The Canadian Investor - The Wealthy Barber on Canadians’ New Financial Reality

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

In this episode, Simon sits down with Dave Chilton for a broad conversation about personal finance, investing, and the habits that help Canadians build long-term financial security. They discuss how the money landscape has changed since The Wealthy Barber, the challenges younger Canadians face today, the role of good financial advice, and why simple, consistent decisions still matter more than chasing the latest trend. Dave also shares lessons from his career, his time on Dragon’s Den, and the financial advice he believes will stand the test of time.  Subscribe to our Our New Youtube Channel! 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.

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If there's uncertainty in the markets, there's going to 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 to the Canadian Investor podcast. I'm Smolbe Lange and I have a special guest today, Dave Shilton. You might know him from the wealthy barber or Dragon's Den. That's actually where I first found out about you in my early 20s when you were in the Dragon's Den. So welcome to the podcast, Dave. I'm really excited to have you today. No, my pleasure to be here.

We were talking just growing audible, you being in Ottawa, one of my favorite cities. I love going to the parlor of the buildings. To this day, every time I'm in Ottawa, I walk down and view them. They are spectacular. I think a lot of Canadians forget just how gorgeous our nation's capital is. So I've enjoyed it there immensely and been very well treated over the years. You are nice. I think you forgot to mention one small detail. There's always some renovations going on. So that is kind of the running joke for Ottawa residents is like there's always some kind of a crane around the building.

No, I'd say it's so true. And I also remember going to Ottawa in 1992 for a weekend of speeches. And it was minus 45 to minus 50 every day. And I honestly remember thinking, why? do people live here? Like, it is a nice place to visit, but why do people live here? That being said, I mentioned to you that Ottawa was our number one city per capita for the original wealthy barber. Some of that's because I happen to give a lot of speeches there. Then you get the word of mouth flowing. Did a lot of interviews on radio. But I think the government employee base really adopted the book and the word of mouthed very strongly. So, yeah, I've had nothing but good times in Ottawa over the years. I used to go to a lot of senators' teams as well, including their first year, when they were playing at an official arena at that time.

So the Civic Center. Yeah, exactly, the Civic Center. And I had an obstructed Duce seat, my first ever game. So, no, nothing but good memories. Okay. Well, no, that's great. And thank you on behalf of Ottawa residents for those kind of words. But really excited to have you.

So for people are not super familiar, although I think most people should be. But do you want to give us a little bit of your story aside for? from the wealthy barber, Dragon's Den, and how that came about and then essentially what's been your focus since. Well, you know, it's an interesting background. I went to Wilford-Lurie University economics graduate, came out, went into the investment business. Actually, when I was 17, 18, along with the guy named Dallas Mastakis, my best friend then,

my best friend now, we started a GIC agency. So I got involved in the investment business at a very young age, like 17, I think I was, and was always fascinated by the space. And then while I was a young stockbroker, we call them stockbrokers, not investment advisors back in the day. This is the early 80s. I really got lucky. I wrote some articles for a local newspaper slash magazine that went over well using

humor. And I thought, you know, I like communicating. I like educating. I opened up a side business to teach teachers financial planning. And honestly, that was a life-changing decision. Just that one call changed everything. I went in front of groups of teachers. I used a very informal delivery, not a lot of charts and that type of thing.

It's more conversation, storytelling, humor. It resonated. It went over very well. Other areas, other boards of education started getting in touch. I knew I was on to something. So I thought, what about tackling this through a book? And I had seen that my clients as a young broker wouldn't read books. They found them too dull, too intimidating.

So I started working on an idea called the ultimate guide to losing money. And it was a humorous look at all the mistakes that Canadians make while they managed their money from insurance right through to investing. And I, you know, I still think it was a fairly good idea. In fact, interesting. Barry Reichold's last year came up with a book very similar to the one that I'd lay out back then. Very similar approach. But one night watching Cheers, I got the idea to use a fictional approach. In fact, the original title for the wealthy barber was the wealthy barton.

And I had it set in a bar, but the alcohol got in the way because I was trying to keep it realistic. You had to have people drinking and that didn't work out too well. Shifting it over to the barbershop. I was only 25, 26, 27 when it came out, but 25, 26 when I started ready yet. And God's so lucky. I mean, who could have imagined that that idea would pick up a steam that it did and go over with the public to the level it did? And, you know, after that I got involved in all kinds of things, publishing books to running a frozen food company to a lot of private company investing. You mentioned Dragonstan.

And then over the last several years, I've come back into the personal finance. at space pretty aggressively with shorts on Instagram and on YouTube, et cetera. And then our podcast that we put together, I relaunched the wealthy barber, which was a wall project due to rewrite France. And now at the end of the year, I'm finally retiring. I'm old. It's time to move me out. Well, yeah. I mean, I don't think, I think you're selling yourself short. I think you could probably do this age wise for years. But I hear that you might be becoming a grandfather soon. Yeah. My daughter's pregnant, which is very exciting. And my parents,

were the greatest grandparents ever. Incredible influences on my kids. I want to do the same for my grandkids. And also I mentioned in the video, I've had a lot of sick friends. And I think when that happens, you know, and you're just so many recently that it reinforces my own mortality,

but also I want to spend more time with them. And I want to socialize more with different groups, do a little bit more traveling. There's a few projects in my life. I've always wanted to pursue. For years, I've been saying I'm going to write a play. I actually wrote when I was 18. And I want to get at that again.

But, you know, you get busy. You know, you run a business like this, you're consumed by it, and you have to stay on top of all this financial matters. So it's not just doing the podcast, it's being prepared for it. When you're going to interview experts, you have to be able to talk to talk and bounce back and forth with them. So it's a lot.

And I've enjoyed it immensely. Don't get me wrong, but I'm also ready to move on. And there's all kinds of new voices. People like you who are doing a good job, building followings, call money. It's come out. And, of course, in Canada, we're lucky to have the Ben Felix is and all these types of people. So there's all kinds of great etiquetteers out there, which is great to see. Okay.

No, I appreciate that. And like a quick question, why do you think your book resonated so well? Is it because it kind of showed people you didn't need to come from a rich family, come from a high paying job that you could just get a have a regular job like a barber and be able to, you know, save money for nicer things or retirement, that 10% 10 to 15% rule? Yeah, I think so. I mean, if he called the wealthy doctor, I don't think it would have worked as well because people would have said, well, of course he's wealthy. He had or she had a big income. But the borrower seemed to really work. But I think there was more to it than that. I also think the fact that the narrator started out saying, I hate this stuff. I'm not good at math. I don't have any interest in this. People could relate to him. And they bought in. I think the format being able to use a lot of different characters and therefore cover off different nuances, exceptions. It all just seemed to come together. I also think the way that I put them together, I didn't have a lot of confidence in my writing. I was a very young man. And so I kept testing everything.

And initially I tested with the guys on my slope-pix team. And I expanded that to a much wider universe. And I was able to take all of their feedback and incorporated it into the initial book. A lot of the questions the characters asked were questions that came through the testing. I kept that up through book two and through the rewrite of the original wealthy barber. And I think it's a big reason why they've all gone over so well. But your question is an interesting one because I still look at it. Like even with the new book out, the feedback we're getting now about the impact

and savvy and how people said, oh, I try to get my kids to listen to this and read this. They wouldn't do it. But they actually read the wealthy borrower, the new book. And I was just saying to me my long time resisted moments ago, the chapter nine on saving savvy, we've had hundreds of people say, I save thousands of dollars applying those types of things. And it's exciting for me because, you know, you charge 20-something dollars per book. And people are telling you a mere a few months after reading it, they've already saved

thousands of dollars. It's made a big difference in their life. You know, who knew? I've often joked. I've only had a good idea of my life. Thank God, I had it when I was young. And it's funny thing is I'm not really that much of a joke. There's a lot of truth to it. So I'm thrilled the way to books going over. Okay. And you said, so you talked about rewriting the original book and like what was the parts that you felt needed the biggest updates and why? And obviously, feel free to mention if there was a couple parts you really felt like you needed to update. Yeah, there was a lot. It was, it was. It was. some major work.

People laugh at this, but it took me longer to do the rewrite than it did to do the original. You know, there are so many more products now. And so, you know, back when I wrote the original book, we had RRSs. Well, now, of course, we have RESPs. We have TFSAs, we have the home buyers plan within the RSP and so on. We had the, you know, first home savings account. You have to explain all of those, but it's not just you have to explain them. You have to talk about how do you prioritize.

If you can't do them all, where do you start? And all of these things, of course, added a lot of great. content to the book and could have been overwhelming and confusing, but I can't let that happen to the wealthy barber. It's all about keeping it simple, keeping it understandable. So there was a tremendous amount of rewriting. Now, of course, ETFs have become a much bigger part of our lives with their lower fees than conventionally active managed mutual funds, you know, 40 and 42 years ago whenever I first started getting into the field, all that had to be reflected. And we've got this high cost of living, high cost of real estate. And you have to be realistic about that. And I think

I've been thrilled with the feedback to the book, the fact that people are saying, hey, you did a good job there being upfront about that and how it's very hard now and it's not that easy to save 10 to 15% with mortgage costs or these levels, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the things that helped me there was before writing the new book, I went out to the marketplace, the 20 to 45 group, and I asked a ton of questions. I saw a lot of their finances, looked at their budgets, their spending summaries, all of those types of things. And it helped me to get a very good feel for what they're up against.

And then I would say, what questions do you need to answer? Where are you struggling? And all that gets melted in the book. The downside of that approach is it takes forever. So I'm thrilled that the book is out now and doing well because that was a little a couple of years. No, I mean, I totally get it. And the ETF part is definitely interesting.

I mean, I'm kind of that chord, but a bit on the older side. And I've seen the evolution over time. And especially, you know, one of the big differences is the internet, right? You wrote that book. And I think the internet was in its inconsistent. I remember, like, I don't know when you got the internet, but I think I was about 10 years old in like 1994, 95 when we got it. Yeah, 94 and 96. When you first started seeing it take off for home use, etc.

And I wrote the book way back in 87, 88. And so, of course, there was no online world at all. You're right, that's changed things. And of course, there's been positives and negatives to that. But going back to your mention of ETS, in some respects, I'm surprised they haven't picked up even more momentum in Canada. You know, in a lot of the other countries in the world, including the U.S. passive investing has become a huge part of how people invest their money through index funds. In Canada, less so.

We still have a big use of actively managed funds and high expense ratios, et cetera, that have unfortunately negatively impacted performance. And I think Canadians are now awakening more and more than the fact that fees matter. And that, yes, it's great. It doesn't matter if a great manager can overcome fees wonderful. The problem is there are very few of those people out there. and predicting who they're going to be ahead of time is, I'm not even going to say a near impossibility.

It's an impossibility based on the research. And why do you think that's a cause for Canadian? Because I get ass all the time, friends and family. Like I have a friend who's an engineer and he says, look, I have mutual funds with the bank. I know I'm getting screwed, but he's busy. He's a smart guy, but he doesn't know how to get started. And I've heard that story time and time again.

or people in my parents' age group, like early 60s, early 70s, and they'll say, well, it's a family friend. I can't move the funds away from that. Those are the two most common things that I see. Are you seeing the same thing or other reasons? You actually send that extremely well. I would echo those sentiments.

Inertia plays a huge role. Inertia, it's frankly a little bit caused by laziness. It's easy to say we're all too busy, but the bottom line is most people are watching two or three hours of streaming. many days. So they've got the time if they really want to find it to go out and set up an account on one of the new platforms and make this pretty easy. And so I think that that excuse is not one I buy into, but you're right.

It's when you hear a tremendous amount out. And then you made a great point with your second argument. You don't hear much about, but it's in real life exactly what happens. People say, I don't want to alienate or upset my current advisor because I've known her. I've known him for a decade, two decades. They're nice. They've done a very good job. They keep in touch with me.

There's lots of positives to it. So I'm happy to continue on. I get that. That makes perfect sense to me. I have a lot of advisors, advisors to do a good job. The challenge is if you are embedded costs of the mutual fund are 2 to 2 to 2 and a quarter to 2.5% which we see fairly frequently, certainly 1.75. Oh, my, it eats away.

You know, over a 25, 35, 45 year period, it can be 25, 35, 45% of your total retirement pool of capital that's gone away in B. So the advisor has to be adding tremendous value to overcome that kind of drag created by the fees. And it's very difficult for them to do that. So I think you are going to see fee suppression in the next five and 10 years where even the actively managed funds have to bring their fees down. And you're going to see even the AUM model where there's a fee charged and people are using ETFs. I think there will be pressure there on cost to come down. In the next 10 years, I think consumer will be the winner on a lot of the cost fronts.

Yeah, and I'm fine with financial advisors or financial planners. I always tell people, you know what, like as long as you feel like you're getting value out of the services, like anyone can put you in index CTS, but are you getting tax planning advice? Are you getting financial retirement planning? All these different kind of things. If you're getting value and the fees are reasonable, then it can make sense. But like you said, I've heard a lot of stories where they basically meet with the advisor once a year and the advisor does nothing. for them and they're being charged to two and a half percent. And unfortunately, I still see that pretty frequently.

I mean, let's be honest. In Canada, we see way too much of that. I mean, that's very common. Now, I do want to say that, wow, are there a lot of good financial advisors out there? I mean, we're seeing the advice only segment finally growing in Canada and had a lot of trouble getting a foothold. But the last few years, more and more extremely confident people have come into the advice only area.

They're all getting to know each other and sharing ideas for marketing. ideas to ideas of how to develop the plans. They've got associations where they come together. I'm beyond impressed. Like I've met so many people where I go, wow, that person is sharp. And they are doing the estate plan and the insurance needs analysis, the retirement income planning, the whole package and often for quite a reasonable fee. And even in the AUM end of things, you know, we're seeing fees of 100 basis points that

sometimes 90, 80, 70, 60 and going down depending on the amount of money involved. And a lot of those people are doing a wonderful job. The industry is improving. I don't think even the biggest critic would not agree that this is a much better situation than it was 10, 15, 20, 40 years ago when I first started, but it's got a waste to go. And to your point, there are still a lot of people not getting very good advice or not getting any advice, but they're paying 200, 225 basis points a year embedded in the fund. That is not a good formula.

Yeah, it's too bad. Every time I think it's improving, then I feel like CBC comes out with an investigative report on the big banks. out there pushing this bad advice, including mutual funds. But I'm like, I think overall, I think you've spoken to Mark McGrath, too. I had on the podcast, and Mark is really good at what he does. So I totally agree with that. There is an old saying in investing. It's not about timing the market, but time in the market.

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We've booked a cottage for early July, and I'm already picturing the kind of trip where the days are pretty simple. Mornings outside with coffee, my daughter running around with our new puppy, afternoons by the lake, and those quiet evenings with my wife watching the sunset with a glass of wine after everyone else has gone to bed. And while we're away enjoying that time together, the timing also made me think about our own home back in Ottawa. Early July is such a busy time in this city, with Canada Day and Blues Fest bringing so many people in. That got me thinking about how our home could be put to good use while. we're out of town as it's just sitting empty. Listing our home on Airbnb could create some extra

income to help cover part of the trip while also letting another family enjoy our neighborhood during one of the best time to visit Ottawa. They could walk over to a local coffee shop, spend the afternoon at a nearby beach, and use our place as a comfortable home base after taking in everything happening downtown. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. Smart investing doesn't have to be complicated or time consuming. With BMO all-in-one ETFs, you get a complete diversified portfolio wrapped up in a single ticker.

It's easy. Whether you're a conservative investor or more aggressive, BMO has an all-in-one solution for you. And now, it's even more cost-effective. BMO has cut management fees to just 0.15% on selection. asset allocation ETFs helping you keep more of what you earn. Simplify your investing today at BMOetFs.com. Speaking of younger generation, how have you seen, like, you see the internet and social media, like is it good or bad, like a net positive or negative in terms of there's more information

there, but with more information comes almost like bad information as well. So I've seen both. I've seen some really good stuff, some bad stuff. So what's your perspective on that? Well, you're doing a great job when you're framing these questions of giving really good responses because you're right. It's good. There's bad. It can be overwhelming.

You get the paradox of choice setting in where there's so much information coming at people. They almost freeze a bit and don't go down any path. I must say in the last, say, 24 months, you've had some really confident people rising to the top in terms of number of views that it's going well. And again, I mentioned Ben Felix, the plane. Bagel. You know, I love all of his stuff in Canada. He's very entertaining and very understanding. They're all from Ottawa. Yeah, they're all from Ottawa. Isn't that interesting? And, you know, and very nice people to boot. You know, they really want to make a difference. I mentioned called money. And I didn't know him at all and started watching his stuff,

you know, a year ago-ish, maybe not even quite that long. And he's got great stuff. So, there is good material out there. But let's be honest, there are a lot of experts in quotes who really are trying to sell something as opposed to educate. They're not covering off the nuances, the exceptions at all. All of that scares me a little bit. I find it hard even having a background of this. When you do the very short videos, that's the challenge is that you may be giving good basic advice, but what about the exceptions?

What about the what ifs? Do you have time to get them across? And we don't produce as many of those as we initially did because I was having trouble coming up with content that I could truly cover off. helpful manner in two or three minutes without steering some people the wrong direction. So all of that's tough. The long form of course gives an advantage to people like Ben who use it so well. And of course, podcasts have been interesting too and gone over well.

You know, just change the subject for a second. I've been surprised by the pickup on our podcast, Aidan Stride, and one of our team members deserves credit for saying, hey, I think there's a need for this. It'll go over better than you think because, you know, Canadian-only financial landing content, you know, relatively dry. You're thinking it's going to be tough and to see a podcast out there. You know, you're doing one.

And yet it's gone very well. You know, the overall listenership. We don't get a lot of YouTube views, interestingly. Ours is mostly on Spotify and Apple. I think people don't want to see me. They don't want to see my face. So they go straight to the audio. But it's really gone over well.

And it's built a lot of momentum. And I think one of the nicest things as I go to retire is that it seems like the podcast has raised the bar for the financial advisory industry, that they're hearing these outstanding advisors going, holy smokes, these people are very, very good.

You get the Julia Chunks, you get all these people, they are really good. And I want to be that good. I want to add that much value. I want to be that respected by people. So I think there's been some positives that way. Yeah,

and I think the podcast, I'm not surprised per se, because the reality is, if you're someone who's busy, audio, like, you know, I have a young daughter, she's three and a half,

and I'm making dinner a lot of the times and they might not be home yet, but if I want to listen to something, I can't really focus on a screen. So I'm just popping a podcast in an audio book. I just find I can still get a lot of stuff accomplished and still learn at the same time. I agree.

And a lot of people tell us they listen to another commute, you know, to and from work or while they're working out, we get that feedback a lot too. So, yeah, the online question, going back to your original query, it's tough because there are a lot of good material, a lot of good providers of material out there, content creators, but there's not so good stuff too.

And of course, too much of the stuff aimed at young males ties into trying to get them to gamble, either through the prediction markets or through little gambling on sports, etc. And unfortunately, those people are quite persuasive. And there's a lot of people suffering right now from overbeating on sports and everything else. In fact, right, I'm hearing more and more stories on that. It seems to, despite all the warnings from people, it seems to me to be getting worse, not better. Yeah, I mean, I do wonder what's causing this. Like, I know there's a lot more gambling ads.

Obviously, they're everywhere. You listen to you watch whatever sports show. You're going to most likely get a gambling ad there. There's a predictions market that I think are slowly coming to Canada after some of them being blocked. But do you think especially for the males that, and I'd love your thoughts on this, is there a way that the younger males are just thinking, you know, what the old way of doing it? what Dave was saying in his book, that you have to be consistent, you know, save a percentage of your income. I, you know, I don't have enough of an income to begin with. So I might as well, you know, yolo and just make this bed that will probably not work. But if it works,

I'll be set for life and I'll be able to buy that house and achieve those dreams. You know, it's funny. I hear that theory. It's a desperation. You wonder why it's almost exclusively males. What? Women are dealing with the same challenges. And so I'm skeptical. about that. I think it's more likely that a lot of younger men, and they're saying it's partially because of testosterone levels, have been drawn to risk taking and to gambling, and now they have access to it. It's everywhere. You no longer have to find a book you or fly to Vegas. You can just turn on your phone. And because it's so easily available and ties to something they're passionate about sports, emotionally involved with sports, it gives you that spike all the time of adrenaline,

of everything else positive in their minds is they're betting on even stocks because stocks have been gambled by it with the meme stocks, et cetera, then I think it ties more into brain chemistry and testosterone and all those types of things just ongoing access. I'm worried about the prediction markets, you know, coming to Canada. That's just another form of gambling instead of betting against the house, though, you're betting against insiders. So it's probably even worse. And, you know, again, most people are not going to prosper with all of these types of things. I mean, as you know, good investing in achieving long-term success is actually pretty boring. It's not going to provide you with a lot of excitement for the most part.

In fact, the people I know who've managed their money best pay very little attention to it. They've automated most of the processes through pre-authorized checking payroll deduction, whatever. Everything's blanked to their accounts automatically and being put into the various investments they've chosen, primarily index funds, their dollar cost averaging, they're not paying a lot of attention to it. They're focusing 10 and 20 and 30 years out. This is not particularly exciting. exciting. No, it's hard not to agree with you on that. And in terms of like younger people just sticking with that theme, what's your message for them if they're having trouble saving and their budget feels tighter than ever? You mentioned inflation. People have to deal with that. Obviously,

one that I keep an eye on is just food inflation because unless you have a magic trick, you're still going to have to eat some food, right? So it really hits everyone and the ones with the lowest income are impacted the most. So what are some tips that you could help the younger generation where they, you know, they, I guess they can still enjoy themselves, but at the same time, save for for the future so that striking that balance. Well, you know, I think one of the reasons the updated version of the book has gone over well is because there was some true empathy in there from me through the characters or how challenging it is on the cost of living front. And a lot of boomers are a little bit out of touch with that. They'll say it's always

been difficult. We straight by and young kids travel too much now. And, you know, there's some truth of that. Young people do travel way more than we did at that time. But the bottom line is home prices have driven two to three times as fast as incomes over the last 30 years. And property tax and all things associated with homeownership are very expensive now. Rents, although down in many areas lately have trended up dramatically relative to incomes over the last 20 and 30 years too. It's tight. You mentioned food inflation. Holy smokers. I mean, it's crazy. Understated, by the way, I would argue the stats of Canada statistics that are released. And so the first thing I wanted to start out with was recognition that this tough time isn't back real.

And that there is empathy and sympathy towards the people going through it. It is tougher down than it's ever been. So here are some techniques you can use. It's tough for me to give you a quick answer to that question because I spent two years writing a book that more or less tried to tackle all of that. But it's interesting that in the first book, the chapters on paying yourself first and on compounding were what people remember. So it came out and that's what people talked about.

Wealthy Barber is known for Pay Yourself First. And those two chapters, four and five, that's where the attention went. This book is funny because they're getting attention, but chapter nine, which is on saving tips, different ways to think about how you save money from spending summaries on through. That's the chapter that's getting the most feedback. And I think that's testimony to the fact, hey, great to save 10 to 15 percent, Dave, but how? I mean, I just can't do it.

You say pay yourself first, but if I take it off the top, I don't have enough left to pay my conventional bills. So how do we manage all of that? How do you choose a home that makes sense for your income level? What else can you do? And a lot of it in my mind, and I was wrong about this initially, starts with spending summaries. And the importance of really understanding your cash flow, what's coming in and then where exactly is it going? And so I'm pushing people as boring as it sounds to chronicle all expenses, literally everything from buying gum to the major expenses like rent for a three month period, categorize them, and wow, does it ever open your eyes? You find some leaks, say, I probably could save some money here. You also learn very

quickly, where am I spending money and not getting back a lot of joy units? So I don't have to necessarily save this money. I could redeploy it in another area of spending, but one that I think will give me more fun, more joy, whatever. And so I think all of those tips in Chapter 9 seem be working. It's funny. And the three books I've written, if you count this as a separate book, anytime I've tested my material, you always, always get a lot of feedback that makes you rewrite it, change it. That chapter, for whatever reason, as I tested it page by page, you ever went to, yeah, love it. Don't have any questions. Don't have any comments. I'm learning a lot of this. It more or less is as originally written. So, yeah, it's tough out there. It really is.

And you look at car inflation, car insurance costs. Again, I would argue that CPI understates what most people are dealing with in terms of their personal inflation rate. Yeah, when I, like, we'll usually go over quickly the numbers on the podcast. And one thing that always makes me laugh and makes them look a little bit out of touch is when they'll say like, oh, you know, guided tours are down like 5%, like for most people. Like, does it really matter? Like, it's on the main summary. I just, I always joke about that.

But it just goes to show it is a basket, like you said, and even food inflation, Whether it's understated or not always tell people it's a basket of food. Keep that in mind. So if you're a vegetarian versus someone who likes to eat meat, you're probably going to feel it very differently, even if you take the official members. That's exactly right. I mean, everybody's personal inflation rate is different.

Look at this year, for example, we could have CPI reported, let's say between 2% and 3%. But when you have people renewer than their mortgages at much higher rates, their personal costs have gone up dramatically, much higher than the inflation rate, of course. And so that's what really matters to them. And it is tight. It's why we're seeing so many parents getting involved and helping adult-age kids to get

through all of this, whether it's with a down payment, a co-signing, some money here and there. Wow, this is very common. You remember a few years ago, one of the banks came out and said we're seeing this, and I think it was 20 to 25 percent of making up the number now. And every real estate agent I knew went, what? It's way higher than that. All the deals we're doing almost. You have some parental involvement.

and it could be something that doesn't show up on the official records, but trust me, it's there. It's all hard by a house now without some help from parents. Yeah, definitely. There is an old saying in investing. It's not about timing the market, but time in the market. The most successful investors aren't usually the ones trying to catch every top and bottom. They're the ones who spend the most time in the market.

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listing our home on Airbnb could create some extra income to help cover part of the trip while also letting another family enjoy our neighborhood during one of the best time to visit Ottawa. They could walk over to a local coffee shop, spend the afternoon at a nearby beach, and use our place as a comfortable home base after taking in everything happening downtown. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.c. host. Smart investing doesn't have to be complicated or time-consuming. With BMO all-in-one ETFs, you get a complete diversified portfolio wrapped up in a single ticker. It's easy.

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like it's mostly government workers and the amount of luxury new cars that we see, I just kind of scratch my head. Like how many people really can't afford these cars? And I do get the sense, especially with social media, there's a lot of the younger generation feel like, you know, they have to buy these nicer things because whoever they follow as a brand new purse or whatever it is. So what's your message for people who are trying to keep up with the Joneses?

Well, you know, like I make no apology for this. I don't intend to try to hassle people too much about how they spend their money because I just want them saving. And then what they do with the rest of it, that's their business, except when it comes to cars. Because my frustration levels through the roof, I see all of these spending summaries where young people are making a legitimate. legitimately good point to me. Dave, it's hard to say. Here's our cost. I go, yeah, you're right, it is hard. But then you see what they're spending on cars. You're going, that makes no sense based on your income and based on everything else you just said. The car industry is not a marvelous job of pulling us in over the years and making a lot of people define themselves to some extent by the quality

of car they drive. The rationalizations that can take place are absolutely stunning. And we see all the time spending summaries come through where a couple is spending a couple thousand dollars a month, a car payments. And that's before you get to insurance, gas, upkeep, parking, and so on and so forth. And then they're telling me there's no way we can max the TFSA and I'm going to think. Of course you can't. Okay. So to max the TFSA, let's say you're looking at $600 a month, you could do that easily if your car expenses were more modest. And this is an oversimplication, obviously exaggerating there are people in the middle.

when it seems like a bit of a barbell situation where a lot of younger people are saying, yeah, Dave's right about this and they're very good on the car expense front. But then there's this big percentage, whether it's 20, 25, or 30, who are horrible in terms of what they spend on cars relative to their incomes relative to common sets. But here's the funniest thing. And I really do laugh out loud about this is I will talk to people occasionally and helpfully the spending someone and say, hey, I know you like to travel, but I mean, you know, three trips last year probably doesn't make sense based on where you're trying to get.

No, you're right. They'll always say, yeah, you're right. But they may give you a little pushback. With cars, nobody gives you any pushback. Everybody goes, yeah, we spent too much. Like, it's like they know that there's spending way too much on cars, but it just holds them in. And they can't seem to help themselves. Huge frustration for me.

I think most people who've looked at spending summaries over the years, I remember way back, remember the millionaire next door, the famous book from the States, the Kimmel, the 18s, those guys back then were saying, what the heck are people doing? spending this much on cars. So 40-something years later, and it hasn't changed. It's a tough one. There's a big pole there for sure. You would love the cars I drive because I bought two years ago,

2017 Jetta because we had daughter needed a second car. And I refused to pay more than $12,000 for a car had to be used. And if it were not for my daughter, I would have paid less and gotten an older car for her for safety reason. Yeah, for sure. Decided to be less cheap a little bit. But our rule is that we like basically, we only buy like, we don't get any car payments. We just buy used cars.

That's it. No, and that's absolutely the right to take, the right route to take. And again, I don't care of rich people are doing. Like I have a lot of rich friends who drive fancy cars. I couldn't care less. They've got lots of money and they're saving the appropriate levels. But for most Canadians, that's an area you've really got to look to try to save. Now, again, there are a lot of people doing a wonderful job here.

And I must say, I would say this to Ben Felix, maybe 18 months ago, is. I noticed a few people contacted me had gone from two cars back to one, something you see very little look. And boy, is it a tough adjustment initially? They were just used in many families to having two cars. And this wasn't necessarily people who had access to easy public transit either. So they had the inconvenience of always making sure that they planned out how they're going to use the one car or somebody had to drive the person.

But after they got through the adjustable period, the basic feedback I was getting is, wow, the savings are huge. and this was a good move. We probably should have done this earlier. And, you know, it's funny, they didn't do it by design necessarily. A few of them had said to me that one of the cars had to go into the shop, accident, whenever, for an extended time frame. And they made the adjustment kind of then and went, you know what,

I probably can do this and off they went. Now, again, I know for a lot of people, realistically, going to one car would be very difficult, especially with kids' extracurricular sports and all those types of things. Yeah, but even when you think about it, I think people forget, like having one car and then once in a while you take an Uber, like it's still probably going to be way cheaper than having two cars.

But you're right. Like having a young daughter, I can relate that it's not always easy with just one car. But in terms of just going back to what you mentioned, home ownership, I think you talked to Dan and Dan Foch and Nick Hill I think late last year.

And Dan and I are friends. And we do a podcast show on live on Friday, talk a little bit more about macro. But he has Ethereum. he has this point of view where he thinks that for a lot of Canadians, home ownership is a forced savings plan. So you think it's a good thing because without it, they would simply not put money aside.

And even though he doesn't think of owning a home as an investment, he still thinks for a lot of Canadians, it's actually probably a pretty good thing despite the higher prices right now. So what's your point of view on that? And given the current market, like, do you think homeownership still makes sense? or does renting become more and more attractive, especially with some big cities seen falling rents? Well, you know that the data really supports Daniel's argument strongly.

He's a very sharp guy, eh? He is. He's a very, don't tell if I said that, but he is. He's a very sharp guy. But I'll tell you how you can prove he's right to some extent. There's been some studies done in the U.S. where they've looked at people who have focused on paying off their mortgage before they started investing.

And then they'll compare them to the control group that didn't pay their mortgage offer. early and invested and set. And there's always that argument back and forth about what road is best. Interestingly, the people who invested as opposed to paid off the mortgage early tend, not always, but they tend to finish quite far ahead. And one of the big reasons is the people who tend to pay the mortgage hour early often then don't do the saving after. So when they have the increased cash flow, because they no longer from mortgage, they don't set aside enough to do the catch up. The mortgage is the ultimate for savings program. You have to make

mortgage payment or the lender gets very annoyed. And so that part, he has got right. Now, is that enough to say it's always the best move to buy as opposed to rent? Probably not, but it certainly has to be weighed in there for some people. You know, the answer to your question about whether you should buy, whether you rent, it's a tough one. I mean, we're getting a lot of attention drawn to that matter lately on both sides of the border. You're seeing some very smart people analyze this, Ben's looked at it very carefully. You know, I think for me, I want to hold both my kids old homes, but you can make a pretty good argument in certain.

environments right now in certain jurisdictions for renting, that as long as the person has the discipline to set aside the difference and invest it productively, in other words, long-term and low-cost index funds, for example, they may well end up ahead. Now, again, that's a big if, though. Do they have the discipline to set aside the difference in overall costs? A lot of people, to Daniel's point, don't, and will they invest in a low-cost index funds or they will end up gambling it away or doing something silly with that investing in things that don't understand. Those are important questions. And so there's no definitive answer to any of this.

I will say this. And again, I'm pro home ownership. I own a whole. I am fascinated by how few people truly understand the overall costs of owning a hole. So they think about the mortgage cost. But when you chronicle for a year or two, every cost associated with owning that hole. So you've got the property taxes, the insurance, the obviously some of the utilities, etc that will be there in other environments too but then you look at the upkeep you look at the

little things you have to buy the odd thing the brakes it blows you away how much money you put into your house and people often forget oh yeah that's right we did we put in that stone patio oh yeah we did put it in a hot tub but then we put the hot tub and we had to redo the plumbing to get outside over and over and over again it's only forcing people to write it all down that draws their attention to holy smokers this is very very expensive i am finding some younger people especially people people who are thinking either zero kids or one kid and we're seeing more of that, we're thinking I may rent, I like the flexibility, it gives me, it doesn't involve as much work for me in terms of lawn care and everything else, I may opt to rent.

And they're not having it because they're forced to because they can't afford a hold. They're actually going, I think that might be the right lifestyle decision for me, not seeing a ton of it, but seeing more of it now than I ever did 10, 20, and 30 years ago. Yeah, and funny thing about that was maintenance costs and items, you know, it gets affected by inflation too. Well, not only does to get effective. I would argue those items since COVID have gone up at a way quicker than inflation rate takes. Try to get somebody to come by your place now to put in a small fence or to do a little bit

of a fix up. It's twice, two and a half, two point seven five times more expensive than it was in 2019. So that is nowhere close to three, four percent inflation. That's a much higher rate. And again, all of that adds up tremendously over the years. And so how often do you hear a Canadian say, well, I want the house for $300,000 and it's now worth $900,000? And then you have to say, yeah, but remember you did do $250,000 of renovations a long point. Oh, yeah, I probably should count that too, probably. Obviously, you have to count that in the analysis. So again, I'm not saying don't buy a home. There's great peace of mind that comes with it. Some people from a lifestyle perspective, it's very important to them. They want to be in a district. They want a nice backyard. I get it. I own my home. I have forever. My kids own their own home. I am not saying, but. The big picture looking at this is very interesting. And there's a lot of different perspectives that come into play and should come in play.

Yeah, and especially right now where you see a lot of inventory on the rental market. My parent, just a fun story is they had their condo. They were owning it. They had a house for years sold that, got into a condo for about 10 years, renovated it. I helped them a whole lot doing tiling and stuff like that. But now they were getting to a point older building. Condo fees kept going up, special assessments almost every single year. I was stressing them out.

And I was like, have you thought about renting? You can get actually months free. And they started looking at the numbers. My mom's an accountant. She's like, you know what? I think they never thought about it until I mentioned it. And they were just blown away. They're like, yes.

So they put their condo up for a cell. They moved a couple weekends ago. And now they're just renting and they're super happy there. You know, it's so interesting you say that because I just had this conversation with a very good friend of mine. His name was Tom Connolly. He's going to love getting his name on. the podcast and he owns a whole. And so he's contemplating moving, but he's thinking about moving down by as opposed to

rent it. And he was asking me about it. We were talking about some of the math, but I said, I'll tell you an interesting point, Tom. I've had so many older people in my life the last five years who've moved down to a smaller rental and then, and not really wanted to, kind of done it because they've been forced to health reasons, whatever, but like your parents, after being it said, I wish I would have done this years ago. The lower hassle factor, they have the use of their cap, all those.

types of things. So there's no one answer, unfortunately, it's right for everybody. There's no pearls of wisdom I can say, hey, all of you listening should do this. But be open-minded to possibilities. A lot of people later in life, they like that reduced hassle factor of not only the whole and not just the artwork, but the upkeep, the redos, the things that can go wrong, worrying so much when they're away, all of these things come into play. So I'm not surprised at the the story about your parents because I've seen that more and more. And you're right, rents in many parts of the country have come down over the last 12 to 24 months because we had some programs sponsored by the CMHC that went over very well and purpose built rentals went up hugely in terms of

supply and of course that knocked down the prices of that, especially with immigration figures slowing. And so we had less demand as well. And so I think all of the mouth of this is changing a little bit. Oh yeah, exactly. Like I had a buddy of mine whose brand was coming up after two years. He used a yonze a triplex and one of the units was free. And I was talking to him. I'm like, you do know, you might not be able to get the same price you got. And he was kind of surprised. And then you started doing some research. He's like, oh, you're right. I think I'm going to have to list it like 10% less than it was listed if I don't want it to stay vacant for too long. Exactly. And 10% by the way is I've heard more than what is that kind of seems to be the number

in some areas. And you're right. They don't want to stay vacant. I mean, it's tough to make up for that. So it's tough game right now. We, you know, change the subject to bet, but being a landlord, especially in BC and Ontario. We've had so many problems with tenants. And I'm the first to say a lot of landlords handle situations poorly and aren't fair to the tenants. But let's be honest, a lot of tenants have figured out how to gain the system now. And we're seeing a lot of non-payments because I know it's going to go in front of the board. And that's going to take quite some time to get through the process.

And therefore, even if they lose, they're going to be able to save some monies. And I have had so many friends, including one on Sunday, say, I'm not doing it anymore. So I've been a real estate investor for a long time dealing. with tenants, but now the pendulum is swung too far. The hassle factor is too high. The risk factor is too high. I'm not going to get involved anymore. It's interesting times on that front.

Yeah, I guess it's not so much passive investing anymore, but. That's right. Exactly. And in terms of like other types of investments, so there's been a lot of products been pushed over, I would say like maybe around the pandemics and the pandemic started, maybe a bit earlier, but I marketed specifically to retail investor. I'm thinking like private equity products. products, private credit, IPO access, single stock leverage ETF, which don't get me started on,

and so on. Like, those are often framed as democratizing access or opportunity to retail investor, which would typically be reserved for institutions. So how should every day investors think about these products and where do you think the line is between useful innovation and just clever marketing? Most of them are not good products at all. I mean, you mentioned the single stock leverage D.A.F. So we have the double bear, double bull, triple bear, triple bull, run from all of those.

You know, over the long world, those are all going to lose you money. The math stacked against you tremendously, even if you look at the better of the products you just mentioned, let's say some of the private equity funds, the private credit, I don't really love them either. When you look at how high the fees are, oftentimes that takes away the expected sprint of the return and the risk-adjusted return is nothing spectacular. You have liquidity challenges, of course, built into those, and we've seen gating now where people, You can't get the money stacked in a timely fashion that they thought they could when they originally invested.

You know, again, for the most part, I'm not a big fan of most of those. Now, would there be exceptions if I looked at 100? Certainly. But not in the double bear, double bowl and all that kind of stuff. I never like any of those. Again, the math is too far offside. So, yeah, I'm always a little skeptical when I hear we're democratizing this. We're bringing this to the retail investor.

I mean, for the most part, people are just looking for ways to make the institutions money. And that's one of the ways they can do it is they can come. map people with a wide variety of products. It's funny when I see all these financial plans, and people have had the best performance, and people have done the best over the years, have just kept it very simple. They've stayed at low cost, vanilla products.

They've not done anything particularly tricky. They put up with the ups and down because, of course, markets have pullbacks. They have prolonged periods of poor performance. Maybe we'll look at one relatively soon. Certainly markets are quite expensive by most historical measures, but they don't get too caught up in that. They're not emotionally engaged.

In fact, most of the best investors don't even, to look at all of this very often. I've mentioned many times on podcast, my father, he's so good at this. He pays no attention. You know, the guy doesn't look at all. He never knows what's going on, but that's why he doesn't get emotionally engaged to get out at the wrong time. And so, but no, most of the tricky products I don't particularly like.

In fact, I would say over 90% of them make me shake my head. One thing I've always said is when Bay Street and Wall Street start pushing and marketing certain kind of products. There's kind of warning lines that go off in my head. I'm not saying they're all bad, but that's just the way I see. Well, this is a while ago. It's maybe, I'm guessing, maybe 20 to 30 years ago, but there was a guy who looked at it with the banks in the U.S.

And it was probably a fair to cross borders, like the banks, but when they offered up ETS in a certain sector, so a bio-ETF or whatever, that it was almost always the sign of a market top. So we'd seen that sector do, extremely well for a while, and then the major financial institutions will create an ETF around the sector, and that would be more or less the end of it. And over and over again, that seemed to work.

But you're right. You have to be fairly skeptical. And again, most people handle the money best stay away from anything kind of tricky, and they just stick with the try and true, low cost, boring products. So one theme I've noticed you mentioned a few times is just the behavior aspect, and something that's pretty present in the markets is people tend to act on. fear. So whether it's the fear of missing out or when markets start being volatile, start the down swing, though the fear of losing or losses will kind of kick in. Are there, aside from like not paying attention to it, are there any tips that you can give to investors? Because that's long been the argument for just investing in dividend stocks. It's just invest in dividend stocks and you get

paid the dividends. So when the market goes down, you don't have to worry, you still get the income. So any tips for for people who, you know, maybe battling with the behavior there? Well, you know, you made two great points again built into the question. Number one is I've been a little bit more supportive of dividend stock investing than some other people in the industry who might tend to agree with in almost everything else. So they're like it's only total return just by the index buying. Mathematically, I'm with them.

And there are points about dividends just being returned. I'm with them in all of that. But when you watch people's behavior, a lot of people who buy dividend stocks are very good at staying the course during difficult times because again, that income sues them to some extent. And you may say, well, that's silly. I don't care of it. It's effective. It keeps them in.

And so I think that has to be weighed in this whole argument a little bit. It has to get some sort of waiting. But going back to your initial point about behavioral, I mean, staying detached is key. But I loved how you were talking about fear, fear of the market falling and therefore people panic at some point as the market goes down. and it's going to go down even further, but you were talking about fear of missing out. I actually see that one probably more than any. As the markets roar ahead and get very expensive, then people bring on leverage. They're not afraid to borrow because they think they're going to miss out and even higher

returns. And of course, they're taking on that leverage when valuations are already stretched, and that's setting them up in many instances for failure. So it's fear. Greed is a form of fear. In many instances, that fear of missing out to your point. On the behavioral fund, I mean, again, I keep harping back to you, you've got to stay attached. You've got to focus very long term. Don't get caught up in the volatility. I'm actually

very good this way. I really am. I'm not a hypocrite at all. I don't watch my investment performance much. Even a few speculative things I have, I don't watch much. I pay 20 times more attention to my hockey pool than I ever have to my investment portfolio. Many times my son or somebody will drop out because we're getting the podcast and they'll say, oh, I see the markets are way down the last two days? I said, I didn't know that. I didn't even know because I'm not watching. because I'm not smart enough to harness that information productively. I'm not smart enough to trade it, to act upon it. If anything, again, emotions will get involved and I'll do something stupid.

I'm no different than the vast majority of people who might read my material. So I don't pay a lot of attention to that. And funnily enough, even when I do, it's not because I'm going to try to do something with it. It's because I find it interesting. So if I'm following the markets very closely, it's because I'm fascinated by it all. And I like hearing the different opinions, but I'm not going to try to harness those opinions. and alter my portfolio structure or time to market. I'm not good at that.

I told this story before, but I think your listeners will find it interesting. I actually have only market timed once, and I nailed it, and it ended up costing me money. Back in 2006, 2007, I was touring a tremendous amount, and you can see the complacency, the optimism that set in about thought market returns. People were boring a lot to buy mutual funds, even teachers, a very conservative group for the most part, we're doing that. I made a joke on stage one night. If the most conservative investors I know, teachers are boring to buy mutual funds,

were in trouble. Who's left? This has to be a market top. And really, that's not actually a bad way to look at it. I think that joke had a lot of truth to it. At the same time, I was speaking a fair amount in the States and seeing what was happening with the real estate market. And I could tell you some specific stories, but I'll let it go.

But you could just see something wasn't right. And I thought, I'm going to get out. I didn't know what credit default swaps were. I'm not near as smart as the guys are the big short, but I said, I think the markets are going to go down and I get out. The problem is you got to get back in. And of course, you have to time it property twice. And you know how quickly things recovered when they started flooding the market with cheap

money. And the markets move back up relatively quickly starting March 2009. And I missed a lot of that. And I think overall, getting out cost me money, even though I actually got the market time rate. And so I learned, just listen to yourself. Listen to Dave Chilk, go read your own book for heaven's sakes. That sends it's time in the market and not timing. And since then, I've paid less attention to try to get in and out of different things.

Obviously, you have some individual stocks if you're doing that. A lot of your listeners won't be, but then you have to pay a little bit more attention because news can change the whole story. But for the most part, again, the best investors are quite attached. They're not living and breathing this on an ongoing day-to-day basis. Okay. And just to finish up, before we wrap this up, I wanted to know. So how did it come about for you going on Dragons Den? Because that is really when I got to know you was when you joined that show.

And I remember my girlfriend and I had the time, I would love watching the show and like remember you on there. Yeah, thank you. I was a little luck, actually. They contacted me at the end of the first year. Well, one of the dragons unfortunately passed away. And they'd seen me interviewed a few times and thought that I would be a good fit. Plus, they knew I did some private company investing, which is very unusual. I mean, very few people in Canada.

invest in private non-tech companies. I'm still one of the few people I cross-pass with who does that. But I ended up saying, no, I was busy with other things. I'm pretty low-key guys. I've said many times, I live in a pretty quiet life and living kitchener, my house by myself, et cetera. But then when Robert Herch had left the show and the opportunity came again, I said, yeah, I'll give it a shot. Amanda, actually did a big role. You know her from BN.

She and I are friends. And she said, you should give her a try. I mean, you're quite old. Try something new. And I think she meant to be positive, but it didn't come out that way. And I thought, I'll try it for a year. And I loved it. I mean, I threw myself into it to the end degree.

I did all my own due diligence with my son and daughter helping, made a lot of investments. I, you know, way more than traditionally is done by a dragon or a shark, got involved, intimately involved in many of the companies. The returns were outstanding. The problem is the time that if you're doing your own due diligence and you're helping a lot of the entrepreneurs, going to the meetings, making the intros, all those things. It literally overwhelmed me. And I either had to change my approach or leave the show. and I opted to do the latter because I didn't want to change my approach. I didn't want to go on and not make the investments or not be personally involved.

But those three years were highlights of my life. I enjoyed work with the CBC. The CBC takes a tremendous lot of criticism, but I found people delightful, very hardworking. And then, of course, my fellow dragons were great. We've stayed very close friends. I still talk to Arlene, Jim, all of them all the time. And yeah, great experience across the board. Bruce Cox and I are good buddies.

So a lot of fun. What percentage of the pitch do we see on this show out of curiosity? I know it's just a fraction. But you know, it's interesting. We don't get asked that question much, but I think it's an important question. They show, I heard the segment, it's about eight minutes long, although it varies and I'm not sure what it is now. Yeah. We would see some of the pictures for as long as 30 to 35 minutes.

So as a percentage, it might have only been 25. The editors, by the way, were phenomenal, nice people, and very talented. And one of the things I give them credit for, they didn't move things out of order. or they didn't try to create drama. Dragons then really didn't do that. They tried to stick to the story. The story's dramatic enough. You can see why it works.

You know, stories to be compelling have to have the beginning, a middle and an end, character and conflict. Those are the five things the story needs. Well, of course, the beginning, they're coming down the stairs and making the pitch. The middle is bounce back and forth with the questions. At the end is the yes or no. And of course, there's character and conflict. You know, there's constant arguing back and forth.

By the way, that was all real. None of that's orchestrated. Like people always say. to me that are leaving Kevin really dislike each other. And I said, for sure. Like, yeah, absolutely. Those fights were all real. In fact, one of them was a little bit over the top.

So that part of it just worked magnificently well. That's why almost every country it's gone to, it's been a big hit. Although, per capita wise, I think Canada's been maybe leading the way. And again, if you're willing to put the time into the investments, they did really well because how many times can you place money into an investment, but then you can influence the performance. You can make the intros. You can set them up with the law.

You can set them up with designers. You don't have that opportunity to publicly traded companies, of course. Plus, the hand start is, at the time I was on the show, a lot of the episodes were seen on the Wednesday and Sunday night by millions of people. The built-in advertising for the product and for the service was absolutely huge at that point. That doesn't even count the reruns. And so a lot of the investments did very well. I didn't deal with a single picture, you know, the 24 deals I ended up closing and some of the ones I rejected where I didn't like them where they didn't handle themselves well. Everybody was nice.

We had a lot of fun. It was an all positive experience in my life. Well, thank you for sharing that. I was always curious and I meant. Definitely wanted to ask that. So I guess before we wrap this up, like we mentioned, you're going to be a grandfather soon. So if you could give advice to Canadians, one piece of advice today that you think will

still be applicable to say your grandkids when they're adults, what would it be? Well, more than advice, I'd give this observation after doing this for almost 40 years. years now. I said in my second book that the biggest misconception I see out there is that I have to sacrifice some happiness today by spending less than I make in order to be happier later in life in retirement. But when you see people in real life, it's not that way at all. People who are at top of their finances today who are spending less than they make and saving the appropriate amount are happier today too because they're less stressed about their finances. They have a feeling of accomplishment, they're not always worried about paying next month's bills, etc.

Getting on top of your finances pays benefits far beyond the financial impact. Psychologically, it's very helpful too. Look at all the studies now on how much more productive people are at work when they're on top of their finances. Why? Because they have less stress in their life. And so that's one of my fundamental messages that I know will hold true for 50, 100, 150 years.

Get on top of your finances and all good things flow from that. Well, I think that's great parting words. Dave, anything else? I know you have a website, anything you wanted to share with our audience before we leave. No, thanks so much for having me on. I really enjoyed it. I'd heard good things about the podcast, and I enjoy Daniel, and it's great that you guys work together. And I'm sure you and I will see each other again. Okay, Dave, thanks again. Thank you. The Canadian Investor Podcast should not be construed as investment or financial advice. The host and guest 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.