More Money Podcast - 066 Everything You Need to Know About Robo-advisors - Andrew Kirkland, President of Justwealth
Episode Date: October 19, 2016I interview Justwealth president Andrew Kirkland about what we as investors need to know about robo-advisors, index funds and ETFs. Long description: Don't forget to take advantage of today's epis...ode freebie! Receive a special $50 bonus when opening an account with Justwealth by visiting justwealth.com/jessica-moorhouse. I've been getting more and more interested in investing lately, and it could be for a number of reasons. Firstly, I'm not as young as I once was. Ever since I turned 30 I can't help but feel a sense of urgency when it comes to building my wealth. Retirement is only a few miles away, and I want to be prepared! Maybe I'm exaggerating, but that's sometimes how I feel if I'm honest. Another reason is that there are a lot of cool things happening in the investment industry — the big one being robo-advisors. The name itself makes it sound like a robot is taking your money and trading it on the TSX floor, but in reality, it's just a more efficient way of investing. You'll be paying less fees and you don't ever have to leave your living room. Robo-advisors are a big topic lately, especially amongst Millennials since I feel like they are just a natural fit together. But since it is a relatively new idea, I wanted to interview someone who really knew the ins and outs. That person just so happens to have started his own robo-advisor — Justwealth. For this episode, president of Justwealth Andrew Kirkland breaks down some core priniciples of investing (what's the difference between an index fund and ETF for instance), and what robo-advisors are all about. Enjoy! Important Things to Note About Robo-advisors Robo-advisors in Canada aren't managed by robots or just some algorithm (though that can be the case for some in the United States). Although there's an online interface and pre-packaged portfolios you're suggested by doing an online survey, there are most definitely humans involved, and yes, you will have to talk to them (though maybe just over email). You won't lose all of your money by using a robo-advisor. Although they are relatively new to the investment scene, they are very regulated in Canada, and their intent is not to scam you. Scamming is bad for business. Robo-advisors deal mainly with exchange trade funds (ETFs), however mutual funds are being slowly integrated into the mix too. Learn More About Justwealth New Canadian robo-adviser promises more than just a ‘basic offering’ - The Globe and Mail Justwealth: The New Robo-advisor in Town - Urban Departures Justwealth Financial Launches Canada's Most Comprehensive Online Investment Portfolio Platform - Yahoo Finance Follow Justwealth on Social Follow Justwealth on Twitter Like Justwealth on Facebook Follow Justwealth on LinkedIn For more podcast episodes, check out the Podcast page. Shownotes: jessicamoorhouse.com/66 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hello and welcome to episode 66 of the Mo Money Podcast. I'm your host Jessica Morehouse.
Thank you so much for joining me for another wonderful episode. So lately I've been getting
really into the world of investing. I used to be honestly a little bit afraid of it.
I thought it was really complex over my head and I really just wanted to focus on, especially
like in my 20s, on saving, budgeting, frugal living,
that kind of side of personal finance. But over the years, I've gotten really into investing and
just how I can make my money make more money. And I feel like it's something that us millennials
are kind of afraid of. We don't really understand it and so we don't do it, which is really a
detriment to our future, our future retirement, our future goals,
everything like that. So I am making sure I'm bringing on guests who really know what they're
talking about when it comes to investing so we can all learn about it together.
Which brings me to my next guest, Andrew Kirkland, who is the president of Just Wealth. He is also a
certified financial planner and chartered investment manager. And
he's been in the biz for over a decade and he's worked at one of Canada's largest independent
asset managers. So you know he knows what's going on. And the reason I really wanted him
on my show is he actually reached out to me back in the spring and we went out for coffee and just
talk shop for like a good hour and a half. And I was just like,
we need you on the show. We being me. Because he just really broke it down and explained
investing in just a very understandable way that no one else I feel has ever really explained it
to me. And I'm like, yeah, you need to be on the show because you really just say how it is. And
he kept on repeating to me, he's like, investing really isn't that complicated.
And I'm like, that's what I need you to explain to me and to everyone because I absolutely
am on board with that.
And I feel like we really do need to understand investing better.
And on top of that is a little freebie.
So if you were interested in investing with JustWealth, well, it is the most comprehensive online investment platform in Canada.
And if you sign up at JustWealth.com slash Jessica dash Morehouse, you will receive a special $50 bonus when you sign up.
So make sure to check that out.
I will include information about that in the show notes.
JessicaMorehouse.com slash 66. But you know what? Let's just get to the show, shall we? Okay. Okay.
Okay. Thank you, Andrew, for joining me today. Well, it's awesome to be here, Jessica. Thanks
for having me. You are so welcome. I'm excited to pick your brain about all of your investing
knowledge. But before we get to that, I would
like to get to know you a little bit more. What is your background? How did you get into this
world of investing? Yeah. So I got into investing. I've been in the investment industry now for over
10 years. And I started at a mutual fund company. And over the last 10 years or so, when I was working there, they sold mutual funds directly to financial advisors who would then sell those mutual funds to their investors.
I worked my way up.
I started in the call center.
I'd answer calls.
People would call me and say, what's the account value in my investments right now?
And you can imagine this was probably back in 2006, 2007.
So technology wasn't really the first thing people did.
They'd call and find out what the actual market value in their account was.
It's kind of crazy to think over the last, say, 10 years plus years, it's changed so much.
So I started there and I worked my way
into different departments there. And I actually, I was able to get to a vice president level at
this mutual fund company, where I was the one out there speaking with financial advisors
and consulting them on the mutual funds that we had. At that time, we also had exchange traded funds. And, you know,
my goal was to, you know, work with them in hopes that they would sell more products to their
investors and just work within a territory in Canada, or sorry, in Ontario. And then from there,
I got, I really got to know financial advisors very well.
And these financial advisors work, they could have been different,
whether it was a bank or somebody that works like at an Edward Jones type of office
or another dealership like that.
And then I really got to understand what they were doing.
And what I found is that a financial advisor, they're typically a little bit older.
In order for them to give advice to their clients, clients need a lot of money.
Sometimes they need like $100,000, $250,000 or $500,000
in order for a financial advisor to actually speak to a client.
And I just felt that there was this change in how people were interacting.
It wasn't necessarily calling a client service desk.
It was people wanted to get instant information.
They want to use their phone.
They wanted to be online.
And I just, I felt there was a, there was a better and there was a more efficient way
for advice to be given to investors.
And that's when we started, my partner and I started Just Wealth.
It was the notion of we wanted to make it efficient and low cost for investors,
but at the same time make it fair and honest and act with the utmost integrity.
And that's why the company is named Just Wealth.
A lot of people assume that we just manage wealth, but the just portion is
actually for justice. And we want to make sure that everything we do for our investors are
acting in their best interest and not our own. It has to be all about them. So that's the whole
just part and fair and acting with honesty and with integrity. So it's kind of a little background on myself there.
Yeah, no, I like that.
And I really just like your mission because I absolutely agree when it comes to the financial advisor situation.
I've had a few in my lifetime and some good, some bad. And in general, I always kind of go leave feeling I
could probably do this myself more efficiently and not have to be, you know, in this office with
this guy, you know, never really answering my questions for like an hour. So and it's true.
It's like, there's always this kind of like, feeling where I'm like, do they actually have
my best interest at heart? Probably not. Because at
the end of the day, their goal, even though they say, no, no, no, this is how I'm compensated and
everything like that. At the end of the day, they are salespeople and they do want to make money.
So you need to be kind of careful of that. So that's kind of why I am, I mean, my husband and
I are more drawn to kind of more the self-directed route because I don't know,
I just feel like there's, you know, that old saying, no one will care more about your money
than you. And I think that's very true. And so companies like yours, Just Wealth, I think it's
definitely something that, especially us millennials, I think are getting more interested
in doing as opposed to maybe going in a more traditional route like our parents.
Well, I think if you look at the lay of the land, like up until probably a few years ago,
there was no robo-advisor. So our company, Just Wealth, is a robo-advisor. And I can touch on
what a robo-advisor means more. But up until a few years ago, there was no companies like ours
that existed. And really the only options for like really anyone to invest,
it doesn't matter what your age was, was you could do it yourself and you could open up an account
at a discount broker or you could work with a financial advisor and, you know, they would
provide advice not only on investments but probably insurance planning, tax planning, financial planning, and the whole shebang.
But those are really the two different things.
So discount brokers is low cost.
If you want to do it yourself, it doesn't cost much because you're the one that is going to be making the trade.
It's your expertise.
It's your time.
They're just providing a platform.
Whereas on the financial advisor side, because they're spending the time,
they're doing the investment planning, building a portfolio for you,
they'll be providing financial planning.
There's a higher cost to that, as there should be, right?
Because it's their time and their expertise that is going to be rewarded for them providing that value.
What robo-advisoring and robo-advice and what Just Wealth does, it kind of brings both of those worlds together.
We provide the low-cost nature of a discount broker or a do-it-yourself investor. But we also bring in some of the expertise that a financial
advisor provides. And we do it through our investment planning. And because of technology,
we can do this. And like I said, up until a few years ago, the technology and the industry
wasn't up to what we can do today. So it's been a great kind of marriage between the low cost and also the professional advice that people want.
And they get it on their terms, right?
You can get their – you can access to their portfolios at any time, 24-7.
You can interact with us through email, Skype, however.
And it's really – it really is the best of both worlds.
And it seems to be growing quite quickly in the last couple of years.
Yeah, absolutely.
There's so many robo-advisors, especially in Canada.
I know it's a bit crazy in the U.S.
There's a lot more options there.
In Canada, it's getting very popular.
Do you want to kind of touch on what exactly is a robo-advisor? What is that all about? Okay. So the term robo-advisor,
it sounds like it's literally just a robot managing your portfolio. But the term was coined
actually in the United States. And a robo-advisor in the United States can literally be an algorithm
managing a portfolio.
So there's no human intervention there, which can be kind of scary, I guess, for some people.
And it's not something I necessarily would do.
And that's why in Canada, it's a little bit different.
So even though it's called a robo-advisor in Canada, it's a little bit different. So even though it's called a robo
advisor in Canada, it's this term that's just kind of come up from the United States. But
the way a robo advisor works here in Canada is much different. You have to have a licensed
portfolio manager watching the portfolio and managing the portfolio on a daily basis.
And the only, I guess, similarities between a robo-advisor in the United States and Canada is the way we interact.
So if you go to our website, you fill out a risk tolerance questionnaire.
And we have a good idea of, based on the answers to those questions, which portfolio you should be in.
But it isn't until we actually have a conversation with you.
Then we can find out, okay, you've said this in your questionnaire, but we're
actually thinking that you maybe shouldn't take on that much risk, so we're going to
actually recommend a lower risk portfolio.
That's just from a regulatory standpoint in Canada.
That's how it has to be, but I actually think that's the superior way to have your money
managed.
You're going to get the professional money management.
You're going to get the professional money management, you're going to get the relationship with somebody, you get that constant contact,
but you also get the efficiency of using technology and you get the low cost nature
that robo-advisors do bring to the table. Now, do robo-advisors generally, is it mainly
that they only deal with like ETFs or index funds or it could be mutual funds too?
What can they do?
Yeah, so when they build a portfolio, within the portfolio, they would invest that person's money into one of many things.
Like you mentioned, a mutual fund or an exchange-traded fund. Now, most robo-advisors here in Canada will invest in exchange-traded funds or ETFs
because they provide a low-cost avenue to getting access to the market. If you're going to be
investing in a mutual fund, there's more costs and it's more expensive. So sometimes not in the best interest of an investor.
So for the most part here in Canada, Just Wealth and some other online advisors or robo-advisors mainly use exchange-traded funds.
But we're starting to see an evolution there and there's different strategies coming out.
And people are using – they're integrating mutual funds and things like that.
But from our standpoint, we believe that if we build a portfolio for a client and use low-cost exchange-traded funds, it's going to be in the best interest of the client.
Absolutely. Just for people listening and also I remember the first time I met you a while ago, you just kind of picked your brain about what are – like I am not an investing expert at all.
So I'd love for you because you had such a great way of explaining it, the difference between an exchange-traded fund and an index fund and what exactly are those things.
Sure. exactly are those things sure they seem to be like kind of buzzy things like everyone in the personal finance fair it looks like that is what they're kind of going more towards and kind of
ditching the the old style mutual funds well yeah not only in you know kind of the the finance world
i was reading uh john oliver had a at a column that you know the late night love john i love
john oliver yes you know he has some very informative different rants if you want to call them that.
But he had Time Magazine kind of did something on the best money tips, best seven money tips.
And John Oliver was the one who made these up and recommended these.
And one of them was invest in low-cost index funds or exchange-traded funds, right?
So it's not just a buzzword in our community
that we know it's getting out there to the masses. But basically, you know, when you're talking about
index funds or exchange traded funds, we got to take a step back and think about, okay,
what is a mutual fund and exchange traded fund? So a mutual fund, what happens with a mutual fund, you have a person who is managing the money withheld within a mutual fund.
And what their job is to do is to go out and select what they feel is the best companies within their specific mandate.
It could be companies that are just in Canada or just in the U.S US or companies from around the world. And typically, there'll be like 20 to 30 companies that that manager would select to
go within that mutual fund.
Whereas with an exchange-traded fund, you're buying the market in most cases.
It's a basket of stocks or bonds that are focused on a specific region of the world
or even a sector or something
like that.
But the way those things – so those are very different.
One is very concentrated.
It holds 20, 30 companies that the manager thinks is the best and the other one just
holds the market.
The two differences between the two of these, one, a mutual fund has a higher cost because
again, you're paying for that time and that manager to go do that research and all that.
Whereas with an exchange traded fund, you're literally just buying the market.
It could be the Toronto Stock Exchange and all the companies in the Toronto Stock Exchange.
So there's no human necessarily intervention in there.
You're literally getting access to the 60 companies or whatever the index tracks.
The other aspect is how do you trade those and how do you buy them?
With a mutual fund, they're pretty easy to get access to.
You can normally go into your local bank and buy them very simply.
With an exchange traded fund, they're not as easy to buy
because you actually buy them on the stock exchange, right?
And you buy them throughout the day and there's sometimes
like bid and spread, bid-ask spreads and all these different complicated things that people,
general public typically doesn't know about. Now, having said that and going down that path,
an index fund is a mutual fund. It's structured the same as a mutual fund, but you're buying the entire market.
So you're getting the aspects of an exchange traded fund, of the market exposure, but you're getting it packaged in a mutual fund.
So you say, okay, well, that sounds, it could sound pretty good. The difference
is because of the packaging and how they, they, they, you know, they bring it all together.
The cost is still higher than what it would be for an exchange traded fund. So an index fund,
you could go to a bank and buy an index fund for over 1% or one and a half percent potentially.
Whereas with an exchange traded fund, if you're
willing to trade it yourself, it could be 5 basis points, 10 basis points, a lot lower.
And when I say basis points, I'm talking like 0.05%. So it's really low.
That's a big difference.
It is. And when I say that number, I say 1% or 1.5%.
I say that would be what it would cost every single year.
Simple terms, if someone had $100,000 to invest or if you're buying an index fund,
the cost is going to be around $1,500 every year versus if you're buying an exchange-traded fund,
it could be a couple hundred bucks.
Yeah, exactly.
So that's really different.
Now, obviously, an exchange-traded fund, low in cost is better,
and that's where a robo-advisor can come in and help out
because we have the capability and we have the experience to do that trading
that may be difficult to do on your own.
However, we're giving you exposure to the full market at that lower cost, right?
Yeah, that's kind of the thing that I was always interested in ETFs.
They sounded good to me, but I'm like, wait, but how do I do that?
That seems really complicated.
Also, I don't have time to monitor that kind of stuff.
Yeah, well, that's another thing. Investing can seem complicated because the industry
may just want to do that because it's almost like they don't want investors to do it
themselves because they can charge money, a lot of money to make money
off investors. Right. But, um, you know, when you're, when you're, when you're dealing with
exchange traded funds, it's, it's, it's really, it's not that hard and it's not that difficult
if you know what you're doing. Right. Um, and what I mean by that, it's not that we don't have
the information and we can't get it ourselves or do the research.
It's sometimes the emotion of investing is what really is the tough part.
And I remember as a personal story, my first experience of investing, I started investing in 2006.
And I invested in a mutual fund at that time.
And it had a great year.
It was up, you know, double digits.
I was like, wow, this sounds really good.
It's returned really well for the last year.
So I'm going to try it and hopefully it does that next year.
And sure enough, it didn't, right?
Yeah.
And so what happens is that you buy on Euphoria but then people sometimes sell when it's at the bottom.
And then, as a matter of fact fact you should actually be doing the opposite so you know having that that expertise and somebody who's been
through it and done it and experienced the ups and downs of a market is really i think the toughest
part um it's not necessarily looking at which what to buy like you can buy an exchange-traded
fund it's like it's helping people stay invested when they should
be invested or buying more when it's a good opportunity or selling when it's a little bit
too high. So that's the number one difficulty I think most individual investors that are doing
themselves probably face. Absolutely. That reminds me of when I started investing in 2010, so it was shitty market.
But I also did a lot of research.
It's like, okay, yeah, you're supposed to buy low, sell high or whatever.
And even still, you know, I really didn't have that much money, but I still, I wanted to get into the investing game.
And so I did and just checking the investments.
And I know I probably shouldn't have, but I checked them like every couple of weeks, every month just to see how they were going.
And it was hard.
You're like, ah, you feel like an idiot when you lose money.
But then you feel like a genius when you make a lot of money.
Yeah, I know.
And everyone talks about their wins.
I know.
Yeah, that's true.
No one talks about their losses.
That's very true.
But no, it's just something that I think is so important for young people when I feel feel like lots of people my age are getting into – they're paying off their debt and they're getting to the mode where like, okay, what's kind of next?
I'm starting to kind of get my financial house in order and I want to do investing.
And I think the big question for most people my age is where do I start?
What do I do?
Obviously, they'll kind of talk to their
parents or parents will go to a bank and talk to somebody. But there's lots of different options
out there, which is why I wanted to talk with you. Because, you know, I feel like, yeah,
robo advisors are very new, but I think they could also be very good. But having said that,
you know, after I initially met with you, and we chatted about investing, I, you know uh after i initially uh met with you and we we chatted about investing i um you know
talked to my husband about you know uh what we chatted about and he was kind of like hmm robo
advisors like is there a lot of risk to that and it's it's true it's like there's it seems like a
lot of benefit you know there's because there's not a storefront and all these things costs can
be lower but i guess also people are worried because it's online,
are there a lot of risks?
Like can I lose all my money if I invest with a robo-advisor?
Yeah, so it's a good question.
It's a valid concern that your husband has.
And it's no different than investing with the bank.
It's no different than investing with a financial advisor.
When we have to go through all the regulations that is needed,
and sometimes even more because it's an online access, right?
So an online portal.
When we got JustWealth started in 2016, and when we were going through the regulations
and with the different
securities commissions in every single every single province um it wasn't an easy easy thing
to do and we were coming from an experience where my partner had been managing money for some of the
largest banks for the last 20 years and i've been working in the industry for the last 10 years
um but we had to go we had to meet with these commissions, securities commissions face-to-face and do our due diligence that they needed to do their due diligence.
As far as – that's the registration standpoint.
As far as like money being safe, you're investing.
So there's volatility in the investing. But as far as your money going away because an online scam or something like that, that's not the case at all.
In fact, we don't even hold the assets.
They're held at what's called a custodian.
So they actually have custody of the assets and we have a relationship with them.
And they have all insurance and all this in place
if something happens to them the client's money is protected but you know that's hardly ever
it's never happened actually no one's ever had to put an insurance clause because a custodian
went bankrupt or anything like that so they hold the assets and then what we do we just make sure
that your your investments are invested the way they should be.
So we have a certain allocation to Canadian stocks and U.S. stocks.
And then we'll keep that on track at all times so that you don't have more exposure to U.S. than you should.
Or you don't have more exposure to some type of sector than you should.
We just keep it in track and they hold it.
And actually, anytime you do a deposit, it's to them.
It's not even to JustWealth.
It's to them.
So in that case, it's virtual brokers is the company that we're dealing with.
But yeah, it's as safe as any investment they would do, whether it's bank or financial advisor.
That's good to know.
And also, it's also kind of nice.
I hear that just any kind of fintech thing that comes up, it's very hard to do anything like that in Canada just because of all the regulations.
And that's honestly kind of nice to hear that it's hard to do.
Because it's like there is a lot more options and kind of cool things going on in the States.
But, and so, you know, obviously it's a bit harder
for some of those things to come to Canada,
but it's also kind of nice knowing that we have a lot of regulations.
So it's not easy for any, you know, average Joe
just to open up their own like investing firm.
Right, yeah.
And I think, yes, it can be harder as a Canadian business in a regulatory environment or a
business.
But that's a good thing.
I think that shows that the regulators are doing a good job and they're looking out
for the interest of the investor because we don't want – because the last thing anyone would want is to have some type of whatever scam or whatever the case may be because that would just turn people off investing in general.
Exactly.
And that's not what we want at all.
People need to invest. They need to save for certain aspects, whether it's retirement or any other, whether for school or whatever the case may be.
So to have those kind of bad clouds over the industry would not be a good thing.
And the regulatory bodies are doing their job there.
Okay, last question.
How often do you think people should kind of change their investments? I'm never quite sure it's probably a good time to look at it. You know, my wife and I are having a baby
in two months. So I'll be looking at my finances and I got to change it around, right? But that's
one thing. I'd say at the minimum, you should probably look at it at least once a year. Okay. So not more than that?
No.
If you're changing your investments like that rapidly,
it probably means that you're not in the right investment.
Yeah.
And, you know, say, for example, if you're saving for retirement
and you're changing your investment portfolio every single year until you retire, say, for example, you're 30 or something like that, every single year until you retire, you shouldn't do that because you're probably not the right investment.
You're probably in something that is keeping you up at night.
It's causing you stress.
And then you're just changing for the sake of changing. something that is keeping you up at night, you know, it's causing you stress and, uh, and then
you're just changing for the sake of changing. So, you know, it's, uh, if, if you are, if you
are doing that, you're probably not the right thing. Okay. So yeah, that makes sense when,
yeah, kind of, you see that your life is changing and, you know, you maybe need to do something a
little less risky or more risky or whatever. That makes sense.
And as far as looking at your investments,
I've heard that you don't really need to look at your investments more than once a year.
Because I guess the downside, if you look at it too often,
you may get emotional and want to switch things up when maybe you should just leave it be. Yeah.
That is probably good advice to look at it once a year, but you're able to look at it
daily if you want. But it's not, you know, I remember, again, like if you're looking at it
daily and it's causing you grief and you don't like the movement of your investment, again,
that probably means you're not in the right thing, right? So it's almost like you shouldn't have to
look at it very often, right?
Yeah.
There shouldn't be some golden gold.
There shouldn't be any surprises.
Right, exactly.
And I think that's what I like about what we're trying to do at Just Wealth is because every single client that becomes a client of ours goes through an investment questionnaire and is asked questions on, okay, you know, what is your expectation for this portfolio? How much do you like invested in
Canada? Or what is your time horizon? And, and what we found is that when we've, when we've
brought on clients and they've answered those questions, we don't, we don't have that many
conversations about someone who's worried about their investment because we're not really,
we're listening to what they're telling us and then investing based on that. So whereas I think with whether it's other institutions, they tend to have a product that they need to sell a client.
Whereas we're trying to do, it sounds like it shouldn't sound foreign, but it is,
but we're doing it the exact opposite.
We need to learn first about the client before we can actually recommend a portfolio for them, which should be the way it is at all times.
Absolutely.
Yeah, so I don't think – if you're in the right portfolio, you shouldn't have to look at it very often.
A couple of times a year, maybe once a quarter, you usually get a, you usually get a statement at least at the bare minimum, you get a statement once a quarter.
Uh, that's what the regulatory bodies say.
You have to, we have to send statements out once a quarter.
So check it out there.
But, um, you know, you, you, you shouldn't be too surprised if, and if you are, you're
probably not in the right investment.
Well, yeah, totally agree.
Well, thanks, Andrew, for chatting with me.
And I know I'm going to do way more research about robo-advisors and see if it's – I have a feeling that's kind of the route that me and my husband are probably going to go into. And I just think it's an exciting time, honestly,
to be around right now being kind of a millennial
with all these different options.
So you're not kind of just stuck with one or two things.
Well, and it is a great time.
And I think the millennials, if you're just getting into investing,
it's a good time to get in because up until now,
there really hasn't been much transparency in the investment world.
You invested money into a mutual fund and you didn't really know how much you were paying
for it.
You didn't know what your fees were.
But there's changes coming in the industry that is now going to show on a statement how
much you're paying for advice and if you're getting a good return or a good value in return
for that cost. And I think that's changing in early 20... Well, it's already changing,
but it's going to start showing on statements in early 2017. So I always kind of...
Yeah, that'll be interesting to see. I'm excited because it's like you can see on your statement
the MER percentage, but you don't have the dollar amount. And I remember I used to always ask my advisor, I'm like, but how much?
And he just kept on just, I don't know, he never really came to the point,
so I always had to calculate it later.
Yeah, and sometimes people don't, you know,
depending on how much they have invested,
but you see, say, 2.5% because that's a typical MER or fee
on an annual basis for a mutual fund, 2.5% because that's a typical MER or fee on an annual basis for a mutual fund, 2.5%.
But you see that.
Like 2.5% doesn't necessarily sound like that.
Yeah, exactly.
But when you equate that back to a dollar term, it could be quite expensive and it could be one of the most expensive things you actually have that year.
And it could be expensive on a mutual fund you're not making that much money off of, you know? Right. Exactly. When there's other avenues
that can provide similar service, if not superior service for a lower cost. So we always have a
saying, it's like, keep your fees like your milk under 1%. And if you can do that, if you can do
that, you're going to be pretty good. So yeah, there you go. Keep your fees under 1%.
I really like that. I feel like I should just put that on my fridge right now.
There you go. Keep your fees under 1%.
That's a great thing to remember. Easy to remember. Well, thanks again,
Andrew, for chatting investment talk with me. It was super fun.
Well, thank you. I had a blast too. Thanks for your time.
And that was episode 66 with the wonderful Andrew Kirkland, president of JustWealth. And Well, thank you. I had a blast, too. Thanks for your time. So a big congratulations to you, Andrew, and good luck. You're going to be very tired and very busy, I'm sure.
And again, if you are interested in investing with JustWealth, which is Canada's most comprehensive online investment platform,
make sure to do so by checking out my special link, justwealth.com slash Jessica dash Morehouse.
You'll get a special $50 bonus when you sign up with them.
JustWealth, investing the way it should be, just for you.
So make sure to, there's going to be more information in the show notes,
JessicaMorehouse.com slash 66 about that special offer,
about all the things that we talked about,
more about Android, JustWealth, and all that good stuff.
And before I let you go, I got some new iTunes reviews.
Thank you so much for giving me the reviews.
And if you're
listening and you haven't given me a review yet please please please please just spend the next
two minutes to give me a review and i will give you a shout out on a future episode all right the
first one i have is from impatient fan from usa um they say i pop in my earbuds and eavesdrop on
fun conversations with great guests about my favorite topic, money.
Jessica, it's easy to listen to, ask great questions, and lands interesting guests.
Fast becoming one of my favorites.
Well, thank you so much, Impatient Fan from the USA.
I appreciate you and your review.
And next, I've got Kiki underscore OE from Canada.
And they say, I gained an interest in becoming financially
educated and debt repayment after paying for my wedding and sought areas to self-educate.
And I must say your podcast has been so helpful. I spent a week listening to every episode and I'm
sad I'm done because now I have to wait for new ones. Thank you very much for the stories
of everyday individuals that inspire and assist others. Well, thank you, Kiki. I am trying my
best to get new episodes to you as soon as possible so you won't have to wait too long.
But thank you for binge listening to all of my episodes. That's awesome. I really,
really appreciate you and your iTunes review. So if you haven't given me your review,
please take a few minutes to do so. I'd really appreciate it. If not, that's okay. Whatever. No
big deal. Still like you a lot. And make sure to check out tomorrow. I've got another listener
series episode with a gal named Heidi from Vancouver, and you're not going to want to miss it.
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