More Money Podcast - 381 The Canadian Guide to Getting Rich (Slowly) - Adrian Bar a.k.a Canadian in a T-Shirt, YouTuber

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

This is a very special episode for all my Canadian listeners who are also fans of Canadian personal finance YouTuber . Having amassed over 140,000 subscribers on YouTube and millions of views, Adrian has been consistent with his get-rich-slowly approach to teaching Canadians about taxes, investing, and saving their money. And what's even more exciting about having him on the show is I had Adrian over at my home studio to do the recording! I haven't done this since 2019, and it was seriously such a blast talking about his journey from working in AI to becoming a full-time content creator, his investment philosophy and strategies he lives by, and of course his top money tips for listeners like you. For full episode show notes visit: https://jessicamoorhouse.com/381 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, and welcome back to the More Money Podcast. This is your host, Jessica Morehouse, and this is episode 381 of the podcast. And I've got a special episode for you. This is a, I was going to say live. It's not a live. It's pre-recorded, but I did it live in person with my guest. I haven't done that in years. And I feel like it was such a, you know, I kind of miss doing the in-person interviews. Believe me, if I had more resources, and let's just say resources, I would have a video podcast, I would do these things in person. I am just not that wealthy or famous to have that. I'm not a celebrity, basically. So I can't really do that. So virtual is how I am able to have guests from all over the world on this show. But luckily, my next guest lives in my city of Toronto.

And I'm talking about Adrian Barr. You may already be familiar with him because he has over 100, I think now it's like 120,000 subscribers on YouTube, maybe even more by this point. And he is the founder and host of the YouTube channel Canadian in a T-shirt. And he talks about, unsurprisingly, Canadian personal finance, investing, taxes, credit cards, how to start a business, anything to do with finance, entrepreneurship, side hustles, everything. But for Canadians specifically, which I, you know, the feedback I get most often from listeners is,

oh, hey, I found your podcast and I was looking for something Canadian and there's so much American stuff out there. And yeah, that's true. And hey, I'm not knocking it. There's some great personal finance content by Americans. I mean, I have a lot of American friends who I've known for years that are doing some amazing stuff who've been featured on this podcast. But sometimes you want some Canadian stuff, some Canadian content, something that's applicable to you. And that is what we're

going to talk all about. And then some. So you're in for a treat. So without further ado, let's get chatting. But before I get to that interview, I want to share a little bit more information about my online course that you may not even know about, but it's been around for almost three years called Wealth Building Blueprint for Canadians. It's a course I built specifically with you Canadian listers in mind who want to learn how to do passive investing like I've been talking about for years on the show. If you want to get rich slowly, invest for the long term, you don't want to day trade or dabble in something speculative like cryptocurrency or some hot stocks that you find online. You just want to make sure you can retire one day or save enough for buying a home. And this course can help you. It is specifically about all the fundamentals you need to know about investing as a Canadian. But then I also show you how to

build a strategic investment plan and then how to invest in your own portfolio by way of either using a robo-advisor or doing it on your own from scratch. There's lots of worksheets and calculators and spreadsheets that you will not find anywhere else on the internet, hence why I had to build them myself, but also get lifetime access as well as access to the private Facebook group, my monthly Q&A sessions for students, a private email you can contact me with, and you also get a private get lifetime access as well as access to the private Facebook group, my monthly Q&A sessions for students, a private email you can contact me with, and you also get a private one-on-one session with me when you finish the course as well. There are so many benefits to the course,

so I highly recommend going to jessicamorehouse.com slash course to find more information and to apply. Again, that's jessicamorehouse.com slash course to learn more and to apply. Welcome, Adrienne, to the More Money Podcast. So excited to have you on. We've tried to record this intro several times, and we keep on getting distracted and talking about other things. We can go all day, yeah. We can be here all day.

I know, we are talkers. We are talkers. Well, I'm so excited to have you on the show, your second ever podcast. I feel very grateful and very exciting for anyone who's listening. You were in my studio. And by studio, I mean my basement with my toilet paper. But it's a studio nonetheless. And yeah, this is exciting.

I have not recorded an in-person interview, I've got to say, in like five years. Like there was a time where I'd even, for a few special people, I traveled to them. Wow. I mean, within Toronto, I'm not going outside of the city, but you have standards. But yeah, it's crazy. So I'm so excited that you're here. We're doing it live. Thank you. And for anyone who doesn't know, you've got the really awesome YouTube channel called Canadian in a t shirt. Let's start there. What is what's with the name? Where would that stem from? Sure. Well, Jessica, thank you so much for having me it's my absolute pleasure being here again this is my second ever podcast I'm totally new to this kind of world and kind of just doing things more live unscripted

kind of like you know unfiltered so this is fun and I and I'm really excited to be here so thank you so much um yeah so mine I mean I started my YouTube channel Canadian in a t-shirt uh over four years ago now and um the reason I mean the reason why I named it that way well there's a few reasons one is when I first started on YouTube there were only like maybe two or three other Canadian focused finance YouTubers out there that at least that I knew of mostly the vast majority of the other finance YouTubers were U.S. focused and they were you know a lot of them were great they taught you know good kind of fundamental general topics but a lot of them were more like U.S. focused you know roth IRAs 401ks all that kind of stuff

which Canadians it's like speaking greek to them right so I want to emphasize that I am Canadian and I wanted to only ever really just dial in on the Canadian audience right so Canadian in a t-shirt I want to emphasize that I'm Canadian on day one and then in a t-shirt because that that's who I am like I'm I'm not a fancy guy wearing a fancy suit, sitting in a fancy office on the 50th floor. I'm just an average Canadian, an average guy. I wear a t-shirt, I wear jeans. Like I'm not trying to impress people.

I'm not trying to use big fancy terminology to make myself sound smart and to like intimidate other people. I speak down to earth. I want to be as like relatable and approachable and accessible to people who are starting from square one so that's why i started canadian in a t-shirt also i mean funny story it was another kind of side quest i guess was i wanted to be like i i love collecting like geeky t-shirts with like you know like lord of the rings star wars all that

kind of stuff on and a lot of my friends were actually designing t-shirts so i wanted to like sell their t-shirt designs um and it's been four years later and i haven't set up merch yet so even though that was like one of my first like like revenue streams i planned out four years down the line and i haven't really you know yeah you should probably do that i really should there's actually a way with not to plug shopify but you can set up a shopify shop and connect it to your YouTube. Yeah, 100%. I know that the barrier to entry is so low and there's no excuse for me not to have done it yet,

but I keep getting caught up in other projects and stuff. You can be selling Canadian in a t-shirt t-shirt. It sells itself. It sells itself. Really, like the work is already done. So I have no excuse. It's probably one of my biggest sources of embarrassment, the fact that I haven't done this yet,

but it's it's coming hopefully by by maybe by christmas yeah maybe for the christmas season you never know like that's a good idea i can't make any promises don't hold me to it but yeah people check and you're like still not there that's amazing that's awesome and honestly like only four years and you've like i just checked your subscribers you have have like 140,000. You're going to be reaching 200K soon. Oh, I don't know about that. But it's. I mean, do you get any, do you get a special plaque for every 100K?

Or is it no? So when I reached 100K, which was, I think, January or December, this past couple of months ago, well, I guess now, nine months ago. Yeah, almost a year ago now. That was for me a huge milestone. So you get the silver plaque from YouTube when you reach 100K. The next plaque is a million. You get a gold plaque.

And I mean, Canada has, what, 40 million people? So I doubt that I'm going to be able to reach a million Canadians. That's a big jump. So I don't think that's going to happen. But hey, you never know. I've been doing this for four years now, and I still love it. So I plan on doing this until they kick me out, really. So maybe one day i'll

reach the the one mil plaque but at this point it's kind of like i don't know subscribers it's kind of more like a vanity metric i don't 100 i my my and i think we agree on this like we don't really care about like how many subscribers we have how many followers we have we we would rather have like a loyal and engaged following right even if it's a smaller following i'd rather have like you know 10 000 ride or dies who watch every video and comment on every video and like like interact with me on a daily basis right that's way better than having 500 000 strangers and they only like watch sporadically once in a while right and also i find with the people that do have like those bigger channels oh the the the trolls and the critics or the bots i mean the bots are endless oh my goodness yeah yeah so yeah i'm curious just like out of like just personal curiosity because hopefully one day

in like 10 years i'll get my my 100k plaque um does like google like reach out to you to be like hey we saw that and then they like do you like is that how it happened? Yeah, so they sent me an email. Maybe it was a week or two after you reached 100K. They want to make sure that you didn't buy the followers or whatever to get that. Because I know there's a few of my friends or colleagues who are really close to 100K. And they're trying to do anything they can to kind of bump up. Just be patient. You're going to get there.

Anyway, so after a couple of weeks after you reach 100K, you get an email from youtube from google and they say here enter your name uh it will send you the plaque here's the address right and then like a couple maybe like four or five weeks later yeah it came in the mail you know a big black box with google on it and then it was a setting it was a it's shiny like it's a silver shiny plaque is it heavy not really it's very light it's very light yeah but i need i'm always every time i put in the back like on my bookshelf behind my studio i'm always worried it's gonna tip over but so i need to like i need to kind of set up something to like stick it in place but i wonder do you know why some youtubers have like over 100k like i've seen some people

that have like 200k and they don't have the check mark is that like a different thing the check mark in the back there's some people that don't have that was also once Is that a different thing? The checkmark in the back? There's some people that don't have a checkmark. Yeah, that was also, once you reached, I think it was a 100K threshold. Some people don't have it. I don't know why. Interesting. I'm not sure about that.

No, it's a tangent. That has nothing to do with anything. I'm just curious if you do. I didn't have to apply for that. I think that the checkmark just happened. It just happened. Yeah, yeah.

Instagram checkmark, I had to pay for that. You know what? But hey, do you have less spammy kind of things? No, no. Right?

It's worth the money. And it's a business expense. And I think it's fine. Like, it's, believe me, if I could have paid for it when I had all of my spam accounts,

I sure as heck would have. I remember that there was a time where I wanted to tag you or something in a picture. And there was like, there was seven Jessica Morehouse Instagram accounts.

It was getting. I'm like, which one is her? It was getting. I follow you, so I know. It was getting a bit crazy. Yeah. Yeah, that yeah that's wild so you started your channel four years ago which is amazing what was the goal was it just a hobby because like i know now this is what you do full-time this is

your career but before you were working and what did you do for work and it didn't have anything to do with personal finance so again my youtube channel started purely as a passion project so i was working i mean i've been, my career has been a roller coaster. I wanted to be a cardiac surgeon at one point, a quantum physics professor at one point. But for the last three, three and a half years of my career, I was working as an AI, artificial intelligence, like software engineer. I feel like that's a good career. It was a good, I loved it.

It still is. That's like a good career path. I loved my job. I loved my job. Yeah. It's all about AI right now. What did you do? Like, it's like in a lot of

ways i could be making way more money if i was thinking of the ai than i'm but but again i'm there's there's no amount of money for me that's worth like working for someone else again yeah once you're your own boss oh my god that freedom it's literally their only motivation i have to work right like i know who i know who i am i know my capabilities i'm a workaholic no matter what right if i'm gonna be a workaholic i matter what. If I'm going to be a workaholic, I want all those blood, sweat, and tears to be- Worth it for some. I want to be the one to reap those rewards. So yeah, so when I started, I was an AI engineer, nothing to do with finance.

But what I did was I would, we would basically do like three to four month projects where we would hire a new batch of co-op students. So every semester, every three to four months, we'd hire like between six to 10 co-op students. And I was, I was kind of like the unofficial manager of all of them. Right. And what I really liked to do was every Thursday I would do like a little, like kind of like unofficial lunch and learn sessions where I would teach them like soft skills, like how to write a resume, interview skills, that kind of thing. Right. But I also taught them about like the fundamentals of finance, like how a credit card works, how taxes work, how investing works. And they,

the students ate that up. Cause no one tells anybody. No one ever taught them that. I wish someone told me that. And they loved it. And like after every couple, every semester, a new batch of co-ops came in,

I realized I was kind of giving the same speech again and again. And I'm like, I mean, if I'm giving the same speech, why not just kind of like, you know, cement these lessons in video format. So I did that and I put them up on YouTube.

I never expected anyone to watch. It was purely a hobby, purely a passion project. If anything, it was more to kind of like just share with my friends and like share with my students and stuff, right? And slowly as the months went by, I started gaining traction. I remember when I think I reached subscribe, but the first like 56 subscribers were just friends and family. And then my first subscriber number 57 were just friends and family. Yeah.

And then my first subscriber number 57, his name was German Commando. And I'm like, I have no idea who this person is, but thank you so much for subscribing. Like, that's amazing. Right. Some random person found me and chose to follow me. And then as the months went by, you know, I kind of grew and grew. And then about like a year and a half later, I reached the thousand subscribers and I got my, I got accepted into the youtube partners program where you can put you know you get a benefit from ads and i got my very first paycheck from youtube it wasn't a lot it was like 67 but i was like oh my god oh my god

i got it i got a letter in the mail from i got a check in the mail from google i remember when they sent checks it was so cool you know they've changed that though my i have my like youtube um channel for my podcast and i finally finally reached 1,000 views. It's not good enough anymore. I can't monitor. I don't make it. No. Now you have to have – it's a certain amount of view hours and stuff like that, and I just don't have –

So for me, it was a nighttime. But I thought it was – back in the time, it was just 1,000 subscribers, and then you're good to go. For me, it was – I guess I was in the middle kind of segue. It was 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours. So I actually reached 1,000 subscribers before I reached and 4,000 watch hours. So I actually reached the 1,000 subscribers before I reached the 4,000 watch hours.

So you're like waiting. Yeah, exactly. Right. So and then, you know, as then, you know, I was still working full time

for another year, two years after that. And I got to the point where I was, I was stretched so thin. I was working 60 hours a week on my job. I also had other business

like side businesses. And then I was working another like 30 plus hours a week on YouTube. were your side businesses uh i did tutoring i still did some contract software development so i got contract web development uh gigs um at one point i had a had a had a had a modeling gig for a while what kind of modeling like clothing or like art like for arts art. Like art modeling. Like holding poses and stuff. So that was kind of fun.

It was a good workout. Fun way to kind of meet people and make some good money. It was a great job while I was a student. So I always had multiple things going on. And I was at the point where I was stretched so thin. And with YouTube and YouTube ad revenue and affiliate income and all that kind of stuff. I was at the point where I was stretched so thin and with YouTube and YouTube ad revenue and affiliate income

and all that kind of stuff right I was at the point where I was making enough not nowhere near as much as my job obviously but enough that I could

reasonably kind of cover my living expenses and this was probably still in the middle of pandemic like lockdowns and a lot of my friends and close friends

were actually like losing their jobs and here I am I'm feeling like I'm at the point where I want to voluntarily quit my really good job. And I felt guilty for that. But I knew it was a risk. Right. But I made the decision and I'm so glad I did.

And also for me, it was a risk for sure. But at the same time, I had confidence that my employer would be happy to take me back anytime. Yeah, of course. They're like, this is a growing industry. We need all of our AI experts. Exactly. Exactly. So I felt comfortable taking that risk, but it definitely was scary.

Yeah. And I'm so glad I did. Like now, you know, I'm still working nonstop. So it's been a couple of years since you left. Yeah. So now I've been full time about two years now. Oh, wow. So I still, I don't take weekends off.

I'm working day i'm always plugged in right i remember i have to start to like reel that we'll have a chat about down yeah i need to work i've been working on that for years and you know we need to yeah i've got a book actually you need to read i have a guest on my show uh and i don't know when if it's going to be after this episode or before it, but anyways, I have a guest who wrote the book, The Good Enough Job and it's incredible and you need to read it.

I think so. I think I'm the prototype reader for that. You need to read it. Yeah. No, it's, yeah, that reminds me of me quitting my full-time job

and doing a million things and not taking weekends and then you, I don't want you to burn out because- I've been through burnout multiple times. Yeah. Right?

I've already seen- And you know how bad it is. It's not fun. No. It's so discouraging. we don't want to do that again it's awful it's the worst feeling in the world and then i feel like i'm a bad friend i'm not seeing my family i'm like neglecting my health like everything right and i've got some solutions for you i'd appreciate that um but you know with that i'm curious you've been doing this for two years what have you learned because i know a lot of people listening you know see

I see this on YouTube and social media all those people tell you like quit your job and be a content creator people in I was talking to someone

the other day and they're like young people in school like in high school or middle school they aspire to be a content creator

an influencer now and I'm like that is in my view I'm like oh the world's ending no no so you know

that's terrible when I was a kid it was like oh i want to be an astronaut i want to be a rock star i want to be a soccer player yeah or the most it's like an actor now i want to be mr beast you're not gonna be mr beast no one could be mr beast i don't know if i'd want to be mr beast he looks also you know he does a lot to me too much yeah and it's a lot of pressure and pressure and like like the thing for me i don't want to have like 50 million subscribers. No.

I want to be like, like very marginally famous in the sense that like, every once in a while I get recognized on the street, but I only get recognized by people who like me. Yeah.

By fans, right? Oh yeah. I don't want to be recognized by someone who hates my videos. I don't want to be like Kanye West where half the people love me, half the people hate me.

I want to be able to go to a movie and enjoy myself, right? This is why we do what we want because we want to be loved. Yeah, exactly. That's ultimately what we're doing. Something in our childhood made us not feel good enough, and now we're just trying to find that love externally. Well, the talk after the show.

Maybe not, maybe not. But so what has your experience been as a content creator, starting from scratch? Going from doing it as a hobby to full-time, what was that experience? And what have you changed in order to you know improve your revenue so you can you know make maybe not as much as your last job or maybe that's the goal is like i want to meet that or what have you right so well for me it's interesting like it's kind of a bit of a dichotomy because in one area i was always treating it as a business in the sense that I was always keeping all receipts. I was doing tax deductible business expenses.

Obviously, you're a finance person. I'm a finance person. I was tracking everything, all the analytics, right? So I always had that kind of like, you know, mentality of at any given moment, I know exactly what my net income is for the month and all that kind of stuff, right? But at the same time, I also really don't treat it like a business in the sense that this has always been a passion project. And I still, it's still something I'm passionate about. Like I don't want to get to the point

where I feel like I'm dreading filming a video. It does happen once in a while where like I'm just not feeling it. I'm exhausted. That's normal because it is a job. It is. It really is. And so sometimes it feels like a job.

That's okay. But you asked me like what has really changed? And to be honest, nothing really. Like the thing that I love- Are you feels like a job that's okay but but you asked me like what has really changed and to be honest nothing really like the thing that i just like making more videos is that the biggest shift um not i mean honestly the frequency of my videos hasn't really fluctuated it hasn't really been it's not only your schedule as you i think you have like you have like a weekly upload schedule just for the podcast not for the youtube channel let me tell you it's been pretty desolate on the channel this year. For me, I try to do every two weeks I'll make a public video

and then kind of in between like maybe once or twice a month I'll make a members only video. But like the thing is like even from day one, my favorite aspect of the whole YouTube gig

was the engagement with the audience and like responding to comments, answering questions. Do you do that like every day? To this day, I still spend at least two to three hours

every single day responding to comments on YouTube and I know that like and people have told me this viewers have told me other YouTubers told me like you're crazy like no one else does but that's part of it right I'd say like that engagement is what brings people back and again I don't get paid from comments I don't get paid for that but like well one I love it like I genuinely do love answering questions but two i build such a fiercely loyal audience because i'm not just making a video and then be like okay guys see you next week see you two weeks right yeah yeah like if you scroll through all my videos even like my videos from

four years ago and you scroll through almost every comment i've responded to right yeah and like and i'd love and like the thing is for me it's like like yes i know i'm spending a lot of time every day doing this and i i could spend that time making more videos and so making more money. But the reason why I started this YouTube channel is because there's so many people who are starting from square one, and they don't know where to turn. Exactly. So for me, if I can take away five minutes out of my day to write out a paragraph answering their direct question, they appreciate that so much. Because there's a lot of general questions that you can Google like,

oh, what's the TSA limit for 2023? Yeah. Google will give you the answer in 10 seconds. But there's a more specific question like, oh, should I transfer my stocks from my margin account to my TSA account at the beginning of the year

when I get new TSA room? That's a question that Google probably won't answer. It's a more specific question. But you can ask me and I'll give you a specific answer. And the fact that I, like i like you know like when my viewers kind of receive that one a lot of times that they're amazed that i respond to them in the first place and then i write out such a thorough answer kind of going through the crossing all the i's and donning all

the t's sorry donning the i's and crossing the t's right like we were talking earlier about how like when we're doing live things we screw up little like idioms and sayings i mess up yeah like literally i would have done that's why i don't say a lot of idioms because on the podcast especially because i'm gonna mess it i know and there we go right but moving on yeah moving on yeah so like it's like um you know i i love having that one-on-one engagement and that's something i never want to lose even if i do reach a million subscribers one day i hope i can keep that. And that's something I never want to lose. Even if I do reach a million subscribers one day, I hope I can keep that. I think that's what sets you apart.

Because the problem, I think, with a lot of those big content creators, influencers, is they lose touch with their audience. And that's how usually then you're like, oh, why are they losing followers? Or why are they not as popular anymore? It's because they lost touch with why they started. And if the whole point of you starting this was to help people, educate people, because you saw how valuable that was in your life and you started doing that with those interns, then that's an amazing thing.

I do the exact same thing. I do not have as, I don't spend that much time, but I have it in my little Asana, like to-do list every morning, look on my YouTube comments and answer as many as I can. And yeah, it does take me time. And yeah, some of the questions are either really specific.

And so like, and if they are, that's why they're asking me the question because they can't Google it. And then I have to do a little research. But I actually don't mind because I'm like, oh, I've never gotten that question before. And it keeps you on your toes.

It keeps me on my toes. And I learn a little something probably. And that's the thing, because now it's kind of like, since you and I, we do this every day, we've been exposed to all those really nitty gritty, kind of obscure out of left field questions. Right. So when we do like a live event and we do like a live Q&A, nothing can

face me because I've already seen like the craziest questions. I know. Yeah. No, that's, I think, the best thing. And like, I even do that for my investing course. We have a monthly Q&A Zoom. And so I've had the course for almost three years now. And I'm like, at this point, because I've done so many of them, it's been really great keeping me on my toes but also i'm like now you also can kind of see repetitions of what questions people have and that's also a great way to find other videos what i should make a video about because people keep on asking that so clearly they can't find the answer online i should fill that right right that's no honestly like like for me i would say maybe like like 70 of the videos i

make the topics are topics that i want to talk about yeah and i feel like there's an unmet need yeah but like the other 30 is just what you said right i get the same kind of questions again and again i mean people i'm realizing like so many canadians don't are either like they're they have like a fuzzy understanding of this or a total misconception yeah i'm like that's great video to make right exactly i'm curious yeah how do you determine what you want to make like one thing i find with some canadian content creators and i even fell into this you know situation in a bit is you feel like oh i could grow my channel more if i didn't just talk about canadian stuff because you do feel like we kind of talk about like, there's a limitation on how people want Canadian, there's a ceiling. But for me, what I found is, I mean, there's like a term like niche down to blow up. That's kind of a great

thing to do. And for me, I've liked that because a lot of people come to me because I am Canadian. Do you ever kind of think, should I talk about things that aren't specific Canadian, just so I can grow my audience? Or no, you know what your lane is? No, I'm almost always exclusively Canadian, especially when I can grow my audience or no, you know what your lane is. No, I'm almost always exclusively Canadian, especially when I make my taxes videos or my entrepreneurship videos. Those are all like

Canadian specific tax laws, right? Then my investing basics, like, you know, what is a dividend? What's a REIT? That's more universally accepted.

But there's even those videos, I still have like a Canadian focus, right? Yeah. So I'm the same boat i felt that temptation like oh i wish i kind of expand to the the 10 times larger u.s market but at the same time it's like then i would be a tiny fish in a giant pond that's true and like these people wouldn't like again like i was saying before like i don't want someone to follow me and

then only watch 10 of my videos yeah i I want someone to be like a ride and die and watch every one of my videos. And that's what I can only get together in the Canadian market. Now, I know one thing that I think brings a lot of people to your channel, even for me, this is probably how we discovered you,

quite honestly, is like Googling stuff. I'm like, oh, hey, who's this guy? You talk a lot about investing, obviously. That's a very hot topic. Everyone wants to know how to invest and then build your wealth, but you do it in a way that's not cringe.

That's my baseline, right how cringy is this title how cringy is the thumbnail if i as a viewer would be like shaking my head at this then i'm not gonna do it yeah i'm not gonna do it right so tell me a little bit about like how do you make sure that you aren't gonna be like cringy or like all the people that are like a little bit like oh are you a snake oil salesman like trying to sell me to buy this thing. And what is your like personal investing philosophy? Like how do you invest and how do you like to educate people to invest? So for me, the pillar of my, I guess,

brand that you could say is authenticity and transparency. I will never, ever, ever preach, like endorse a stock that I don't personally invest in. I will never make a video about an investing strategy if I don't personally believe in it, right? Like when, and I've, you know, over the past four years, I've seen the hype train. I've seen the rise and fall of trending topics.

I've seen when people were going crazy about NFTs and crypto and weed stocks and and risky IPOs, right? And I avoided them like the plague, right? Even though, yeah, I would have gone on the views. I definitely would have gone on the views and the attention, right? I don't believe in those things. And I think they're dangerous, right? And that's why, like, you know, when I,

you were actually the very first YouTuber or content creator I ever met. And now since this past year, I've met dozens of others. And all the YouTubers that I've met, like yourself and others, I respect you guys because you guys have the credibility. You practice what you preach, right? I know that there's a bunch of other content creators,

more so on the US side, but also on the Canadian side. Yeah, there's everywhere. Where you'll see them flip-flop, right? They'll make one video talking about how dividends are the way to go. And next week they'll be like,

oh, dividends are dead. Next week later, oh, it's only crypto, right? And they're just chasing trends. They're chasing topics. And then at the end of the day, as an audience, you're like, what do you really believe in? Like, what is your true philosophy?

Like, you don't know, who are you? Or they'll be pumping a random IPO, like a new penny stock that they just found. It's like, really, you just found that yeah more likely and then now that you know we're yeah they may have gotten paid for that probably and you and i we get those emails right we get those i actually don't i feel like no one no i don't get they probably go to your junk folder they probably go to my junk or if they're anything unless it's like delete like yeah no 100 right and it's funny when you see those stories of like

you know i've seen like, as examples, like Tattoo Chef, very good butchers. I got those emails a couple years ago being like, oh, we'll pay you X amount of money to like interview our CEO and blah, blah, blah, right? I'm like, no, like, I'm not going to sell my credibility. I don't believe in this company. I look at the financials. I look at the metrics.

They're spending like 6,500% of the revenue on marketing. That's insane. That's a huge red flag. I'm not going to do that. But then I saw the people who did those videos right and i'm not gonna say i'm not gonna like fault them because i get the temptation is there i was tempted i'm not gonna lie it is so hard i think that's one of the hardest things as someone who got into this business to be transparent and have that integrity it's hard to maintain that integrity when people have money and they're like and because

you know we're we want to make money we want to build wealth we want to have a good life it's hard to make sure that you are like checking yourself and you're like no no why did we start this right we did not get this in for the money because every time and i don't know if there's they're in the early days of my blogging there were i definitely did some like sponsored blog posts that i'm like this is just this is just for the money. They do not exist anymore. They are deleted, thank God. That was when I was really broke to be fair. But it's hard to sometimes say no to a big wad of cash.

I agree. And I agree, right? But I guess I think you and I are similar in that regard. We always, with investing, with our brand, with our businesses, it's about long-term mindset, right? And you can't buy back your integrity. Exactly. What makes us special? What makes us stand out, right? And you can't buy back your integrity. Exactly. What makes us special?

What makes us stand out, right? It's not that we're brilliant and that we can like time the market and outsmart, you know, Warren Buffett. No, no. We have, we're relatable. We resonate with our audience and we're sincere and transparent, right?

Once you lose that credibility, you can't get it back. So even though like a really fat one-time paycheck could be tempting, in the long run, I don't think it's going to work. So tell me a little bit more about what do you do for investing? Because I know you talk about, I don't know actually, you talk about dividends a lot. Do you do just individual stocks? Do you do ETFs? Combination. So for me, I have two main philosophies.

The two main pillars are long-term investing. I do not care about short-term volatility. I don't care about short-term performance. I don't want to get rich overnight. I don't care if a stock will go down two weeks from now, four weeks from now. I care how will the stock perform 10 years from now, 20 years from now. So for me, it's all about time in the market versus timing in the market. So long-term mindset, I only want to invest in quality, well-established companies that have a long-term track record. They have a history of being profitable and increasing their profits year after year, quarter after quarter, right?

Will these companies 10x in two years? No. But will they have reliable growth, 8% to 12% a year? That's perfect. I'm happy. I'm happy with that, right? So long-term mindset is number one. And number two is diversification.

And that's in all areas, right? So I do a combination of individual stocks and ETFs, right? I do the ETFs to get kind of the broad index market exposure. And then within those ETFs, I kind of double down on some of the little gems or particular winners I see in there, right? And it's fine to do that. It's fine to have overlap between your stocks and your ETFs as long as you're aware of that. Right. You want to be too heavy somewhere.

Exactly. Right. And then I also diversify in terms of like, you know, my asset allocation. Right. Like I have, I invest in dividend stocks and growth stocks. I do REITs and more capital appreciation focused ETFs. I invest in geographic diversification. You know, I invest in Canadian and US markets

and a little bit of international exposure too. I try to cover all the sectors, right? I love, for example, REITs, like real estate investments. I am a real estate investor as well. That's another kind of sector of mine. Definitely will, right? So I'm a huge proponent of real estate, but I don't want to be all in in that sector, right?

You have to diversify across the telecoms, financials, insurance companies, consumer all in in that sector, right? You have to diversify across the telecoms, financials, insurance companies, consumer stations, all that stuff, right? So for me, I'm never trying to outsmart everyone. I'm not trying to find those needles in the haystack that will 50x, right? I just want quality companies, companies that I would be proud to own and that I know that have a long-term future. And again, that being said, even my favorite stock of all time, like something

like, you know, TD or Procter & Gamble, companies that I love, I never want to have more than, let's say, six or 7% weighting in those stocks. I want to diversify across all those great established companies because, you know, let's say, God forbid, something cataclysmic happens and TD stock goes to zero, right? Worst case, that's not gonna happen. But if it did, worst case scenario, I lose 6% of my money. I'll survive.

It'll suck, but I'll survive, right? Meanwhile, a lot of the younger kids or younger investors, they'll be like 60% in Tesla, 40% in Nvidia. And are these quality companies? Overall, I'd say yes. Are they overvalued? I mean, the story.

Also, I don't trust Elon, so I'm not, you know, I'm not putting my money into his hands. That's a whole other conversation, right? So like, even if a company that you know and love, and let's say you are an Elon stan, and you believe it, you're gonna go to the moon. Even if it is a great love and you and let's say you are an elon stan and you believe he's gonna go to the moon even if it is a great company that is let's say profitable even a profitable company can still be severely overvalued right is it worth you know a 1.5 trillion dollar market cap i don't know i don't know yeah right so um how do you keep track of everything because

that's the other thing that i mean obviously there's there's so many tools either by like, you know, software companies or whatever. But you're a spreadsheet person like myself. So you just build your own spreadsheet. Well, a combination of things. So I use Excel when I kind of I have my own Excel dividend tracker spreadsheet. You've probably seen my YouTube videos. I kind of show it all the time and I give it I give like a free template for it. But that's a template I personally use. I track all the stocks I bought, all the stocks I buy, all the stocks I sell,

all the TSA and RRSP contributions and withdrawals I make, all the, you know, how many, the number of shares I own, the dividends I receive from them, how many drips I get, what my drip ratio is, drip meaning like when I get like those automatic dividend reinvestments, right? So you kind of like build compound on autopilot so that's what I do that's my main source but then I also

through my brokerages like Questrade, Wealthsimple I use those for the more like the live values right so I can kind of see like my portfolio performance overall and then I also use Blossom Social which is the app that I'm kind of partnered with now and I'll give a super super quick version

of a blossom socialist it's kind of like we think of it as the canadian linkedin for canadian investors right so it's kind of a social media platform for canadian investors that's half of the app where it's like you know you write posts you can ask questions people can comment on stuff but the other half is kind of like a portfolio uh summary and a portfolio like analysis right so that way i can kind of automatically track how my portfolio is doing on a day-to-day basis. I can see what my current dividend yield is, if I went up or down today across all my brokerages, across all my accounts. So that one's a nice kind of automatic, really quick snapshot summary of my portfolio. But the

real meat and bones and meat and potatoes of my of my portfolio of tracking is Excel because I have total control and I can do whatever I want with it. Does it take you a long time to keep things organized and do it? Because that's the other thing, too. That's why I'm an index investor. I'm like, I want the simplest thing ever. That's why I'm like not into like, I mean, I've got some individual stocks, but in general, it's and they're just like buy and hold kind of things. But in general, I feel like, yeah, most people are afraid to, I don't want to be a day trader.

I don't have time for that. You know, so how long does it take for you to just to do all kind of active management in terms of like tracking things, making your contributions or rebalancing? How long does that take? For me, it's such a habit at this point. And as long as you do it routinely,

like it's kind of like, you know, if you're running a business, you're like, you know, bookkeeping, your expenses, right? If you wait until the end of the year and then you have like a shoebox full of expenses, it's going to take you days, right? But you make a habit of doing it once a week,

once every two weeks. It's really not bad. Like it takes me 10, 10 minutes, right? Like I would say on like a month, maybe 10 minutes a month, just to kind of update my excel sheet enter the new like drips i receive uh if dividends are you know increased hopefully they increase right i just go through each of them and kind of update that so it really doesn't

take me as long as you make a habit of it and you make a routine out of it it doesn't take a whole lot and then in terms of like researching the stocks yeah that definitely takes time yeah right and you should take the time yeah if you don't have the time to research stocks, then don't buy individual stocks. Then if you want a more passive hands-off approach, kind of set it and forget it, do like a broad-based index fund, maybe even like an all-in-one comprehensive index fund, right?

That's fine, right? Or even something like robo-advising or whatever. You do pay fees for that, but it is kind of a hands-off approach. If you want to invest in the individual stocks, you do have to put in time. Because remember, a stock is not a magical thing.

You're not buying, a stock is not just a magical app. A lottery ticket. You're buying a piece of a company. So you have to understand how the company works, how the company makes money, what their current situation is, what their future looks like,

what kind of projects they're going to work on, how they're handling their debt. Those are all, and you kind of evaluate that in two ways. You go through the financial metrics, reading the financial reports,

which again, that can be very intimidating for a lot of people, but you also have to kind of read the press releases and the news articles and understand what's going on

with the company and what the future holds because it's not just, stocks aren't just like a black box where you put in like numerical metrics in and you like spits out an output. You're buying a company

and companies are unpredictable, but you can kind of make an educated guess of where the future of the company is going to go. And there's no shortcut to that. You have to kind of read the articles and understand what the company does. I'm curious, how did you learn about this stuff? Because it's like, were you always interested in this?

Did you learn about this in school or did you just educate yourself? Yeah, no, I educated myself. So when I first got started with investing when I was in university. So the story there is, I mean, I think for most Canadians, I started with mutual funds. Yeah, of course, yeah. So, and I started with, back then it was ING Direct, now it's Tangerine. Yeah, yeah.

And they were pretty good, like for me, I mean, for me, when I first started with mutual funds. They was ING Direct, now it's Tangerine. Yeah, yeah. And they were pretty good. Like for me, I mean, for me, when I first started with mutual funds. They were lower fee than most of the big banks. They were. They were significantly lower fees, right? And they were way better than like the GIC rates or savings account rates I was getting. And at the end of the year, I got like a nice dividend on top of a little bit of capital appreciation.

So it was very exciting, right? And then I kind of, you know, I'm an engineer, so I'm all about maximizing efficiency in terms of my time, my money, my effort, all that kind of stuff. Right. And I kind of at one point, maybe a couple of months in into mutual fund investing, I sat down and questioned myself, like, OK, what? Like, it's nice that I'm making money off this, but what's what's in it for ING Direct? Well, Tangerine, what's in it for them? Why are they providing me the service?

And at that time, I had this misconception. I think a lot of Canadians do is that like, oh, they get a two percent fee off of the profit they make me the service and at that time i had this misconception i think a lot of canadians do is that like oh they get a two percent fee off of the profit they make me yeah and so they are incentivized to make me money but no no that's not how it works they don't take two percent off of the profit yeah they take two percent off the full amount of money so whether they gain whether i gain money or lose money tangerine doesn't care yeah they get their cut they get their money every single year. So there really isn't a financial incentive for them to make me money.

So I started realizing, well, like if there is no incentive, what am I paying this fee for? Like, why am I paying a guaranteed 2% loss on no matter what, right? And I started looking down, like kind of, you know, kind of looking to the weeds

of what exactly the portfolio looks like. And it was just a bunch of ETFs and stuff. So I thought looking down, like kind of, you know, kind of looking to the weeds of what exactly the portfolio looks like. And it was just a bunch of ETFs and stuff. So I thought to myself, well, why am I paying them 2% every single year when I could just replicate that portfolio for myself and buy the exact same portfolio and keep that money to myself? So that's when I started. That was probably like in third year university, I think, when I bought my very first ETFs and individual stocks. I still remember to this day. It was TD Stock, BMO, Dollarama, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, and Rio Can and Enbridge. Yeah. And then I had two other ETFs and I've never sold any of them. Those are all the companies I bought some day one and I've never sold them. I've kind of like every year I kind of increased my holding on them.

And for me, that was kind of, I was lucky because on day one, I kind of, I didn't chase the riskier stocks. I chose the more established blue chip companies. I knew that they weren't, I knew that Coca-Cola wasn't going to, you know, 10x overnight. But they've been around for almost 100 years. They are like the definition. They own so many things. They own so many brands even if

everyone decides that Coca-Cola is unhealthy we're not going to drink Coke anymore they own Minute Maid orange juice they own water they own like half

like you know 30% of the brands you see at the grocery store are owned by Coca-Cola right and they they have such an untouchable

track record right they've been paying dividends for, they've never missed a dividend payment in like over 70 years and they've increased their dividends every single year for I think it's been like 67,

maybe even 70 years. So that's amazing. So one thing you get, I mean, you get capital appreciation, you get a great passive income through dividends, you get increasing dividends year after year and as the share price grows and your dividends grow, you get increasing dividends year after year. And as the share price grows and your dividends grow,

you're increasing your yield on cost, right? And that's why Warren Buffett, he bought Coca-Cola stock really cheap in the 80s, right? And now, even though Coca-Cola now has a dividend yield, I think it's around, I guess off the top of my head, like maybe like 3.6%, something like that, right? Warren Buffett's yield on cost, the dividend yield, the income he's earning off the money he put in, like maybe like 3.6%, something like that, right? Warren Buffett's yield on cost, the dividend yield, the income he's earning off the money he put in

is way more than 3%. He's earning probably like 18, 20% on top of the great capital gains he's getting, right? So for me, that's why I want to focus on, I want to focus on a long-term mindset and I want to focus on companies

that have a good track record of sustainable dividends and increasing dividends. I don't chase the high yields. I don't want a company that can boast like a 9% dividend yield or a 13% dividend yield. That's a trap. Like it's tempting. I get it.

You might think, oh my God, I'm getting 12% of my money every year. There's no such thing as a free lunch, right? You might be getting 12% of passive income, which is taxed if it's not in the TSA or whatever, but that's probably most likely, most likely that company is spending more money on dividends than they're bringing in in revenue. Yeah, that's why the dividends like that. They're bleeding themselves dry.

So yeah, you're getting 12% dividend yield. For now. But the stock is going down in value, like 15, 20% a year. Yeah. So in the end, you're losing money, right? Yeah, it's hard to not, yeah, chase this kind of thing. You mentioned earlier that you're also into real estate.

Do you want to kind of talk about, like, do you own a property or? Yeah. So I don't own the house I live in. So I'm of the mindset. I guess this is kind of one of those controversial, debatable topics. No, I know lots of people who do this now. I'm of the mindset where I don't think of a principal residence as an investment. Not to say it's a bad idea. I mean, you own a principal residence if you want the stability, the pride of ownership, all that control to do whatever you want that makes sense but don't fool yourself into thinking this is an investment you're not buying it as an investment right you're buying until you i mean it could be investment yeah years down the line when you sell but that's not why you bought it right an investment is when you put money aside today with the expectation

that you're going to make more money in the future. Until you decide to sell your primary residence, it's just an expense, right? So for me, I rent where I live, but all the properties I own are rental properties. So over four years ago in 2019, I bought my very first rental property in Kitchener-Waterloo. And then a couple of years later, me and my brother, we partnered and we bought another rental property. Then we bought a third rental property based on the appreciation of the first house, which is one of the real powers of real estate investing is the power of leverage, right? Because not only do you get to benefit from the money you put in, you get to benefit from the bank's money. And if you make a 20% down payment, like most of the four times the money you put in

is the bank's money and you get the benefit from 100 of the money even though only 20 of it came from you yeah right yeah and there's no other asset class that offers that level of leverage right yes you can do you know you can yeah you can do margin calls and whatnot and borrow money from investing but i don't recommend that yeah investing is risky enough stock market investing is most people should not do that you should only invest in money that's your money yeah Yeah. Not not alone. Yeah. And money that you're comfortable to potentially lose. Yeah. Money that you don't need. Yeah. Next, you know, five, 10 years at least. Yeah. But with real estate, like you're able to benefit from a

huge, huge amplifying power of leverage. And here's a really cool example is that like, for example, my first rental property I bought four years ago, right? And then during the pandemic, obviously house prices kind of shot up, right? So my house that I bought in 2019 essentially doubled in value in like three years. So how can I kind of benefit from that growth? I could either sell the house, right? I don't want to do that because if you sell a house,

you pay significant capital gains tax, land spent, realtor fees, right? So that's a huge chunk of money. It's still very profitable, right? But I don't want to do that. I still want to benefit from the increased equity, the increased value of the house, but I have a great tenant. I don't want to kick them out.

I want them to keep living there for the next 20 years and collect their passive income. So what I did, I went to my bank and I did a refinance. I did a HELOC. I basically went to the bank and told them, hey, look, my house is worth double what I bought it for. I want to take on a second mortgage. I want to refinance and borrow against that new increased equity, the new increased value of the house. So they did. I got a HELOC. I basically got like a hundred thousand dollar loan and I use that to buy my third rental property right so that the the amazing thing with that with real estate is that you can gain such incredible momentum because the first house took me years to save up that down payment second house was a little easier

because i partnered with my brother we were 50 50 partners so instead of you know so we we put in you know instead of saving years for 100 grand down payment we only had to save 50 grand each so that was a little easier to do right the third house we bought without using any of my own money. It was just money from the loan of the value of the first house, right? And I'm going to keep this going. Like a couple of years down the line, my second rental property is going to increase in value. I'm going to take a second loan on that. Use that loan to buy a fourth house. A couple years later, do the same thing. My third house will grow in value. Take refinance to buy a fourth house a couple years later do the same thing my third house will grow in value take refinance buy a fifth house and keep on going i mean eventually i'm gonna get tapped

out and the banks are not gonna i mean i'm gonna have so many mortgages at that point that yeah yeah lend it to me but as long as you run the numbers and you use those those loans uh for smart investment or business purposes not only is that uh know, you can kind of like expedite the acquisition of a rental property by years, right? You can accelerate that by years, but also that the interest you pay on those loans is 100% tax deductible, as long as you use it for investment

or business purposes, right? So a lot of, you know, especially now, I mean, everyone's hurting with real estate rates, interest rates, right? My interest rate from one of my properties started at 1.5%. Now I'm paying 6%, right? That hurts. But I have the, I'm in the lucky position where even though, yes, the interest rate

is now 6%, because it's a rental property, all of the interest is tax deductible. So in actuality, if I'm at a 40% tax bracket, after taxes, my effective interest rate is not 6%. I'm only really paying maybe 3.2%. And for me, 3.2% is still really good. It's almost free money. So that's why I definitely, I'm a huge fan of stock market investing, and that's a huge part of my channel, but don't neglect real estate in in terms of like pure dollar amounts real estate is my real estate portfolio is significantly bigger than my my stock market portfolio for me real estate is the real fundamental backbone of my long-term retirement plan my long-term wealth wealth plan but what's your experience as a landlord though because i

feel like a lot of people are resistant to real estate because, I mean, unless you hire a company that does that for you, but again, then that's eating into your profit. You know, do you, you're your own landlord and you do it all yourself? And you've had a good experience? Because you're always in your horror stories. I'm lucky. So also the good thing is like me and my brother, we're partners on this, right? So we can kind of share the load between the two of us. If a toilet needs to be fixed or we need to replace something, either I'll drive over to the house or my brother will drive over. Plus, I mean, it's definitely gone easier since I quit my job

because now if I have to drive to my rental property, I don't have to ask my boss for permission. I don't have to take a day, you know, use up a vacation day for that, right? I can just go and fix the issue myself. And me and my brother, we're generally pretty handy. Most things, most easy things we can kind of handle on our own.

So we haven't needed to use a property manager. Obviously, if it's like a plumbing issue or like an electrical issue, we hire someone for that and it sucks paying, you know, $300 just for a plumber

just to show up, right? But you got to do it. Your responsibility as a landlord, right? So, so far with the three rental properties between me and my brother, we've been able to manage it between two of us without a property manager uh if we get the fourth

one we'll see we might at that point we might have to reevaluate and kind of determine maybe we need a property manager but that's that's one of the reasons why we only buy in kitchener waterloo because my brother lives there and i live there half the time yeah so it's it's easy if i were you know and and again there's there's always opportunities other places like you can get way better cash flow if you buy like in windsor or sarnia or some further away right but i don't want to drive two hours to fix toilets yeah right or i have to hire a random property manager that i don't know and how am i going to trust them yeah i don't know right right? So for me,

yes, even though Kitchener World is a little bit more expensive, I have the peace of mind knowing that one, I know the area, I know the economy, I know that vacancy rates are low, so I'm going to find quality tenants. And two, I'm able to kind of fulfill my landlord duties without having to outsource it to a property manager.

But eventually it's going to get to the point where you're stretched too thin and you have to do that at that point. But make sure that's your cash property manager. But eventually it's going to get to the point where, no, you're stretched too thin and you have to do that at that point. But make sure that's your cashflow. As long as it's still profitable, it's definitely worth peace of mind. Whenever I talk to people that own properties, I always think like, gosh,

maybe I like I've been toying with the idea. And I just, I think part of the reason that me and my husband have not like done that besides owning our principal residence is he is not interested in being a landlord. it would be me doing all of that and i'm like also no i don't know if i want to do that but that's still it's always it's always intriguing before like i was seriously looking at like when we lived in our townhouse and right before the pandemic i bought like it was like real estate for dummies i'm like let's just like read all the things and just like you know get a feel for what's going on and stuff like it was a real estate for dummies. I'm like, let's just like read all the things and just like, you know, get a feel for what's going on and stuff.

It was a real estate for dummies in Canada. It's like very niche or whatever. That's good. And then the pandemic happened and then our focus, our priorities shifted a little bit. That's for sure. And we decided to instead just buy a house for a lot of money. Any regrets? No, I love it here.

Oh, there you go. It's a beautiful house. But like you said, it's's like this like our townhouse doubled and that was awesome so that was a great buy i'm really glad that we did that and then it enabled us to buy this house right now we have a very house also doubled when you i mean well well yeah i mean the plan is to stay here for as long as we absolutely can like minimum 10 years we've been here almost two years so eight years to go um but yeah like you said i don't consider a principal residence like we didn't buy this

because this is going to be a real no we wanted to live here right like we wanted a homestead we wanted that security and just to have the flexibility of uh being homeowners but um exactly yeah the only yeah the only way you can make money is if you sell and believe me there's so many boomers out there i talk to them all the time they don't want to sell their house because it is their home i get it even though it's like a two million dollar house now yeah try to tell someone who's lived there for 50 years 40 years to sell it for the money and live in a condo that's not gonna happen that's a really good point right like investments should never you should never be emotionally attached to your investments and you get emotionally attached to

your home of course you do of course you do you build you you raise your kids there you build memories right yeah so that's why on that criteria alone it's not an investment because you're emotionally involved right yeah yeah i my stocks like if someone and that's one thing i i see all the time and we're talking about kind of like the content creation world right about like you know crypto and stuff and and people get emotionally it becomes a part of their identity like oh i'm a crypto bro yeah and if you insult bitcoin or dogecoin they'll take it personally yeah right you're like you didn't build this or make this i love td stock i love enbridge stock i love ryokan if you insult ry Can, okay, that's fine.

It's like, I don't care. Good for you. More for me then. I'll buy it. I'll buy your share. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, that's a big part of the investing game with any kind of investment. Real estate, stock market, whatever.

You have to get your emotions out of the equation. Absolutely. And you need that discipline to kind of stay the course. I mean, when times are good, it's so easy to get excited and carry away and think that you've, oh my God, I've got it all figured out. I was like, everyone else is a fool for not investing,

but when times are now, when times are tough and you're seeing red losses across the board, that's where you need that discipline. And it's easy for a new beginner to kind of listen to us say on a video like, oh, ignore the short-term volatility, focus on the long-term. Hearing it is one thing. When it's your money on the line and you're seeing that for the first time, it's scary. It's hard to put it into practice. But what I will say, especially as someone who I think I started investing now,

gosh, maybe when did I start investing? Maybe 25. So it's been like 12 years. And I've seen a lot of ups and downs. It gets better with age and time. Right. Because you get that experience and you get to like, you know, when things are tough and you stick it out and you just don't sell and you just like, you know, stay put, then things get better. It builds your resilience. So the next time it happens, you have that experience.

And then you can remember, remember what we did last time and all the good advice that we took let's keep doing that but it's hard when you're right at the start the way the way i look at it i think of if it's a quality stock a quality company and you and you believe in the long-term future of it you should not freak out when the stock price drops you should look at it as an opportunity to capitalize on that discount i look at it the same way as a house right let's say you bought a house and then – I know – let's say we were in the U.S., right? And in 2008, housing market crashed and house prices across the board plummeted by like 30%, 40%. Did your house lose 40% of the windows? Did the walls collapse?

Did the roof fall on your head? No, the house was the same fundamental asset. It was still worth the same amount. Just that on paper, the current market value of the house dropped by 40%. But the house is still structurally sound. So don't sell. Don't freak out and sell. Live in the house, hold on to it, and wait for it to recover. It's the same thing with stocks, as long as it's a quality company that will last. You don't want to catch a falling knife. No. Just because a stock is dropping by 30% doesn't mean it's a discount. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It could mean there's some fundamental- Yeah, there's something fundamentally wrong with it. There might be something wrong, right? And the company might be in real trouble, right? But if it's a company that's been around for 160 years and they're profitable year after year, and they have one- Maybe they still have a profitable quarter, but they didn't meet earnings expectations.

That's okay. That's fine. Yeah. That's fine, right? Sometimes it's just a simple thing of, they change CEOs. Right. And then it's like,

ooh, people are like, ooh, there's a new person in town. Right. But then it doesn't change the quality. The CEO can be fired if they suck you know that's true right you know the company's gonna go down necessarily yeah but uh yes it's just uh good to keep that in mind well i think i can keep you here forever but i think what people would really get value out of is checking out all of your amazing videos on your

channel you have so many great topics that you cover you really cover all the basics and then some and lots of specific uh things as well where can people find more information about you follow you on the instagram youtube so so i i i'm lucky i want to keep my my brand name my handle constant across the board it's canadian t-shirt on instagram on youtube twitter is actually canadian shirt right but i'm are you still doing Twitter? I have. Honestly, I bought- I have it just reserved so no one else can take it from me.

Yeah, yeah, same. I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know. I hate the change. I've never used Twitter for my personal life. I didn't- I liked it before. Oh, you did?

I never. It got that mucked up. It was never a part of my life. Fair enough. So for me, it was more just so- Yeah, yeah. You don't want someone to like, yeah, pretend they're used to it.

So for me, by far, YouTube is my number one platform. That's where I i make my videos that's where i'm most responsive with like if you have a question you're gonna answer write a comment on youtube videos and i'll answer it within like a day or two right if you have a more sensitive question yeah you had a specific membership with your youtube what's that yes oh yeah so i do um so three years ago i started a members only program where basically I charge five dollars a month or a dollar a week, where if you want to see my full portfolio, like I do a full breakdown showing every single stock and ETF I own in my TSA, in my RSP account. I show all of it. And then every single month I make a video or two showing exactly like a 15 minute video of what stocks I'm buying this month, why I'm buying it. I do a portfolio summary, how it fits into my new portfolio,

how I'm like readjusting things. So the way I kind of position that is, I've done a few, I've done a few like public and free portfolio reveals, but I don't want to clutter my channel with like, oh, what stocks am I buying in September, 2022? Because a couple of weeks later, no one's going to care. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I want to make my videos kind of, I want to focus on like evergreen content. I want to make my videos like that are, I want to make standalone self-contained lessons that are relevant and useful five years down the line. Like even like now on a weekly basis, three out of the five most popular views on my channel on any given week are like three or four years old.

Yeah. Right. And that's really what I want to focus on. I don't want to have like trendy kind of really short shelf life videos. Right. So that's why I really want to kind of separate that from my main public channel. If people are interested in what stocks I'm buying and they want to see a deep dive in my portfolio, they can do the members only video. Yeah.

Amazing. For the everyday people who just want to learn how stock market works, how investing works, how taxes work. Watch my public and free videos. Perfect. And yeah, there's so much great stuff there. So highly recommend it. Well, Adrian, thank you so much for coming by to the studio to be on the show. It was so great having you on. Absolutely.

We'll have to have you on again in the future. Can't wait for round two. Let's do it. Yeah, let's do it. And that was episode 381 with Adrian Barr, the founder and host of the YouTube channel Canadian in a T-shirt. You can find him at youtube.com slash at Canadian T-shirt. You can also find him on Twitter at Canadian shirt and on Instagram at Canadian T-shirt. And I will link to all of these things in the show notes for this episode, JessicaMoorhouse.com slash 381. And just a reminder, if you want to find any episodes ever, because there are a lot of episodes, we're creeping close to 400. Oh, my gosh.

Just go to JessicaMoorhouse.com slash podcast or JessicaMoorhouse.com slash the number of that episode if you know it. And I do not, I'm not bothered if you are looking for a particular episode and you cannot remember what the number is or who was on the show. Like, I get emails and DMs all the time from listeners being like, I think you did an episode on, you know, mortgages or whatever. Yeah, I don't mind. Let me know. Like ask me and I'll be like, oh, it's this one because I don't know how because my memory is not the best with things. But I've got actually pretty good. I don't have a good short term memory, but I sure do have a good long-term memory. And I remember every single guest and episode I've ever done. And I've been doing this for eight

years. So hit me up. I'm happy to navigate. Or even if you're like looking for an episode, a specific topic, I can show you because I've pretty much done it all. So, you know, DM me. You can find me on Instagram at Jessica I. Morehouse or through the podcast Instagram at MoreMoneyPodcast. Or just email me, Jessica at Jessica Morehouse.com. I don't mind do it. Go ahead or there's a contact form on my contact page as well. Whatever you're more comfortable with Jessica Morehouse.com slash contact. Okay, so just a few things to share as always. So do not go away. Do you want to figure out where your money is going? Do you want to organize your finances once and for all? Do you want to feel less anxious about your money? Well, I have a

great tool for you, my collection of budget spreadsheets, which you can find at jessicamorehouse.com slash shop. These new and improved budget spreadsheets have helped thousands of people over the years. And these are honestly the budget spreadsheets that me and my husband still use today. They come in Google Sheets and Excel. They also come with a comprehensive video tutorial to show you exactly how it works. And they're very easy to use. Not only that, I've got versions for pretty much any scenario. So if you're an employee, I've got a budget spreadsheet for that. If you are self-employed, I've got a budget spreadsheet for that. If you're in a couple and one of you is an employee and one of you is self-employed, I've got a budget spreadsheet for that. If you're in a couple and one of you is an employee and one of you is self-employed, I've got a budget spreadsheet for that. I've got seven different budget

spreadsheets for any kind of situation. So no matter what's going on in your life and your income, I've got a budget spreadsheet for you. So if you want to take action and see some progress with your finances, this is one really easy step that you can take right after listening to this episode. Just go to jessicamorehouse.com slash shop, find the right budget spreadsheet for you, and then start making some moves that future you will be really, really thankful for. Okay, firstly, I just want to remind you, because you know, this week, we don't have a book, a new book I'm giving away, though I have more to come. Don't worry, I've got four more books and authors humming on this show. So you know, just stay excited for that. But I have a lot of books that have already been featured on the show that I'm giving away copies of. So just

go to jessicamorehouse.com slash contest to enter to win any of those. Just as a reference, I mean, if you want me to go through them, I will. But I've got Gabe Dunn's Bad With Money, Eleanor Tucker, her book, Thanks For Sharing, Peter Atwater's The Confidence Map, Manisha Thakur's Money Zen, Ayo Oudani's The Immigrant View, Mick Hayman's Mellow Your Money, and Mary Sanders, who was on the show last week, Nine Lives by 35. And yeah's that's a lot. I can't believe I just remember all that off the top of my head. How crazy. So speaking of YouTube, because we did talk a lot about YouTube, just letting you know, I do have a YouTube channel, you can find me, I think it's just youtube.com slash at Jessica Morehouse, maybe I don't know. But honestly, if you just go to

like Google YouTube, Jessica Morehouse, or just in YouTube, Jessica Morehouse, I will come right up. And also, if you don't know, I have another YouTube channel specifically for the podcast, just because I set it up years ago, because I had a few people ask, hey, can you put your podcast on YouTube? Because I like to listen on YouTube. I know, you know, whatever you want to do. And so and there was a year that I did do a video podcast. I want to say it was a while ago, like before anyone was really doing it. That's why I didn't really do that. Well, probably back in like 20, I don't know, 16, 17, 18. I don't know. But so there is some video podcasts. I always kind of, yeah, think about doing it again. But again, it's just like a lot

of work. So right now it's just audio and you can, uh, yeah, it's, it's connected to my main channel. So you can like look at like other channels or whatever, and then It's just audio and you can, yeah, it's connected to my main channel. So you can like look at like other channels or whatever. And then it's just on there or just go More Money Podcast YouTube and you'll find it. You'll find it there. So to tease who I have on the show next week, it's a friend of mine. I've known her for gosh, okay, how long have I been blogging? I think 12 years. I think I've known her for as long as I've had my blog because we kind of came up at the same time. And she was a very early guest on my podcast when I started this. She was on the show back in February 2016. And oh my gosh, it is crazy to think how our lives have changed since

then. I mean, a lot has happened in that time frame and really good things. You know, it's exciting to see, oh, look at where we were and look at where we are now. And she's just been doing so many incredible things. I'm talking about Stephanie O'Connell Rodriguez. She started out similar to me, a personal finance blogger, but she's kind of pivoted. And I'm in love with her content now to really talk about ambition and women. And that is what we're going to focus on next week. And I cannot wait to share such an incredible that is what we're going to focus on next week. And I

cannot wait to share such an incredible episode. So you're gonna love it. So stick around for next week's episode. It is going to be amazing. But with that, I'm gonna have to leave you love you and leave you. Big shout out to my podcast editor, Matt Rideout. And yeah, have a good rest of your week. You know, stay safe. You know, it's cold season or flu season or COVID season. You know, people been getting it again, you know, so just be cautious, wash your hands and, you know, do all the things. But yeah, I will see you here next Wednesday. And until then, well, you know, enjoy your life. All right, bye. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.