More Money Podcast - From the Archives: Relistening to Larry Bates Expose What the Banks Don't Want You to Know

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

One of my favourite Canadian personal finance books to recommend is Larry Bates' Beat the Bank because it's exactly what every Canadian needs to know about how to advocate for yourself, not pay too much in fees, and navigate the complex and sometimes secretive world of finance. Considering Larry worked in finance for over 35 years, he knows what he's talking about and holds nothing back.This episode originally aired on January 22, 2020.To find the original show notes for this episode visit jessicamoorhouse.com/223Follow meInstagram @jessicaimoorhouseThreads @jessicaimoorhouseTikTok @jessicaimoorhouseFacebook @jessicaimoorhouseYouTube @jessicamoorhouseLinkedIn - Jessica MoorhouseFinancial resourcesMy websiteMy bestselling book Everything but MoneyFree resource libraryBudget spreadsheetWealth Building Blueprint for Canadians course Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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investing, earning more, real estate, I got you. Just listen and subscribe to Sew Money wherever you get your podcasts. Lu Lu Lu and welcome back to the More Money Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morehouse and we are re-listening to another episode, another fan favorite and my favorite, quite honestly. We are re-listening to episode 223, which originally aired in January 2020, right before the world took a turn for the worse.

It is all about, okay, so who am I? I didn't even mention. Who am I interviewing? Larry Bates, great Canadian author and money expert. He's wonderful. He wrote the book that I am still referring people to. You got to check it out called Beat the Bank. I feel like every Canadian needs to read this. It is about how to be a savvy investor, how to beat the bank at their own game because let me tell you, I'm still talking to so many Canadians and they're paying the most outrageous fees and this is not necessary. It's never been easier to invest in a low fee way and if you know me and been listening to this podcast for a number of years or weeks, you probably get the sense that I don't like fees and yes, I don't because there are so many things that we cannot control with our investments.

The one thing that we can is the fees we're paying and the lower the fees we pay, the more money in our pocket. You may not realize how a couple basis points can have a big effect on your financial future, but they can. And that's what Larry talks about in his book amongst a bunch of other topics that he broaches. So make sure to grab a copy of his book, Beat the Bank, after you listen to this episode. It's great. So yeah, we cover a lot. He's a wonderful person. And that's why I was so excited to re-listen to this episode. So without further

ado, let's get to that episode with Larry. Welcome, Larry, to the momentary podcast. I'm so excited to have you on the show. It's great to be here. Thank you. I know I loved your book, Beat the Bank, the Canadian guide to simply successful investing. I feel like even though it's, I mean, it's, you know, recently came out, it is something I wish existed when I did finish university and was trying to find my way. They're back. I mean, that's when I kind of learned about personal finance because I'm like, I don't

want to always be broke anymore. There really weren't that many great books out there. I feel like, yeah, there's The Wealthy Barber. Sure. But nothing as you just answered so many questions I had throughout my 20s and it's annoying that I'm only, now that I already know the answer is now your book exists. Well, thank you for your kind comments. It's actually the most common comment I receive is, I wish I'd read this 20 years ago because most people, and the book is focused on, very

focused on investing. I mean, there are lots of other books on budgeting and so forth, and The Wealthy Barber is a good one on that. This book is about investing. Really the main message of the book is if you take a little bit of time to learn investment basics and over a lifetime of investing just a bit smarter, it can make an enormous difference. Warren Buffett said, the best investment you can make is in yourself. In other words, take a bit of time to learn and you'll be so richly rewarded over time from taking that effort today.

And that's like a lesson I now know, but I feel like when, especially if you are just starting to learn about money management and personal finance, you are pretty, there's just so much content about, like you said, like budgeting and kind of the basics. I get, you know, it's not that, at the end of the day, it's not that hard. But when it comes to investing, it is actually very difficult to find. I find content that's digestible, understandable, that's not talking either down to you or just way above you and you don't understand. And quite honestly, there's so many great investing blogs out there, but as someone who's like, a young woman, man, they were hard to freaking read. They were just like older retirees just talking

about stuff that I just don't care about or could not relate to. But I found your book, your tone, just your approach very easy to grasp and answered. Like honestly, I talked to so many young people and they have all the questions that you basically answered in this book. So I'm very excited to be able to finally tell people like, there's a book that has all of those answers now. Yeah. Well, I spent 30 plus years in the investment banking business and I had worked with and advised some of the most sophisticated institutional investors in the world.

This was my effort to try to take that knowledge and distill it down to be able to help average investors who don't know much about investing. But again, the industry portrays investing as super complicated. It's like, hey, Jessica, don't even bother trying to figure this out. Just trust me. And blind trust is not good. There's that phrase trust but verify. But in order to do that, you've got to learn a little bit.

And that's really what the book is for, to give people some basic knowledge to enable them to make smarter decisions over a long period of time. I think it's helping lots of people. Yeah. I think that's one of the biggest hurdles too is we all know, I think deep down, we know we need to budget and manage our money and be smart with credit cards and debt and all that kind of stuff. When it comes to investing, for some reason, we all kind of think we could just, and it could be just the narrative that the banks have been pushing. You need to hire somebody.

You need to outsource it. You're too stupid to understand this. So just let someone else deal with it. Oh, poor you. It's too complicated for you. And that was like something that I definitely dealt with in my 20s. I definitely worked with a couple of banks with some advisors and they literally would treat me like I was an idiot, even though I'm like, you don't know that I have a personal

finance blog and I know what you're talking about, but okay, you're just kind of assuming some things. I think the really important message that I'm talking about, that you talk about so many other people are now talking about, which is great, is if you do want to actually build wealth and retire comfortably or just at all and have enough, you actually do need to take responsibility for that, which means you do have to learn this stuff. You cannot just pass it off. You can't do that anymore. And I think maybe part of it is because we don't have the luxury of pensions like previous generations did. Yeah, I mean, past generations had the benefit of guaranteed pensions. And for outside the government sector, that's virtually nonexistent.

So employers have downloaded responsibility for investing to their employees, but nobody's downloaded the basic knowledge. So there's that gap there. People tend to just go to the bank or their insurance agent or their advisor or whatever and just say, tell me what to do. Most advisors are good people but unfortunately, most of them sell really, really lousy products. What makes these products lousy, by far the biggest problem is the cost. Canadians pay the highest investment fees in the world. Most people have no sense of what they're paying.

They either think they're paying nothing or they're not aware of the full cost. Even the way the cost is expressed is misleading. Well, this mutual fund is great. It's only charging 2% a year. But if you're starting when you're 30, and let's say that your lifespan is going to be to 90, well, think about investing for 60 years and paying 2% of your total invested amount every year for 60 years. Start thinking about those numbers. It's madness. But the good news is, unlike 10 or 15 years ago, there are fantastic, super low-cost alternatives available that charge a tiny fraction of what the industry wants to sell you. They're often sold by, they're often sponsored by the same institutions that want to sell you the super expensive stuff. So just learn the difference between those two and take advantage of the low cost funds

and you can double your returns, literally. That's the math. And you want to check the math out, if you're inclined that way, just go to my website, larrybates.ca and you can see this little calculator which shocks a lot of people, but it demonstrates the impact of costs and cost savings over time.

Yeah, I feel like the one argument that I hear over and over again, and again, when I did deal with financial advisors at the bank, when I would bring up the fees, because I was starting to learn about how important fees were and you want to keep those down because they're eating into your own returns and your overall wealth and future, they would always bring up the thing about value, but I'm providing so much more value, value, value, value, but I'm providing so much more value, value, value, value, value. And now that I've been an investor on my own doing DIY and using robo-advisors for years and have done so much better than I ever did when working with the bank, I'm still wondering

what that value is. Can you explain this to me having worked in the banking industry? What is this value they talk about? Well, it is. I mean, I don't mean to be pejorative. I mean, I had a little bit of fun with the book title, right, Beat the Bank, but their sales pitch is kind of built on a bit of a lie because how can there be value when the ultimate expression of that advice is to buy a super high-cost fund. It would be like going

to buy a car and there's a Toyota there for $30,000 and there's a Honda there for $300,000. The advisor says, oh, you should buy this $300,000 Honda. It's a great car because that's what they're paid to sell. And yet there's this car that performs the same at a tenth of the cost that they keep it back. They don't really want you to get involved. So I really have a problem with this argument that, oh, well, you're paying for all the value we're providing. They're actually destroying value, right? Most Canadians, they're taking 100% of the market risk, but they're only getting to keep about 50% of the market returns because the rest is lost in fees. Does that make any sense? That's crazy.

That is crazy. It is crazy. And I still get irritated when I think back to the years I wasted working with that bank and not really understanding. That's the other thing too. It's like, well, part of that value I assumed was they're going to educate me on what they're doing with my portfolio or tell you now. It was just sales pitch after sales pitch or if they thought I was unhappy with my portfolio, they would offer a different portfolio. They would just sell me something else. It would drive me absolutely crazy.

Yeah, like you said, some of them are nice people. We had one really nice guy, and then he was replaced by this other guy who was just a honestly snake oil salesman. If I saw him in the street, I would give him a piece of my mind for basically wasting years and then taking so much of our money. But that's kind of a... No, that's the way the system works. It's not a healthy system.

The Canadian banks and our financial institutions generally, they deserve a lot of credit. They've been stable through the ups and downs. They didn't get hit by the crisis 10 years ago. There are a lot of good reasons to feel good about the banks and trust them. This is not one of them. They take advantage of this trust people have to sell them really crappy products. But at the same time, if you go through a different door, they've got products available at a tiny fraction of the cost.

You can take advantage of that if you learn some of the basics. That's really what my book is about. From the feedback I'm getting, people are taking advantage of that knowledge in the book and taking action and switching to lower cost alternatives. It may not be for you, but hey, take the time to learn a bit and you can't go wrong. It's not that hard. It can be. When it comes to investing, the simpler the better, despite the fact the industry, for

them, they want to make it as complex as possible because that makes people really more and more reliant on them and that's not healthy. Absolutely. I definitely ascribe to the idea that investing actually at the end of the day should be simple. So many people on the show have come on to express the exact same thing. So it really shouldn't be. One thing that when I was doing some research on you, I saw that you did a Reddit AMA, which is so interesting.

So many interesting questions that were there. One of them that kind of came up in your book as well is the idea of kind of the risk that we take. And I also kind of feel like typically, this was my experience and I've heard this from a lot of people that have worked with someone at the bank, they're not taking on enough risk in their portfolios or actually being too conservative. Because I feel like maybe it's the terminology that we use. It's like, well, do you want something balanced or do you want something aggressive? Obviously, aggressive sounds bad.

When you put it like that, it sounds like you're going to lose all your money. Balance sounds, you know, that sounds responsible and like a good idea. But you gave an example in the book that, you know, there's two couples basically investing the same amount of money, same time horizon. One chooses, you know, a balanced fund and one something more aggressive. And obviously the people with the balanced fund ended up with way less money. What do you think is going on here? Well, I think the banks want to, you know, keep down the middle of the fairway and sell people balanced funds so that they don't experience the drops in the market, which can occur when you do have more of your money in stocks versus more stable bonds.

Over time, stocks have always produced positive results. But it's like a roller coaster ride. You have to be prepared for the dips, which will occur. Whatever amount that you have invested in the stock market, you've got to be willing to live with the dips. And the worst thing you can do is have a dip of 10 or 20 percent, which can happen any time, and say, oh my gosh, I can't stand that. I've got to get out.

For instance, if you are 30 years old or 35 or 40 and you're saving for post-career or a lengthy retirement from age 60 to 90 or whatever it might be. Well you've got a hell of a long runway. For some of those folks, they say, well, I don't really care about the ups and downs in the market in the intermediate term. I want to gain the most in the long term. For those investors, a more aggressive approach might make total sense. Owning bonds is not going to make anybody rich these days. Yields are so low, but they are great for wealth protection.

You can be comfortable that you're not going to get hammered owning bonds. There's a lot of fear about investing. A lot of people think investing is like gambling. You can play it that way. You hear horror stories of people losing tons of money in the stock market, in cannabis stocks or crypto or I don't know, whatever it is. Those people are essentially gambling. I look at the stock market as a tool to become a long-term business owner. So if I own a share, one share or a hundred shares or whatever it is, RBC or Apple or

Bell or whatever it is, hey, I own that business and I want to own it for the long term. As a business owner, I don't care what happens to the market day to day. I just want to own that business for the long run and that's how wealth is created, long term business ownership. That's the way I look at the market. Don't pay attention to what's happening in the market day to day. It's all noise. It's meaningless. Invest. And this is the one expression I love is don't be a day trader, be a decade trader.

And if you look at investing that way, the ups and downs of the market become noise over time. They become meaningless. One quick example. Last year, in December of 2018, Last year, in December of 2018, on Christmas Eve, it was the worst Christmas Eve of all time in the stock market. It never been worse. The market was down 3.5% or something. On Boxing Day, the U.S. markets opened on Boxing Day, the Dow Jones had its single largest one-day point gain in history. It was up over a thousand points. So Jessica, tell me, what was the difference between Christmas

Eve and boxing day? Nothing was the difference. It's just all that ups and downs and intermediate noise in the market becomes meaningless if you're a long-term investor. Absolutely. And I remember that time because I remember looking at some news reports and also looking at my portfolios and then reminding myself, okay, we haven't dealt with one of these for a little while. Let's just not do anything. Don't panic and we're going to be just fine. That's what we know. That is the truth.

And so yeah, then I wrote it out and then it was fine. Later on, I talked to some other people I know who, you know, they're like, oh, I matched my own portfolio and stuff like that. And you know what they did? They knew better and yet they panicked and they sold. And I'm like, but you knew better. What are you doing? So like you said, a lot of it is fear based and very emotional.

It's emotional. Yeah. And it's hard. I mean, I remember in the financial crisis 10 years ago, there were some days where you wonder whether the sky was going to fall. It was ugly. But, you know, and a lot of people, obviously a lot of people sold, they panicked and sold and have been left sort of on the sidelines as the market's gone up 250% or whatever since then.

But that's why it's important to give some thought as to what the right balance is as you invest between more risky higher long-term return stocks and more conservative bonds. That's probably the most important question that investors need to address. And I talk about that a fair bit in the book. And, but beyond that, it should be very simple. Like the hardest thing is not doing anything. And it's funny. Recently, I was looking at, you know, a couple, you know, sometimes maybe, maybe just me, I will look at some stocks and look at like their historical

returns over time, like, ah, if I had just been smart enough to buy that stock at that time. And then I was talking to my husband, he's like, but you know what? Most people don't buy that stock when an IPO or right at the beginning and keep it for 10, 20. Most people get emotional and they will sell at certain points. So there's probably very few people that kept that Apple stock or whatever and still have that same stock right now. Most people will trade.

That's why I say most wealth creation is from owning businesses for the long term. It's not from trading. I'll just give you a quick example. I use it in the book. If your rich uncle had left you $10,000 40 years ago and invested it in TD Bank stock and directed that the dividends be reinvested more TD Bank stock, so 40 years ago, what would that $10,000 invested then be worth today? The answer is it's three and a half million or

something like that. It's just outrageous. Okay. And that comes from, that's a great, look, I'm picking a company that did very well. You can either pick one from the past, but it demonstrates the power of compounding over a long period of time and what long-term business ownership can do. In the meantime, that TD stock was up and down like crazy in different periods like the crash of 1987 or the dot-com crash or the global financial. All those market ups and downs became meaningless over time. It was just a great company that did well over time. It was just a great company that did well over time. That's an example of the

success of long-term investing. You definitely talk a little bit more in depth about these. There's wealth builders and wealth killers. I think that's a great way to break those out so we can just remember on a daily basis what am I doing while the wealth builders, as you outline is the amount of money that you're contributing, the time horizon you have, and then the interest rate or the rate of return that you'll gain. And then the wealth killers, like we kind of mentioned is fees, so important, tax and inflation. Like very simple and that is, yeah, like it's a very simple. Those six factors will determine the success or failure of every investment you make.

Fees is where most Canadians really fail badly. Don't see the fees and don't figure that even if they do see them what the impact is over time. Taxes, also nasty wealth killers. There are some things you can do, TFSAs, RSPs, et cetera, to either eliminate or defer taxes. And inflation, the last wealth killer, nothing you can do about it. You just have to beat it. Yeah, there's, it's interesting. I recently also read this book called Invested that's more based on value investing, but she talked a lot about

inflation. And again, I think it's something that we as investors or just people forget about. It's real. We forget about it. And it was just actually like a reminder. Like typically I do do this, but every year I will look at how much am I personally contributing to my investments. I usually do usually my income increases. So I will increase my contributions. But I think it's just like a quick thing that people can remember is even if your income doesn't increase, make sure to increase your contributions because inflation is, it is increased by a year. So you need to increase it so you're not contributing the exact same dollar amount because of inflation,

it will actually make that amount less, if that makes sense. Yeah. And if you can do that along with making those contributions on a regular basis, again, the compounding effect of that can be enormous. The earlier the better, obviously, and all those standard things. So yeah, you you got to keep inflation in mind, you got to minimize taxes and really minimize fees as well, which you can do if you have a decent handle on the basics.

Exactly. And for taxes, and this is a question that pops up, I'm sure you get this a lot, the question about TFSA versus RSP. You know, back in, you know, when I, before the TFSA existed in 2009, RRSP was your kind of best bet. TFSAs, even though they've been around for a while, a lot of people still don't quite understand how they work. And it seems like the more people get to know them and really understand the impact of how great they are, I personally kind of prefer a TFSA over an RSP. They're both great, but when you kind of think about you mean you could put money in there, it grows tax free and when you want to withdraw

in retirement, you don't pay income tax on that money. How amazing would that be? They're beautifully simple. I mean, unlike almost everything else in the world of tax, which is numbingly complex and awful, TFSAs are elegantly simple. And so, yeah, I'm a big fan of TFSAs. But RSPs are great too. The main thing is, if you've got money to invest, take advantage of one or the other, at least. Don't be frozen and do nothing because you can't figure out which one is the best. There's not necessarily a right answer there. I do talk about that in the book, but both are excellent ways to reduce the impact of tax.

Absolutely. And you do mention the book too, because I think some people are like, but which one should I start with? It is kind of the typical rule of thumb. If you're kind of lower income, and I believe the number you gave was like, if you're making like 40,000 or less as an example, TFSA is probably your best bet. And then when you're earning more and you want that kind of way to reduce your overall income taxes and RSP is a good bet. But also, like you said, there's no wrong way as long as you just start investing because I have met people that are so petrified of making a mistake, they delay months or years. Yeah, that's the real error. It's not making the wrong choice. It's not making a choice.

That's the big error. You're right about the income levels, although a TFSA can be absolutely the right choice for higher income earners too. Hopefully, higher income earners can maybe if they're really fortunate, they can fill up both pots. And then I think things get a little bit more complex with the taxable or unregistered accounts. They do, but it's not that I mean you can make it, you're probably right, you need to understand the basics, you don't need to necessarily understand you know the tax treatment of you know of foreign dividends might be and this and that. I mean that's, if you learn the basics

you can be fine and the minutiae is endless minutiae, but you don't need to know it. I think you do have some really good charts actually in this book that go into if you were to put different types of investment products into a taxable account, what would that actually mean in terms of how much tax you pay? I think you do outline it pretty well in here, which was actually very helpful to see in a nice chart. Yeah, good. The subtitle of the book talks about simply successful investing. That was

really a big aim of the book, to try to keep it simple so that it's understandable and if you look at it that way and you can be very successful as an investor and be calmer and more confident about your future. If you learn the basics, even if you decide to stick with an advisor, make sure you know what you're paying, which isn't easy to find out necessarily. But if you're comfortable with what you're paying and you feel you're getting value for that cost, well, that's great. But getting that basic knowledge will enable you to make that informed decision. And that's what I urge people to do. Whereas you know, million, vast majority of Canadians are making that those decisions uninformed and to sort of blindly relying on advisors whose job it is to sell you the

most expensive possible product. And that's not healthy. No, I think yeah, like you said, and you go into in the book, it is, it's heartbreaking when you see all these people doing some of the right things, like contributing to their, you know, investment accounts regularly and they're saving so much money, but they're not getting that much back because they missed a couple of steps, like really understanding what are you investing in? What is your risk profile?

Like what's your portfolio? Why is it balanced in your 25? That doesn't quite make sense. And What kind of fees are you paying? Those are actually almost more important than your personal contributions. That's really what drove me to write the book. I just thought, wow, people work hard. It's really hard to save money. We all know that. They trust their advisors. They're the ones that are taking the risk, 100% of the risk in the market. Yet their advisor, their bank or whatever strips away half of their returns in fees and don't make that clear. It's just not

right. It doesn't have to be that way. And, you know, really our retirement system in Canada, you know, it depends on the success of individual investors. And the industry needs to do a better job at providing lower cost, more efficient products to investors. Right now, those products are out there. And if you know what to do, you can get them. But the industry is doing everything possible to hang on to these old super expensive products and get you to buy them. Now that will disappear over time. But in the meantime, millions of Canadians

are stuck with these crappy products. With that said, what are your thoughts on, because you do talk about the different ways to invest. You can work with an advisor, you can use a robo-advisor, you can be a DIY investor. A lot of these big banks now are coming out with their own robo-advisors probably because if one does it, they all have to do it. What are your thoughts on robo-advisors and these big banks jumping on the bandwagon? Is it a good thing?

Absolutely, it's a good thing. I think I'm a fan of robo-advisors, which are basically online portfolio advisors, which go online, answer 20 questions about your income, what your goals are, what you're saving for, how comfortable you are with stock market risk, etc. And they'll recommend a portfolio for you and you just sign up and contribute on a regular basis and it's taken care of. So it's wonderfully convenient.

They charge fees of something like on average probably half a percent a year plus the the costs of the underlying funds which might add another tenth of a percent or maybe a quarter of a percent so the total fees might range from six tenths to a percent to maybe three quarters of a percent which that's a fair bit but it's a fraction of what what they what they'll charge to sell you their old crappy mutual funds. So RoboAdvisors can be a great alternative for many investors out there and that business model was started by independence disruptors, but the banks are now creating their own. RBC started in RBC Investies.

BMO Smart Folio, the other banks will be doing the same thing. Questrade is out there. WellSimple is one that's advertised a lot. They're well known. So there are good alternatives out there. And if you're looking at one of them, I recommend go online and do a search for comparisons between them. There are probably 10 of them out there or something. Some of them are better for first-time investors. Others are better for seasoned investors with larger portfolios.

They're a great alternative for many, and not just for younger folks, for retired folks too. They can be a great alternative. The thing is with the banks and the big institutions, they will want to sell you the most expensive thing possible, but if you figure out there are better ways, they'll provide those alternatives too. You don't necessarily have to leave the bank to beat the bank. You just have to know which door to go through.

Yeah. You need to know how to talk the talk. You need to know what they're talking about. Also, it's fair to say that depending on who you're dealing with, and I've heard stories like this a lot, your advisor may not be that knowledgeable about investing, depending on who you have. They may be well versed in mutual funds, but if you want to talk to them about, I want to build a, you know, catch potato portfolio of ETFs, they may not know what to tell you. Well, they're trained to sell and, you know, again, they're good people, but they're stuck

selling really, selling products that really serve the banks better than they serve their clients. It really is shameful that the industry keeps selling this stuff and the regulators haven't done enough to stop it, in my view. You need to have a little bit of a buyer beware attitude in order to be effective at that. You need to learn a few of the basics. So you got to somewhat fend for yourself, not to become an expert, but to learn some basic knowledge and like it or not, that's the reality.

And I feel like once you do kind of accept that, that you do have to learn the basics and then you learn it, you'll realize, a, it's not as hard as you thought, it's not that complex. And then if you want to build onto that to, you know, become a more advanced investor of that, something you want, you'll realize the path actually isn't that crazy to do that. Like it's once you kind of build those foundational elements of investing, learning more about maybe options or whatever you want, it won't seem so complicated because

you have this knowledge now. But it is hard at the beginning. Believe me, I remember those growing pains. I'm like, what? It's a whole new language. Yeah. Frankly, for most folks, I don't think you need to get into options and derivatives and all that stuff I mean that's that's that's for mostly for professionals are very experienced people now for average investors You know Robo advisors a great alternative or you know, you get there also as you know, Jessica There are all-in-one ETFs that provide perfectly balanced portfolios with just one single fund that are super low cost and wonderfully simple. So yeah, there are great ways to do it.

And one little note, the impact that's going to... Most people, I think, are pretty surprised with this. After purchase of a home, the largest expense for millions of Canadians over their lifetime is investment fees, and people have no idea. A couple of reasons. They're not charged directly. The bank or their advisor, your firm doesn't come and say

okay, you need to pay X hundred or X thousands of dollars a year for this. Those fees are just deducted from your accounts and people don't notice. The industry never presents a bill, they never say hey look, this is what we're charging and this is the impact over time. Costs can have such a devastating impact and yet it can be so easy to largely eliminate them. So going back to fees, if you need a starting point for figuring out what you're doing with your investments or you want to start, fees is where you should start. And I agree. Once you kind of realize how impactful and using your calculator like you mentioned on your website, it will kind of, I think, make

things start to click and give you that motivation to maybe do something about it. Yeah, exactly. And again, it can be fun too. And I'm sure once you get over the fear aspect of it, it can be fun. Not necessarily every day or when the market craps out or whatever, that's not fun. You can gain some satisfaction over time you're doing will, I think, give people more comfort, more calm over time and allow them to get on with their lives rather than worry about what's happening in the market day to day. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining me on the show. Where can people find more information about you and grab a copy of your book, Beat the Bank?

Well, the book is in stores across Canada and it's also available on Amazon and indigo.ca and other online sources. It's available in hard copy and also available in ebook format. People can also go to my website larrybates.ca. Lots of information there. That calculator, which is a shock to many people but very instructive, is there as well if you're interested. So, yeah, there's lots of info there and I think it has the potential to make a difference for people over time. So, thanks very much for having me. It's been lots of fun and I think your podcast is wonderful, helping people understand the finances. I'm

glad to have the chance to contribute a little bit to that. Thank you. It was a pleasure. I highly recommend this book. I've read a lot of books, Larry, and this was a nice, easy intro to investing. So anyone can read this. So thanks so much for writing it. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Jessica. Wonderful. Thank you.

And that was my Re-listen episode. Original episode number, if you want to check out the show notes, jessicamorhouse.com slash the number of the episode. That's how you can find show notes for anything. Original episode number is 223. And again, you can also go to jessicamorhouse.com slash podcast and you can find it. Or I also link to them in the description of this episode. Wherever you're, you know, if you're listening on, you know, Apple or Spotify, it should be in the description. Same with YouTube, should be

there. So there you go. Grab a copy of his book, Beat the Bank. Some other great book recommendations if you're looking for more. Maybe you've already read this book. Millionaire Teacher is one of my favorite books of all time. Wealthing Like Rabbits and The Value of Simple. These are all books by Canadians. And you know, sometimes you're looking for it, especially when it comes to investing. You want info from a Canadian who understands, you know, how things work in Canada and all that kind of stuff. So make sure to do that. You can find more info about Larry at LarryBates.ca and you can also find him on LinkedIn and Twitter. If he's still there, let me click on this.

I'm like, who's still using Twitter? And I refuse to call it the other, the other word. I don't know. It says I have to log in and I haven't, I've logged out. I'm not logging back in just to find out. Maybe Larry's on Twitter. Maybe he's not. I don't know. It says I have to log in and I haven't, I've logged out. I'm not logging back in just to find out. Maybe Larry's on Twitter. Maybe he's not. I don't know. It doesn't matter. And of course, don't forget that I also have a book, Everything But Money, out now. All about your relationship with money, trauma, psychology, behavior, systems that are unfair.

All these things that are hidden barriers to, you know, why you aren't maybe seeing the results you want or why you just can't get out of your own way. Everything but money has the answers and the solutions. And if you go to jessicamorehouse.com slash book, for example, maybe you got the book from the library or already bought your copy. If you want some book extras, some videos, some audio, some worksheets, some extras for free, all you have to do is give my book a rating or review online. Again, all the info is at jessicmurhous.com. Send me a little screenshot. You get access to all these

things for free. So why not? It takes you two seconds to give me a rating or review. So there you go. There you go. Okay. That is it for me. Thank you so much for listening, supporting this podcast. I will be back here next week with another interview and another re-listen episode. Oh, I've got a really good one. And actually this is going to interview and another re-listen episode. Ooh, I've got a really good one. And actually, this is going to be the final re-listen episode for this season. It's a goodie. I was saving the best for last, quite honestly. So I will see you back here next week.

And with that, have a good rest of your day and week, and I will see you soon. The More Money Podcast would not be possible without the amazing talents of podcast producer Matt Rideout, who you can find at mravcanada.com.