More Money Podcast - 085 How to Squash Your Gambling Addiction and Get Out of Debt - Beau Humphreys, Personal Finance Coach

Episode Date: January 25, 2017

Former gambler turned personal finance coach Beau Humphreys shares his story from drowning debt to financial free. Long description: It was a random weeknight when I went to the Wealthsimple headquarters in downtown Toronto for their 3rd anniversary party. I was told there would be a donut wall, and I was not disappointed. Aside from the free donuts and drinks, I got to meet Beau Humphreys. I thought I knew all the Toronto personal finance bloggers, so it was a treat to meet Beau and hear his story at the party. Immediately I knew he had to be on my show. This episode is very different from any of my episodes, because it deals with a topic that I think most people wouldn't be as brave to openly discuss. Luckily Beau was happy to share his story of getting addicted to gambling at the young age of 11. There's a slogan by the BC Lottery (where I'm from) that's always stuck in my head: "Know your limit. Play within it." Good advice for sure, but let's get real here. Most people who frequent casinos or the race track on a regular basis know their limit, but are incapable of playing within it. Gambling is as serious an addition as alcoholism or drug addiction. And I think it's incredibly important for anyone dealing with something like this to recognize this and find the help they need. That's exactly what Beau did. He got professional help and it changed his life. He found out that his addiction stemmed from him having undiagnosed ADD. With that knowledge, he was able to turn his life around. And now look at him! He's travelling to Kenya for vacation and teaching others how they can get over whatever obstacle to achieve financial freedom. It's a happy coincidence I'm releasing this episode on Bell Let's Talk Day, which is all about talking openly about mental health. And for that reason I'm going to include some helpful links anyone is looking for someone to talk to. Helpful Resources Ontario Problem Gambling Helpline (Canada) Find a Treatment Centre in Your Province (Canada) National Council on Problem Gambling (USA) Quotes to Live By Money problems usually having nothing to do with money. They're about something else in your life that you need to work on [...] Somebody giving you a bunch of money or you making more money isn't going to fix those things. Money can't buy you happiness, money can't fix your problems. You're problems probably have nothing to do with the fact that you have debt. You have debt because you have problems. Episodes You'll Want to Listen to After This Episode 49: Everything You Need to Know About Bankruptcy with Doug Hoyes Episode 64: Finding Your Roadmap to Financial Wellness with Jason Vitug Check Out Some of Beau's Best Blog Posts Why Are You Saving Your Money? My Journey with Wealthsimple Deferred Sales Charges Kicked Me Where It Hurts Follow Beau Humphreys Follow Beau on Twitter Like Beau on Facebook For more podcast episodes, check out the podcast page. Show notes: jessicamoorhouse.com/85 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to episode 85 of the Mo Money Podcast. I'm your host Jessica Morales. Thanks for joining me for this lovely Wednesday episode. I'm really excited about this particular episode because it's very different than any other episode I've done. We talk about a lot of different things including getting into debt through an addiction to gambling, which I definitely knew I needed to explore because this is something that a lot of people experience and probably would appreciate hearing someone talk about it who got himself out of that situation and now is a personal finance coach. So I am interviewing for this episode, Beau Humphries. You can find him at investwisely.ca. He's a

personal finance coach, as I mentioned, and the nicest guy. I actually met him. The reason he's on the show is I met him at an event Wealthsimple was throwing several months ago. And he actually knew who I was, which I still kind of get weirded out by. So that was like the coolest thing. It's like, hey, you're Jessica. I'm like, oh, do we know each other? And no, we did not. But he was familiar with my blog and podcast. And we got to chatting. He was telling me his story. I'm like, I need you on the show. This is amazing. This is really valuable information. So I'm really excited to share this episode with you. And of course, before we get to that interview, I want to thank Well Simple for sponsoring this episode, which makes sense since I met Beau at a Well Simple event and he

actually name drops Well Simple without any encouragement for me in this episode because he's a big fan of Well Simple. So in case you're not aware, Well Simple is the fastest growing automated investing service in Canada. They use smart technology to help you create and manage a diversified investment portfolio, saving you time and money. In short, basically, it is a very easy way for you to go online. You don't really have to deal with a person, go to an office or anything like that, and start investing right away. It is very simple, hence Wealthsimple. It is very easy to understand, and you will be paying less fees because that is the structure that they have created. So make sure to go to Wealthsimple.com slash Jessica Morehouse to get your $50 bonus. Hello. And start getting your

investments right this year. Thanks, Beau, for joining me on the show. I'm excited. I'm so glad I met you in person and I'm now chatting with you on my podcast. Yeah, it's really, thanks for the invite. It's really good to be here. You are welcome. I love, you know, for people listening that don't know me and Beau met at a gathering. And it was kind of funny because you went up to me and I think you recognized me, which I felt very flattered by. But then it was cool to find, you know, meet another Toronto personal finance guy that I hadn't met before, because I kind of thought I knew most of the Toronto cats. So that's always nice. Well, I'm pretty new.

Well, yeah. So it's meant to be, I guess. So that's pretty cool. It's nice. It's good to go out. I like that there's a lot of networking type events. I'm sad to be missing the Canadian Personal Finance Conference myself. Well, it happens every year, so don't worry.

I get to go to Kenya, so that's nice. That's awesome. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, that's freaking cool. So before we get into that, because I'll probably want to talk to you, I looked on your website and you're very all about financial freedom and taking ownership of your money so you can live the life that you want. And there was a lovely photo of you in Scotland saying like, yes, this is actually me in Scotland. And I'm so jealous

because that's one of the places I really, really want to go to. Now you're going to Kenya, which sounds awesome. So I guess those are some of the benefits, I guess, once you really take control of your money situation. But it seems like from your guess, once you kind of really take control of your money situation. But it seems like from your story, and you kind of told me a little bit about it earlier, it wasn't always so, you know, trips to Kenya. No, that was my honeymoon in Scotland, actually. Oh, lovely. which is great we did italy and scotland and and uh you know i've been to peru and costa rica and japan uh and indonesia since then um so the travel but i only started traveling when i was you know about 31 30 31 and uh it's because i didn't have any money. And also I was pretty much terrified of everything

because I had attention deficit disorder, which goes all the way back to the reason why I started gambling. So when did you start gambling and what kind of gambling did you do? How did you fall into that? It sort of, it's a, it was a 20 year struggle for me, believe it or not. I'm 36. So between the age, uh, it goes back to the age of 11. Wow. Uh, that's how early I started. And, uh, um, you know, uh, it was a, I had a problem incident at the time. I'll tell you about that. Um,, you know, it's hard to really be a problem gambler until you're 18 years old. But I got the taste for it early. So, you know, basically, the way that I look at addiction, I've been through a lot of addiction counseling in the, you know, I ended it about five years ago when I, you know, quote unquote, was cured,

which nobody's ever really cured. But there is the time, you know, quote unquote was cured, which nobody's ever really cured. But there is the time where you get, I will tell people you will have your last relapse and you will know that you're done with your addiction. But basically, you know, I spent a lot of time sort of building it up as my thing. And the thing about addiction is it's really just, um, the coping mechanism for whatever is really bothering you in your life. Right. So I chose gambling because when I started young and I liked it and I liked money, um, but it could have been, you know, cocaine or alcohol or whatever, smoking even. Um,, I picked the one that depleted my finances more so than a lot of the other ones would. Right. Yeah. How did you get involved so young?

Like, like. So, yeah, that's a good that's a really good question. It probably it probably wouldn't be very easy now for an 11 year old to really get a good taste, except maybe if they sort of faked it out online but then they would never be able to collect their winning so it's kind of a it would be kind of a moot experience for them they could probably blow a bunch of money but they'd never get a chance to win it uh back because it would have to go to their parents or something there nobody would ever send an 11 year old something but when so in 1991 i was saving up um my christmas and birthday money to buy a super nintendo right the super nintendo was the big thing but it wasn't available in canada

until 1992 so i could order from the states saved up all my money and i said but i couldn't do it myself i couldn't order it i had to ask my parents it. I had to ask my parents. I said, I want to buy a Super Nintendo. Look, I have all this money. Here's the order form and stuff. And they said, ah, that's a lot of money to spend on the thing that you really want more than anything else in the world. You let's know you can't do that. You know, hold on to your money and we'll talk about it later or whatever. And this was my first time probably in my life that I did that I really didn't get everything that I wanted. Right. It was one of those like I'm this really spoiled kid

rebellion thing. And so what I decided to do in secret was take my Super Nintendo money and go to the mall with some of my 10, 11-year-old friends and go buy lottery tickets. And at that time, they didn't really care much if you said you're buying it for your parent or an older brother. The legislation was in place, but it wasn't really enforced as it would be today. And definitely there was no one in the government actively enforcing it. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to go buy about $300 worth of lottery tickets over a week. And so that basically gave me the taste and also the first taste of disappointing my parents when they came and said,

okay, so where's that money? Maybe we'll buy that Nintendo now. And I said, it's all gone. So I'm assuming you didn't make anything from those lottery tickets. Oh, no, it was just fun. Maybe one of them was a $50 winner and everyone got excited, but it was really more of the, the thrill. And, and like, like I said earlier, that I'm coping with something that I don't know how to handle at this time in my life, which is an uncomfortable situation, a disappointment,

right? And a lot of people go through these things in their life and they don't know how to deal with life because either they, they don't have it innately in them to learn or they just, the inability to cope is a huge thing in terms of mental illness. But that was just the first incident. And obviously then between then and the age of 18, probably all of my pocket money on lottery tickets whenever I could, but then they got, um, the next big thing was when I turned 18. Um, and I'd saw, and I went to university and I had a credit card and also an emergency credit card from you by my parents. And so basically that's the beginning of the real uh struggle that i 10 years and uh so what happened was i get to university and i somewhere along the way i'm gonna be the gambler i'm gonna be the guy in residence who gambles

right and uh because it was impressive to people right i would i would gamble online and then say oh i just won like 2500 and people wouldn't believe me until the check came in the mail and I showed them and they're like, oh, wow. Right. But little do they know that I also lost that twenty five hundred dollars like five minutes later. Yeah. Online. And the check is just coming in to come in and pay for the thing that I already gambled away. Right. Um, but you know, why am I gambling so much? Uh, you know, it's because I'm, I'm not like I've, you know, the, the answer to all of this is, um, really I had attention deficit disorder and I didn't know it. Right. Um, and the, the best way to describe attention deficit disorder for a lot of people, um, other than the hyperactivity part, which I didn't have, is you're really terrified of everything.

And then when you try to do something, it takes so long or you can't focus or you don't know how to finish it. And so you never want to start anything. And so that's really hard to deal with. And so And so what I did was, uh, I, I gambled to cope. Right. And, um, so, you know, my parents found out, obviously I gambled away the, uh, emergency fund, um, emergency credit card money. So I had to tell them. And so they decided, uh, you know, okay, well, you know, we'll pay it off, but you got to go to counseling and, uh uh you know okay well you know we'll pay it off but you got to go to counseling and uh you know uh mental health counseling especially addiction counseling not not very uh not a lot going on uh in the late 90s uh at you know on western uh campus so you know they just

thought i was depressed or something and and it wasn't there wasn't a lot of help going on. So basically, it was just a series of little relapses here and there. Stopgap measures, which I'll talk about like, oh, I'm going to give my credit cards to my brother, right? He'll look after my credit cards or stop them or whatever. We can't cancel them because they're all loaded up with the balance. But once I graduated university and I was on my own, everyone started offering me all this credit. And credit for a gambler is the worst, right? So at one point I had about five, probably five to eight credit cards, depending on, which is a lot. And it wasn't for the points. Yeah, it was because sometimes I would get an offer to consolidate at a lower rate for six months. And at least I knew at that time that it would save me some, you know, interest payments.

But, you know, as I as the years went on, I realized this is something that is not going to fix itself. I'm going to counseling at CAMH now. I'm living in Toronto. And and but nothing is changing. I'm sort of learning more about what's happening. But, you know, when is this going to stop? Right. Why? Why do I have these relapses every so often? And so it kind of came to a head where I was in a job I didn't like so much in 2005. And I decided to go and celebrate my 25th birthday by taking a very small cruise from Vancouver down to San Francisco, repositioning cruise one day. Right. Yeah. And the thing about the cruise is that it had a casino on it. And I'm all by myself.

And I'm in another part of the world. And this is kind of my first time traveling, really, because I was so afraid. And I'm still so afraid of everything. Still not medicated for the ADD. I don't know that I have. And I basically blew whatever cash that I had at the casino. And then the rest of my vacation was just, I remember walking around San Francisco looking for a casino.

Like that's how bad it was. And then immediately when I got back to Toronto, I went and I bought however many hundreds of dollars of lottery tickets that I could just to try to continue whatever, you know, coping like this. It's kind of like you're living in a cloud, right? And you like the cloud so much. Yeah. And so you just want to stay in it. And so basically, at the same time that I was applying for a job that I ended up having for six years at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment in the live entertainment department, I went through the interview process.

I got the job, but I was gambling the whole time at night, like pretty much constantly. And at one point, I won $20,000 in a period of a half an hour. Oh, wow. Then at that point is when I realized there's no way that I'm going to hold on to this. Yeah. Whatever is making me do this is also making me realize that this isn't for me to make the money back that I lost because that means that it would have to stop. It would have to end, exactly. So the ending, I realized I couldn't do it. So all of that $20,000 went away and I had to

go and start a job on a Monday and I had no money in my bank account for rent. Wow. So I had to call a really close friend of mine who was aware of my past gambling problems, thought I had it all in check, but relapses were relapses. They happened. And he was, he was so upset, but I told them that he could have full access to my, uh, credit card statements and my bank statements to make sure that I, you know, I mean, it was such a terrible burden to put on him. And he might be listening to this and he'll probably agree that it was, but it's, it's these stopgap measures that are important. They're not going to fix your problem, but they at least help you and

give you a little more time to figure out whatever you need to figure out to get there. You have to get there on your own. And that's the downside to addiction is you have to figure it out on your own. No one can tell you. I'd love to tell however many people I meet and that I met when I was finishing up in the gambling recovery groups. I would meet people of all stages. I wanted to tell them, this is how you do it. This is how you fix this. But all I could do was tell them that it was going to get better and that if they work on this one thing, that'll help them move on, but you can't fix people. And so he lent me the money to pay my rent. And I'd like to say that was the last time.

It was rock bottom, definitely. It was the last time I got down there. But basically, I would say from there on, it was a bit of an uphill climb. So, you know, it was good that way. Uh, so the development that, that, uh, helped me the most was, um, I realized, uh, that I was a little bit $40,000 in debt at this, at this point. Right. Uh, yeah, this includes, so student loans were where people would have been paying them off. I wasn't, I didn't have the money to pay them off. I was gambling with the money that I would have paid the student loans off with.

And one of the worst things is I got an inheritance from my grandparents and I made the decision to put half of it immediately on the line of credit that I couldn't access because I was paying it off. But only half of it, I blew the rest of it. This is like something I could have invested. I was just in such a bad state that I couldn't do anything in terms of improving my personal finance, mostly because I knew that it wouldn't stick, right? So it's like I had to fix whatever was going on with me before I could. It's like if somebody would have given me all the money and paid off all my debts, I don't think it would have made a difference at that

point. I would have just figured out a way to dig myself back in. So, I mean, one of the main lessons I want to convey to people is, is, uh, you know, money problems usually have nothing to do with money, right? They're about something else in your life that you need to work on. And, you know, somebody giving you a bunch of money or you making more money is not going to fix those things, right? Money can't buy happiness. Money can't fix your problems. It can make you happier if you're already happy, right? Yeah. And that's kind of why you see, I feel like there's so many, you hear about the lottery winners that, you know, never had a lot of money. They win the lottery and they blow it in a year.

Or I know people who, yeah, who've gotten an inheritance or, you know, some kind of windfall. And they're like, oh, finally they can use this money to fix their situation. And they just blow it all and they're almost worse than where they were before. Because money isn't the issue, like you said. It's not. And you're absolutely right. People, you know, a windfall, you know, people always be like, oh, if I win this, it'll fix all my problems. And your problems are probably have nothing to do with the fact that you have debt.

You know, you have debt because you have problems. Yep. Right. Yeah, I like that. They see it. They see it in reverse, right? Yeah. You know, I mean, it could have been my liver instead of my bank account, right? It could have been that I kind of destroyed myself or got in a car accident because I drove drunk or something. But instead, I just blew all of the potential for growth. And it's, you know, one of the main things about addiction recovery is you have to let go of regret. Yeah.

But if I did have a regret, it would be that I lost tons of potential that I could have invested anything in. If I even could have invested regularly while I was blowing some of my other money, I wasn't in the state of mind for any of that. Right. Things that I know that are so clear to me now. So what happened was I decided, well, there must be some kind of relief. I couldn't pay my minimum payments because they were so high. This is $40,000 in credit card debt. We're not talking about a low interest or a mortgage or a low interest loan. So I researched it and I found that you can go see a bankruptcy trustee and they can help you with a consumer proposal to your creditors instead of bankruptcy. A bankruptcy would have been an option too. There's a lot of stigma surrounding all of this stuff, but it's there for basically situations like mine, where you have a problem and you're crippling yourself and you see no way out and you need some relief in

order to help dig yourself out of the hole that you put yourself in. So it was like the extreme version of giving my credit cards to my brother or cutting them off. I did a proposal with my creditors and the proposal was accepted and it cut my $40,000 down to $15,000. I feel like I'm very lucky because I know a lot of people wouldn't get that deal. It might depend on the trustee and the creditors, but I got that deal which meant $300 a month over 50 months. The interest stops, but now my credit rating is an R9, R7. I forget the exact number in the credit scale, but it means inability to pay debts as they become due. And now you're branded with that, right? So if I wanted a mortgage, no way. If I wanted any kind of a loan or credit card, no chance, especially with the companies that I

defaulted on. They were not happy with me. happy with me as they, so, but, but it was actually a blessing in disguise. It was probably the best thing to happen to me because not only was I now have this, do I have this manageable monthly payment, but now I have extra money that I can save because the budget that we made with the bankruptcy trustee included a budget for savings, which is very realistic and, and, and kind of the government to allow. So that was the first step that I took. And then, you know, I started investigating other, why am, but why do, why am I acting this way? Why? So I looked into, you know, I just was reading online about a whole bunch of different things, self-improvement, and I stumbled across attention deficit, like a little test online, and it said, yeah, you should get yourself checked out.

Psychiatrist, you know, Cam H is great. They helped me with my gambling addiction. Great counselor. But he never thought about, you know, that I might have attention deficit disorder. Put me into touch with the psychiatrist, and there you go. She confirmed it with a real test. I got medicated and it was like night and day, all the things that I was, but yeah, it's, it's crazy. And I've spoken to other people who've had medic for ADD and you don't realize how paralyzing the fear of the fear of doing something new, interacting with people that they may become your friends and now you have an obligation to spend time with friends.

That's terrifying because do you have the energy? It's all of these things people don't know. And so I took care of that. It's a long road in you know, in mindfulness therapy and cognitive behavior therapy. It's not just the drugs to get out of, you know, most of your early lifetime of having this problem. But it really kind of pushed me out of it.

Obviously, you know, it wasn't the last gambling that I did, but the, the last gambling that I did do, I'll tell you that story. Um, I have no credit, so I can't gamble online. Right. But I decide I'm, I need a change in my life. I'm going to, uh, quit my job and I'm going to go take a two year visa and go to England for, um, that was my plan. I'm going to go take a two-year visa and go to England. That was my plan. I'm going to go to England, right? I just need to get out. I need to – because I have this residual gambling addiction that I just – I feel like I'm on the edge of shaking. But I'm still living the same life that I'm living.

Sure, my debt is a little more manageable. But I'm still me in this situation. I'm living. Sure, my debt is a little more manageable, but I'm, you know, I'm still me in this situation. I got to change it up. And I, you know, I was listening to one of your podcasts today. Jason, Jason, Vidig, Vidig? Vidig, yeah. Vidig. Yeah, yeah. I thought that that was fantastic. Yeah, he's so great. Because he said, sometimes you just have to change your situation. Sometimes you just have to go away to realize what is important to you, what is important in life. And I didn't go to England. But what I did was I went to Peru. And but just before I left, I probably had one of the worst nights of my life.

I decided I'd never been to Woodbine in my life. I was gambling online. Yeah. But I decided I'm going to get on a bus and go to Woodbine because the stress of me leaving my job of six years, I'm about to leave the country. I don't have any plans. Apparently, it was still too much for my fragile, you know, attention deficit remainder to handle. And what is Woodbine, sorry? Woodbine is a... And it has slots. Oh, sorry, can you say that one more time?

It just cut out. Sir, it's a racetrack, a Woodbine racetrack for horse racing, right? But it also has slot machines. Ah, weird. Okay. Yeah, which is in Ontario. If you don't know much about gambling ontario put the slot machines in all the racetracks oh really yeah yeah they wanted to encourage more people to come and gamble all it did was make more gamblers and and i do want to say i have no problem with responsible gambling. I can't do it.

You know, if you want to go and gamble with my extra money that you have, that's that's it could be an entertaining thing. Right. I don't want to say that I'm totally anti gambling because it's just like anything else. Go have a drink, you know, go gamble for a little bit, whatever. Right. And if you're not an addict. Right. But I went there and I just blew through my cash. I just sort of, you know, only the ATM stopped me with the limits for the day. And I ended up end of the night, three in the morning, four in the morning, in the middle of nowhere, because I don't know, even know how I got to Woodbine. And I'm sitting there at a bus stop with my MetroCard. That's all I had, hoping that the bus comes. And part of me knew that that was the last time, that I just need to get out of this country for a little bit.

So I went to Peru, and I went there for 30 days. And I have a whole blog about it. And I spent 10 days in the jungle and, uh, in the jungle with, you know, things that are going to kill you around every corner, you know, we're hiking up a thing and there's like a thousand fire ants on a tree. And, and there's a, there's a place to go where there's lots of bees that you don't want to go. And, uh, just like dangers everywhere. You could slip and fall everywhere that we're going.

And, you know, the monkeys didn't bite me. I'm glad that a friend of mine was bit by a monkey in Bolivia on a separate trip. So watch it. Don't put your hands near monkeys. That's the conclusion there. Not ones that you don't know. Yeah. But in the middle of the jungle, about halfway through my stay where, you know, I had to go and sleep in between two rivers, you know, in a tent.

Where the only way we could get to our campsite was like doing a little sort of horizontal zip line across the river. I'm just like sitting there thinking, um, you know, I have to accept this situation and I'm going to be okay. Right. And sometimes accepting a situation that is very difficult makes you realize that your life back home is not difficult at all. And that the things that you're struggling with, you know, they're not really anything to worry about. And you should just go back and enjoy your life. And, you know, so I kind of hit a milestone there and so when I got back I just started uh my life just started anew I uh I started um just saying yes to things gambling was you know I I went back and I I went to the the groups the counseling groups just to kind of reinforce that I was done. And I would just go and say, Hey, I'm done. I'm not gambling. Other people might say that they were, and I would try

to help them or we would all help each other and listen. Right. But it was like, it faded away. It was gone. And I just started accepting life. And I started a job where I, $20,000 more than I made this job. So now I'm able to save. plan for myself, which was impossible in my old time, where I was just unable to not spend the money on gambling. When I went into my consumer proposal, I had to live on cash because I had no credit. And I learned a lot about managing my money and how important it is to only spend money that you have. The best way to do that is to not be able to spend money that you don't have. If you are forced to monitor your spending, because if you spend too much at a restaurant or in groceries,

you can't pay your rent, Well, then that's, that's like, it's, it's important. You have to monitor everything. And then you realize that it's fine. You don't need the things that you can't afford. You're still happy. You can still live your life. And so, you know, I was able to kind of start over and then I started paying more attention to things like bank fees and investment fees and where I had my work locked in retirement account, RSP, you know, things like that started to actually become important to me. But I had to get through all of my personal problems first. And it's really hard to manage both. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That was quite the story. So that's sort of I know it's a long story. No, no, it's I'm glad you shared it because you really did need to know from the beginning to now to really get the full picture of what addiction

looks like and how one gets out of it. I think that's the struggle that, you know, the main thing that's, you know, how do people, everyone has a different way of, you know, realizing something needs to change. And sometimes it means leaving the country for a little bit and getting some perspective on life. And you have to be unafraid of changing your life completely. Yes. That's what I find a lot of people struggle with. I want to quit smoking, but I always smoke when I drink.

And I don't want to quit drinking. Well, maybe you need to quit drinking. Yeah, exactly. It sounds really obvious and logical. But people aren't willing to go that step because that's their life. They don't want to give up their life. And my life, for most of my life, revolved around some kind of gambling. And I couldn't imagine a life without it.

And I had to get away to realize that I didn't need it at all. And there was never going to be any positive benefit from it. Yeah, no, and that must be hard, especially when you've had that in your life for 20 years. How do you? Yeah, you know, just start living your life, you know, yeah, that's it's been, you know, a routine of yours for so long. That's a hard routine to break. For it is for sure but you know what comes out of it is some really good stuff and you know also what it is is the desire to help so during all this whole time i'm working um as a finance manager or an accountant depending on where you know for the music business most of the time and i'm managing and organizing people's finances.

They just happen to be companies. And I'm like, well, now I'm doing it for myself and I use my skills to help people. So just last year I decided, well, why don't I get something a little

more? So I decided to get the retirement consultant designation from the Canadian Institute of Financial Planning, which gave me a little bit more knowledge, you know, the interaction that the CPP and OAS have when you retire with your existing retirement funds and how to basically make a comprehensive financial plan. So I use those guidelines now. I'm really looking forward to putting it all together as a personal finance coach. So basically helping people with their budgeting or figuring out basically how much money they make, how much money they spend and what it's

left over, right? Which a lot of people don't know. I mean, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It surprises me still that people don't necessarily know. And they might know if they don't have any money left in the bank. But credit cards make it even worse because they might not even be able to track those if they leave a balance. So the first part is tracking spending. And, you know, I plan to use, unless they have a really good tool for themselves, things like Mint. Mint.com is great. Great. It does the job. And then just, you know, kind of making sure people, you know, it's like the financial planning process is about understanding what money means to you. Right. Why are you saving?

I wrote a blog about it was called Why Are You Saving Money? Right. And a lot of people don't know. They just say, oh, I'm saving for the future. Well, what do you want to do? What do you want to do in the future? Right. You know, is your future like near future? Then maybe you shouldn't put it in an RRSP where you're going to have to take a penalty to take it out when you need it next year to go on vacation. Right. It's like, you know, these kinds of conversations need

to happen a lot. If someone just says max out your RRSPs or put something in here without understanding, I think that's dangerous. And what I would like to do is clarify all this stuff for people in a really sort of simple way in English that is not involving financial jargon. And I want to go through it with people until I feel like they understand. Exactly. And then, and then just keep it simple. Yep. Put in a really simple thing, right?

You know, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Cause you're a kind of strategy, which I like, it's very, you know, focused on keeping it simple and it's, you know, you meet up or you are, you know, connected to someone who wants your services. You make a plan with them and then you're like, go off and do and then we will meet up again in another year. Why do you do that? And why have you found that to be successful? Well, the thing is, people are terrified.

You know, it's like I was terrified of everything. People are terrified of their personal finances. Right. Yeah. So the, when somebody says, Oh, I'm going to meet with a financial planner, they don't like that. They're not going to do that. The people that I'm reaching out to are people who just want a simple solution. They don't care about investing in a perfect portfolio of stocks and bonds for themselves. They don't care about, you know, when I'm 63 years old, I think I'm going to make a thousand dollars more. So let's plot that end to the spreadsheet. Right. They just want to know that what they're doing is they're going to be OK. Right. Based on what they think they might be doing in the future. And so I think there is a

there's room for the really simple. And then they don't look at the news. And so I think there is a, there's room for the really simple. Um, and then they don't look at the news, but they don't look at the Globe and Mail, uh, financial and, you know, investor section every day. They don't look at it ever. Um, and so, you know, basically the plan is to partner with, uh, wealth simple for the investment advising part of this, because, you know, I'm not, I don't want to sell you investments. I don't, you know, based on my history I don't want to sell you investments. I don't, you know, based on my history, you probably don't want me to hold your money, right? Let's get, let's give it to some, I can give you some advice, but let's give it to somebody else who is like insured by the Canadian Investment Protection Fund, right? For a million dollars per account. Let's let them

hold onto your money. And what we'll do is we'll just talk about the best things for you and i'll try to help you understand what this plan is all about that we're going through right um you know the the thing about companies like wealth simple is you pay them very little um in terms of percentage and they do everything they do all the investment things for you. And you don't have to look at it. I was at an event last week about financial literacy. And one of the questions was, with these robo advisors like Wealthsimple, how many times do I have to check up on my account? How many times do I have to look at it. And, you know, it's sponsored by Tangerine and Tangerine guy said, well, the idea is you don't, right? And this is a completely ideal thing for me because, you know, I'm going to charge very little to my clients because we're not going to really be spending a lot of time every year going through this. Now you got to review it every year. It's important. If your life situation changes, let's go and rejig the plan a little bit. If you're making

less or making more, obviously, you can't be saving. You got to make some changes. But usually in one year, nothing changes. Nothing changes that you have to worry about, especially if you're invested in something that's balanced, right? And it's being rebalanced by a company like Wealthsimple or if you invest in tangerine balance funds or any other, you know, company that's going to do it for you, enable you to set it and forget it. Right. And it's not about really forgetting. It's about not having to worry. And I think that's the key. I want, I want, uh, you know, my clients to be able to sit on their couch. And if something comes on the TV, like Brexit or, you know, an election result,

for example, uh, they, they, they can send me an email that says, Hey, do I have to worry about this? And probably my answer is going to be no. As long as you don't sell everything. That's it, right? It's like, you know, if you have money invested in anything that's risky, you should be having it invested in for the long term, right? So these little blips are just blips. Brexit is a blip. Election is a blip. The market will recover. That's the whole idea of having balance. And so balance in life, balance in your portfolio, right? It's like the whole concept here is spend very little time on your finances so you can live your life. Because I figured out that life is spending time with people and doing things and not hiding away and hoping that they don't take up all your energy. Right. But I live a lot of my 20s thinking. Yeah. And

so let's let's automate whatever we can. Let's set it, set it and forget it. You know, simplify your finance. I don't want to talk to you a lot about it. It's, like I said, I say on my website, I want to go, I'm going to Kenya. I want to go to Indonesia. I don't want you calling me every day. And you shouldn't be, right? Because there's nothing to be worried about. Yeah, there shouldn't be anything to worry about. And I absolutely agree with you on that. Try to automate as many things as possible. Obviously, know what you're doing, but the key is to know what you're doing, make smart decisions so you can go on and live your life.

Understand what you need to understand and have confidence in some of the companies out there that have good reputations. Exactly, exactly. Well, thank you both for spending this time chatting with me and sharing your story. I know a lot of listeners will get a lot out of it. I'm sure most people, I feel like, can relate to your story. Either they went through it themselves or they know someone who has. I for sure can identify in certain circumstances. So thank you again for joining me on the show. Thank you. And I mean, I, you know, other than helping people with their finances, I hope that,

you know, sharing this stuff helps people with, you know, any mental health problems that they might have, or a family member might have, and at least maybe makes them understand a little more what it's like. And that was episode 85 of the Mo Money Podcast with the wonderful Bo Hemphreys. You can learn more about Bo and what he's all about, what he is doing at investwisely.ca. And of course, I will put a lot more information about him, what we talked about in the show notes. Make sure to go to jessicamorehouse.com slash 85 for all that good stuff. And before I go, thank you again to WellSimple for sponsoring this episode. I really appreciate it.

And if you want to take this year as the year that you get your money right, you get your investments right, well, go to wealthsimple.com slash jessicamorrahouse and get started. Not only will you get an extra, like a free $50 bonus when you sign up through that link, but you don't need a ton of money to invest. I think that's a thing that lots of people think, but it's not true. You do not need to be rich to start investing right away. You will be paying lower fees than if you kind of went with mutual funds that usually have higher fees traditionally. And it's just super simple. You go online, you plug in all of your information, you go through just a couple of questions, a questionnaire to figure out what's right for you. And bing,

bing, boom, you're investing and you're getting your money right in 2017. So highly recommend going to wellsimple.com slash Jessica Morehouse to find out everything that you need to know. So thank you so much for joining me for this episode. I will, of course, have another episode tomorrow, Thursday. So I hope to see you back here tomorrow. Okay. All right. Cheers. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.