want to kind of expand on that? Sure. So one thing I didn't really touch on in the presentation, it wasn't really that relevant, but one of the decisions or reasons why we decided that my wife would stay home full-time is she was actually diagnosed with MS in 2008 and so you know she's doing fine but you

know at that time it was kind of the unknown so that kind of sped up our process we went from wanting to travel the world to be speeding up our decision to have kids and raise a family and one of those decisions was to you know know, hopefully stay home full time and get numbers and we're able to make it work. But, you know, certainly the online income or the side business does help. You know, it helps us not only make that work, but also, you know, get ahead because that's what I,

you know, that's what one of our goals is to, you know, retire or have me retire earlier. And, you know, retire or have me retire earlier. And, um, you know, and, and, uh, we grow accustomed to certain lifestyle and things like that. So, so we didn't want to do it as, as just, uh, you know, we just didn't want to just scrape by to make it, we need to make it work for the two of us in our lifestyle. So, um, is that, um, I'm curious, because one of the things that you're pursuing now is a fee-only advisor. And is that, when did that kind of come about in your mind that you didn't want to just generate, you know, have your blog as a business, but, you know, kind of do another element as, you know, a financial advisor? Well, again, kind of by the seat of my pants, we get a lot of emails from readers that, you know, you write an article and it's kind of like it's either your experience or it's your opinion on a certain subject.

And then, you know, you'll get an that situation because you don't know all their details, you know, or their, or what kind of situation they're in. So you can't just say, well, I would do this. You know, it's not like, I call it the Redditors who, you know, there's only one way to do things. And it's, and it's this way and you're an idiot if you don't, you know, it's, you know, there's a lot more nuance and, and to do things and it's this way and you're an idiot if you don't. There's a lot more nuance and other details that might be missing. I was actually talking with, it was at the personal finance conference two years ago, talking to Sandy Martin who runs Spring Personal Finance.

She left the banking world, started her own fee-only practice. And so just got to talking with her about her experience starting that up. And she was the one that actually really pushed me into starting it and offering that as a service for those readers who have maybe more than that one question, but want to take a whole look at their,

at their financial situation and, and really come up with a plan that's, you know, it's not going to be a financial advisor at a bank who's steering you towards their products. It's going to be someone who is unbiased, doesn't work for someone who's going to sell you products, but can give you, you know, kind of an unbiased look at your finances. And so that's where that came from. And we really just started it, obviously, you know, my mom working in the bank was used to that, at least that process of giving financial advice. But, you know, that kind of came from just a let's, you know, let's try this and see. And so far, so good. I mean, I have nothing, you know, when, when you hear back from clients who say, you know, I wish I would have done this five years

ago, 10 years ago, you know, that really gives you a good feeling like you, you're really helping and making a difference. So, you know, that's, that's exciting. And yeah, maybe leads to a career down, new career down, down the road. Definitely. I think that's really exciting. And, and you, as you know, I think the first time, or maybe one of the first times you've commented on my blog was when I posted a blog post about how I'm thinking about doing some money coaching down the road. And you're like, oh, I'm actually kind of doing the same thing.

Like, huh, very cool. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. So what I'm curious, because I know you're taking some courses to get your CFP designation, has what you've been learning in those courses kind of changed your perspective

on personal finance? Or, I don't know, I'm just curious what your thoughts on that are. Well, the CP or the path to your certification, it really, like it opens your eyes to see there's so much more to financial planning than picking your investments and, you know, your day-to-day kind of finance. There's so much more in terms of your, you know, the risk management, so your insurance needs and estate planning and things like that. And realizing that I'm getting inquiries from not just people who are in their 20s and 30s, but people who are in their 50s and 60s, and they have much different needs. Oh, absolutely. Totally different ballgame. Than I do. And so, you know, right now we kind of deal with that by, you know, a typical scenario

is like my mom will handle the 50 to 60 year olds and I'll handle the 20 to 30 year olds. And then whoever's in between is up for grabs, I guess. You know, depending on their needs. But it's certainly going through that process, it opens your eyes to like there's a vast world or wealth of knowledge out there about certain things. And you can see it by the types of clients that everyone's unique, right?

You can't make, if people want to get into financial planning and think there's just a cookie cutter financial plan I can give to everybody and this will work, it's not the case. Everyone is unique. And so I'm finding there's all these different scenarios that people are up against and whether someone's divorced or whether someone's leaving a job and has a locked in retirement account there and all these different things. And you have to kind of know the answers or know how to get them and navigate your way around them to offer the best recommendations.

Absolutely. And it's funny that you mentioned that just cause I've been thinking a lot lately just about how over the years, you know, as you get older, you kind of become wiser and realize things that are like, Oh, obviously that's so obvious now.

But I was just looking at my, the budget spreadsheet that I just use for my personal finances. And I was thinking, I'm like, huh, if I were to offer this to someone, would it actually work for someone? I'm like, hmm, I think there's kind of no... Then I started kind of looking at what other budget spreadsheets are online that you can look at.

And there's so many different ones. And it kind of freaked me out because I'm one of those people that sometimes a bit black and white. I'm like, no, there's a right and a wrong. But then I was just thinking, I'm like, huh, I don't think there when it comes to personal finance, there's kind of no wrong answer. And there's like a million different ways you can do the same thing. For instance, yeah, just for like budgeting. I'm like, you know, I may budget one way that works for me. But, you know, depending on your scenario, you know, you're divorced, you're single, you're married, you have kids. I mean, you know, how your budget comes in, right? Exactly.

At the university I work, we get paid once a month. Is that right? Oh, that's different. And I hear from people that say, oh, how do you manage that? And that's from someone who's used to getting paid weekly or biweekly. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's certainly different.

Yeah. Also, just, you know, my husband's a freelancer, so he, you know, never really knows when he's going to get paid sometimes. It's a huge chunk one month, and then he has to kind of, you know, wait it out for another month until he gets, you know, some more invoices in. For sure. And different, you know, insurance needs for freelance or self-employed people versus yes versus salaried employees and and so yeah i mean so so i guess the as i'm like you said getting older and and uh kind of learning more about uh about finance and and uh everyone's different scenarios i mean i think that's why people get so aggravated

at like some of the general Globe and Mail, National Financial Post kind of articles where you look at somebody's finances and just do a quick fix because I don't think there is one like that. You can't do it in a page. No, exactly, exactly. I'm curious since you do get so many questions from people,

what are some of the, let's start with what are some of the most interesting or complex questions you've got? Or just something that's kind of like always stuck in your mind? Sometimes it's more on, I'm sure you get lots of emails from articles that do really well, maybe in search or that have a lot of comments on them. So one of them is about locked-in retirement. Okay. And so there's a couple scenarios where, okay, if you worked somewhere for 10 years and then left and then you retreated to a pension there, you have the option to either leave it and leave it vested with that company.

And then when you retire at 60 or whatever, 65, you can withdraw a small pension from that, just like you would if you continue working there forever. But then the other option is to transfer it into a locked-in retirement account so you could manage it like an RRSP, but don't have the ability to withdraw from it because it's there for your retirement. And so we get probably, well, two or three comments a day on this post plus emails all the time about financial hardship.

And so there's certain rules where you can, or certain scenarios where you can access that money, if you can show that you're in financial distress. And so people all the time, you know, and you can and you can kind of sense their desperation, like, so it's either I just got divorced, or I just got off or and I know that there's, you know, $20,000 in here or $40,000 in here, and I, I need it, you know, I need to get access to it. How can I? And so you really feel for these people. I mean, they're obviously in a really tough situation or maybe they're overwhelmed with debt or something like that

and they need to access this money. So probably more than anything, we get questions about that. And different provinces have different rules about how you can access it. And unfortunately, usually the answer is you can't and uh which is disappointing i guess but um i'm curious since uh you said that you kind of help you know um the majority of the people that you help are from 20 to 30. What are kind of some just really key things that people in that age group should know by now when it comes to their finances? You know, you touched on the budget. I mean, most people cringe at the budget. We see it as

personal finance bloggers and our readers probably get it, but the average person, you know, they either have no idea what they're spending or, you know, want to run the other way when you mention the B word to the budget. And, you know, they need to be able to track their spending and kind of know, have a really good idea actually how they spend their money or what they spend their money on. And because, I mean, how do you know how much you can save or pay down your debt or whatever, if you don't know what's left over at the end of the month or why? And so that's a key one. The other one I think is if you are like, one of the mistakes I made as a, back when I was

19 or 20, I started saving, There was no TFSAs back then. That's how old I am. But I started saving for retirement in an RSP. And there was really no reason why. I mean, I still wasn't married yet. I didn't have kids. I drove a beat-up car that was on its last legs. There was no reason why I was saving for retirement

when I should have been kind of building up some cash. So what I suggest to a lot of 20-somethings is, what are your short and medium-term goals? Like, you know, where are you going to be? I mean, you've moved across the country, right? And I mean, it's not cheap. Nope. It was not.

So what are your plans? There are people that, you know, think I need to buy a house right now. Okay, well, what are your plans in the next three to five years? Because maybe locking up your money in a house is not the best use of that money. And so I just would encourage people to really understand where they spend their money and then have kind of a, what are your one to three year or three to five year plans or goals? Because the worst thing you could do, I think, is to lock your money away in either a house or a retirement account when you know you're going to need that cash for something

else. Yeah. And I think that's part of the reason why me and my husband have not bought a house is we're just like, I just don't, even though technically I think we could afford to own, you know, maybe a condo in Toronto. I'm like, I just don't want to lock my money away. Cause there's so many, I think,

yeah, our kind of goals have shifted with, you know, just our freelance businesses as well as this, like our travel plans and just, I don't know. We kind of like the flexibility and freedom right now. So yeah,

it's absolutely. I hope, I hope more young people think that way. Like the, I love those two words, flexibility and freedom. Like, why would you want to be locked down here when, especially when there, you know, if there's some unknown or uncertainty in your future. And I'm not just saying like, you know, you think you're going to lose your job. I just mean like, you know, the options are open, you know, you can move across the country and do anything. Why would you want to lock yourself down here? At least know why, know why you, if you do want to. Exactly. And you just never, especially, I mean, I'm on the cusp of 30 right now and just looking back at the past five years, I'm like, I could have not predicted what could have happened.

But because I think I did not lock my money kind of into and I kind of spread it around, had my TFSA, my RSP, and, you know, emergency fund and kind of, you know, made sure I saved in a way that was appropriate to kind of my short term and medium goals. I was able to kind of go with the flow of things. I mean, I didn't know when I was 25 that I was going to move to Toronto to start a new life, but I'm glad that I kind of left the door open. I think I had an idea. I'm like, I may want to try something out like this. Yeah. I don't know. That's really smart. And I mean, yeah, it's impossible to know. I mean, five years ago, I wouldn't have known that I could start a blog and a side business that could bring, you know, guaranteed, but bring in, you know, $3,000 a month for the last however many years.

And that is what we use to kind of, you know, our savings, our travel or, you know, all those extras that we do are because of that. I know. I'm just so thankful for the internet sometimes. Yes. Man, can you imagine? Like, I honestly, I don't think I could imagine my life without it. No. And like I mentioned in my presentation, like, I'm clueless.

I don't know anything about the back end of the website or anything. Like, I just moved host or changed hosting providers. And, you know, like, I'm like, please do this for me because I have no idea. Please don't break anything. I know. But, you know, I can write and I think my skills would be in writing and kind of promoting, I guess. Yeah. No, I think those are kind of the main skills.

It's handy to have the technical side, but it's also great if you could just find someone to help you. Yes, exactly. Exactly. but it's also great if you could just find someone to help you. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Well, thank you so much, Rob, for spending some time with me and chatting with me. I really, really appreciate it. I had a great time. My pleasure.

Me too. Thank you. And that was episode 36 of the Mo Money podcast. I am so grateful that I got the chance to talk to Rob. Make sure to check out the show notes for some more information about this episode and about Rob. You can check them out at jessicamorehouse.com slash 36. Also check out his awesome blog, boomerandecho.com. He has a lot of great content on there. And thank you so much for joining me. I think I'm going to just wrap it up now and say goodbye until next Wednesday. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.