The Canadian Investor - How to Teach Teens About Money and Save for Their Education

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

In this episode, we break down Empire Company’s recent rebound and how its discount store strategy and capex transformation are paying off after years of underperformance. We also answer a listener question about RESPs and walk through Simon’s actual RESP portfolio for his daughter—including why there’s a large Bitcoin allocation and how he’s thinking about long-term growth.Dan tackles a listener question on Uber and whether autonomous vehicles pose a threat or opportunity for the company. We wrap up with a segment on teaching teenagers about money, from the power (and danger) of compounding to understanding purchasing power, needs vs. wants, and financial consistency. Tickers of stocks discussed: EMP.A, UBER Get your TSX Meetup tickets here! Get your Calgary Meetup Tickets here! Check out our portfolio by going to Jointci.com Our Website Our New Youtube Channel! Canadian Investor Podcast Network Twitter: @cdn_investing Simon’s twitter: @Fiat_Iceberg Braden’s twitter: @BradoCapital Dan’s Twitter: @stocktrades_ca Want to learn more about Real Estate Investing? Check out the Canadian Real Estate Investor Podcast! Apple Podcast - The Canadian Real Estate Investor  Spotify - The Canadian Real Estate Investor  Web player - The Canadian Real Estate Investor Asset Allocation ETFs | BMO Global Asset Management Sign up for Fiscal.ai for free to get easy access to global stock coverage and powerful AI investing tools. Register for EQ Bank, the seamless digital banking experience with better rates and no nonsense.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Are you buying Canadian? Well, why not invest Canadian? At BMO ETFs, we're committed to helping you build a brighter financial future, because it's our future too. This is our home, and as Canadians ourselves, we know what you need to grow wealth right here in Canada. Visit BMOETFs.com for more. Canada. Visit BMOET be some great opportunities for investors. This has to be one of the biggest quarters I've seen from this company in quite some time. Welcome back to the Canadian Investor Podcast. We are back for a somewhat news and earnings episode.

There is one earnings We'll go over today just because it's a bit slow in between earnings season. It's pretty normal So we're doing it a bit differently today We'll do answer some questions We'll also be also finish off with a segment on how to talk with financial about financial literacy to teenagers, but also people that might be more beginners that unfortunately didn't get to learn the basics from school because that's always been a challenge

I've seen back in my day, but from what I've been hearing, still a challenge today where it's kind of a hit or miss whether they're actually teaching some valid or useful concept to teenagers that they can apply in real world Real world uses for financial literacy, but also for investing Yeah, I have a nephew that's in financial literacy and a lot of the stuff that he would told me

He was he was learning is not really applicable to the real world I do think they struggle in terms of you know, educating people on probably one of the most important things to be educated on in terms of surviving in the in the real world especially now that costs are so high so yeah it should be a pretty interesting episode yeah exactly and before we get started just a couple housekeeping events for those interested in the Calgary event coming up on July 8 so there's some big changes that we're announcing. We decided to make the event free. That's based on the feedback that we received just because a lot of locals

reached out to us and said, look, there's a lot of free events going on in Calgary during this stampede. It's a big party. So when people are deciding whether to pay and come to our event or going to free events, obviously that makes a whole lot of sense and in hindsight think about it being in Ottawa. For me I can relate to that. For example if you did an event on July 1st in Ottawa and you charged for the event it may be a bit difficult to get a really big uptick because you're competing with a whole lot of free stuff that's happening. So we decided to make it free at the end of the day. It wasn't a huge cost. It was just us trying to break even for the event. But we decided, you know what, we'd rather have a jam-packed event with as many of our listeners as possible interact. That's always

what I enjoy doing. So if you're interested in coming, please make sure that you register the registration link for Eventbrite.ite will be in the show note. Looking forward to see you. Dan will be there. Nick Hill and Dan Fos from the Real Estate Podcast will be there as well. Brayden will try his best to come, but he has a lot of stuff happening, a lot of things being rolled out with fiscal.ai, formerly finchat.io. So he's not sure yet where I'm trying to convince him or at least hoping he can move things around to make it but if not I think it'll still be a great event so we decided to make it free for everyone. We'll take a little

bit of a hit financially but that's not the end of the world I think just making sure it's a great event. Us as well having a good time I think it'll be fun so that's it for the housekeeping anything you wanted to add before you It's a great event. Us as well having a good time, I think it'll be fun. So that's it for the housekeeping. Anything you wanted to add before we get started? I guess I would just mention if you've already paid, you'll be kind of taken care of in that regard. Like if you bought a ticket.

Yeah, we'll figure we'll figure out exactly like it. We'll make sure that it's free for everyone. So not to worry if you've already paid. We'll figure that part out. Now anything else? Nope. No? Okay perfect so let's get started so we'll start off with you. You went over Empire who just had their earnings release. Yeah so they reported last week so Empire Company pretty big rebound like pretty solid results over the last while so they own stores like Sobeys, Safeway, I believe like Fresh Co might be their

their discount brand we really only have Sobeys and Safeway here that's probably their two main brands and in at least in Alberta they're mostly on the expensive end like they're definitely not the discount end of grocery stores. So when food inflation was going through the roof back in what was a 2022, even to a certain extent, 2023, the company struggled pretty hard. So from its highs in 2022, it would go on to lose around 30% over the next couple of years. And in contrast, Loblaws would actually go on to gain 36% over that same timeframe And I think this would have been more so an element of Loblaws having a lot more discount brands I mean, they're probably the heaviest

Discount brand grocer in the country, but Empire has actually rebounded in a big way So we have earnings up 17 and a half percent year-over. Same store sales increased by 3.8% and back when Empire was struggling, I don't know if you have the same store sales here. Yeah. Yeah. So we have, you know, it was pretty steady, you know, in 2020, 2021 at 4.7% and then you can see here in 2023 and 2024 dipped quite a bit. The same store sales you're seeing on Fiscal.ai here, it would be their combined same store sales. I actually only utilize their food same store sales, which sat at 3.8%. And if you look to food same store sales, which I don't know if they have that KPI, but they do track it separately. Like it was effectively flat through, you know, the heavy inflation periods in terms of food. So it looks like people are maybe starting to shift. Oh, there is food there. Yeah. So you can see in 2021, they actually reported a decline. And then in 2023, it was relatively soft again, and then

it started to rebound. So over the last few years the company has gone through a bit of a transformation. So they've kind of ramped up capital expenditures a lot in an attempt to get the business back on track. I think they they bought Safeway this was quite a while ago. I think it was back in 2013 but that acquisition really didn't work out all that well for them and they're actually I'm pretty sure they're really didn't work out all that well for them. And they're actually, I'm pretty sure they're changing a ton of Safeway stores to discount brand stores. So they're kind of making that shift.

They're looking to reduce large unnecessary costs, they call it, and just developing more discounted brand stores. And I think this is just the end result of you know food inflation people looking to you know budget where they can and I mean thus far it kind of looks like the transformation is paying off I mean they've been doing this over the last five six years and the one interesting thing is the company mentioned that they're noticing customers are shopping at fewer stores and that promotional shopping is declining so this is likely due to the slowdown in food inflation and lower interest rates.

And really what this means is that shoppers who were chasing deals and attempt to save money in 2022 and 2023 and maybe going to numerous stores to get groceries are now sticking to one place. So when food inflation was high, people might have bought certain items at a certain store, and then they seen they were on sale elsewhere and they're driving around. Whereas now, you know, people are probably just, you know, costs have steadied a bit. Rates have gone down a bit. So now maybe they're just kind of saying, oh, it's not worth it to do that. And they're kind of sticking to one store. So they said they're seeing the benefit from that, but they also mentioned that customers are now trading up from boxed and frozen items to more fresh produce. So fresh produce is one of the higher margin products for grocery stores. So if this continues, it would definitely still be a tailwind.

And again, I think this is more of an element to the pricing environment. When prices were skyrocketing, people probably stepped down buying cheaper, likely unhealthier foods. But when you can't afford anything else, that's ultimately the reality. And the company is ramping up capital expenditures next year as well. They expect to spend around $850 million. I think the guidance a few quarters ago was around 750. So they're ramping that up. Half of this will either be allocated to opening new stores or renovating previous stores.

And the interesting thing here is the company plans to open 24 new stores this year. And typically a normal year for Empire would have been around eight. So they're definitely getting a bit more aggressive in this remark. And I would imagine that most of them will be Discount lines and they expect to grow earnings per share by 8 to 11 percent annually over the long term

So a lot of these grocers have put up double-digit earnings growth rates over the years and they never really grow revenue all that much I mean it grows low single digits max and The the bulk of this is done by you know taking the cash flows they generate they aggressively buy back shares Pretty much all the grocers and in addition to this they invest heavily into the networks Ultimately, you know improving the efficiency of the stores which in turn boost margins which in turn boost profits so Pretty good quarter from Empire their stock stock price has done very, very well over the last six to nine months here. It's definitely making up some ground

in terms of performance relative to Loblaw. Loblaw has definitely been the better performing grocer, but they're closing the gap a little bit. Yeah, I mean, it feels like all the grocers have been performing pretty well recently. Like I was looking at them, Metro and obviously Loblaws and they've just been on a bit of a rip over the last like six months or so. Loblaws is a bit longer but yeah. Yeah like Loblaws had a hell of a five years, even three years. It's just been crazy, up 250% the last five years.

percent the last five years. Yeah but even the last year so if you're looking at all three here Metro, Loblaws and Empire so all three grocers like they've been they've been doing pretty well if you're looking at total returns you're looking at Empire actually the best performer over the last year at 65 percent and you have Loblaws as 45% and then Metro at 41%. So you could have done a lot worse than owning the grocers that the boring businesses in the past year. Yeah these are about as boring as it gets. I mean there's a lot of controversy around them as well. I mean a lot of people don't yeah it's that's endless but I mean they they know how to turn out cash flow that's for sure. Yeah exactly and we will be doing I'm not sure exactly when we'll be releasing it definitely in But I mean, they know how to turn out cash flow, that's for sure. Yeah, exactly. And we will be doing, I'm not sure exactly when we'll be releasing it.

Definitely in the next couple of weeks, we'll be doing a top 10 stocks to hone in the next decade. There will be one of the grocers, so stay tuned in terms of the names on the list. But I was looking at all three of them just to have a look and yeah, they've done pretty well. But yes, like you said, a lot of people, not a lot of people, but a decent amount of people are not fans of these companies. Rightfully so, right, there has been some scandals, the bread price fixing, for example, in the past. So, it's not like they've been the best corporate citizen. By the end of the day, as investments, they have looked pretty good.

Yeah, I think, well, it was in the last couple of weeks, I think that bread scandal lawsuit was finally settled. I can't remember. I think it cost blah, blah, like 600 plus million or something. But yeah, I mean, it, there are necessities. I mean, they're, you know, discretionary businesses and they just, they perform In this kind of market, I like having some cash on the sidelines. It gives me the flexibility to jump on opportunities when the right stock goes on sale. But just because the cash is waiting, it doesn't mean it shouldn't be working for me. That's why I use EQ Bank. They offer some of the best interest rate

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So we'll move on to a couple of questions that we received and then I'll finish with that segment I mentioned when we started recording. So question from ElGolfarino on Joint TCI and the question was specific to RSPs. So I've been wondering if you would use a different strategy if you were to set up in RESP. Would like to hear a show on the RESP and maybe even Simon's daughter RESP portfolio. So I think it's a really good questions. We've talked about RASP before,

but I haven't gone into the strategy that I've used for my daughter, which is actually quite simple. I'll go over that towards the end of this segment. But before that, a lot of people may not be aware of RASPs. And I know Dan, you're gonna be listening attentively because I think you have some big news, right? Yeah, so I haven't really looked too much into the RASP

because I don't have children, but I will be having- Yet. Yet, twins in November, so while November due date, so I will have to open up a couple of these, I imagine. So, but yeah it's big news we've been you know trying for a while happened yeah well congratulations yeah actually I've known for a little bit but you know kept it to myself like you requested yeah my my wife was let was telling me she kind of

wanted to wait a bit until we announced it but it's out of the bag now and yeah, it's going to be a big life changer. So I'll be doing a lot of listening in this segment because I haven't paid it. Like I know about the accounts, but I haven't really, and I know the matching and stuff from the government. They're pretty good accounts especially if you start them early because you got what, a 20 year horizon to you know. Yeah depending obviously when the child actually goes to post-secondary education it has to

be an eligible establishment but it doesn't have to be like university college it can also be trade so that's why I think it's a really interesting one. So just to give a bit of a primer here, obviously it's not like an over, I'm not gonna go into all the details. This is just an overview of what they are. If I wanted to go into all the detail, probably would take like 25, 30 minutes

to just really explain how they work. So it's a registered education savings plan, RESP. It's a type of account that you open to save for a child's education. You don't have to be the parent to open an account and contribute to it. It could be a grandparent or even a friend of the family. So you don't necessarily have to be related. Money contributed to this account is after tax dollars so you cannot use a contribution to reduce your taxable income like you would with an RESP. There is a maximum lifetime limit of $50,000 that can be contributed. There are also some government programs, government grants that are available like the Canada Education Savings Grant, the CESG, and the Canada Learning Bond. The Canada

Learning Bond has some income tied to it so it's not everyone that would be eligible for that. There's also certain provinces, I believe Quebec and BC if I remember correctly, but don't quote me on that if I messed up I'm pretty sure Quebec, that offer some provincial grants to it. The money can be used to pay for tuition, rent, books, tools, and transportation. The withdrawals or payments are made to the child himself or herself when he or she needs it for school. The dollar value contributed is not taxable since it has already been taxed. However, any gains grants on those contributions are taxable, but since they

are taxable at the child's tax rate, there is usually little to no taxes paid on it since the child will likely not have that much income when they are in school. So effectively they're going to pay little to no tax on it. And while the money is in the RSP, there are no taxes that are applied. It's only when the money is paid out to the child. There are some kind of time limits as well on when to use the money, if it's never used, and so on. I won't go into those details, but that's just a kind of a general overview of RSPs and how they work. There's a few different types as well depending, I think you can have an individual one or one that you can have for multiple children as well,

which could be useful for you, Dan. So there's more information on our ESPs and I encourage people to read up more, but was just to give a little bit of a primer here. Can you have multiple accounts under the same child? I don't know if that would be like say, cause you said it doesn't need to be opened by the parent himself.

So if they couldn't maximize it, could somebody else open another account and maximize that one? I don't know if that's the case. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. Yeah, so I'm not sure if the amount is per child or per contributor. Like they use, I can't remember exactly.

I think it's a subscriber or something. I can't remember the exact term. They have these funky government terms. So I'm not sure about that. So I have to look that up I haven't had the problem for my daughter. So it's not something I have looked up, but that's a good question Yeah, yeah, they do. Well, I don't know if you go over this but the matching I think they match or you said It's only in certain provinces. I know I Think the provincial grants. grants yes the federal grants are available to all Canadians yes yeah they match you up to 500 bucks a year

something like that yeah yeah exactly that's a I believe it's 500 a year if I remember correctly yeah yeah and I think I think it amounts to can't exactly remember like 7200 if you contribute to Max or no, it's not that anyways I'm messing up the numbers because I didn't do my notes for that. But yeah, so they'll yeah here they'll they'll match 20% on the first 2500 contributed annually up to a maximum lifetime of 7,200. That's it. Okay, there was a 7,200 number.

Yeah, take the free money when it's available. Yeah. That's it, okay, there was a 7200 number. Yeah, yeah. So take the free money when it's available. Yeah, so yes, typically you'll want to do 2,500 a year if you wanna max out the contribution up to that maximum of 7200. Yeah, now in terms of my personal situation, I opened RSP for my daughter a few months after she was born, so we've been putting money on it

on a, I would say semi regular basis but it has grown into a decent little account we definitely haven't maxed it out or anything like that yet and in terms of the portfolio well you have to keep in mind the time frame as well that the money will have to grow so like I mentioned my daughter it was open when she was a few months old now she's three so she won't need this for probably another 15 years or so, roughly. Maybe a bit more, depending. Maybe she'll go backpacking in Europe for a few years, who knows.

That's important because 15 years is a pretty long time, but it's also not 30 years. So it's not like you're contributing to a TFSA and you're 21 and you'll need that money, or an RESP, you're 20, 21, or you're in early 20're 21 and you'll need that money or an RESP, you're 20, 21 or you're in early 20s and you won't need that money for another 40 years. Yes, 15 years is a long time, but it's not that long, right? It's long term, but a lot of stuff can still happen. I tried to make the investment strategy as simple as possible since I think it's important to, obviously it's an important account to me,

but to keep in mind, just for context, like the RESP of my daughter is about worth 2% of the value of all our other investments. So yes, it's not nothing, but it's not as a proportionate basis, it's not also the biggest biggest amount the biggest account and it's definitely important for education. Don't get me wrong But it's also something I wanted to just keep pretty simple that I didn't want to have to constantly have to stay on top of it, so

Right now there's a total of four holdings. I have a Bitcoin ETF that's roughly 40%. Now I will explain, people may be like, oh my God, what is he doing? Well, it's pretty simple. I bought those Bitcoin ETF when Bitcoin was trading between 25 and 30,000 in 2023. 25,000, 30,000 per Bitcoin, a USD in 2023. I just haven't touched that allocation,

so I didn't add any more since. The only thing I did really with that allocation is I sold those at ETF to buy the US listed one to save on the fees. So that's the only thing I did, but I didn't add any new fresh money. It might feel like a bit of a high allocation, but like I mentioned before,

you know, it's not a huge portion of our portfolio altogether, and we have a pretty sizable TFSA as well. So at the end of the day, of course there's no grants in the TFSA, but it's something, you know, we do have some savings that we could use for education if need be.

And I'm also not adding to this position when we're putting fresh money into the account. When we're putting fresh money, it goes to one of the other old things. So that 50, 40% around 40% Bitcoin ETF right now, 35% is a US total market index ETF, XU.TO. And then I have roughly 15% in the BMO gold ETF ZGLD.TO. The main reason for that one is I had a little bit of cash sitting around late 2024, late last year, and it was just it I just didn't really see that many good opportunities in the market at that point instead of sitting on cash for something that I'll be holding for 15 years. I just figured, okay, I'll put in gold ETF and I can always just trim it, sell it and buy adds to some index ETFs that are more stock based as I see some opportunities to

do so. And the rest of it, about 5% is in another index ETF, one that I own with my regular portfolio or my other accounts, which is the all-world excluding Canada XAW.TO. So these are the allocations here. I know it may be a bit weird to people. I mean, I wouldn't recommend putting 40% in a Bitcoin ETF. This is just more of a reflection of how well Bitcoin has done since I put the money in and I will likely be trimming that in the in the near future

to have definitely a bit less Bitcoin exposure and a bit more on the equity side I'll probably just be opportunistic about it yeah. Yeah and I think with with accounts like this I guess as you get closer to college, university, I guess you would have to really modify this portfolio because I mean you wouldn't really want you know, if your child is 17 years old and probably going to college in two years, would you really want like 100% equity exposure or you know this makes a crypto like I would imagine you would have to scale it downward and maybe go into I mean at that point maybe even money market funds or something like that because I mean I guess it's it's something like this the last thing you'd

want to happen is to have 100 equity when they're 17 and the markets bomb 30% Exactly. I think I would approach it in a similar fashion that I would approach a Retiring. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's a little trickier because When you're dealing with kids that are 18 19 20, I'm sure you can remember but I went to university and I Remember and I still think this to this day is I think the Quebec model with Cégeps where you have high school you finished and you do kind of a two-year in between university and that two year you can actually do an extra year and have more of a specialization in technology as they call

it but that two years after high school it just prepares you a bit more to what university will be like and you start taking courses that will peak your interests or you might not like. So it gives you a better idea without having to commit. The number of kids that I saw when I was in university that ended up going to university straight after high school because in Ontario that's what you do and then ended up completely changing or dropping out or whatever it is and tuition is not cheap. That's why I think the Quebec model is actually quite good because you know a lot of kids just don't know what they're doing at 17, 18 years old like and oftentimes they don't know what they're going to do until they're probably mid-20s, right? That's not unusual.

So instead of having to pay tens of thousand dollars in tuition, I think that's usually kind of the best approach to do. But when it comes to these investment, I think that's what I'm getting at is your child might finish high school and then I was kind of joking before, but maybe they're like, you know what,

I wanna work for a year or two and see how it goes. Like it's tough because you don't know exactly what your child will want to do and they might change their mind. And so I think that's where you really want to also start having a discussion with them maybe a couple of years before just trying to get the pulse of what their interests are, whether they maybe they don't want to go to university, maybe they just want to start a business, like whatever it is, you want to start getting that sense so you can try to position your portfolio accordingly.

Because if you talk to your child, then they end up and say, you know, they're 16, 17. They're like, you know what, like, I go to university, college or whatever, but I want to take an extra two, three, four, five years to just work, go on the job market. And they're really decided or they want to start a business like, okay, well, maybe I won't put as much in cash right now or money market fund. I'll leave it mostly invested, maybe tweak a little bit while they're still kind of making up their mind, whether they're going to be using it for post-secondary education or not. Yeah because you do have a very long time after opening the account until you need

to pull it out. I think it's yeah 35. Yeah 35 if I remember correctly. Yeah I don't have like that's why like some of the stuff I'm like oh I'm not 100% sure I don't have it in my notes So I just yeah, just yeah, it looks like it's 35. So I mean, there's not necessarily any rush No use the money. I mean I if I had one open I could still use it You know what? I mean if one existed like it wouldn't have been open. Well, I mean, I guess I'm getting a little older than that Now, yeah, not quite. I'm beyond that barrier. But I mean, yeah, you've got a long time to use the account. So yeah, there's just to say that. Yes, I agree. You'll want to change the investment mix at something probably. Yes, less equities. Obviously, the 40% Bitcoin is definitely too high. Even right now is probably too high, but it's still, you know,

the account still relatively small. So honest, I could probably just keep it as is and just as I keep adding money, just put it in the index funds and then that will probably eat at that Bitcoin allocation as a total percentage because I'm not adding to it. So I'm not too worried about that. But as you get closer, it does, it's really tricky because, you know, teenagers are young, they don't really know oftentimes what to do so it can be pretty tricky on how to actually manage that even when they're relatively close to the age of using it because you know they're young, they're not sure what they're what to do like I mean I was in that situation too maybe you were

maybe you weren't but not a lot of kids know exactly what they're doing at that age. I pretty much went straight into the trades. That was a popular thing to do in Alberta, so I was pretty much immediately into that. But yeah, I mean, teenagers are relatively unpredictable. I imagine you could talk to one and they want to believe. And now you run stocktrades.ca, so exactly. Yes, exactly. I changed.

Yeah, but it's a good example right like I think that's my point is just a lot of kids they're not quite sure what they're doing at that age right like even if you went to trades and I know you practice as an electrician it's still different than what you're doing today and it's not that far out right so that's that's kind of my point yeah yeah so that I think that was kind of a good question, really a fun little kind of overview to do. And if people would like to have more information on our ESP,

I'm happy to do another segment down the line where we probably drill in a bit more. Maybe we do it before your little ones are born. Yeah. Be a good primer. So now the next one here, a question from Subham. Your little ones are born. Yeah. Be a good primer. Mm-hmm. So now the next one here, a question from Subam. Hopefully I'm pronouncing that correctly.

If not, I do apologize. Like I always say, feel free to butcher my name in French. A few times will be even. And on joint TCI. So you wanted to get our thoughts on Uber as a long-term holding as the competitive landscape evolves and the moat shifts towards autonomous vehicles and robo taxi networks potentially dominated by players like Waymo Tesla and other developing their own ecosystem.

You still see Uber as a worthwhile investment, $2 cost average in two over the long run. So he really wants to know what we have to say on there. So I'll chime in a little bit, but you do own Uber. So I'll let you take the lead for that one. Yeah, so there's a lot of talk about you know, the AVs and you know, the robo taxis like taking Uber's business. I really don't think that's gonna be the case. I mean first off, although, although it's a huge chunk of the business, no doubt, I think they had what, three billion trips last quarter, maybe something like that. Like it's not solely a ride hailing company. I mean, they have delivery, they have freight.

I think freight is a very small portion of the business. So I think it's maybe 5% and advertising. I mean, Uber Eats, I would say, has a lot more competition. I mean, there's a lot more players in that space. But I mean, the ride hailing is not the sole portion of the business. It's obviously the backbone. But I see more of these AV companies partnering with Uber

to utilize the network and potentially putting their fleets into Uber's system. I mean, we've already kind of seen this with Waymo. I think these AV companies are gonna look to partner with it in order to just kind of streamline the process and improve the overall user experience. I know there was a big news, I think it was like a few days ago on Tesla offering

that like $4.20 robotaxi rate in the major cities. Of course, 420. Of course it's 420. Yeah. Of course it's 420. And they went up like I remember Tesla was up like 10% on the day and everybody was talking about oh yeah like they you know they can undercut something like Uber like there is no way that this rate would be sustainable. I think it's probably some sort of you, initial rate and it's also in cities probably with very small

Lengths, I guess of trips. I mean, I I don't really think that's sustainable over the long term and I think Uber will you know in terms of AVs they'll probably run more so along the lines of a distribution partner rather than a direct competitor to these companies. And we're talking about, you know, these AV companies are operating initially in a select few cities, even if, you know, they disrupted Uber's business in major US cities. I mean, this is a small piece of the pie when we look to, you know, the overall global operations. And then we have it, it's they're not going to roll out all these AVs in every single country. I mean, some of them are probably, I don't want to say decades,

but maybe a decade away from rolling something significant like that out. And I mean, it already has a dominant share of the ride share market globally, effectively. And I mean, in areas where the AVs are evolving, I believe it'll just, it'll form more partnerships. And, you know, just as I mentioned, be a bit of a distribution network rather than an actual like AV operator.

And I've been on the long-term side of things, obviously I own Uber, I've been adding to Uber. It was a recent buy by me. I bought it when it was in the mid $70 range when we had that big drawdown in the market. So it's a recent ad buddy. Liberation day. Yeah, that was about when I took the position.

I mean, it's done quite well, obviously for me. That was, I had wanted to buy the company for quite a while. So I mean, that's just an element of a bit of a lucky timing by me, but I plan to continue to add to it. company for quite a while. So I mean, that's just an element of a bit of a lucky timing by me. But I plan to continue to add to it. I will admit, I didn't really believe in the company back when they were burning through a boatload of cash, but they're doing very well now. And I see this as being almost a bit of a tailwind rather than a headwind. I don't think you're going to get Tesla and Waymo rolling over Uber and kind of killing their network.

I think they're gonna work together in a way. And it might change Uber's business model a bit, but I don't think it's gonna materially impact them. Yeah, and at the end of the day too, you have to think that Uber has the distribution network in terms of the network effect and the amount of subscribers that they have so I think that to me is

Bullish for Uber, but there could definitely be some disruption It's non zero possibility and the one thing I'll say about AVs is it's one thing to do it And I think Austin, Texas, I think is where they've been rolling it out I think there's been some issues, but I don't know how widespread they are. Sometimes the media will blow things up and you know, Elon is not necessarily the most loved person universally to say the least. He's very polarizing as we've seen over the last few months. But if you think about it, look, this is a Canadian podcast. Think about it how AVs would work in Montreal.

Have you ever been in Montreal during the winter and tried to drive in Montreal? Like downtown Montreal, that area, and even when you're not downtown, like good luck if you can program an ev to actually figure that out because a lot of Two-way streets become one ways Ottawa is actually pretty similar in some areas too I'm sure it's probably like that in Calgary with the snow banks. Like it's just crazy. You have these old streets that were built like two three hundred years ago

They weren't originally conceived for cars, but now cars use them. It's just sometimes a bit of a disaster with all the snow. So it may be easier in some cities than other, but I'm just thinking about it like just from a Canadian perspective. I don't know how they would make that word because how do you make sure that it's properly trained for winter? When it's a constantly changing landscape like it's not like the roads always the same right like it's constantly changing So I don't know. I really don't know we don't get too many of those like shifting roads in Calgary And I mean we're not obviously not as old as much or else so we don't have a lot of those But yeah, I mean it's definitely something obviously not as old as Montreal, so we don't have a lot of those. But yeah, I mean, it's definitely something

that needs to be taken into consideration. I imagine the technology, we're very early in that space. So I imagine the technology would probably be able to be rolled out to actually accommodate for that. But I mean, even in that instance, I think a lot of these companies are working with Uber rather than directly competing with them, which is why I'm really not all that worried about it, which is why I plan to continue holding it.

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Summer always gets extra busy. Weekends at the lake, trips out to Canada's east coast, vacations with the family, chasing a bit of sunshine somewhere new. Every time I'm away, and probably you as well, your place just sits at home empty. And since I'm already staying at a great Airbnb, why not have my own place generating a little income on the side while I'm gone? I've always thought it's a great idea, but it made me nervous to think about the work required. It's easier now with Airbnb's co-host network. I can find a local trusted co-host to handle all of it.

Guest check-ins, support, even cleaning, no stress, no extra work. If your place is often empty in the summer, maybe it's time to let it make some income for you. Find a co-host at airbnb.ca forward slash host. So now we'll finish here to, like I mentioned, talking to teenagers about investing in finance. So I think I got definitely inspired a little bit by the RESP question to do that. But if you're in your 20s and you don't have kids, I think this could also be useful to you. So it doesn't have to be that you don't have kids.

You might not have kids, but you may have younger siblings, a nephew, niece, cousin that are teenagers and could really benefit from this. And even sometimes it's just people that just haven't learned about it and maybe in their 20s as well So of course my daughter is nowhere near close to understanding this she's still you know

She's in the potty training phase so financial literacy is not It's not ever near us at least for for the foreseeable future Plus even though I'm an only child, my parents had a lot of siblings, so I do have lots of cousins. I've had a few of them ask me questions about finance and investing, so it's something I've thought about quite a bit. So I'm an only child, and I actually, because I'm French, I always thought it was a lonely child.

Not an only child. Yeah, I actually said this for the longest time. Not knowing the difference, but just to say that, you know, they know that I have a podcast. So I've had the question a few times. So I've had to explain it to them. And over time, I've kind of modified a little bit the way I explained it, because a lot of basic concepts, they just don't have. So you have to keep that in mind. So you can't really start talking about just investing in stocks and the stock market right off the bat. Like if you don't have, you can't

like start running when you don't know how to walk, right? So that's kind of where I'm going at with this. And I'm really approaching this from the perspective of teaching a teenager, but like I said, it could be useful for adults or starting to learn about the basics here. Before I get started anything you wanted to add I kind of drilled it down to just five things as a starting point. This is not an end point to by all means. No yeah anything I was going to talk about you're going to say here so I'll just chime in as you go. Yeah so the the first thing here is So the first thing here is I would want to teach them about the power of compounding wealth. So that is really, I think that is the basis here.

Like, this is the most important concept in my opinion. Do you disagree? Agree? Or that's that? No, this would be the most like I, my nephews,hews I mean just showing them a basic like investment calculator with a relatively small rate of return and how much money it turns into Over the like they're absolutely shocked But I mean, yeah, this is one of the most Important concepts for sure. Yeah, exactly. So just the power of compounding. I mean you can look at any

Exactly. So just the power of compounding. I mean, you can look at any stock chart, right, that has done well over the years. And it's always because of the compounding because if you, you know, you always had that 2% on top of the price that it was, you know, the day before, whatever it is, right? It like it compounds. That's the idea behind it. And it's really easy to do. You just pull out a compound interest calculator and play with different scenarios. There's tons of them out there. I mean, now with ChadGPT, you can probably just ask ChadGPT to kind of do one for you with some graphics and bells and whatever, right? Like it's quite powerful. But you can also use, I think, Get Smarter About Money. They have a good one too. It's a Ontario Crown Corporation,

really well done website for financial literacy. I would use realistic assumption and just show how much money can grow over time with regular contributions. That's really powerful because when I mentioned early about our ESPs and you have maybe 15, 20 years to really make it grow until you use it, well, if you're talking to a teenager,

they have at least four years, most likely, if not 50, right, depending on when they would need the money. So you can really show them how powerful compounding is. The second one is I would do is teach them how destructive compound interest can be if you have debt. Because- When it works the opposite way. Exactly, so you have to show them how powerful compounding can really be for you for creating

and generating and increasing your wealth and keeping up your purchasing power and even increasing it. But you also have to show them that, you know what, if you have debt and you have especially high interest debt and you don't pay off that debt you can be you can get yourself in a whole lot of trouble and having to pay way way more than the actual amount that you put on let's say a credit card. There's some good tools there's, the credit card payment calculator from the federal government, really good tool to use.

You can even compare something like a scenario of $2,000 on a credit card debt with a minimum payment versus investing $2,000 over that same period of time. That would show how much they would pay for that $2,000 in debt versus if they had not purchased whatever they bought for $2,000 in debt versus if they had not purchased whatever they bought for $2,000 and instead invested the money. When you start showing how different it can be, it's like, okay, you're out of money for

this amount, $2,000 plus whatever the amount is. Maybe you just paid slightly more than the minimum payment for a long period of time. So you end up paying like three grand for that thing that you paid $2,000. But in that of time you're two thousand dollars, you actually, you know, it's worth three or four thousand dollars, whatever the assumptions that you put. I know in reality it's a bit more nuanced, but given some extreme example, I think it's really good because you can really open their mind about just how powerful it is a tool for them, but also how destructive it can be. And it will something I'll bring up in one of my later points as well is I think it also

forces them to think twice when they make a purchase, especially a purchase that they would buy with credit. They would really think twice about doing that and even think twice about a purchase that they would have the cash for but instead of purchasing that they're like well you know what I don't really need it I'm gonna invest it instead. So just kind of showing those two concepts I think is very powerful. Yeah like when I was younger my grandparents never had a credit card and it was kind of like when I was younger, it was deemed that credit cards are bad. I mean, I probably took this as an extreme when I was

younger. Like I don't think credit cards are that bad if they're utilized correctly. But I always kind of went like, if I don't have the cash to buy it, I don't buy it. I mean, even now, if I don't have like, I will put it on a credit card mostly because of rewards. But if I don't have like I will put it on a credit card mostly because of rewards but if I don't have the cash to buy it, I don't buy it. I mean I also grew up in like when I just graduated in an environment that was a lot cheaper to live in, now it's getting ridiculously hard for yeah. It's getting ridiculous for like you know if you're coming out of high school It's getting ridiculous for like, you know, if you're coming out of high school to even afford to live without utilizing credit but I mean if you can try to encourage them not to utilize credit because ultimately I mean that's a 20% APR on a credit card will Will bury you over the long term, especially, you know if you're making those minimum payments

Like I think if you pay the minimum on a credit card, it's like a 10 year payback or something. If you were to just take away at the minimum and you're paying 20% a year on that. So it's easier said than done now, because I know there's probably going to be a lot of people who were like, oh, it was, it was a lot easier back in 2007 than it was in 2025. But I mean, if you, if you can, can yeah avoiding it or at least using it responsibly would is a lot better yeah exactly so I'm just showing here so that calculator from the federal government it actually has a pretty good table where it'll explain the results but yeah that's what you were saying is if you're

just making the minimum payment so they're just using a thousand dollars here, it would take you 10 years to pay it off. That thousand dollars original balance, you'd pay close to 800 dollars in interest. So you're almost paying double than the actual purchase. So it's pretty crazy. And obviously that becomes more and more palatable as you're paying higher and higher payments to pay it off quicker, so it's good, but regardless interest does eat in well, I mean Interest us just hurts you quite a bit. Yeah Well, especially the high rates of interest and there is you know, there's I guess I know people don't like saying this

But there's good debt and there's there's bad debt I mean a lot of people don't say pay off their mortgage early because it's a relatively Attractive rate of interest versus you know what you can earn elsewhere But I mean credit card debt even to the point of you know lines of credit You know, you can get some very good rates on like a HELOC or something But obviously a teenager would would not be in that position. But yeah, you want to eliminate that high interest debt or just avoid getting involved with it whatsoever, which I mean, I've managed to do,

but again, it's a different environment today and it's definitely more difficult to do. Yeah, so now the next one here, the third thing I would do is just show them a visual of purchasing power of the dollar today versus a hundred years ago. So I actually found a really interesting chart and this is just to bring home what inflation does, right? So it's really you want to explain to them and show them concretely why you want to invest your money because you have to keep up with a constantly debasing dollar, whether it's US dollar, Canadian dollar.

I mean, at the end of the day, when it's not tied to anything, it's fiat money. It can be pretty much printed out of thin air. If you increase the supply, eventually the value of the dollars just ends up going down. So it's that simple. And what I found here, it's from the visualcapitalist.com. It's a really, really well-made chart. It's not super up-to-date. It goes to 2020, but I think for the purpose of educating, it's perfect.

You don't need to go up to today. It's a. Like you don't need to go up to today. Like it's a long enough timeframe. It starts back in 1913 and then goes all the way to 2020. So our joint TCI subscriber will see the chart here. I'll put in the show notes for anyone who would like to have a look as well. But the way the chart is to visualize it, so it starts in the top left corner at $25 in 1913 and then goes all the way to $1 in 2020. And the way to read the chart is pretty simple, is that a dollar back in 1913 was worth actually $26.14.

So they give you some examples of what a dollar was actually buying for the different periods of time. So back in 1913, you could buy 30 Hershey's chocolate bars for a dollar. Probably couldn't even get one now. Yeah, you get half of them. Yeah, exactly. I don't... That's it. And back in 1929, you could buy 10 toilet rolls for $1.

And then if you go to, let's's say we'll kind of fast-forward not just do all the examples but you could get in 1964 one drive-in movie ticket for a dollar. Good luck with that today as well. That's only 1964. And then if you go back in 1997, so we were both born at that time. You could get four grapefruits for a dollar. Again, I don't think you're getting that today. Good luck, yeah. Yeah.

So these, I think it's really great because it just goes to show how much over time it depreciates. And of course this is for the US dollar, but you could have the same kind of chart for the Canadian dollar. That's beside the point. The point here is to educate a teenager. I think it's a really good visual. It's a good way for them to understand like, wow, I probably should not keep that one dollar in my piggy bank for 20 years because it's not going to be worth a dollar in 20 years. You got to outpace inflation. I mean, at the minimum,

but there's opportunities to obviously grow your wealth over and above But and I would imagine like if you were to go to if this chart was to 2025 it would be Dramatically worse because we went through so like yeah 15 months of just ugly ugly inflation. So exactly Yeah, so it's actually better than it looks way better than yes right now So but that's just a trend right Even if we didn't have these, what, 8-9% inflation months that we had back in 2021, I think, if I remember correctly, even if it stayed at 2-3% constant, I mean, it would still keep, the chart wouldn't change. It would still be, you know, starting up high in the top left corner and go downwards to the right that's

usually not what you want to see when you look at a chart so that's the one I would use I think it's a great chart to use to be honest like I said doesn't matter it doesn't go to 2025 the whole point is just to have a really good visual the next I would say is look you have to figure out what you actually need versus what you want. And especially in the age of social media, it's really easy for kids to get influenced because they see an influencer kind of talking about this and how great that product is and blah blah blah.

At the end of the day, a lot of the stuff that you see on social media or on TV for advertisement Whatever it is a lot of this stuff. You either already have something that does your job or you don't really need it and If you really also kind of hammer in the debt portion you can really start Letting them know it's like okay that person that you're following on social media or your friend that's showing off their car, what they're not telling you is the $20,000 loan that they got to buy that car and the monthly payments that they're doing.

Sure, the perception might be that, oh, look at them, they're lucky or they have a lot of money. But that is always one thing that goes through my mind is that the amount of luxury vehicles I see I just remember that a lot of people Can probably barely afford those oh yes cars well even like on my on my street like I got a 11 year old jet on the driveway and most everybody else got teslas and

Yes Like I don't know. Vehicles is a big thing too. I mean, I financed one vehicle when I was younger and I'll never do it again. I just buy them used because I really don't need all that fancy of a vehicle. They're paid off.

But I mean, again, you said, I was actually gonna mention the needs versus wants before you said it was I think the social media aspect of it is huge too because You know you see a lot of stuff today, you know people kind of showing off and you don't really know they're on their situation It's probably not as good as you think Yeah and a lot of the time too I've noticed in the past when I made a big purchase or something I was pretty excited about a

lot of the time like You're like, oh you're kind of excited to get it. And then after like a few weeks, it's like, okay That's yeah, you know, it's like a like a hot tub or a pool table Yeah, you use it for a bit and then it becomes a a clothes rack. Yeah, exactly so that is something I would really hammer home because if you can really figure out that it's, you know, something you really need versus something that would be more of a nice to have or you want, then you can really start investing money because you'll be saving on what you're spending quite a bit. Obviously, you need to have enough income to do it, but if you can get that into control, it will play a long way. And the last but not least, I would definitely reinforce the importance of consistency.

So pay yourself first, meaning save a percentage of your income before you've been thinking about what to spend it on. So really save a percentage of your income that goes towards your saving or investment, whatever if you're building an emergency fund or you already have that and you're investing and then you can think about what you're going to spend it on. I'd reinforce the importance of compounding and how delayed gratification is often the most satisfying thing. I know in our society a lot of people it's just instant gratification by the end of the day delayed gratification tends to at least my personal experience and

opinion is that it's usually much better and I'd use the compound income calculator to just show that consistency can pay off big by comparing a single lump sum versus regular small sum amount. Just the consistency of doing it every two weeks or whatever it is especially when they're that young. It can really make a big difference when they're 50, 60 and getting closer to retirement. Yeah and I think on the delay I think there's a fine line there between the instant and delayed gratification because there's a lot of people like on the flip side you'll have the people who will literally spend nothing live off the fire crowd. Yeah.

And I don't really think that's something you want to be teaching people either. I mean, to each their own, they could do whatever they want. But I mean, I would say I'm fairly frugal, but I still spend money on things I enjoy. I think, you know, if you delay everything, I mean, often 18 to 30 is like the best years of your life overall. And I think just being extremely cheap and, you know, hoarding money to a certain degree can impact your quality of life as well. So there's a fine line there. But yeah, it's all about balance.

But I think it's just showing them that it's not all about instant gratification. I think at that age, they'll definitely be more on the end of the spectrum of instant gratification. And that last point is to maybe bring them a bit more into the middle where they can say, okay, sure, I really want to go see that concert. I want to go see that hockey game. I want to go see that. Well, instead of spending all my money on the three events that I want to do in a span of, or this summer, maybe I just pick the one event that I really want to do and then, you know,

I'll hang out with my friends. We can, you know, go out, night out, pre-drink at home, save some money on that instead of, like just, there's ways to be able to balance it a bit more and just making some choices where you're like, okay, I will enjoy myself a little bit, but I wanna also be smart and start saving a little bit and really benefit from that compounding that has the biggest impact the longer you do it. Yeah, you're definitely going to benefit more from leaning towards the delay

rather than the trouble you can get in with the instant. Yeah, exactly. So that's kind of it. You'll notice that I didn't talk much about investing concept just yet. So if people really enjoy this and would like me to talk about how the next maybe five things that I would talk about with a teenager after I've gone through this, you can let me know and we can do another segment on that. But that is the basics.

You'll see again, it's not much about investing. It's just more creating that foundation because like I said at the beginning of this, you can't teach someone to run if they haven't figured out how to walk just yet. And I think that is really the foundation here. And then you can start talking a bit more about different type of things.

Like I'm not quite sure I haven't thought about the next five, but probably explaining to them what you know in stock is what it represents a stock market the bond market getting into a bit more of those things like savings account different products registered account and stuff like that that would be kind of a bit more down the line but I think this is a good starting point let us know whether you you'd like to have another segment on this. Yeah and I think it's important that you don't jump into what you were just talking about before you explain this. Because I mean a lot of a lot of

people like a lot of young people want to jump right into the stocks, the investing, the earning money. But I mean if you don't understand these core concepts, you're probably not going to stick to any sort of long term strategy. I mean, I've had some people who I've explained the secondary part you mentioned, and they really doesn't really last that long. They own the stocks for three, four months, they sell them, they pull the money out, they spend it, things like that. So I think drilling down these core concepts first is very important. Yeah, 100%. So that's it for episode today. Thank you everyone for listening. It was fun to mix it up a little bit. Just like I mentioned before, we are for a joint TCI, really recommend for those who want to get some more content, our portfolios,

you'll be able to see those there. I post some regular content as well for people in terms of just some questions. I'll post my parents portfolio once a month. Maybe I'll start posting the RESP as I make changes. I haven't decided just yet, but it's something that we've added in terms of the additional content. You get the ad free podcast feed as well as an extra perk the full videos we will be looking to increase the price towards the end

of the summer again I haven't figured out exactly the date on that price increase but if you want to lock in the nine dollars a month now's the time to do it the new price would just be for a new subscriber once it goes up so there's still time to do it we'll be adding a few more things in the coming months as well, but yeah it's a really good platform. I've tried to respond to pretty much all the questions we get on a regular basis as well. So I definitely give priority to those. So thank you a lot for listening, for all the support. We appreciate it. We'll be back again with another episode in the coming days, because not quite sure on The Canadian Investor podcast should not be construed as investment or financial advice.

The hosts and guests featured may own securities or assets discussed on this podcast. Always do your own due diligence or consult with a financial professional before making any financial or investment decisions.