More Money Podcast - 168 Canada Pension Plan: Will It Be Around When You Retire? - Mei Maven, Director of Global Communications for CPPIB

Episode Date: September 19, 2018

We all pay into the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), but most of us have no idea what the heck it is! I talk with CPPIB spokesperson Mei Maven to get the facts. Long description: We all pay into the Canada ...Pension Plan (CPP), but most of us have no idea what it is, who manages it, or if it will even exist by the time we retire in the next 40+ years. That’s why for this episode I talk with Mei Maven, the Director of Global Communications for the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB). I ask her all the important questions we all should know about CPP so we can understand how this pension plan can (and should) work into our individual retirement savings plans. So…Will CPP Still Exist in the Future? Since I was a young adult, I remember hearing conversations from my parents about how CPP wouldn’t be around by the time I would retire. I think that’s a big reason why I was so set on saving and investing for retirement as soon as I got a full-time job. This is actually a fairly common worry amongst Canadians, so I wanted to make sure I got to the bottom of it. Well, the short answer is YES, CPP will be around by the time you retire. As Mei mentioned in the interview, it is almost guaranteed to be around for the next 80 years. It will probably (and hopefully) be around for longer than that, but I don’t think CPPIB can make assumptions further into the future than that. Does This Mean I Don’t Need to Save for Retirement? As Mei also mentioned in our interview, CPP is meant to supplement your retirement savings, not replace it. You still need to save for your own retirement, but it’s important to consider CPP when doing your calculations for how much you actually need to save up to retire comfortably. One great tool to play around with is government’s free Canadian Retirement Income Calculator. What Is CPP Invested In? This was a fun question to ask, and it was quite nice to get a straight up answer. All the funds that CPP is invested in is made public on their website under the Our Investments tab. What Has CPP’s Portfolio Performance Been Like? To see what returns the CPP’s investment portfolio has been earning, check out the Our Performance tab on the CPPIB website. As shown clearly on their website, their 5-year annualized return has been 12.3% and their 10-year annualized return has been 8%. Open Submissions for Guest Posts Hello lovely podcast listener, do you have a money story to share? Well, first and foremost, you are always welcome to email me about being a guest on the Listener Series of my podcast. I’m always looking for new listeners to interview, so feel free to email me directly with your money story to apply to be on the show. Does the idea of being recorded on the podcast freak you out? Maybe you’d be more comfortable writing a guest post on my blog. I’m currently accepting submissions from my podcast listeners (and blog readers, of course!) for guest posts. What I’m looking for is raw and real money stories that include failures, successes, lessons and advice and tips readers can absorb and learn from. To apply, visit https://jessicamoorhouse.com/listenerguestpost For full episode show notes, visit https://jessicamoorhouse.com/168 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to episode 168 of the Mo Money podcast. I am your host, Jessica Morehouse. Thanks for joining me for another episode. And this one's good. It is pretty Canada specific, just spoiler alert. But still, even if you don't live in Canada, it's actually pretty awesome and informative. So we're diving deep in this episode all about the Canada Pension Plan, CPP, as people like to call it on the street. And for this episode, I will be chatting with Mae Maven. She's the Director of Global Corporate Communications at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. And basically, I wrote up as many questions as I could think of that people would have about the Canada pension plan. So I could ask her and I asked her all of them. And she answered all of them. So if you've
Starting point is 00:00:51 ever had any questions, if you've always, I mean, at the end of the day, we all pay CPP. Okay. But most of us have no idea what the heck that even means or where that money goes, how it's invested, if it's safe. Is there actually going to be CPP, is there actually going to be enough money left for us, especially younger generations during the period that we wish to retire? So these are some of the questions that you can expect to be answered in this episode. You're going to love it. But before I get to that interview, here's just a few words about this episode's sponsor. This episode of the Mo Money Podcast is supported by Vanguard Investments Canada. Unless you've been living under a rock, then you've probably already
Starting point is 00:01:31 heard of Vanguard. Vanguard is one of the world's largest investment management companies and is one of Canada's leading providers of affordable index ETFs and actively managed mutual funds. Not only that, you've heard me talk a lot about index funds on the podcast, right? Yeah, well, Vanguard launched the first ever index fund in 1976, changing the investment landscape forever. Vanguard is on a mission to keep costs low. Lower fees on mutual funds and ETFs means more money in your pocket as an investor. There's even a thing called the Vanguard effect, which is when Vanguard sets up shop in a new country like Canada, and they help drive down costs in the investment industry because no one can compete with their low fees.
Starting point is 00:02:13 Since they opened their doors in Canada in 2011, the industry's average MER on ETFs went from 0.44% to 0.37%. That may not sound like a lot, but it actually equates to saving Canadian investors tens of millions of dollars per year in fees. I'm also a proud Vanguard investor myself, holding a number of their low-cost ETFs in my own investment portfolio. To learn what funds I hold and more about Vanguard Investments Canada, check out my blog post all about them at jessicamoorehouse.com slash Vanguard. Or head on over to VanguardCanada.ca for info on their funds, how to start investing, and how you could save thousands of dollars on fees by choosing low-fee funds for your
Starting point is 00:02:56 investment portfolio. Once again, visit VanguardCanada.ca. Thank you, Mae, for joining me on the Mo Money Podcast. I'm super excited to chat with you. Well, thanks so much, Jessica, for having me on. I'm really looking forward to it. You are so welcome. So before we kick things off, May, what is your background? What is your role? So I am the Director of Global Corporate Communications here at CPPIB. My background is a bit mixed in that I live in London in the UK right now, but I'm Canadian. And so, you know, working for CPPIB in Canada for the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board in London is really interesting because I'm able to kind of
Starting point is 00:03:39 tap on my Canadian roots and work on a company that does a lot of work internationally. So it's great. Oh, that's really cool. Do you want to explain a little bit more about what CPPIB is? Sure, absolutely. We get that question a lot. So CPPIB is the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. What we do is, you know, everybody in Canada, anyone who works in Canada has money taken off of their paychecks every two weeks. And that money goes towards their kind of CPP, their Canada pension plan. So for them, when they retire, they can kind of collect that. What CPP IB does is we take that money that's not being used to pay existing pensions and benefits and we invest it. And so what we try to do is make sure that the
Starting point is 00:04:26 fund will actually be there for people when they retire. So, you know, obviously right now, a lot of people are receiving it, but because of some of the work that we do when we invest it globally, we're able to say, and there's a person called the chief actuary of Canada who, who does all his calculations every three years and comes back and he just came back a few years ago saying you know the fund is sustainable for at least until 2090 so for 75 years so you know our kids our kids kids their kids kids can rely on the cpp to be there and that's part of the work that we do because we invest it right and so it's able to grow um and kind of provide returns for the long run. Yeah, well, I think that's one of the questions
Starting point is 00:05:10 I had noted down because me as a millennial, and this is, I feel like, been something in my mind since my 20s. I don't know where I got this information or where I got these thoughts, maybe from my own parents or just in the news. Just the idea that by the time I retire, CPP will, like the funds will have been completely drained, there won't be enough left. But you're saying that that will not
Starting point is 00:05:32 be the case. Like, is there a guarantee? Or it's just like, well, mathematically, it should not happen. Well, it's the chief actuary of Canada, he's an independent, kind of, he's independent from us, he's, he's part of the government, he's independent, us. He's part of the government. He's independent, but he assesses it every three years. And he says, it's going to be there for you when you're 75. So yes, for 75 years. So yes, it will be there. It's an interesting thing, actually, because when I started working for CPPIB, I've not lived in Canada now for almost 10 years. And when I kind of got approached for this job, and I had the same kind of reaction thinking, I thought that wasn't going to be there anymore. And you know, you come here and you think, oh,
Starting point is 00:06:10 it's so it's on such sound footing, because the fund itself is at 350 billion Canadian dollars. So there's a lot of money in there to help pay for benefits. And we'll just continue to make know what what our job is, is to kind of continue to grow that so that we can continue to say to people hey you know what it's going to be there for you for your grandkids for your great-grandkids it's I think you know part of the the kind of misconception about why this is the case I think back in the kind of mid-90s there was a real crisis with a pension fund they They didn't think it was going to survive. And back then, the governments got together and said, you know, we have to do something or else it's not going to be there for people anymore.
Starting point is 00:06:54 And so they kind of changed the contribution rate. So how much gets taken off your paycheck and they changed how much you get. But then they also created a CPPIB so that we could take that money and make it grow. So and now, you know, almost 20 years later, it's actually kind of like the envy of other pension funds around the world. We have lots of people coming to us asking, how did you guys do it? What's this Canadian model all about? So it's a great Canadian success story that I don't think many Canadians know about. Yeah. Well, I'd like to kind of talk a little bit more about that. Because you kind of mentioned there was a crisis kind of in the 90s that wasn't possibly going to survive. What kind of changes
Starting point is 00:07:35 happened? I mean, besides, I guess, creating CPPIB to kind of be this independent investment organization, like what happened to kind of, you know, resurrect it so it did kind of have this now long life? Sure, I think there was a couple things. So one is, again, the creation of CPPIB. The other thing is, you know, and it was pretty unprecedented back in the day. I think back then it was, he was the finance minister, it was Paul Martin kind of got all the different provinces together and said, listen, we are approaching a real crisis we need to come to an agreement to say we have to do something about the pension fund or else it won't be there for you and so what they did is you know the amount that was being contributed they increased that back then so um so both the
Starting point is 00:08:21 employer and the employee portion because both you know you know, as an, as a person kind of earning money, you have to put in your employer has to put in as well. Um, we, they increased that and they said, okay, you guys are gonna have to pay a bit more, but this will help put it on sounder footing. And then they decreased some of the benefits. So when you retire compared to what people were getting before the nineties, it's a little bit lower, but it's still there. And so right now, it's intended to replace about 25% of your kind of income up to a certain maximum. And actually, they've just done some other reforms this past,
Starting point is 00:08:59 a couple of years ago, and it's going to start in effect in 2019, where they're increasing contribution rates again. But the purpose for that is because the Canadian government kind of realized, you know, Canadians aren't really saving enough. It's true. And they thought, you know what, the pension fund is here, and it's actually going to be a sound base for everybody. Why don't we increase that a little bit? So with these changes coming in in 2019, and they'll be phased over a few years, the ultimate end goal of that is that, you know, people who are contributing to that, eventually, when they retire, they'll have a third of their income, again, to a certain limit,
Starting point is 00:09:38 will come from CPP. That's awesome. Yeah, I was reading an article earlier about how so and this is kind of news to me because I have not done enough research about CPP. Just because I think I'm like, oh, that's years away that I'll have to actually, you know, take advantage of it. But that CPP has not always been around. It was something that was kind of launched back in the 60s, I believe. Yeah. Do you know some of the history about that or why it, you know, it didn't exist and why did they decide to start it? I think a part of it, and I don't have all the historical detail, but I think part of it is, you know, it was after the, you know, still kind of after the Second World War and trying to find a way to make sure that we were helping everyone who was coming back from war. And Canada was recovering from the Second World War of how can we help people when they eventually retire? So I think that was the whole notion around it. And then it just became a fabric of life in Canada, I think. And so it's just something that continues.
Starting point is 00:10:34 And luckily, it will be around for a long, long time. And I think you make a really good point about people not knowing about it and being like, well, why should I care? Like, why does it matter? Because, you know, especially for kind of a younger audience, they're, you know, they're not thinking about it till much later. But one of the reasons we kind of want to talk about and why I'm kind of talking to you about it is because one thing that we found is if people are looking at their retirement and they think, oh my goodness, I need to save so much and I have nothing, they're less likely to do something, right? Because they're just like, it's too big. I don't want to think about it. But if we tell people, listen, no, actually,
Starting point is 00:11:13 there's a base. You've got a base. So you have something to start from. So don't freak out. There's something there. Then hopefully that'll kind of help them think, okay, I've got something. How can I make myself more comfortable in retirement? Absolutely. So one question I have is, so we all pay into CPP. And like you mentioned, if you work for a company, you pay a percent, your employer pays a percent. If you're self-employed, you pay the whole shebang. So that kind of sucks, but it is what it is. I have to save up every month, every paycheck. I take a little bit of something off that for myself, so I know I have enough. But basically, you kind of talked a little bit about there's certain kind of limits on how much you can take
Starting point is 00:11:59 out when you are retired. What are some of those limits and does it have to do with your income? How much can you get? Or does it have to do with your income? How much can you get? Or does it have to do with how much you've contributed over the years? Yeah, it has to do so much with how much you contributed over the years. And all those details are kind of managed by the Canada pension plan versus us who are the kind of investment arm. But it is a certain limit because you know, some people would probably know if you're paying into CPP through your kind of employer, like if you're employed and you pay through a certain payroll, CPP contributions drop off after a certain amount of kind of earnings. And so basically it's what you get is kind of what you put in up to that limit and then how long you've been contributing. So it's kind of like you
Starting point is 00:12:45 get, you get out what you kind of put in. And, uh, I was also reading too, and this is something I never really thought about, but so you are, um, what age you're supposed to take it out at 65, right? That's kind of, yeah. Um, but you are able to take it out early at 60, but there's some kind of penalties. So it's some kind of penalties. So it's usually kind of discouraged to do that. And you also have the option of delaying it until 70. Yeah, I believe those are all this,
Starting point is 00:13:13 the kind of that I think you've got those details, right? Again, it's probably best to check like the service Canada website or CPP, because they have all the details on there and on kind of taking out early and what that means for how much you're going to get or what happens if you kind of decide to defer it till you're 70. They have all the all the details on their site there. Absolutely. I'm kind of curious and I don't know if you know the answer to this but you know you talked about how CPIB
Starting point is 00:13:39 is you know the investment organization that takes care of investing all of this money, what exactly are they invested in? We're invested in so many things. One of the key things, I think one of the key pillars of our success is being really diversified. And I'm sure your listeners would know that. And I'm sure you've talked a lot about that in terms of, you know, your own portfolio and how important it is to diversify. We kind of take the same approach um we diversify on a much bigger scale of course being such a big fund um but you know so many different things like for instance what we were and we're not invested in it now but uh many many years ago we were one of the first kind of big investors in skype So we participated in that. We are invested in this company called Entertainment One. Yeah, you're a big company. Exactly. Well, Peppa Pig, who is for those of your listeners who have kids, or they do the Hunger Games as well. And so some interesting kind of investments,
Starting point is 00:14:40 but we also do kind of very, very steady, stable things like real estate, like office buildings all around Canada. We own kind of student housing in the UK and in the US. We have a lot of, we've just made a number of investments in kind of the renewable space recently. So windmills, wind farms in Brazil, in India, and some here in Canada. So you name it, we've all invested in it. And actually, that's one thing, you know, as a Canadian, you're thinking, oh, this is something, my money, my money is in this. And again, we do it all around the world, because you want to make sure,
Starting point is 00:15:17 again, the portfolio is diversified. But when we make these investments, it's about how much of a long term return can we get so that again we're always thinking far far out because um that's when that's what we have to think about when we're paying out pensions when we have to make sure that the pension money is there and generally would you know like kind of a typical percentage that the fund gets every year like yeah well last year so we actually actually just put out our results at the end of middle of May. So our fiscal year ends kind of the 31st of March. And this past year, we returned 11.6%. Oh, great. So that's the one year return. But I think another important element is our, you know, we also kind of report on a five and 10 year basis.
Starting point is 00:16:08 Yeah. And in that in that space, we kind of have returned. So on a 10 year basis, we returned 8%. That's really good. And on a five year basis, it was 12.1%. Oh, wow. Cool. It's eventually going to drop. But what we want to let people know is that it's okay because we're in this for the long haul. And that's why we like to kind of focus on the kind of 10 and 5-year returns. Because what we tell people is, listen, one year in 10, we fully expect that the fund will lose about 12.5%. And we're okay with that. That's kind of by design because we know we have to take a certain level of risk to achieve the kind of return that we need to get for the fund. But we look at it over a very, very long horizon. So, you know, another good year for us this year. We're really happy about it. The fund went up by almost $40 billion this past year. So wow, that's amazing. Who exactly or how are these decisions made to choose what to invest in? So we have really, really smart investment people.
Starting point is 00:17:34 It's just great. We're able to attract some really talented people. And so we have investors, professional investors who come and work for CPPIB to say, you know, people who've worked in real estate who that's their expertise and they come to work for CPPIB to say, OK, here's where we think the real estate should be invested. So we have a great group of very smart investors here who make those decisions, kind of look at the various opportunities that are out there in the market. And again, it's not just here in Canada. We have people on the ground in London, in Hong Kong, in India, and in Australia, and in Brazil, in Brazil. So they're all over the place because we think that, you know, again, it goes back down to diversification, right?
Starting point is 00:18:20 So, you know, Canada's 3% of the GDP globally. So we can't really put all our eggs in Canada. We invest about 15 percent, which just means we're still quite overweight in Canada. But like we were comfortable with that because obviously it's our home market. We know it. But we have people all around the world who kind of try to look for these investments that we think will deliver in the long run. Absolutely. I'm just curious, too. Is this information made public? Can people, if they want more information, can they see specifically what we're invested in? Absolutely. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:58 Yeah. It's on our website, cppib.com. And if you go on there, if you want to find out what what we're invested in from a public market perspective, or from a private investment perspective, you can take a look through through the site and find out you can find out who our leadership team is. We've just put out our annual report, which details all that stuff as well as our financials, we try to be as transparent as possible. Partly, I mean, we know like we, you know, we serve 20 million Canadians, it's a real kind of honor and privilege for everybody here. And so we want people to know, we want to be as transparent as possible to say, hey, if you want to look up what your invest,
Starting point is 00:19:33 what your money is in, you can go into our site. And we just want to be, you know, transparent and accountable to everyone. Absolutely. So I know we've kind of talked about this, but I want to almost reiterate it because I feel like when I do look about, look for information about CBP and stuff, there's a lot of misinformation. People think that it's run by the government. But again, it is completely independent. The government can't go in there and dip their hands in there. Yes, you are absolutely right. We are independent from government.
Starting point is 00:20:01 Yeah, so there's no way at some point where they can just get in there. No, no, no, no. So, and that, that was designed, that was built on purpose when they created CPPIV. And again, it was, they created us, we had to get agreement from kind of the nine, 10 province, we've got 10 stewards. So all the provinces except for Quebec, plus our federal government are all kind of our, our stewards. So they were in a way accountable to them. They can't tell us what to do, what to invest in or anything. But, you know, we have to be accountable to someone to say, here's how we did, et cetera.
Starting point is 00:20:34 But they cannot touch it. And that was definitely built into the app, to the CPPIB app when they created us that we are an independent investment organization. And our mandate in terms of what we're supposed to do, it's really, it's super simple. It's, you know, we're designed to maximize returns without undue risk of loss. And that's our sole purpose.
Starting point is 00:20:56 So there's no government kind of interference behind it. So absolutely, we are independent. We have a professional board of directors as well, which is great so it's composed of business leaders from around Canada and actually a few international business business people who are on our board and so that helps us as well in terms of behaving as a real kind of private independent investment institution awesome, that's good to know. Because, yeah, I just kept on seeing all this information
Starting point is 00:21:27 about people fearing that, oh, the government can kind of dip their hands in and mess it all up. And I'm like, I don't. It's not kind of how our country runs. No, it's not. Because it's not government money, right? It's your money that you've put in. It's your employer's money that you've put in.
Starting point is 00:21:43 It's not the government who's put that in there. I think sometimes there's a bit of confusion between CPP and like old age security or the GIS, because OAS and GIS are government programs, whereas CPP, you know, it's kind of administered by the government, but the money in there is, you know, your money, it's kind of administered by the government, but the money in there is, you know, your money and your and the employer's money. Absolutely. And you kind of mentioned this at the beginning to that. Although like, you know, the name is Canadian pension plan, which,
Starting point is 00:22:15 you know, some people may think, Oh, great. So I'm totally fine for retirement. I've got this pension plan from my country. It's should never be like your only retirement plan. It is basically kind of a bonus or something to kind of supplement. It's yeah, it's a base. It's, you know, it's not meant to replace 100% of your income, not at all. It's a base from which you can retire. And again, it's like, you know, right now, it's supposed to be about 25% up to a certain limit. And then it'll future it'll be about 33%. But when you think of when you're applying for retirement, you're going to try to replace as much of your current income as you can.
Starting point is 00:22:53 So I don't think it's going to be, you know, for most people it won't be enough to retire on. But, you know, it's a base from which to retire, definitely. Exactly. But it is, like you said, it's, I think one of my kind of fears in my 20s was when I kind of started doing more research about retirement and learning like, oh, my gosh, I need like, you know, at least a million dollars. How on earth am I ever going to save up that much money? That's crazy. And then learning that, well, there is, you know, the CPP,
Starting point is 00:23:21 so you will have something to kind of build upon. It made that kind of number that I'll need a little bit more. Okay. I think, I think this is doable. Yeah, exactly. I think you've got it. You've got a spot on there. It's, you know, it'll just help when you're, when you're planning for your time and you can think, Oh, you know, I'm going to need, you know, $15,000 a month or whatever the number is throwing a big number out there. But you know, I think that then what you can say, well, okay, how much do I need to save to get that? Well, let me let me take into account the CPP, I'm going to get x amount. And again, it, it depends on how much you've worked and your your income, etc. And how much how long you've put in,
Starting point is 00:24:01 then you can kind of say, okay, well, actually, I only need this much and I can plan based on that. So planning for retirement, actually, if you factor that in, it's a bit more realistic on what you actually will need because you know that you can count on the CBP being there. Well, thank you so much, May, for chatting with me about this. Before I let you go, is there anything you definitely just want to make sure people take away from this so they're more educated about this? Absolutely. Well, thanks so much for having me on, Jessica. It was really, really great to talk to you. I would say the one thing, you know, we'd want people to walk away from when they're listening to your podcast is, you know,
Starting point is 00:24:39 the CPP, you know, it will be there for you when when you retire we're kind of sustainable for the next 75 years and the work that we cppib are doing is is really to try we're all really working really hard for you for everyone to try to make sure that that that remains sustainable for for many many more generations so um you know factor the cpp and and when you're planning for your retirement because it is it will be there for you. Absolutely. Great. Thank you so much, May, for chatting with me. It was very enlightening. And that was episode 168 with May Maven from the CPPIB, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Make sure to check out the website, cppib.com. So that's like two Peters and a Bob, if you get my drift, the website. And it has so much more information about the Canada Pension Plan, how they invest,
Starting point is 00:25:32 their investment strategy, what they're investing in, the performance, basically just a lot of the things that we talked about, but the evidence. It's like, I've been checking out the website. It's very, very interesting. So if you've ever been more interested, you want to get some stats, you want to get some hard facts about the Canada Pension Plan, check out the website. It's all there for you to check out. But you can also check out the show notes at jessicamorehouse.com slash 168. And, yeah, I'll also have a lot more information about what we talked about and some interesting information that they have on the website in the show notes. So jessicamorehouse.com slash 168. Don't go away. I have a few things to talk to you about. But before I do, just a few words I want
Starting point is 00:26:17 to share to you with you about this episode's sponsor. This episode of the Mo Money Podcast is supported by Vanguard Investments Canada. Want to start investing but also want to avoid paying crazy high fees? Or maybe you're already investing but hate that the fees you're paying are eating up a huge chunk of your returns? Then you may want to consider Vanguard's low-fee ETFs or actively managed mutual funds instead. Vanguard is one of the world's largest investment management companies and is one of Canada's leading providers of affordable index ETFs and actively managed mutual funds. Curious how they're able to offer funds with some of the lowest fees around? Well, rather than being a publicly traded company or owned by a small group of individuals,
Starting point is 00:27:00 Vanguard is owned by its U.S. domiciled funds and ETFs, and those funds in turn are owned by their investors. That means that Vanguard investors don't have to worry about the company being acquired one day and can rest assured that Vanguard's only priority is offering low-fee funds so their investors can build their wealth even sooner. To learn more about Vanguard Investments Canada, check out my blog post all about them at jessicamorehouse.com slash Vanguard. Or head on over to VanguardCanada.ca for info on their funds, how to start investing, and how you could save thousands of dollars on fees by choosing low fee funds for your investment portfolio. Once again, that's VanguardCanada.ca. Okay, so if you're a long time listener, then you know that from time to time I do this thing called the listener series where I basically record an episode with a listener of the podcast and they share with me their kind of personal finance journey, their story, and we kind of learn how regular folks like you and me handle their money, some of their failures, some of their successes, so we can all learn a little bit more about money. Well, number one, there's a constant, if you want to be part of my listener series, you just let me know. You just hit me up over email, jessica at jessicamorehouse.com,
Starting point is 00:28:14 and we'll set something up. But in case you maybe are a bit shy, and maybe you don't want to be on the podcast, totally get that. I would love to feature you on my blog. Maybe you'd rather write something for my blog than appear on my podcast and be a little bit more anonymous. So if that's something that's interesting to you, I am currently accepting kind of some guest posts, but specifically from you guys. Nothing salesy, please. No promotion, self-promo. I just want to share some stories from people like you that you have a story to share. You have some information, some tips, some advice that you'd love people to know, but you don't have your own blog or you don't want to set up your own blog. So I want to kind of do a series highlighting,
Starting point is 00:29:05 showcasing stories from people like you because you're awesome and people should know your story. So if that's something that tickles your fancy, just go to the show notes. There'll be more information there. Or go to jessicamorehouse.com slash listener guest post. listener guest post. And there will be a form where you just have to kind of plug in your details and we'll get in touch with each other and make this happen. Because I want to know your story. And I would love to read it. And I know my blog readers would also love to read it. And then I could share it and it'll be fabulous. So think about it. Think about it. Also, just want to make sure y'all are aware I have a free Facebook group you would probably love to be in. If you're not already
Starting point is 00:29:49 in there, just go to facebook.com slash groups slash money life balance. Quite a few people are already in there, but there's always room for more awesome people like yourself. It's just a non-judgmental safe space where you can talk about money ask questions as dumb questions because there's no such thing as dumb questions because it just means you just don't have all the facts or all the information to answer your question um and it's just like a great i really like it obviously i started it but i really just like it's a very warm um supportive community and i i hope you join us. I think that'd be nice. That's really it. There's gonna be more stuff that I probably share and tell you announce because I keep on having new ideas for new projects and exciting things. Sometimes I don't
Starting point is 00:30:35 have the time to share them on the podcast. So if you want to be in the know at all times, make sure to get on my email list, jessicamorales.com slash subscribe. But I just want to say thank you for listening. I appreciate you appreciate all the reviews coming in. I would appreciate if you have if you're a new listener, especially or if you've been a long time listener and haven't given me an iTunes review, take two seconds out of your day to give me a little review. I'll give you a shout out on a future episode. Obviously, I would prefer nice reviews, though I do sometimes appreciate a good little nasty review. Sometimes I like to read those and just to have a good old chuckle.
Starting point is 00:31:11 And then remember, haters gonna hate. But anyways, enough of me yapping. I've taken up too much of your time. You have too much. You have other things to do, don't you? You're a busy person. So I'm going to let you go. Thanks so much for listening. I'm going to check you back here next Wednesday for a fresh new episode of the Mo Money Podcast. See you then. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.

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