More Money Podcast - Special Episode - Live from Fincon with Desirae Odjick (Half Banked), Bob Lai (Tawcan) & Andrew Daniels (Family Money Plan)

Episode Date: November 10, 2017

At FinCon 2017, I had the pleasure of sitting down with my three of my favourite Canadian personal finance bloggers: Desirae Odjick from Half Banked, Andrew Daniel from Family Money Plan and Bob Lai from Tawcan. This episode was recorded live on the last day of the conference, and has us chatting about their experience at the conference and what takeaways they'll be leaving with, their thoughts on blogging and everything in between. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to, oh, a special bonus episode of the Mo Money Podcast. What, what? That's right. This is a bonus. This is special because I got to do a live podcast episode at FinCon that actually just happened a few weeks ago. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, I like to name drop FinCon a lot because it is a massive money nerd conference I like to go to every single year.

And this time I was able to do a live podcast with some of my favorite people, my favorite Canadian personal finance bloggers. I'm talking about Desiree from Half Banked, Bob from TalkHand, and of course, Andrew from Family Money Plan. They were at the conference and I got to sit down with them for a very special episode of the show where we talk all things money, blogging, FinCon, everything I can think of. And I am so surprised that we were able to really do this episode because honestly, I had just finished the Money 2020 Payments Race. Then right after I finished that race, I went to FinCon, and I was trying my best because this episode I recorded on the last day of the conference. I was trying so, so hard not to lose my voice because I tend to do that when I go to a conference because I love to chat. So I tried to preserve my voice as much as i could but you could probably hear it's it's kind

of a few decibels lower than normal uh but it was so much fun chatting with my favorite peeps so i hope you enjoy this special bonus episode of the mo money podcast well uh welcome everyone to a special episode of the mo money podcast live from fincon this is my first time doing a live episode from fincon always wanted to and of course I'm joined with my favorite people, my Canadian friends. Woohoo! Woo! Okay, so first, before we kick things off, let's go down the row here and get everyone to introduce themselves. Let's start with Bob.

Hey, I'm Bob Lai. I blog over at Taokan.com, which is T-A-W-C-A-N. I write about FIRE investing and everything in between. So pretty cool. Pretty damn cool, Bob. Des? Hi, everybody. I'm Desiree Ojik. I blog at HalfBanked.com, and I blog for millennial women who want to be really good at their finances without giving up the things that they like spending money on the most.

Sometimes there's prioritization, but you can still have your lattes. Awesome. And Andrew. Hi, I'm Andrew Daniels. I'm from FamilyMoneyPlan.com and MillennialHomeOwner.com. Millennial Homeowner is all about helping people find their first home and buy it successfully. Awesome, awesome. So the reason I wanted to get you all on this

special episode of the show is also because you guys are all first time FinConers and I talk a ton about FinCon. It just happens. I always talk about FinCon throughout the show just because I go a lot and most of my guests I have met at FinCon. So this is the last day of FinCon. This is your first FinCon. I would love to get what have you experienced? What are some of the highlights? What are some of the most favorite things that have happened to you at this conference so far? Bob, do you want to start? Sure.

Just meeting with all the people I've been talking to for the last couple years or three years that I've been blogging, like some of the bigger American bloggers like J Money, Carl from 1500 Days, all these people. And then just, you know,

just even the group of us that started blogging around the same time that I've been talking, interacting on Twitter. I know. It's super cool. And just random, like now I have revealed my identity.

I know. Because I was blogging anonymously previously. People just recognize me from my picture and that's super cool. It's weird and cool. Have you gotten people like, oh my god, are you Bob? I know. It's just like, what? People read my blog?

I know. It's kind of like crazy. How about you, Des? It's actually been a lot of the same things have been the perks. Meeting people has been a really big part of it. We all have our internet friends. I think one of the people I was most excited to meet was Penny from She Picks Up Pennies, who does still blog anonymously.

That is not her real name. Yeah. And it was amazing meeting her. I mean, she looks nothing like I pictured, which I don't know what I really pictured, but it's just been amazing getting to connect in person and spend time with people that we spend time with all the time on Twitter. Totally. Andrew? I think the whole thing has been the warmth of everybody I've met.

There hasn't been a single person that hasn't made a little bit of time to talk to you. And some conversations have turned into an hour. I can't believe how amazing this community is. I know. I know. I was just actually talking to someone about how it's really not a conference because when people think conference, they think here's my business card. Let's let's make some business happen. But it's really like for me, if you want to get anything out of this conference,

it's just about like not being weird, being normal, being and just like being nice and friendly and just having deep conversations. Because honestly, like this really is a big conference full of introverts. I believe we're probably most of them. Maybe Andrew, you're an extrovert, aren't you? You keep saying that, but I am an introvert.

Okay, fine. I believe you. Maybe you're like half and half. I'm kind of more in the middle of the spectrum, yeah. Yeah, and so being in this conference with like 1,600 introverts, it's hard.

But it's also because when you do meet another person, you have these deep, meaningful relationships and conversations, which is really exciting i've never been to a conference like this at all so i'm so excited that this is your first one hopefully you'll come next year to orlando hang out with me in harry potter world that's where i'm going to be all the time yes i'm in i'm a hundred percent and i want to do that oh my god i'm so freaking excited to go to orlando i would love to come that's Oh, my God. I'm so freaking excited to go to Orlando.

I would love to come. I'm thinking about it. You got to come, Bob. You got to come. It's a long way to fly, though. We're going to get butterbeer. So I guess, you know, I get this question a lot, too. You know, what did you want to accomplish?

What did you have in your mind before you got here? Why did you want to come? So I'm going to ask you guys that. So what did you want to get out of this conference? And do you feel like you've gotten that? Anybody, anybody can jump at any time. I actually signed up almost a year ago when I was really focused on, I wanted to be blogging full time. That was my goal. And so I came into it when I signed up with this big goal of I'm going to make contacts and this is going to be like a business conference for me. And actually throughout events that happened this year, I ended up transitioning to a full-time job where I am blogging full-time already. So it took a lot of the pressure off the event.

So even just a few months ago, my goals for the event really changed. And I'm happy they did because it was a little bit more relaxing being here where I could just freak out over meeting Jay Money and be a total nerd and not have to worry so much about this is the make or break event for my goals. Yeah, it's like I need to find some clients or whatever. Exactly. So it was a lot more relaxing than I thought it was going to be. And it's been absolutely wonderful.

Honestly, my goal was just to meet as many people as I could and have some deep conversations. And Des and I kind of talked about that before we came out here. And it's just about making new friends, like real friends. Like online friends are great, but having an online friend with a personal presence is amazing. It just takes that to the next level. Yeah. What about you, Bob? For me, I was meeting with people that I've been talking to for years and that was super cool.

And just because the FIRE, the Financial Independence Retirement Early Community is a pretty small one. It's growing. But it's like very, I didn't even know FIRE was a thing, Bob, until I met like Tony from RNEX. It was super cool just to talk nerdy,

like what's your date and what's your number and then all these strategies and all that stuff. Oh my God like what's your date and what's your number and then all these strategies and all that stuff what's your date and what's your number that's that's like super cool and just like people are like looking i was like what are they talking about like what are it's like what's going on and it's it's super cool because you you walk into a room you're like yeah he's retired he's's financially independent. Like, collected net worth here is pretty high here kind of thing. Yeah. So that's been super cool. And people are asking, like, hey, when's your day?

And, like, what are you doing? Have you revealed this? I said something within 10 years. Okay. But the reality is having, like, with the Vancouver real estate being super crazy, we could be fired today if we really want to. Yeah. If we move somewhere else.

Yeah. Like a cheaper country or, you know, Winnipeg. Winnipeg. Oh, yeah. Shots fired. Come into Winnipeg in the winter and we'll see if you want to come there. Yeah. No, but it's like nuts in Vancouver, right?

Yeah. But it's all about flexibility and super cool talking to people. I talked to Tanya quite a bit from Our Next Life. She just revealed herself. I know. Everyone's coming out of the closet. The blogging closet. No, it's been super cool just to network with everybody and seeing all the Canadians here.

I know. That's really cool. I love, too. I love seeing all the Canadians here because we all know each other and somehow gravitate towards each other in safety. Like, oh, my God, another Canadian. And I'm so, like, I tell everyone here, I'm like, FYI, I'm Canadian. Like, I just want them to know because I'm proud to be Canadian in this conference. I also want to see if, for me, I've actually, surprisingly, I've learned a lot. And also, I feel like also things within my personal finance world, I'm like, huh, I have some new ideas about new financial goals and stuff.

Well, for instance, I went to, there was a session on FIRE, a panel, and I literally have never thought about early retirement because I didn't think it was. I thought you kind of terrible, but I had these preconceived notions that you had to be rich already or have a really high paying job or blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, well, I'm self-employed. So is my husband. We just want to retire and not be broke. But that panel was so inspiring. I literally called my husband after. I'm like, I think we should, when I get back, talk about maybe this should be another future goal. Have, has anything like that happened to you? Have you had like any kind of like inspiration, a new idea or like, wow, I thought,

you know, this thing, but actually it's totally different. I think it's been really interesting hearing about all the different ways that people are monetizing their projects and how people make money. I mean, I've been freelance writing a lot through my blog with other clients and it's been really interesting seeing how you can branch out from there, how you can work with brands, how you can pitch those projects. I think that's been one thing that's really come out of it because I mean, there's, there's just freelance writing. Isn't that scalable? I mean, at a certain point, you can't write more words in a week and so I think that that's been something that's been really interesting for me coming out of it cool nothing is like I'm not coming back with a set strategy except that I feel like I have a lot

of projects that are 80 and I need to get them to 100 as soon as possible and that's kind of been the thing that I've heard. And you feel like this has kind of been a good push to just get it done. I find every conference I go to, I come back with a lot more energy than I ended up going with. And I find that always propels me forward. Yeah. And also just meeting like-minded people that are also working towards kind of similar things. They're like, oh yeah, I'm not crazy.

Because sometimes we all feel this, even though we know each other through the online space and communicate on twitter and email and whatever sometimes you feel alone sometimes you're like because like in your other normal life with your friends and family they have no idea what you're doing and they think it's like what is personal finance what is that so yeah i i totally agree i feel like every time i come to this conference when i get back i'm just fired up just like let's do this i'm not crazy for thinking of doing this, this, and this project. Yeah, for me, it's just like getting new ideas to write about, like super motivated and just hearing people talking about like being more vulnerable in your posts, writing more personal stories.

And like, it's about connecting with your readers right so you want to create this relationship and and like they're reading your blog it's because they they like your perspective so like share that perspective with your readers and and that what this was saying like the whole monetization thing like i just went to white coal investor session and he's making like 1.2 million from his blog hello i was my mind's completely blown and he's talking about all these things he's doing i'm like holy crap i don't know any of those like maybe one percent of that yeah so that's just been really cool to to attend and listen and learn about these things i feel like also well in past

conferences i've always felt like a big kind of theme was the idea that it's about growing your blog or your brand so you can't, like, leave the day job and do your own thing. Have you felt like that's kind of been the vibe again? Or, like, what is your perspective? Because I know, well, I mean, I literally just quit my job in January. But all the other conferences, I felt like I was kind of alone doing the day job and the side hustle. I know you guys are all still doing the day job and the side hustle. What is your kind of perspective on that? Do you still kind of feel like, well, I know, Des, you kind of touched a little bit about that,

but it sounds like you kind of found a good mix. You're like you're actually doing something that is the best of both worlds. Do you feel like this is still something, like do any of you to like quit your day job to do that no that's what fire is about right well but but i mean for me it's more reaching financial financial independence than than retire early um my my thing is like once you're financially dependent you don't have to work you work because you choose not because you have to. The whole power shifts once you don't have that pressure making money. Yeah. Right?

So you could still work because you like your work. Yeah. Not because you have to. And that's just been super cool talking to these FIRE community folks. Yeah. Because we're all working towards that. And when people ask me, oh, what's your day? I'm like, well, I absolutely love what I do at at work so it's not really work for me so yeah i don't have the

pressure of like okay i need to monetize my so i can get the hell out of my day job yeah exactly so i don't have that pressure so i guess i'm lucky that way you are lucky for me it's always been about what interests me i've always had a couple of things on the go. So I just always find what's interesting. What's going to be my next kind of passion and follow that. Right now, it seems to be courses. So we're going to work on that for a little while. And then after that, it might be, who knows, more social media, maybe podcasting, maybe something else.

But I just love that there's so many options with this type of side hustle. Absolutely. It's endless. It's almost too hard to pick, but you have to pick something at first and get into it. I think the most interesting thing for me being here and in this question of, do you want a day job? Are you just side hustling with air quotes? You know what?

Side hustling's cool. Whatever. Exactly. Well, and I think the best part of the side hustle and the way I've always treated it is I'm running a company. And so with my blog, it's a very small company, but I get to make executive decisions about what I'm going to pursue. I get to build entire email marketing campaigns, full marketing stacks, make those decisions. And that was actually a big reason that I was able to land the job that I have right now, which is an amazing gig. I get to blog full time for a Canadian

tech company. It's absolutely wonderful. And I think that there's no way that I would have gotten it had I not put in the two and a half years building my blog and being able to speak to that and why I made certain decisions as a, again, air quotes, company owner in my interview because it wasn't really something that I had a lot of experience with in my day job. But I think that the side hustle is this unique opportunity to give you that experience. If you want to be a product manager, start a small company. Do that role for yourself, and then you can speak to it in an interview. It could really accelerate your career even if you never want to leave your day job.

Yeah, I found that, I mean, just because things have changed so rapidly in the past 10 years, if you want to get a particular job, you already have to. You have to prove that, oh, yeah, I can do that. And by doing that, you kind of have to be like, I have a blog or a YouTube channel or whatever. So, yeah, very smart that you figured that out and landed your dream job. That is awesome. I want to shift gears a bit just because we're all Canadians. Have you, or, like, what is your perspective on, I guess, the American kind of bloggers or people at this conference and then the Canadians?

Do you feel like there is a big difference or especially just, like, there is a different space? Like, I have have to you know explain well it's a bit different canada we don't do that or i can't work with your company because you don't exist in my country what are your thoughts on that they keep asking me if i say a a lot they do that too i'm like you know what where are you getting this where are you getting this information it's from me i say a lot what all the time just like at the end of every sentence? Eh? Almost, yeah. And I catch myself doing it more here than I do in Canada, so I'm sorry.

It just comes out. We don't notice it back home because everybody's kind of doing it. It's just part of the background, but I've done that a couple times. Like, oh, you're Canadian. No, I literally said hi. No, you said hi, eh. I said that a few times after a few beers and they're like, eh, the eh's coming out. The A's coming out.

A couple beers to come out, man. No, I think the biggest thing with what you're suggesting is when you talk about tax advantage accounts, like the 401K, I'm like, I have no clue what you're talking about. I know. And the big thing here, especially within the FIRE community, is the whole health care. Yeah. I'm like, I have no clue what you guys are talking about. I just spent 20 minutes talking to a fellow physician in the U.S.,

and he was talking about how the insurance works, and I was like, whew, so far I don't have to deal with this. Yeah, it is a different world. Like, health care is insane. And also, so glad I'm Canadian. You know, it's like that we don't have to really really worry about that because it seems very complex and yeah and that's especially a big a huge factor you have to include in your fire calculation and and i'm so glad i don't have to do that

exactly exactly i think one of the big differences is that the canadian community and i would seriously encourage anyone who's canadian and who's thinking about launching a blog, you should do it because I find there are so many more American bloggers and it's so much more competitive. Whereas in Canada, we are a tight-knit community. I find it's a very supportive blogging community and there are so many opportunities to work with the amazing financial brands that we have in Canada and support them and really talk about the brands that you personally use and love, they're going to be very open to working with you because there just aren't that many Canadian blogs. It's really true. Like I feel like I just know maybe it's always been small, but like I feel like when I was like a baby blogger just starting out, it seemed like there was so many and like, oh my God, no one's going to read it. And then you start it, and then you get to know the other bloggers,

and you're like, literally, there's like 15 of us. Yeah. You know? Well, I'm sure there's more, but, you know. And it narrows down if you're talking about whose niche you're targeting. Yeah, or like what location. Like, oh, are they East Coast, West Coast, whatever. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I would echo what you guys said, like, especially with the healthcare and with just targeting. Like, if you're out there and you're thinking, well's a lot of blogs out there you should get started yeah yeah your story is unique and you need to i know that's we're not talking about the canadian thing right now but yeah in canada it feels like there's a lot but there really isn't and if you can get into it and stick it out for a few years you're going to see some pretty cool rewards yeah okay well that that kind of pings something in my mind uh because all of you have had your blogs for a couple years now.

What, I guess, are some things that you have learned since starting out? Like, was there anything that you thought, oh, you know, I'll just, like, do it for a little bit as a hobby and then it's completely changed? Like, what are some of the key things that you've learned about starting a blog? The biggest thing I did when I started was I bought a three-year, uh, posting subscription. Yeah. And I told myself that you're not quitting for the first three years, no matter what. And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote, and sometimes it was pretty bad. We've all written those.

But it's, you're new at it and give yourself the time yeah just get into it yeah and but the thing that i would say has really helped us out or myself and maybe des can attest to this is we have a mastermind group where we meet weekly and we talk and we just kind of have that other an accountability and somebody to pick you up when you're feeling like you just can't do it. And just some encouragement, goal setting. It's really useful. Yeah.

I would agree with that. I would say if you, and if you are hearing this and you're newer or you don't have a mastermind group, ask people who you feel like are at your level. Don't ask people who are already in seven mastermind groups and who are super impressive. I'm sure they'd be happy to do a one-time half hour chat with you about blogging and advice, but a weekly commitment from someone who's much further along from you might not be the best place to start. And I also think that you have to start somewhere. There is so much to learn. And I have this a little bit of what I feel like is an advantage because I work in marketing as my day job. So I know things about web design. I know things about marketing and I've been writing for years and years and years, but take

it one step at a time. If you work in investing or you don't come from this world, just learn how to set up a WordPress website. Start with a Squarespace site, start somewhere and take baby steps. There's something you can do, you know, once a week, every week, learn something new. You're going to build an amazing skillset that's going to provide so much value for you in your blog, in your work. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I guess the biggest thing I learned is just writing quality instead of quantity, right? Yeah.

I'm guilty of this. I just want to pump all stuff out because I have like, okay, I haven't posted this week. I need something else and so on but like it's tough because you know you you you're you want something on the on your blog something new but you're kind of running out idea to write about so that that's kind of always like a teeter-totter a little bit um but yeah the biggest thing really is when I decided to reveal my identity and the exposure I've been getting is pretty cool. And just writing more about my own personal perspective. And I think because I'm an immigrant and been living in Canada for over 20 years I think I could give a different

perspective absolutely which I haven't really explored on my blog so far so I that's something I've been thinking about it and what to write more about it so I'm pretty motivated when it comes to that um have any you guys haven't been uh besides Bob you haven't been anonymous were you always public bloggers I was anonymous for about four months when I started. But I was very bad at it. The long-running joke is that I was anonymous, but my nickname was Des, not Desiree, which I go by in real life. So it wasn't that anonymous. So not Clark Kent anonymous.

No. Well, mine wasn't really anonymous, too, right? Because I've been using Talcant since I started using the internet in the 90s. So when I published the blog, some of my friends were like, hey, you now have a blog. I've been reading it. I was like, uh-oh. Right?

I'm getting the couple minutes to wrap up. So I want to make sure that everyone listening can follow you guys, hit you up, because I know you're also working on a lot of amazing things. So Andrew, where can people find you and what kind of exciting projects do you have in the works that people can get excited about? On Millennial Homeowner, we've got a couple of courses in the works. The first one should be coming out. I'll put myself under the gun by beginning of 2018. That's going to teach you how to just save up for a down payment on a home. The next one's going to be how to buy a home that you can actually afford and still have your life.

Yeah. And you can find me at millennialhomeowner.com or millennialhomeowner.ca. We're in, because Canada and US are completely different, so we've got a Canadian specific site because that's needed. Right on. Des? Yeah. So people can find me at halfbanked.com and half underscore banked on Twitter. That one

always trips people up. I know. I got the underscore too. It sucks. It's just my favorite place to hang out and connect with people is on Twitter. And I'm actually also launching a course in January. So I did the first run of my quick budget fix course. It's, I'd say an entry level price course just to help you figure out what you're doing with your money, where your money is going, and how you want to spend it. And so that'll be launching at the very start of January for a month-long kind of money kickstart for the year. Awesome. And Bob?

So, Bob, yeah, you can find me on my blog, TauCan.com, T-A-W-C-A-N, and Twitter at TauCan. That's just the name I go by on the internet, so you can find me anywhere. Yeah, and what I'm super excited is I just recently launched a, I guess, a money coaching or personal finance coaching service after many of my readers have asked about it. And I never thought about offering that service. And it's been super cool. So, yeah, it's just like talking to somebody for an hour or two hours.

And it could be anywhere from how to get out of debt or how to start investing to, you know, this is my fire plane. Does that make sense? Or I'm almost at FI. Can I pull the trigger? So I had clients all over the spectrum and it's it's been super cool talking to them and realizing that i'm like there are other canadians out there having the same plan so that's that's like it's been really neat awesome awesome well thank you

guys for getting up early and joining me and i'm surprised all of us still have our voices i'm probably the one with the worst voice right now but thank you so much for joining me and I'm surprised all of us still have our voices. I'm probably the one with the worst voice right now, but thank you so much for joining me for this special episode of the Mo Money Podcast. Thanks for having me on. Thanks a lot. Thank you. And that was it. That was the special bonus episode that I did live at FinCon with my favorite peeps, Desiree from Half Banked. Check her out at halfbanked.com Andrew from Family Money Plan familymoneyplan.com is where you can find him and of course Bob uh a fellow Vancouverite uh you can find him at talkhand.com I hope you enjoyed this special episode uh it was so much fun to do uh

especially doing something live like that man I should do more live podcasts. But anywho, I did mention actually at the beginning of this episode, if you're like, wait, you mentioned something about this money 2020 payments race. What the heck were you talking about, girl? Well, it is a crazy race that I did for seven days, kind of like a money nerd version of the amazing race. And I've logged every single day of the race and you can find out more details about uh what the hell that looks like um which uh really was you know i would like to i look back on it with fondness and uh it was a really great experience but also super crazy stressful i was very tired i took the bus way too much which was a mistake and you can find uh kind

of all the shenanigans on my YouTube channel. And you can find that at jessicamorehouse.com slash YouTube. It'll direct you right to my channel and you can subscribe and check out all the other new episodes I've got going on there. Also, speaking of my YouTube channel, if you're listening right now and you're like, huh, I would love to see what some of those guests look like. Well, for lots of this current season, I have been doing video interviews. So I have the audio that I share, obviously, for the podcast, but I also put them on my YouTube channel. So lots of my big guests, you'll definitely want to check out the video so you can take a look at them. Just name dropping some people. Got

John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneurs on Fire, Chris Gilbo from Side Hustle School, and a lot more where that came from. So again, check out my YouTube if you don't mind. JessicaMorehouse.com slash YouTube is where you can do all that. All right. I'm going to let you go. Have a fabulous rest of your day. I will be back here next week, next Wednesday, with a fresh new episode of the Mo Money Podcast. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.