The Wealthy Barber Podcast - #18 — Bruce Sellery: Getting Out of Debt So You Can Get Back Into Life

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

Our guest this week is Bruce Sellery, CEO of Credit Canada—a non-profit credit counselling agency that’s helped millions of Canadians avoid bankruptcy, get out of debt and reclaim control of their financial lives. In this episode, Bruce joins Dave to talk about the growing debt problem in Canada and the personal stories behind it. They dig into everything from credit scores to the rising cost of kids’ sports to the impact of divorce on your finances. Bruce also shares his own unique journey—leaving a corporate job to become a business journalist and help launch BNN, before becoming a financial educator with a bestselling book and podcast “Moolala.” If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by debt or just want to understand how credit counselling really works, this is a candid, insightful and engaging conversation you won’t want to miss.   Show Notes (00:00) Intro & Disclaimer (00:55) Intro to Bruce Sellery (03:37) Leaving a Corporate Career to Be a TV Reporter and Help Launch BNN (07:06) Personal Finance vs. Business/Investing News (09:05) How Bruce Developed His Communication Skills (12:17) The Grace of a Well-Lived Life (13:44) The Affordability Crisis in Canada (16:04) What is Credit Canada? (17:52) Credit Canada’s Non-Profit Structure (22:12) What Happens if You Need to Claim Bankruptcy? (23:30) How Do People Get Into Trouble with Debt? (29:50) What Impacts Your Credit Score? (32:28) The Housing-Affordability Crisis’s Impact on Debt Levels (37:42) Divorce and Debt (39:30) Kids’ Sports Have Become CRAZY Expensive (43:56) Conclusion

Hey, it's Dave Chilton, the wealthy barber and former dragon on Dragon's Den. Welcome to the Wealthy Barber Podcast where we'll be hosting some of the top minds in the world of personal finance. Yes, that's to balance me out. The podcast is about making the subject not just easy to understand, but dare I say, even fun, honest. Whether you're trying to fund your retirement, figure out how to build a down payment,

save for your kids' education, manage debts, whatever, we'll be here to help you do it. Before we jump in, a quick but important note, nothing we discuss here should be taken as investment advice. We don't know you and your personal financial situation, so we're not here to tell you, we're specifically to put your investment dollars. We're here to educate, get you thinking, and we're not here to tell you where specifically to put your investment dollars.

We're here to educate, get you thinking, and we hope entertain. But please do your own research and or consult with your financial advisor before taking any action. Hey, it's Dave Chilton, Wealthy Barber Podcast. I have absolutely no idea what episode this is, but I'm very excited about it. I have Bruce Celrion, good friend, one of Canada's best known voices in the personal finance space. I'll give you a little background about Bruce, Queen's University graduate, clearly could not get into Laurier, that's fine, not going to judge him, went to Procter and Gamble where he was a young star, but wanted to make a change, wanted to do something different, got into financial journalism. BNN, one of the founding members, by the way of BNN, had a great

career there, has gone on to write a mega bestseller with Moolala, followed it up, has had a podcast longer than almost anybody on the Canadian personal finance front that's done very well. He's written for MoneySense, he's obviously been in the Globe and Mail. I came to know him through his efforts on CBC. He's written for MoneySense. He's obviously been in the Globe and Mail. I came to know him through his efforts on CBC. He was on the Exchange a lot with Amanda Lang. As a co-host, he would sub in for Kevin on Lang and O'Leary where he did a wonderful job. Much sharper than Kevin, much more likable than Kevin, much more pro-Canadian than Kevin. So all good on that front. He's a gifted speaker, but I would say the most important part of this introduction is none of that. It's that he's a very fine person

He's very caring. He likes helping people. He really does care about Canadians personal finances He's now the CEO of Credit Canada will talk a lot more about that later I think a perfect role for him a good outlet for that passion to make a difference in people's lives. So it's a real honor to have you on the show, Bruce. It is a real honor to be here. And I would like the transcript of that introduction so we can just save everybody time and use that as the eulogy for when I kick the bucket in 50 years.

Because the work is done. We'll just publish that. I'll come and speak, although I'll be long dead. I'll send a tape, for sure. I'll send a tape. No, it is really good to see you, and I meant every word of it. I've been a big fan of yours for years. I loved you when you would substitute on the exchange in Lang and O'Leary.

I thought you brought a very positive energy. Now you say that because you were just so glad that Kevin wasn't there. It didn't have to be me, it was just anybody but him. Anybody coming in for Kev was a positive. No really, you're a very positive guy but you have a great knowledge about economics and personal finance. You make it understandable. You use a lot of humor, a lot of stories but the other thing is I found is that you speak to everyone. A lot of us fall into the trap of speaking to people with a lot of money because then you can talk about every aspect of the investment arena, et cetera.

You've tried to focus a lot on everyday Canadians, people scuffling to get by, et cetera. How do we help them? And I think that's been a very positive thing. So gonna cover off a lot of subjects today, but give us a little bit of background initially though, how you made the transition from Procter and Gamble over to B&N. That's a pretty big jump. I flew to Central America with one of the best self-help books I've ever read called I Could Do Anything If Only I Knew What It Was.

And I'm flipping through this book, it remains a classic, Barbara Sher. And it asked a question, if you could do anything and knew you would be successful, what would it be? And I'm on the shores of Lake Panahatchel journaling my heart out. And I realized like a lightning bolt that the answer to that question was very simple. I'd be a TV reporter. And I was just terrified to make the leap

from all the right things one does as a business school graduate. We go to Proctor and Gamble, we have the job, but that was the dream. So I returned from that trip, quit my job and freelance for a year and then BNN launched the following year. So that's what happened. I really wanted to pursue this dream to work in television, which had been my

dream since I was 10 years old. I just was too scared to pursue it up until that moment. So I remember walking into my office, quitting my job and she's what are are you going to do? I'm going to go be on TV. And of course I developed a Procter and Gamble OGSM, which is the strategic framework for launching a new diaper. And I use that to get a job on television. I still have it. It's in two career books and it works. So that was the insight was I'm gonna follow the dream. And then I developed the plan, the marketing plan, executed the plan and got the job. Before BNN was BNN, Business News Network,

wasn't it ROB TV? Oh yeah, report on business television. Did you go there when it was report on business or when it was converting to BNN? And was there an ownership change too or just a name change? There was an ownership change. There was a whole bunch of complexity. So we launched BNN,

what's now BNN from a hotel conference room back in 1999. And literally is like a room of people. We had six weeks to launch a TV network. I was hired as a producer after two questions. The executive producer at the time, Jack Fleischman said, what's EBITDA? What's NPV? I successfully defined both I thought left the room after five minutes and he talked to my reference for 45 minutes so it was chaos it was the most extraordinary start up you could ever imagine smart interesting people really committed to bringing business news to Canada and that's what we did we totally winged it and had a blast doing it.

It was super fun. I loved it. It was a very enjoyable group of people. I've kept in touch with a few of them over the years. But I think your big move there was you ended up becoming the New York correspondent. So if you dreamt of being a reporter, this must have been the ultimate to be covering all the big

stories out of New York. And based at CNN. So our bureau was in CNN. And I can't even tell you what that's like to be at CNN everybody who's on CNN is literally there in the makeup room beside you they had an entertainment show for a while and I can be really timed it to need to go touch up my makeup around the time all the celebrities were getting ready for the show like Rob Lowe hi Judy Dench just need a little

touch up here. So it was the time of the Martha Stewart trial the Bernie Ebers trial Dennis Kozlowski corporate crime was the big deal and I had a front row seat is amazing. I still don't think those and Ron guys did it. You're probably right you should do what true crime series. Now look at knowing a lot about business and clearly you did coming from the Queen's Commerce group and then going into this, that's not the same as knowing a lot about personal finance. Where did that expertise come from?

On the ground. So I would say, first of all, I was raised by a dad who had a very, still does, has a very strong value around personal finance. So I learned this stuff at his feet. I'm one of five, youngest of five kids, and allowance was delivered through a ledger system, like literally a little ledger book that he would pull down from the shelf, write our name in and calculate our allowance. So the wealthy barber and its teachings

were embodied by my dad, but then I also went to my local Canada Trust and bought a copy of this new book called The Wealthy Barber. And I read it, was obsessed with it, and embodied all of those, many of those things over the course of my life. What I realized working at BNN was that we were talking to a very small slice of her shirt, who was super keen on retail investing, not even financial planning or getting a handle on your

investing. And so when I left after a decade, that became the mission. How can I help people get a better handle on their money so they can live the life they want? Because retail investors, super small slice, and I would say in hindsight, we encourage them to focus on things that don't really matter. Because it's so interesting. It's gamified. It's fun. I used to host our coverage of the US Fed rate decision, two o'clock every six weeks or so. There was music. We had correspondents joining us from around the world. We had analysts. We had all sorts of resources and nothing ever happened.

You know CNBC and BNN we all they all need news They all need something that day to keep people hooked But at the end of the day most investors are just better served by buying a low-cost index fund and paying no attention whatsoever But that's not a message that goes over well. Where did you develop your unique communication style? So you do use a lot of humor, you use stories, you're very demonstrative. I think that's what draws people to you. Yeah I was the winner of the public speaking contest in grade four, five, six, and eight. Wow what happened in grade seven and that was an off year.

I mean, you really dropped the ball. You were wrong. Tory Hawken won for a speech on the weather. And I still have an issue with that. I'm working through with my therapist trying to- Have you run into Tory at all since? No, but I saw her dad because he was on the board of the TSX and I almost brought it up, but I did not bring it.

Tom Hawkins, Minister of State for Finance, your daughter robbed me of my rightful wish. Would have been five in a row. It could have been five in a row, unparalleled in London, Ontario. But I was such a nerd. Like I was 43 at 13. And so I took the bus to Fanshawe College in London, Ontario, first to take a course in small engine repair when I was in grade nine. And in

grade 10, I took a course in public speaking, effective public speaking. So I've always been very interested in communication. And the one thing that has been nuanced over time is that I was a closeted gay man for a long period of time. Right. And I'm a little extra. So pretending to be straight takes no short small amount of effort on my right, but I was able to hem it in and clamp it down for a long period of time. And on BNN, you know, back in the day when I wore a tie and

was hosting the business news I would try and portray that what unfolded for me after I mean I've been out for a very long time I became out in a communication way such that I could speak in the way that I'm naturally inclined to speak which is a lot and that a lot there's a lot of facial expressions is a lot of hand gestures it's a lot. There's a lot of facial expressions. There's a lot of hand gestures. It's a lot. And I think that's what has me be more effective with people because I really am like this, you know, when you go for dinner.

Yeah, it's very authentic. No, there's no doubt about it. You're very much yourself. And I think that draws people in. And I think also I mentioned earlier, your passion for people, you really do want to make a difference. But I think the most important question is what did you end up doing with the small engine repair? Knowledge it's not something you pursued at all. I Repaired an engine that I had seized it was a Toro Lawnmower that I he's from your 88 year old neighbor or seized from whom no no I I seized the engine. Oh, you see that I see that

I thought you've been stolen raged by what the mechanic was going to charge me to fix it. I hopped on the bus, I got lawnmower to fan shot college and I fixed it myself. And my mom kept that lawnmower for over 20 years. But what I learned in that whole experience is that there are certain things that one should outsource and taking care of machinery is something that I should and will outsource. I've never changed the oil in my car, I've never rotated my tires. I happily pay for that kind of service.

Very wise. I do nothing. I have no skills whatsoever. Like I can't fix anything. I don't know how to cook. I'm completely useless. You know, are you a good cook? I am a good cook, but as a parent, that's kinda like you're making meals all the time. And also my mom was a great cook, so I would always cook as a kid because she was working. So I would have to have dinner on the table when she got home, not every night, but regularly.

Are either one of your parents still alive? My mom just passed, just recently. Oh, I'm so sorry. That's okay, she was the best best and I had her for almost 89 years and I was there when she drew her last breath. Her passing will live for me as one of the most beautiful days of my life ever. Same with me.

Not your mother's passing, but my mother's passing. Same thing, I remember it very fondly. Strange, I know this sounds strange, but it was a peaceful passing with a lot of love in the room and that's the way it should be. That's the way it should be. And my dad and stepmother are still with us and rocking and rolling.

So yeah. I'm a little concerned that you had your mom for 89 years, meaning you were alive the entire time she was alive. Can you walk us through the math on that? That was a way of me saying that I had her for a very long time without revealing my age. Without revealing your age. Okay. How old are you? Do you mind me asking that I had her for a very long time without revealing my age, which is this. Without revealing your age. Okay.

How old are you? Do you mind me asking? I don't mind you asking. We will edit this out. And you don't have to edit it out. No, we weren't going to. I was just going to say that. Oh, confront ageism straight on.

I am 54 now. You look great. Thank you. No, you seriously look great. I've known you for a long time now. It has been a long time. It has been a long time. Okay. Let's get to the personal finance

We're gonna talk about Credit Canada and what they do etc in a few moments, but I want to ask you an interesting first question What are you seeing out there? You know what I'm seeing is the cost of living is hitting people hard The inflation numbers are understated if you ask me in terms of what's really happened with pricing so many people are tight right now We hear about the housing affordability crisis. There's just a living affordability crisis that's hitting a tremendous number of people. You seeing the same thing? 100%.

Credit Canada had the highest volume first quarter in 54 years. Wow. It just is a huge volume increase. And a part of that is our success from a marketing standpoint and our operations and all the efforts that we've put into there. But the other factor is the deterioration in the Canadian consumer.

The other challenge that I would add, which is outside of the cyclical time that we're in on rates and inflation and the economy and the recession concerns and all that is our consumerism as a culture is at unprecedented level. So it is exceedingly difficult for an individual to manage their own behavior in a way that it wasn't when you and I were growing up or when my parents were growing up. Because back in the day, you might have a charge card, but you didn't have a credit card and the banks closed Friday afternoon. If you didn't have the cash, you didn't pick up the cash before the bank closed Friday afternoon. If you didn't have the cash,

you didn't pick up the cash before the bank closed, you didn't have any cash over the course of the weekend. And I have a 15 year old and I see the extent to which social media makes it much harder. They want a gazillion things and they can fund a gazillion things because they have access to credit and buy now pay later and

all those sorts of things. So it's not to say that technology hasn't enabled lots of great things in our culture, but it has made it very difficult for people to toggle between their present selves and their future selves. It's exceedingly hard. You know, that's very well said. I really like your wording there. And you're right.

Ubiquitously available credit has been a killer for a tremendous number of consumers. You've got social media pulling people in and all they have to do is tap or their card is already registered on that site etc. It takes a lot of self-discipline to avoid it. In fact, I find most of people who avoid it are just not on social media. It's not that they're on and fighting off the temptation. They're not on period. But no, you're right, a lot of the spending has come too naturally. You at Credit Canada, tell us a little bit more about what Credit Canada does, and then we'll go from there.

Yeah, so our vision is to transform the way people use credit, which is a very high bar. Before my arrival, we provided a great service, provided credit counseling, and the sector for generations has been focused on financial literacy. We have said that is wholly insufficient. We need to get at financial behavior in order to improve financial well-being. So we have launched a whole financial coaching program, which is spectacular.

We think about our credit counseling in a very holistic way. So we provide financial coaching, credit counseling, and we also do a ton in the world of education. What we are trying to do is help people get out of debt so they can get back into life. There's always a in order to there's a higher order benefit. And that higher order benefit is your life. Like I want you to watch your Netflix and hang out with your kids and, you know, travel and do whatever else it is. I don't want this to be your new hobby. So we have redesigned entirely how we serve our customers. We moved from, in the old days, it was all appointment based, right?

You would go into an office and have an appointment. We're completely on demand. You pick up the phone and you're talking to a credit counselor immediately. So really what we're trying to do is transform the way people use credit. And that requires that we move beyond knowledge and we move beyond knowledge to insight. Because when the light bulb goes off, that's when people change behavior and not a minute before that.

Knowledge is a commodity. You can ask AI, you can look anything up on a search engine. And what we need to do is have people reflect on what's my money for? What are my strengths and weaknesses? What am I gonna do to manage my behavior such that the toggle between my current self, my present self and my future self are both well served. Is it a nonprofit that you are heading up there and how are you getting your funding?

Yeah. Credit Canada is a nonprofit. It's been a nonprofit since its beginning, but it's no longer a charity. So there was a change a couple of years ago. All the nonprofit credit counselors are now structured as nonprofits. I actually think that's better because I think of us as a social enterprise. So we break even over the course of time. We invest in delivering on the mission, but we're not trying to appease a shareholder or an owner. We make money in two ways. The first is something called the fair share agreement, which is historically how we made 100% of the money.

And that is that of the 10,000 clients that we counsel a year, a percentage will do a debt consolidation program with us. So their debt comes to us, we pay off their creditors at no or low interest. We then get through the Canadian Bankers Association, 20% of that return to creditors to account for all the counseling work that we do. On my arrival, I was like,

we need to diversify our revenues because I do not want to be running a single service business. It's too risky. It's fraught. So we launched sponsorships and we developed some pretty extraordinary relationships with organizations who have a genuine commitment to making a difference for Canadians. And so for some of them, it's marketing. For some of it, it's CSR, corporate social responsibility. And for some of them, it's loss mitigation. Because think about this. If you've got debt you can't manage and you're in a collections department, they have no advice for you. They're calling and asking you to pay, and they're wanting you to pay, like come and pay. So who's providing advice on how to actually go out and do that? It's us. We're the missing link. We're the advice gap. And you know,

the banks will say they provide advice and in some sectors they for sure do like how do you get a mortgage? How do you invest? Whatever. Who's providing advice on dealing with debt you can't manage? No one except for the non-profit credit counselors. And by the way, it's not just Credit Canada. There's five amazing competitors. Yeah, industry association. So we're providing that advice and that's a critical piece. And sponsorship is a way to help us do things in which there's no dollar sign attached. Our financial coaching programs sponsored by Capital One, they cut a big check, but

it means every single participant receives a full scholarship for a very intense program. That's interesting. So, what is the, there's a bit of irony that Capital One is a major sponsor of all this because obviously a credit card company and a lot of the people got into the trouble in the first place through credit cards they have a vested interest obviously they don't want people to not pay their credit card back but are they also trying to do this for social responsibility reasons but also for PR reasons which by the way I'm not criticizing but it's a part of the

game for capital one it's really not a big objective for them they don't require in our agreements that we do all sorts of things to talk about it. I mention it because they really do believe in making a difference for vulnerable Canadians. And I'm sure lots of people say it, but my experience working with them in the last four years is they really do believe it. And that's what we find in general

with the sponsors that we're working with. I think we have to resolve this paradox for ourselves to know that there's two truths that can coexist at the same time. So if you snap your fingers and credit cards disappeared, then sure, people would not get in over their heads with credit cards. It would also shut the economy down, right? Because we are now in a digital world in which people transact in that way. And I often get asked, how do I reconcile that for myself? And how I think about it is, and it's a cliche word,

I hate to use it, but I'm gonna, the ecosystem. So we have this financial services ecosystem that includes nonprofits and charities and government agencies and the FCAC and the credit card companies and all the subprime lenders, the licensed insolvency trustees. We all have a role to play. And how do we surround the client, the consumer, the average Canadian in a way that they have

the knowledge and the insight and the products and the services that are going to help them achieve their goals sooner and more effectively than if we weren't paying attention to that and focused on that human, that individual. Did you use the word ecosystem in the grade seven speech that didn't win? That might have been the reason that jargon. Now going back to what about bankruptcy and you must have some people come to see you where they're so far gone that it may be best to claim bankruptcy and start over. Do you have a process to help them? How do you handle that situation? So we view Credit Canada as the first call.

So if you are dealing with debt, you can't manage. If you have anxiety around that, call us first. And we are going to be non-judgmental and empathetic and confidential, all that. Then we have a whole bunch of places we can refer you. So we can refer you to a mortgage broker to a licensed insolvency trustee, because our counselors are trained, they're accredited, they're going to look at your financials and say, based on your income, based on your debt, based on all those

things, you're insolvent, you're not going to be able to do a debt consolidation program, you need to do a consumer proposal or bankruptcy. And we're not the people who do that the LITs are regulated federally, we're going the people who do that. The LITs are regulated federally. We're gonna connect you to those folks and they're gonna do that. If you start somewhere else, it can be a little more complicated

because if you're a subprime lender, what you wanna do is sell another subprime loan. If you're an accountant, you wanna sell someone on their tax services. We're a nonprofit. So we have an easier time referring out based on need. Okay well that's very fascinating stuff. How are people getting in this trouble right now? We talked about the cost of living being through the roof. We talked about the draw

of credit, the availability of credit. Is it the same old people just can't fight off temptation? Do they run into a tough time in their personal life? What leads them to this situation? It's all those things, but here's where we start. We start with the view that debt is not the problem. Debt's never the problem. Debt's the symptom. So, if debt's the symptom, what's the problem? And it's all the things that you've already said. The thing that I would underline is very often there is a mental health issue.

And I don't mean big M mental health, like clinical depression or clinical anxiety necessarily, but there's some dynamic that is around someone's mental health. Maybe it's undiagnosed or untreated ADHD, for example. Maybe it's substance abuse. There's just a whole bunch of other things. And I think how our logical and linear minds approach this is,

you know, we would think, pay yourself first. How hard is that? Just do that. People don't do that for a lot of different reasons, a lot, a lot of different reasons. And it's not just the knowledge of that. Like they didn't read your book. They don't know that. Right. There's a whole bunch of other things going on. Here's another variable, which is going to seem both super logical and also makes you scratch your head a little bit. We had a client call us. They were not able to pay their DCP, their debt consolidation program.

And our counselor was trying to understand what was going on. And she said, I have the money. I can't get it to work on my app. She said, did you go to the bank to get help with the app? And she said, I took a cab, 30 bucks each way. I arrived at the branch and they were closing, they couldn't help me. So this person who has no discretionary incomes

on fixed income, I think a disability payment, she went back without that need met and our counselor worked with her to get the app functional on her phone so she could pay the Credit Canada DCP, she could pay the phone bill. That is a service that a nonprofit credit counselor is 100% ready and willing and able to do, that in a for-profit context, you can't really imagine someone at a bank call center spending the 25 minutes to get the app to work. They're going to send you to a video or a tutorial or something. This person was well into her 70s and we were the one person, the one resource

that could help her in that particular way. So when we think about all the things, there's just so many barriers, including the adoption of technology. I couldn't agree with you more. You brought up ADHD and you know, I'm a guy who over the years, because the wealthy barber came out when I was so young,

I've seen, you know, tens of thousands of people's plans, spending summaries, et cetera. ADHD plays a much bigger role in getting people in financial trouble than many realize although I will say there's been some good studies on it recently in the States that have finally come out and said wait a second we may not have recognized the behavioral issues are flowing from this more often than we thought I thought that was interesting you brought it up so you're seeing a lot of that there just that lack of focus impulse buying all of it up. So you're seeing a lot of that there, just that lack of focus, impulse buying, all of it.

All the things. And I'm a parent with a kid with ADHD. So I have that much stronger awareness of how that particular neurodiversity manifests itself. And you think, right, my kid and people with ADHD often have a very hard time completing something. So they're great at starting, they have a hard time completing.

When you think about taxes, It's a horrendous task I hate the task. It takes some time. How do you get closure on that? How do you set up the automatic withdrawal for your TFSA or your RSP those task oriented things once they're set up? They can operate without a lot of oversight But for someone who's neuro diverse, there's just a ton of different things that make it really hard. The other challenge with ADHD when it comes to dysregulation

is sometimes getting a handle on your money is about other people, having a conversation with the bank, having a conversation with a mortgage lender or broker. If you've got dysregulation, navigating those relationships can be very tough. And a virtual world maybe makes it easier. You can use a chat bot or whatever, but that's a complexity

that I think we in our moralizing way we overlook like there's a lot of finger waggy thou shalt right and I've been often talked about it like what role am I playing with people with Canadians when it comes to their money and what I would say is I'm trying to crawl through the fiber optic cable like literally like when I'm on radio or TV, crawl right through, sit next to them. And to the extent that it's possible, be their saucy best friend.

Your best friend is going to smack you up every once in a while and say, come on, and they're going to take you for a beer and they're going to have fun. And that's the role I think I'm trying to play, we're trying to play, because we've got to change the channel and speak to people in a way in which they can hear us. That's the objective, not what we say, but how we are heard. Yeah, that's fantastic stuff. I mean, it really is. Did you start there in 2021? I did. Yeah. Right. So you've been there four-ish years now. If you noticed it, I'm sure you have have that it's not what people think. The general public thinks that the only people

who get themselves in trouble with credit are lower income people, et cetera, but it's not. It's a diverse group of people, sometimes double income families that are quite reasonable in terms of their totals. But again, they fall victim to a lot of these temptations that we spoke about. So you have a wide variety of clients

among those 10,000 calling in. It really is. It's all incomes. It's all geographies. It's all jobs. It's people who own homes. It's people who rent. It's people who are newcomers. It's people who've been here for a thousand years. Like it's really every Canadian and the circumstances are, the circumstances are all different. And the essence of it and the approach to getting out is always exactly the same. And I think that's one of the most critical paradoxes for people to understand is that we're all different as human beings. Our lived experience, everything's different. It's all exactly the same. And when you look back at The Wealthy Barber, the original book from the 80s, it stands the test of time because all of the universal truths and they still apply to everybody. Now

decades later and regardless of where you are in the income spectrum and that's the same for the La La method. It's the same for a lot of this basic personal finance stuff. We can spin it differently and add some soy sauce and dress it up and put it on TikTok but fundamentally the approach is the same. I agree. I fundamentally, the approach is the same. I agree. I agree. Now that's interesting. People who own homes, are you seeing some of the car problems? I am like, I've been collecting spending summaries the last six months. I am shocked

at what some families are spending on cars. Like I've always known it's a problem. But when I see the actual numbers, I'm like, what is going on here? Is that one of the problems that brings people to your services? It is. And here's an interesting example about how that manifests. If you have compromised credit and you go to get a car loan,

what can happen, and this is a risk factor, is that dealership may make multiple hard inquiries on your credit in order to get you financing. And we had a client who's got their head kicked in because they had five hard inquiries to an already compromised credit score and it took them to the basement. They would have been way better off to walk or take the bus because just that application process significantly harmed their credit. Hey, can you walk our listeners through that?

Most Canadians don't know that. Yeah. That the actual request for information affects the credit rating. Walk us through that. Yeah, so your credit score is a function of a number of things. And one of them is the number of what are called

hard inquiries on your file. So there are soft inquiries that don't affect your file. And that could be something like if you go to a fintech and get a free credit score, that's a soft inquiry, it doesn't affect your file. And that could be something like if you go to a FinTech and get a free credit score, that's a soft inquiry doesn't affect your file. A hard inquiry is when you ask to borrow money or apply to a credit card company, and they metaphorically do this, but they call the credit bureau and say, Hey, this Bruce guy wants a credit card. What do you think

should we give it to him? Hey, this Bruce guy wants it. Hey, this Bruce guy wants a credit card. And if they suddenly receive five requests for Bruce to get a credit card, they get concerned. And so that hits your score. The thing that most people know about their credit score is payment history. Pay on time every single time, no matter what your life depends on it. Credit history, the duration of time. And the other one that really hits our clients hard

is credit utilization. So this is the percentage of credit that you're using at any given time, not when the bill is sent to you, but at any time during the month. Of what you have available. Of what you have available. And why that's problematic is a lot of people have a credit card that's maxed out.

And on the one hand, you think if you've got a good score or you've got good income, you could get a second credit card or a line of credit and not use it. That's going to help your utilization dramatically and bring your score up. The challenge is you then have to exert extraordinary self-control not to use that additional credit. And run it up. Yeah, absolutely. Because all of a sudden you've run that up and then that's hugely problematic. No, those are all wonderful points. It's changing up a little bit. Are you seeing rent becoming a bigger and bigger problem? I mean it's going down a little

bit the last 68 months in many parts in the country but go back a year and two ago as a percentage of income it was at the highest level I had seen it. And in Toronto in particular was so problematic. Is that driving a lot of people's fixed costs up bringing them in? A hundred percent it is. And our counselors as a matter of course, do a basics cashflow snapshot to say like, where's the leakage? What's going on? What could you cut? And housing, regardless of rent or own, whatever it is, has gone up dramatically. Even if we see a bit of softening in rents, it is a huge chunk of people's budgets with virtually no increase in wage power. Like people are not in aggregate, not making more money. Absolutely, Bruce. They're bearing the brunt of inflation.

Inflation is perfectly fine if your wages are matching that. That's right. And it's not. What about all the people our ages, I'm 10 years, 12 years older than you, but who say, well, it was tough to buy a house when I was young too. I'm going, are you kidding? It was two and a half to three and a half times our income. It's now eight to 10 to 12, depending on what city you're in, times an income, even with

slightly lower rates than the historical averages. It's so much more difficult to buy a home now than it's ever been. A hundred percent. Now, here's the nuance that I would love for young people to understand, and that is the interest rate delta, because they believe that they are owed rates that are sub three percent. That that's the natural way of the world. And you, you in particular, because you're older than I am,

but my parents recall viscerally 18, 19% interest. 21 even. And I really encourage people to look at that long-term chart because what they'll say, the recency bias is overshadowing history. And when you look at that long-term chart on rates, the natural level of interest rates is not sub 2%.

That was weird. It was an anomaly. As you think about that 25 year period of your mortgage, you need to be thinking about 5% to 7%. That's what's real. And I think we've done a disservice to people by not underlining the fact that the natural level of rate, there's no natural level, but it's certainly not sub 2%. But even when you factor in the fact that rates today at let's say 4-ish percent on a five-year fix are significantly lower

than historical averages, homeownership still a lot more expensive. And it's not just again the price of the homes, you've got property taxes, insurance, everything has been going up at a greater than CPI pace. And to your point wages haven't come close to keeping up. It's so unfair. And the point we've made on this podcast repeatedly is, choose your parents wisely. Because if you don't have parents who can help you out

in some way, shape or form, unless you're an ultra high income, this is a tough spot. The other dynamic is inflation, or sorry, expectation creep. So when I was growing up kids shared bedrooms, you did not renovate your kitchen because you wanted to renovate your kitchen you renovated it if it I don't know exploded or I don't know, something happened. Whereas true in the area of in the era of HGTV.

We're super excited about what's possible in the world of Instagram in terms of where we travel and the car that we have and what our home looks like. It is almost impossible to give away antique furniture in today's times. Antique stores closing down everywhere. Can't do it. Because of that, you can't do it. And to your point about the kitchens, I mean, even the size of the home, the homes are so

much bigger now. Even the relatively modest new builds are 1.5 times the size of the home the homes are so much bigger now even the relatively modest new builds are 1.5 times the size of the homes of the 40s 50s 60s and 70s. That's not getting factored in much So you're right expectation creep plays a role here. It doesn't offset the major problem We're talking about but it plays a role It does because our young people believe they first of all they want and they believe they deserve something that is financially impossible and I will sound like a super old crank when I say this but I think there is a real opportunity for people not just young people to reset expectations and to move outside of what you deserve to what you can afford. And all that you say is accurate in terms of how unaffordable so much is, like you get a postage stamp for less than a million dollars in a major city.

And that's the reality that we're in. So we both need to rage against the machine, build more housing, deal with the supply and demand dynamics, and accept that the world is very different than it was. And that it's equivalent to yelling at the snow in February. We live in Canada, it's gonna snow, the weather's gonna be like that. And so how are you going to mitigate your own risk? How are you going to find your own path? Because that is not changing. You know, it's interesting, I wrote essentially that exact same piece in the redo of the wealthy barber I'm working on, where the barber says, look, you've got a lot of valid complaints. We can talk at length about all the reasons

this has come to be, but what for? This is the new reality. Let me help you to navigate the waters as well as possible. It's not easy. It's not as easy as it was, but let's get through it as well as possible. Look at whatever levers we have. What about going back to your business? Divorce obviously must play a role in some of these people coming. It is, and I don't think it gets enough attention on a financial planning front. I see it because I do a lot of front line stuff.

It's great to write a book where everybody's a fictional character and they all have great marriages. But in real life, people split up and with housing costs where they are right now, the backwards step can put people in trouble. They have trouble adjusting their spending to where it needs to go. And then they're coming in to see Credit Canada. Yeah, 100%. And where I think about it, we can

wind back the clock and reverse engineer a successful marriage. You see, you want to reverse engineer a successful marriage if you only do it for the financial benefit, right? Right. So it's like, okay, I don't care if you really like each other. I don't care if you make each other happy, but way better financially. I'm teasing. But if you reverse engineer it and you look at cash flow, then you would say, where's the line item for your marriage?

And so that's a trip together. It's babysitters if you've got young kids. It's marriage counseling. It's all those things that are hard to pin down. But I assert that everything in life has a dollar sign attached. Every single fan has a dollar sign attached. So how are you going to have a successful marriage over time? Just take the case that there's a dollar sign attached and add in a monthly therapy session or something like that. Insofar as it's one of the most effective ways to get a

handle and keep a handle on your money is just stay happy and stay married to your spouse please. Thanks. I mean all the research supports that you know it really does. In fact I loved your first point there even before he said the spouse part and that is that if you and I and people like us can get people handling their money better they're happier even if they're making sacrifices. They're spending less, they're not going out as much. All the research says they're happier. Antitotal evidence, formal research, everything else. Okay, I'm gonna hit you with a weird one and it's because of spending summaries I've been looking

at in the last week or two. The elephant in the room to me for a lot of people in their 30s and 40s are their kids sports and extracurricular activities. So I'm getting these spending summaries sent to me. My kids grew up playing sports. My son was a good athlete. You're looking at all this going, okay, it was expensive when these guys were young. This is nutty now.

I mean, is that not putting people behind an eight ball? The model I apply is called the priority pyramid, right? So it's a riff on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And I came up with it because people were so overwhelmed with all the things we were talking to them about. So the base level of the pyramids cash flow, debt reduction, savings, all that stuff at the level of cash flow, the average family needs to look at it and say, what's coming in and what's going out. It is not optional in my view, probably

yours, but it's not optional to save for retirement or to save for an emergency fund or to save for a kid's education. None of that's optional. So all that's then in your monthly cash flow and you've got discretionary spending. And that discretionary spending then goes to clothes outside of a winter jacket, uber eats, kids sports, all those sorts of things. And every family has to make those judgments. But I want them to make those judgments

with their eyes wide open. And when you say, it's important for my kid to play rep hockey, it doesn't come from retirement savings. It comes from, oh, I guess I'm gonna have to work an overtime shift twice a month. Like if that's what I'm gonna have to do. Love it.

Amazing, you should totally do that. That's great. Eyes wide open, here's what our priorities are, and here's how we're going to fund them. You know what's crazy though is that when I was raising kids, so let's say 25 years ago, my son's playing high level sports, we could make sacrifices in one area, all the families and still support even though it was expensive. We could get through without dipping into retirement savings efforts, etc. Now, even if you make compromises elsewhere with discretionary spending, you don't take holidays, you work the extra shift to your point, it's so crazy on the

AAA level, especially or on dance or on cheerleading, they can't get through it without compromising their retirement savings, which means maybe we shouldn't be doing this. Like how did all of this stuff become so expensive? I think sure there's inflation, but I would go back to expectation inflation. So my kid danced. Why do we need new costumes every single time? Why does at the mid-level, synchronized swimming requires so much travel?

What are the kinds of things that we could really think about how to make this work for more people and in this holistic view of our lives? We almost never order in. And if we're ordering in, it's pizza. And that's probably like, it's not often. And that comes from the imprinting of my family in London, Ontario, and one of five kids, as you know, we just didn't do that. So I don't have morality about it. I want people to have what they want, but I also want them to take a step back and think holistically about that.

And the choices they make in the day to day, Gretchen Rubin has this quote, it matters more what you do every day than what you do once in a while. And I think that's what we need to be thinking about is habits in our financial coaching program, we have a whole unit on habits, how to introduce them, how to remove them, and how to have some agency in the way we live our life. Because we forget that actually we made up the game. We're playing a game we made up by and large.

Sure, society- Very well said. No, I agree. We're understating the problem. When you actually see the spending summaries from people who chronicle it well, meaning they take care of the gas, the hotels, the hockey sticks, the baseball bats, the dance outfits, etc., they actually list everything. It is absolutely crazy.

By the way, you brought up Uber Eats. Funny story, I'm in your hometown London. I'm at a new restaurant, Basia, excellent restaurant, I'll give it a plug. And the waiter comes up and says, hey, the owner just said, you're the wealthy barber. He goes, my gosh, I didn't wanna deal with you. He goes, I spent $1,100 a month on Uber Eats. And then later he's telling me he's having trouble saving. I'm going, you see how these two things are connected, right?

These are not unrelated matters here. No, it's tough. Again, to your point, it's all about, we've taken friction out of society. With all of these apps, the it's all about we've taken friction out of society with all of these apps, the tap and pay, we've taken friction out. That has not been a good thing for us. The friction slowed us down. It made us think. No, interesting stuff. Okay. We got to wrap up. Any other points you want to make? I think the number one thing that I would say and the number one thing our counselors say is there is always hope. There is always a solution.

There is always a next step. There is always action. I like that. If we can do one thing, you know, you and I and there's a whole bunch of people who are committed to the same thing is to keep providing air in that balloon so people see that there is hope, there is something that they can do. Their present self and their future self

can work quite well together and all can work out. It's just gonna take some work and you can do the work. That's great. Listen, Bruce, you're a gentleman. You really are. You're a master communicator, one of the best I've crossed paths with on either side of the border

in the world of personal finance. Thanks so much for coming on. Continued success with your career. It is my pleasure to be here. I'm flattered by the invitation and I love the conversation. Yeah, come back on any time. Seriously, you're way better than our other guests. No, I'm just kidding.

I just said that in case they're listening. All right. Thanks again.