The Wealthy Barber Podcast - #36 — Aravind Sithamparapillai: Financial Planning Tips from a CFP® Gold Medalist

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

Our guest this episode is Aravind Sithamparapillai, a financial planner at Ironwood Wealth Management Group. Earlier this year, Aravind earned his CFP® designation with the highest exam score in the country, placing him at the top of the CFP® Exam President’s List, and was also selected for FP Canada’s Emerging Leader’s Award. In this conversation, Dave and Aravind walk through what great financial planning actually looks like in practice. They discuss the “financial quarterback” model, Aravind's four-step process for investing and why assessing true risk tolerance goes far beyond a simple questionnaire. Aravind explains how biology and financial stress affect investor behaviour, why unusually high returns are unlikely to last forever and how personal preferences should factor into a well-designed plan. The episode also dives into estate and tax planning topics that are often overlooked—from common estate planning mistakes and the risks of joint accounts to when RRSPs should be left to an estate, how taxes work at death and traps grandparents can fall into with RESPs. The conversation wraps up with a practical comparison of TFSAs vs. RRSPs, a discussion on alternative investments and Aravind’s personal story about discovering The Wealthy Barber. Whether you’re building your first financial plan or refining an existing one, this episode is packed with clear, thoughtful insights from one of Canada’s brightest young planners.    Show Notes (00:00) Intro and Disclaimer (00:55) Intro to Aravind Sithamparapillai (04:47) ​​The Financial “Quarterback” Model (10:32) The Four-Step Investing Process (14:38) How Do You Assess True Risk Tolerance? (16:47) A Financial Planner’s Role in Changing Risk Tolerance (19:04) Biology and Financial Stress (21:38) 20% Returns (Probably) Won’t Go On Forever (23:30) Personal Preferences & Maximizing Return (25:05) Common Estate Planning Mistakes (26:50) Reasons Why RRSPs Should Be Left to the Estate (31:47) The Risks of Using Joint Accounts to Avoid Probate (34:44) The Benefits of Leaving a Letter of Direction with Your Will (36:43) What Happens Tax-Wise When You Die? (38:26) The RESP Trap for Grandparents (45:00) TFSA vs. RRSP (49:09) The Risks of Alternative Investments (56:13) Aravind’s Personal Story About The Wealthy Barber (58:45) Conclusion

Hey, it's Dave Chilton, The Wealthy Barber, and former Dragon on Dragon's Dent. 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 hope entertain. But please do your own research and or consult with your financial advisor before taking any action. Hey, it's Dave Chilton, the Wealthy Barber with the Wealthy Barber podcast. As I said last episode, we really appreciate the incredible support we're getting. The word of mouth has taken off. I think we're number two in the country most weeks among all business podcasts.

And it's exciting. And we're getting a lot of good questions now and feedback and what do you want covered next, et cetera. And it seems like a lot of people are embracing this way of learning. I've had a lot of fun. I've learned a lot. I mean, our guests are so good that every week I'm always thinking, hmm, I didn't know that or I hadn't thought of it that way, et cetera.

And I've mentioned before one of the things we put a lot of emphasis on, is not only getting true experts, but doing our due diligence ahead of time to make sure they're also strong communicators, and that they're going to keep you interested and keep it flowing, and boy, have they ever come through in spade. So it's been a great experience. We've all enjoyed it. And the next guest, I'm going to give him quite an introduction. He's come to us in a different manner. So most of the guests, because I've been in the finance field for 40 years, I've come to know personally, or at least I've known of their work. And we invite them on the Jason Pereira is because I have so much respect for them. I've seen what he's done.

We had Leanne Kaufman on recently to talk about estate planning. I know her well. I know how knowledgeable she is. I don't know, Aravind, the guest I'm about to introduce. He and I casually chatted. He came to us in a way that you cannot beat on the credibility front. Our other guests, again, the top financial minds in the country, literally, no hype there, said, you got to get this guy in the show. Well, it happened once and I kind of went, okay, interesting. Happened a second time. So then I reached out to him by a Twitter, I think it was, and said, hey, your name has come up a couple times. Maybe we'll get you on a podcast down the road. He got back to me right away, said, that sounds great, didn't really tackle as quickly as I should have.

Then he came up a third time. Then he came up a fourth time. And I want to repeat, these are four of the top financial minds in our country, none of whom work together, by the way. They're not all tied into the same place saying you need to get this guy in the show. He's articulate. He's passionate to the end degree. That came through over and over again. In fact, one of them said to me, Dave,

this might be one of the only two people who's more passionate about financial planning than you are. All right, he is that much into this stuff. He's a bit of a nut bar and he's like the Aaron Hector's of the world where he'll just go and do these deep dives. So he has great credibility coming on the show. Also gives us, frankly, a little bit of a younger look. We've tended to gravitate to a lot of people.

He's not as old as I have, but older people. So I really am excited to get him on. I'm going to give it my best shot to introduce him. He has a complicated last name for a person with my mind. It's Aravind, Sith and Parai, Palae. Is that we're good? Yeah, that works for me. Thank you.

Give it to me again, one more time. Aravind, Sittan Parra Pillay. Sithampara Play. Okay, I love the name. Yes, I nailed at that time, so that was good. Hey, first off, I want to start with congratulations. You wrote your CFP last year, and I know you would not have brought this up. You finished number one in the country.

in that very difficult course, that very difficult exam. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you so much. It was February 2020, so it still feels fairly fresh. But it is kind of crazy to,

it's crazy. Everyone wants something like that, but no one ever, I mean, I didn't believe per se that, you know, it was possible. So I really appreciate you bringing that up.

Thank you, Dave. Well, I want to make another point. Remember, when he wins that award, he's up against all smart people. Okay? Like, so this is like having the mark,

highest mark in your grade 11 class, when some people couldn't care less. These are all passionate people who are going into this field for the right reasons. They're all smart. He finishes number one. Very credible. Recently, the Financial Planning Association at FP Canada has said he's an emerging leader. I assure you that's the case.

Again, that's why he came so highly recommended to us. So he works at Ironwood right now. Tell us your role there and what drew you to the firm. Thank you, Dave. So Ironwood wealth management group, we do financial planning and we do handle investments for our clients. a financial planner there now is my official title, having gotten my certified financial planner designation. Now, many of us have sort of different markets or different people that we work with, and there I focus on the financial planning at a broad, holistic sense, for three main clientele.

Midwives, mid-level sales and executives, people with complicated lives, complicated growing lives, because that's where my original career came out of. And then because midwives can incorporate, And as you've known from many of my social media posts, I read a lot about corpse. A lot of owner-operated businesses have started to reach out to me as well. It's interesting. You and I are talking off here. I find a tremendous number of people who own corporations do not know what they need to know. And their accountant tends to file the tax returns and do a wonderful job there,

but is not giving them the all-encompassing financial planning advice about how to optimize their situation. It's interesting you've chosen that area to go into. You can add a lot of value. for that particular group of people. What I've found resonates with clients is, and I think this happens for corpse, but it happens for many types of clients, is most of the time they have these three professionals in their life.

They have that investment advisor, and maybe somebody at the bank or at an insurance company who can kind of tell them that, you know, stocks go up, stocks go down, things like that. But then they start asking them, well, what happens in my corporation? What happens if I pay a dividend? How do I think about that?

And the advisor says, that's not my area of expertise. You need to go talk to your accountant. So then they go talk to the accountant who files their taxes, and the accountant can tell them, well, yeah, you know, maybe you should pay a dividend this year for X, Y, Z reasons, it'll save you some tax. But, you know, also have you considered getting a trust because you're going to sell that business one day? Or you're very wealthy now. How are you going to protect your family? And then they say, okay, but what does a trust do?

How does it help me? And then they say, well, you know, the legal implications you have to go talk to a lawyer. And they find they often get bounced around these professionals where everyone says, I know this tiny little scope. but they can't help connect the dots to the other two. And so I've made it a mission to try to learn as much of those other areas so that I can try to sit in the middle of those three and be able to actually talk to clients in a way that says when your investments do X, here's how it will impact your taxes,

and here's why you need to think about the legal implications from a big family goal setting perspective. Well, a couple points. When you optimize on the tax front, you are making yourself a lot of money without taking on additional risk. and we tend to be very careless. The second point is that the model you're describing is almost where you're very, very knowledgeable

and expert in those fields, but you're also acting as the quarterback. You're coordinating things and making sure everybody's communicating and working together to get to that optimal situation. In the U.S., that's very common. And so they've seen that model over the last 20 and 30 years

where people have come in again and brought the experts together. Somebody's coordinated them. We're now seeing it make some good inroads in Canada. You know, your firm and others are starting to do that, we need a lot more of that. Because carelessly, people have let a lot of money slip way over the years, especially on the tax front. I assume you probably, through your time in the U.S. have come across Michael Kitses. Yes, for sure. And so I had a chance to ask

him a question at a conference. And I actually asked him that. I said, you know, I kind of feel in Canada that everybody says that they want to be the quarterback, but I do feel that it's a bit of lip service because a lot of advisors don't know that true in-depth in all. to be able to coordinate the team and say this is what needs to happen. And he laughed and he said, it's a lot of lip service in the U.S. too. In order to truly do that, you have to be willing to only work with, I think he said it was 50 to 100 families tops. Because think of all the extra meetings. Think of how deep you have to go in other areas of expertise. And so his point was, if you're servicing 200 families or 300 families, you can't actually be an in-depth expert and

coordinate that quarterback position. I completely agree with that. I really do. You're right. It requires extra meetings. You know, it's going to sound like a funny comment, but one of the things I hear about you all the time, and again, I want our audience to know, you and I aren't friends. And so when I say these nice things, I mean them, I would say nice things about friends

because most of my friends struggle. They're idiots. So, but you're a very nice guy. This is something that comes back over and over again, is people like you. You're a nice person. You're generous with your time. You really want to learn. I think the quarterback almost has to be, because instead of just managing the client relationship,

they're now managing relationships with all the other advisors too, again, bringing them together, trying to make all the right things happen. They have to be someone that those people like working with, like sharing with, like communicating with. So I think the fact that you're a nice person plays a fairly big role in all of this. I really appreciate that, Dave. And I would also say that it's how can you add value to their lives behind the scenes? because everybody just wants, I mean, we all have jobs, right? The power of incentives.

So nobody wants to look like the not knowledgeable person in front of a client. And so it's really about how can we communicate behind the scenes in order to make sure that the client still comes out ahead. I think I had shared with you in an email that story where a lawyer had asked to speak with me about a joint client when you were doing some estate planning. And the reason that lawyer wanted the one-on-one is they couldn't understand why I was making the specific recommendation. about the RSV. So having that private conversation allows them to now go back and do the will and do the will the right way. But the client just sees two people like communicating, collaborating and feeling good about working together. And I think that's really important. Yeah, no, that was an excellent example. Okay, now we're going to do a little bit different style of interview instead of kind of flowing like I've tried to do a lot of the others. You and I are going to jump around a bit. We're going to go in silos and cover off some areas that I know that you're passionate about and I'll chip in with my two cents. One of the things we talked about is you have a four-step process, in essence, to investing. Walk us through what those steps are and why they make sense. To keep it in plain English for clients, the four main steps are, one, what are your goals?

Two, how risky can your investments be? Or what is your, in finance jargon, people will know risk tolerance or risk capacity? Three, are there other personal preferences we need to know about? And then four, and this is where I think many people miss the mark, is get as much return as you can. keeping those other three steps in check. Yeah, well, you know what's interesting is that time frame, of course, plays such a big role in all of this. And so in one of those initial three,

it's one of the big factors that determines how much risk you're willing to take on. And you and I have both seen a lot of Canadians who don't give enough thought to this. The example I often use is I'll see FHSAs now, where the person's planning on buying a home in the next 12 months, and they're 100% involved in equities in quite expensive markets. And so the timeframe plays a role. But yeah, walk us through each of those four steps, each of those four things people need to think about in a little more depth. It has to start with goals.

And you already listed a key goal, buying a house. Right. Because the goals are going to dictate not only the time frame, but the types of accounts. Because if we want to buy a house, then maybe we might be prioritizing the FHSA and the RRSP for their unique home down payment properties. Right. If we're looking at a vehicle purchase, a cottage, we might look at the TFSA because that money has to come out in the middle of our working life. And if we're looking at long-term retirement, then we might truly be looking at the RRSP or a corporation for our owner operators.

So the goals will start by telling us which accounts and everyone can kind of see through the examples, those goals are going to have different timeframes. If you're buying a vehicle in five years, that's a different time frame than retirement in 30. That's absolutely key. And again, I think everybody understands that, but yet doesn't think about it enough as they go to make their investment decisions or to your point their account decisions. A hundred percent. And I would also say that some goals like retirement can be a little difficult to put a true number on because it's so far in the future. We don't know about inflation. But to some degree, that's why planners have software. Because we can tell you roughly

if you need, you know, if you're spending $5,000 a month or $10,000 a month today and you want that life in retirement, then we can grow. that expense by inflation and say it's going to be $15,000 or $17,000 in future inflation dollars. So we need to match that income. So now we know what the expenses, whether it's a $50,000 car, a $500,000 house, or a $2 million retirement. From there, how risky can your investments be? And I would say for everyone listening to this podcast, we can take into finance jargon away. we can put it into two main buckets. The first bucket is, how comfortable are you with that roller coaster ride?

And I say the roller coaster ride, because we all know that stock markets go up or down, the question is, how comfortable are you with those drops? Because you have to be able to go to sleep at night. And if you feel like a roller coaster that that drop is too steep and you want to get off at the bottom or throw up, then you're in the wrong investment plane. And the other piece, and this is more where your advisor, or your planner should be taking an active role is looking at all of the other factors in your life and saying, do you have other sources of income to step in for those emergency

needs? And that's what we call risk capacity. Because to your point, Dave, if you need that down payment and you don't have other income or your job is a little precarious, especially in today's world, if it could be replaced by AI, you could lose your job. Do you have other sources of income or is there a risk that you might need to draw some of this money? Let's go back to your risk tolerance comments, a couple of things. I find it's difficult for all of us, Dave Chilton included, to assess our risk tolerance ahead of time. You know, until you get through those gut churning downturns, you think I'll breeze through it. I'm the kind of person that can stay detached. I know I've got to think long term. But when you're in the throws of them, so for example,

the credit crisis back in eight, nine, I mean, when markets were down 50 and 60 and some stocks down 70 and 80 percent, it's tougher to stay the course than most people recognize. How do you get around that? How do you assess that? How do you test for that when we know that the reality differs from the projection so much? Two things. One, there are a lot of good, even for people who are figuring some of this out on their own, like Vanguard has a questionnaire. There's a handful of more scientific methodology-based questionnaires that help give an idea of based on the questions and how your client will answer them, what their risk tolerance or what the ideal mix of stocks and bonds will be. But the other piece that I try to focus on with a lot of my clients, especially

if they've got a 10, 15, or 20 year time horizon to retirement is I actually look at what that dollar value might be in 10 years. And I ask them. So some of my midwives, I say, you know, you're going to retire with a million to $2 million. So my question to you is, at some point, you might have a million dollar portfolio. And if you're in a full stock portfolio, that can fall 50%. How do you feel losing $500,000, knowing that that is more money, than you'll make in three years. And that's when you see the blood kind of drain from their face a little bit

because they never thought about it. I love the way you phrase that. And when I'm helping out, even people like my kids, that's the exact same thing you're doing. You're trying to paint a worst case scenario. And you're even trying to paint it like a novelist where you're wrapping emotion around it because then you really get the test.

But the other thing I do a lot of is I say, I don't want you to have to deal with that. Get detached. And I'm a big preacher of pay no attention. You're not going to get as stressed. Now, it's more difficult now with the media so ubiquitously in front of us. I mean, everywhere you turn, you're getting reports on stocks, including social media. But if people can stay detached, that's great.

Here's an important question. So you come across somebody relatively young, and the risk tolerance level is extremely low. Do you view it as one of your responsibilities to try to somehow change that, that you want to try to educate them and work with them to realize they should be taking on somewhat more risk than they're willing to, that their conservative nature could actually end up hurting them dramatically. And do you walk them through all the different communications, examples, and everything else you can't? I do. I would say that this becomes, and both from a, you know, if people are responsible for someone's

investments, then you have a level of responsibility to that person. So again, not forcing them or pushing them into something. But I do. And I actually give this talk to graduating classes of midwives as an example, because I have noticed in a lot of the graduates that come to me, me when they're starting out and they don't have a lot of knowledge because I think the other piece to this is there's not a lot of historical understanding about markets and the risk questions are often phrased as how do you feel about risk? How do you feel about losing money? Not good.

So I also view part of the good planner's role as helping them understand the other side of that conversation and painting that 30 year trajectory and saying if you are investing a thousand dollars a month or $2,000 a month, at a lower risk portfolio, you will end up here, $400,000 in retirement. If you are investing in a more aggressive portfolio, you could end up with a million. And then we have to microscope into the credit crisis or even COVID. And so my graduating presentations include these slides of history saying, hey, this portfolio also went down this much. So you have to be prepared for that, but take a step back and look at that big picture as well. You know, you made a great point when I was saying sometimes our job

is to educate people and try to change their risk tolerance level. But that's easy for me to say when you're across the kitchen table from the client, if you do that too aggressively and they're kind of dragged into a more aggressive portfolio, they become even more likely to panic during a downturn. So getting the measure of all of your clients psychologically, making sure they're matched up to the risk they're taking on. Such an important part of this process is you can see why I always say the best financial advisors out there are outstanding communicators, including really good listeners. It's funny you mentioned that, Dave. And I hope you'll let me take a little sideways story into a biology class I took an undergrad. So in the biology class, they actually talked

about a scientific experiment that was done. And I think it was on like starfish or jellyfish. And they tested squirting them with like jets, like fairly strong jets, but not crazy jets of water. Right. And over time, eventually they started to acclimate. to the force and it didn't respond as terribly. But they also did that with an electric shock. And what ended up happening is the electric shock had the opposite effect. It made them much more sensitive. And so they overreacted and eventually also just kind of became like a bit of a quivering mess.

And so I think there's a big parallel here when we think about clients and that risk and what are we exposing them to, not just in the context of markets. And this is what I explained to a lot of clients. You have to think about it, not just as this one isolated piece, but imagine your portfolio goes down and that's like an electric shock. Or maybe you're okay and it's a jet of water. But what happens if you're fighting for your job? Because maybe there's layoffs happening.

And around you, maybe your family or your kids are struggling to get a job, your parents are being laid off. And all of those become other existential crisis factors impacting you. And so I think that's where it becomes really important to understand. not just, hey, this portfolio will be fine, but what is this portfolio as a component of everything else you're going through as well? You said that very well. And you go back to the electric shocking sample. Think about the poor investor who started out in 1999 and dealt with three crashes in 21 years. And true crashes, you know, market pullback is 40, 50 and 60% in some

instances, depending on the markets we're describing, that's a lot of shock. And for some people that overwhelm their system. Now, the good news is the overall return, through all of that and certainly coming out the far side of COVID, again, justified putting up with that horrible volatility, but it's difficult. I mean, it really is. You wouldn't be human if you didn't get a little jittery when you saw your retirement funds being hit. So all of this is a lot easier to talk about. And it's a lot easier for us to preach. Oh, you've just got to focus long term. You're well paid for the volatility. Don't pay attention. But when you're living it, and to your point, a great point, if you're also dealing with other financial stresses, potential job loss, it's tough. And we go back to what we said, a few, moments ago, a good financial advisor who is communicating with you regularly, has that sense of who you are and how to help. Wow, they can add a lot of value. And on this point of risk tolerance, and we'll talk about personal preferences and, you know, as much return, but I think there's another piece that, especially now, we've had a couple of amazing years, actually three, almost three-year returns have been phenomenal. I think if you are a good planner, you should

also be proactively explaining to your clients, not that, oh, I think there's going to be a crash or I think that something bad is going to happen, but help them understand their portfolio and what has happened recently in the context of a bigger picture. So first, if you weathered 2022, give yourself a pat on the bat because those three years are a result of you staying invested through 2020. Well said. Additionally, understand that when we look long term and if you look at any type of projected assumption, they're projecting mid-ish, like five to seven, five to eight percent returns. So when you look at your 15 percent return and you compare that to eight, the question needs to be, why is there this difference? And what then should we expect

going forward? Not because we're trying to time the markets, but in some sense we're trying to inoculate ourselves so that we are ready when something happens to be able to continue to stay in our seat. You said that extremely well. And I I think right now with market prices where they are, with valuations where they are, you can never be certain, but the odds favor subdued returns over the next 10 years. Now, again, we don't know for sure. So much can change, especially technology-wise that could lead to a productivity burst. Could be totally wrong. We could have spectacular returns. But the odds favor subdued returns over the next little while, and that's all part of the long-term process. Now, I would argue

for the people I tend to write for in their 20s and 30s, all of this is immaterial. In fact, they almost want markets to do poorly in those early years of accumulating because they're buying more shares at lower prices. But I love the way you think. And I really do. And you're very articulate. I think the way you've explained all of those is excellent. So we talked about those two pieces, risk, comfort with risk, personal preferences. That's really related to if you have religious preferences. If you're Muslim and you need to follow Sharia law or if you're Christian and you have very specific companies you don't want to invest in or you have ESG focus. But I think the fourth step there, get as much return as you can.

while keeping the other three in mind becomes really important in the context of, and this is something many of your other podcast guests have already hit on, fees, the idea of active versus passive investments and indexing. Because one of the most common arguments you might hear from a bank or another advisor who is using a more higher fee approach

is, oh, you know, fees don't matter and it's not all about returns, it's about goals, preferences, all of those things. I agree. But once you get down to the certain point where you say all of these have been laid out and we have a proper mix, we can, yes, you are aggressive full stock or no, you're closer to retirement. So maybe you need a 60% stock, 40% bond portfolio. Well, the last piece is how do we take that portfolio and get the most return from it? And one of the major contributors to returns, how do you cut down the fees? How do you look at a more tax efficient like an index style portfolio? And how do you compare the returns between active and passive? passive. And so I just want to make sure that everybody understands that framework down to you figured out the first three. Great. Have your advisor tell you what they are doing to keep your risk in line, but get the most return commensurate with those three card rails.

You said that very, very well, couldn't agree more. Okay, on to estate planning. You know, it's interesting. We started putting out short video clips and social media platforms a little over a year ago. And then we started putting the podcast out. I had no idea that the estate planning material it was going to blow up the way it has because normally people find it boring and intimidating. Obviously, it's a sign that that's where we are demographically in Canada. We have a lot of older people now paying attention to this, but also the industry, I think, has done a very good job in the last few years prior to my re-involvement and explaining to people, wow, do we see a lot of common sense mistakes here?

Like people are making error after error that's leading to poor returns in some cases or lesser money being available, but also leading to family friction, leading to all kinds of things. So let's talk a little bit about some of the common mistakes you're seeing in estate planning and the kind of general advice you would give our listing audience. So first of all, I would say if you're working with an advisor, and I've actually had clients question me on why I ask for this. If you have a good advisor or a good planner, they should be asking you for your will. And they should be reviewing it as a component of your overall plan.

Because first, most often, does your will line up with who you've put as beneficiaries on your registered accounts. And we could talk about the reasons. And how often doesn't it? Like I'd say over half the time, they're misaligned. Especially if like what I see most commonly, and this one is, you know, someone had their first job. They weren't married. Maybe they were just dating their now spouse. And so at that time, they had maybe mom or dad as the beneficiary on their work RSP. Then they get married. Things go on. They have a kid. They get their will done, but they never think to go back and check that work RSP or something that's not directly under an advisor's purview. And I've seen so many times when I review that group RSP, the beneficiary doesn't line up. So first and

foremost, I would say that. You've made an interesting point on some of your posts that you think in a lot of cases leaving the RSP to the estate makes the most sense in the context of the other things. I completely agree. So walk our audience through why you believe that. First, I think a lot of the audience and maybe even a lot of other professionals might be asking, okay, walk us through like what happens. So first, if you're married or you're in a common law relationship, then yes, if one of you dies leave the RSP to the spouse, because there's a tax benefit. To do me so, it all moves over. Next, assuming that you're planning for both of you dying and you're saying who then next,

many people would say, well, we can bypass what it's called probate because there's a very small fee in certain provinces, like in Ontario, it's 1.5%. So if you think about a million dollar RSP or a $500,000 RSP, we're looking at $7.5 grand to $15,000. Right. That's the fee. It's not about other taxes. Whether you leave it outside the estate or inside of the estate, you'll pay all the other taxes. That's the fee that people focus on. Here's the catch. CRA still wants their taxes. So this is the first piece. CRA still wants their taxes out of that RSP. So when you leave that RSP to somebody else, so let's say mom and dad pass away, they have three kids and they decide to leave the RSP to one of the kids to take care of or steward. properly. CRA goes after the remainder of the estate first. So they will look at the taxes on that RSP. So let's say a million dollar RSP, roughly about 500,000 in tax. They're going to go after the house that the mom and dad left behind. They're going to go after the other vehicles, jewelry, TFA, whatever the case might be, that they've chosen to leave in the estate. So now you

have three kids, but if one kid got the RSP and the other two are supposed to split the remainder of the estate, well, a million dollars went to kid one, and kids two and three got a $500,000 tax on top of what was in the estate. So that first and foremost is the, I would say, the easy reason that it's easier to put the RSP in the estate. Yeah, it's a fairness issue. It's a family friction issue. And I mean, remember, they're not under any legal obligation, the person who got the RSP to settle this out, if I'm not mistaken. No. And that's where a lot of, you know, parents want to believe. And I think we all want to believe that when we raise our kids, our kids are going to do what's right in all of those pieces. But we can't predict how grief

changes things. Or what happens if you were sick and one of your kids took care of you and the other two didn't? What happens then? How are they going to feel? So you run a massive emotional risk that you're not even seeing necessarily. For a lot of clients where maybe they have multiple properties, I know a lot of people will have a cottage, things like that. There is another somewhat complex reason, but I think it's important that everyone understand this piece as well when it comes to preserving the estate and why the RSP can be very, very useful. I don't know. Has anyone discussed what a graduated rate estate is on your podcast before? No, go ahead.

So for all the listeners, and I know we're getting a little deep, but I think this is very important that you understand if you have multiple properties, if you've got a sizable amount of assets. The graduated rate estate allows that deceased person or that person who died to essentially, for the next three to four years be taxed, so all of these extra assets that are there that you're distributing across all of those lower marginal tax rates. You know, the first $100,000 might have an average tax rate of 25%. Now, if you don't preserve that estate and you don't preserve that tax status, then automatically everything gets the highest marginal tax rate. So where this becomes really important is one of the ways that you can blow up this tax status is when you have people

outside the estate, put money into the estate. Now, everyone might be wondering, well, how would that happen? Why would anyone do that? But remember, you have an executor who maybe is one of your kids that you've left as the beneficiary. So they're trying to take care of everything. But now the RSP has left the estate. And maybe you've got a couple properties and not a lot of money left in there. And so now they're saying, I got to put the money back in to pay the taxes. Oh, I got to pay the utilities for that cottage. Oh, they hadn't worked on the foundations. we have to fix the foundations because they're not safe before we sell the cottage. So all of a sudden, it becomes very easy without thinking to take all that money, put it back in.

And they're actually trying to do the right thing here. Exactly. And so that was the case with that lawyer. We discussed it. We realized that this family with two properties potentially could end up blowing up. We're talking about tens of thousands of dollars of extra tax, maybe even $100,000 of extra tax, all for this. Let's push the RSP outside. And that's why it's so important to have the professional.

professionals all around you working together, making the right recommendations and having someone who is willing to roll up their sleeves and do that heavy lifting for you. Now, that's a great example. You know, you mentioned probate. In general, it's bizarre to me how the efforts people will go to to avoid probate and they don't want to pay in the Ontario, the 1.5% to the point we're seeing some honestly silliness now on the joint account front where people are willy-nilly slapping kids' names on to joint accounts and exposing themselves to, creditors, divorce, all kind, family friction again, depending on how it plays out post-death, all of these types of things. What are your thoughts there? In general, I would also say the same thing. I don't really agree with it. I think if you need to have someone helping you with closing out accounts in your older age, like as part of your wind down process, maybe a little

different. But having the vast majority of your investments or joint accounts left to somebody for the purposes of distributing to everybody else, not only does it open, as you said, Dave, to divorce to creditors, et cetera. But it also opens it up to the fact that this kid could potentially walk away into the sunset with the money. And if they do, everyone else starts to sue them, starts to sue the estate, so on and so forth. Additionally, this year, so for everyone listening who is still like, ah, whatever, I'll take

that risk, just so you know, the government has also put out rules that a lot of these joint accounts need a trust filing now. That's right. So now you've potentially incurred like thousands of. of dollars of extra tax filings, so you're not really saving much on the probate front anymore either. No, I think you'll probably end up coming out behind in many instances. You know what's fascinating to me is how many quite well-informed people? These are people who've done well in their career. They follow financial planning relatively closely. They think that if you go with a joint

account, you avoid the tax. Let's say there's a pent-up capital gains. And you try to explain them, obviously, that's not the case. The government's not that stupid. You're just going to slap a name on and not have to pay the tax on the deemed disposition. But there's a lot of people who think that. It is crazy to me. And they don't realize because depending on how you're trying to structure it, you might actually just accelerate that tax. That's right. If you say, no, no, no, no, for sure, my kids own it now. Well, then the government said is like, did you sell it today? Like, do you want to pay that tax right now? So people really, and I think the U.S., because there is so much financial commentary out of the U.S. where the rules are very different.

Very. So I think that's also probably contributing to some of this mixed misunderstanding. in some ways. Oh, for sure. And you'll even see people say, well, no, they've owned it with me for years. I put their name on it five years ago. Okay, if that's the case, then you've sold whatever percentage to them at that point. You've triggered capital gains. You're not only do you owe the tax on that, but you could be looking at penalties, interest, and everything else. And again, this is this rush to avoid probate. I personally think that many of the provincial governments, the territory governments that have the higher probate fees would make more money for themselves if they lowered the fee because then people would be less inclined to try

to miss it, they put more assets into it. I think everybody would come out of head whether or not that's going to happen. I don't know. What else do you see in the estate planning area that you wanted to chat about? I think, honestly, the first piece that I would say is a lot of people just don't give true pause and thought to it. And I think it's really difficult for a lot of people in our current day and age to actually understand that.

Like, you're rushing around, you've got kids, you're going to daycare, you're doing whatever the case is. but then no one really stops and says, okay, but what happens when I die? Who do I actually want to receive my money? Do I want them to be wise with it right now? Do I want them to have a little bit more in the future? I think there's a lot of these potential opportunities for maybe attaching a letter of direction and saying, I grew this money.

I want you to enjoy it with your family. I want you to take a trip with it because so often, and what I have seen actually, I have some clients in this situation. They receive chunks of money, but they're not tied up with. But if I spend it, this is like my last link to my parents or my last link to my grandparents. And it comes with these weird emotional anchors. And so we don't spend a lot of time thinking about how can we guide our clients to best think about how to use that money both now and in the future. So that's one piece that I think is really important is as you're thinking about who you want to receive that money,

how are you actually going to communicate why you're giving it to them, what you're doing with it. so on and so forth. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people now are smartening up and putting that kind of instruction letter in with their death binder for lack of better expression that says where everything is and all those types of things and giving some guidance on those fronts. Maybe all of these podcasts, not just ours, but all the, it's finally starting to hit people a bit because I am seeing some positive change with people going, yeah, that makes sense to me. The other thing that's happening is a lot of the baby boomers have had to act as executors for their own parents and gone, oh, my gosh, this could have been so much easier had to have been

well organized. And so they're taking those lessons and applying them to their own situation to help out their kids, grandkids, and we'll see more of that. Here's a very basic question. We do these podcasts. We've talked about estate planning with the number of our guests. And then some of our listeners say, Dave, the one thing you've never really done is gone back to the very basic of what happens when I die. So from tax perspective, what happens in Canada? Are there estate taxes? You know the vast majority of Canadians, as you are aware, think there are estate taxes. So how does all of this work. When you die, what happens? So at a serious level, so I would say the way you need to think about it is when you die, the government pretends that you sold everything. That's right.

So if you have a house, they pretend that you sold it that day. A cottage sold. Business sold. RSPs liquidated and pulled out. TFSA liquidated and pulled out. Non-registered investments sold. So there is what is called this deemed disposition. The government has essentially deemed or pretended that you have sold everything. As a result, there are potentially big tax bills that come along with that for all of these non-registered assets or withdrawing all of the money from your RSP. So that is the first step. Now, that sounds very scary, but this is where good planning comes into play because that's

the step one default, but step two is there are ways to manage or mitigate some of these taxes. We discuss one briefly, the RRSP rolling over to a spouse. is a common example. TFSAs can be rolled over and merged with their spouse. So now they can, if you do it right, not only do they get that money, but they get the TFSA room. So you can double up your TFSA room. Principal residence is tax free. So this is where understanding what that tax is and how it applies to different accounts becomes really important as well. The RESP is a little unique. And I think Dave, we had talked about grandparents at RESPs. You want me to go through that one

really quickly. Yeah, that's cool. I like that one. Go ahead. The RESP is a little different because when we talk about RESP beneficiaries, we're actually talking about the kids who will use that money to go to school. But that's not necessarily who you've left as a beneficiary in your will. So what happens with an RESP is if you, in your estate and if you don't plan for it properly, the government treats it as you've sold and liquidated the RESP to give to your heirs. What the default interpretation will mean is that, that you have broken open the RESP, taking all of those contributions out. And as a result of taking those contributions out, the grants have to go back to the government. Right. And then the growth can potentially have a penalty interest as well. Now, the most-

A steep one. Yes, 20% on top of that tax rate. So, again, if we think about the estate and all those pieces, it becomes very complicated. What I will say is, again, there are ways around that. If you're joint with the spouse, then they can preserve. the RESP. If you've left in your will that you want someone to take over as what is called the successor subscriber, then the executor can essentially, you know, sign the papers for the administration of the RESP to pass over. Where I see this get missed a lot, and Dave, I know you

talked about grandparents helping fund their kids, RESPs for the grandkids. I do see some grandparents who say, I don't know if I trust my son or daughter to administer the RESP at this point. It's tough. They're growing, why not. But I want to make sure the grandkids are taken care of. So you know what? I'm going to open the RESP. I will take care of it. And I think it comes from a well-intentioned place. But they do that, and then they never go and change their will. And they're more likely to die, obviously. In the relevant time frame, yeah. And that will has that everything is going to go 50-50 or one-third, one-third, one-third to the kids. And so this opens up a very unique problem. Because, Because if you interpret the will literally, you have to break open that RESP and distribute the proceeds available to the kids. But then you get the penalty tax, you get the grants that go away. This puts the executor in a really, really hard position, which I think is something you've honed in on in your book about why being an executor is so hard. Because if you are the person that has this responsibility, you're caught between a rock and a hard place.

You either have to tell the parents who is RESP for this kid, which they also. can't do anything with now because the grants have been associated with that kid so it's not like they can open it up and restart. So you can either tell those parents, sorry, your kid doesn't get that same money to go to university and you can't even use this inheritance anymore

to get those grants. Or you have to go to all of the other beneficiaries in the will and say, I got to do this complicated math. I got to figure out the RESP relative value to all of the other assets because the taxes are weird. I need your cooperation.

I need your cooperation. You all have to sign that I'm doing something technically a little different from what the will says. And if even one of them says no dice or if one of them sues you, the executor, for contravening or getting in the way of what the will said, then you as the executor are now on the financial hook. So that is a very tough place to be. So grandparents who open an RESP for your grandkids, make sure you get your will updated to add a successor subscriber for the RESP. someone to take over in case you die we're going to put this out as a clip you are doing a great job on this because you know what a geeky guy i am i've never really thought this through to that extent and it is very important advice and to your point i mean i know this sounds basic but the grandparent is often likely to die right when the child is still not at the post-second education it's this is great advice very important why do we not see much about this like you know much i read you don't see a lot about this. There's not articles out there kind of pointing out this potential pitfall. Funny enough, Aaron Hector was one of the people who kind of pointed me in this direction.

I'm not surprised. So this is, this is it. Aaron is very focused on tax. And anyone who listen to your podcast with Aaron knows that they have a very, very deep expertise in tax. This goes back to that sort of the three pieces of that triangle of professionals, truly that I believe, is somewhat overlooked. Because you need a little bit of legal expertise or exposure from a lawyer standpoint to understand what happens when an executor goes through the process of administering and dispersing the estate. You have to understand RESPs and taxation in order to understand the implications. And accountants don't necessarily really have to file a lot of tax stuff on the RESP because it's all contained inside of the RESP. So rare is the accountant who will have

encountered all of the penalty pieces and whatnot up front. So it requires someone who's willing to understand a state law, understand the rules, read some of the court cases, and then manually draw those dots or connect the dots together to say, well, if this happens, we understand the legal implications. What are the tax implications? Same idea for the, for the cottage or the second property. You have to draw dots between isolated incidents to know what could happen. I'm really glad you're drawing attention to this. We need it. Aaron does such a good job on so many fronts. I love that guy. Like I devour all of his stuff. And he's, he's, he's such a good communicator in Twitter too. He's very polite with the people who get it wrong, but he's also

quite firm. He strikes a very good balance and all of that. He's just a very fine fellow too. Like you can just tell he's a giving, passionate guy, much like yourself on the personal finance front. You know what this reminds me of a little bit is we put out a video a while ago where I said, do not pay back your homebuyers early. Just pay it back at the pace you have to. couldn't believe how many advisors reached out to me after and said, I never thought about that. But that's actually a good point. You've got the math right on that. And we've got to follow that. And I think there's some of these types of things that do slip between the cracks. So it's good that a lot of you younger people are now on social media and you're drawing attention to some of

these relative obscure areas. Because I want to repeat something you said a few moments ago. The penalties in this particular case can be quite severe if you don't get this right. I mean, they're not minor. And again, family friction along with the math. So that was very good. Okay, going on to something that's near and dear to my heart, I am shocked in the last five to ten years how many people have mistakenly turned on RRSPs. You've seen a lot of people take the money out later in life.

They seem to be shocked that they're now paying tax on it, even though, of course, it's been educated properly for all those years. They're saying I should have gone the TFSA route the whole time. Where do you think we can help people to understand the math a little bit better of all this? As you know from reading the redo of the wealthy barber, I put a lot of focus on that and making sure the people understood the math behind all of this. I think there's two pieces. So first, and I think you might be the only non-financial planner, like, geek who uncovered

what I would call effective marginal tax rates where the Canada child benefit and other government income tested benefits play a role. So I really want to give a shout out to the book because there are so many of these nuances in the book that I think if you're not working with the planner, like this is like the next best thing in terms of like you've really dug into some of these radicals, Dave. So I love the book for that. I think people have to remember as a starting point that when they are contributing to their RRSP versus their TFSA, they are totally forgetting that they're usually getting a tax refund on the other side or if they're self-employed, that they're not paying

extra tax as a result of that. And what I do with my clients to help remind them every year at the end of the year, so January or February, is we'll get their last pay stub or we get a summary of their corporate income. And then we do a letter to them in the accountant to say, you know, marginal tax rate is this. You have three kids. The effective clawback is 9%, 8%, whatever the case is. So your true effective marginal tax rate for this year is good for you guys. That is excellent. You know, 41%, 53% in some odd cases, it can be above the highest marginal tax rate. And so then that letter also says, you know, based on our projections, we're

projecting that you're going to retire at a 30% tax rate. Right. So the RSP contributions make sense because we're going from 53 to 30. I love that. I wish everybody was doing that, but you're one of the few I've heard of that's actually doing it that way. I think it helps because again, sometimes the accountants have a different opinion if you want everybody to be on the same page. What we also do is we can get a rough estimate then of how much tax they're going to owe. And so as a result, this kind of provides a quick back check because sometimes I've had clients come to me and say, and my tax return says, like I owe $10,000 more than what you

generally projected. And then when I look, it's, you know, their group RSP that for a 60 day slip never got in the mail or something along those lines. So it provides a very handy way as like a cross check for, do Aravon do his case calculations properly? The accountant is happy because now

the accountant doesn't have to service so many people asking in the wrong coin of the tax year to do their taxes just for the purpose of should I put money into my RSP. So I would say that's a key piece. The other key piece that people often forget is that if you are a fairly wealthy person saving, well, you're probably going to have money in both these buckets anyways. And to be very thoughtful about that, I think is

really important. And people often forget that the million dollars in the RSP was not going to be a million in the TFSA. It would be 600,000 or 700,000 once you factor that you would have had to pay tax. It's amazing how hard it is to get through to that, get people on that when they get to that point, though. You know, I can explain to them ahead of time, but when they get there, they're bitter that they're paying tax, et cetera, et cetera. So, no, in general, by the way, when I look at the average tax rate in retirement on the withdrawals, I find the RSP still when you model it out with all kinds of thousands of different scenarios, if you can only do one of the two to build a retirement fund, the RSP tends to be better than the TFSA in the majority of cases. And people like

you go, yeah, that's absolutely right. You look at Mark McGrath, they go, that's absolutely right, Jason Pereira. But a lot of Canadians say, I don't want to hear it. The TFS is simple. I understand it. I'm not paying tax when I take it out. Screw you. I'm not listening. And it's a little bit like what's happening with when do you take CPP in that a lot of people go, yeah, your math looks really good there, but screw it. I'm taking it as early as I possibly can, even if in some cases it makes sense not to. Okay, let's wrap up. I want to ask you about something you sent us a note on alternative investments. And a lot of our listeners don't know. What does that mean? Technically, all it means is, investment that's not a publicly traded equity or a publicly traded bond. That's what it technically means. Over the years, though I think real estate's almost come in to be a mainstream investment and people are now talking more about private credit, private equity, any number of things. You could buy racehorse. That's an alternative investment. I always worry about this space. It's opaque. The fees are often very high. The liquidity is challenged. A lot of my background is in this space and I'm very thorough on the due diligence front. But most of the friends I have who've gone into these spaces literally

know nothing about what they're investing it. They're just trusting a middle person, but the middle person's often working for or in conjunction in some way, shape, or form the firm offering the alternative investment. Give me some broad thoughts on alternative investing. It looks good on the surface, but the amount of work you have to do to know what you're investing in, to know what the fees are, to know if after you pay all the fees going forward, we're going to expect really good returns out of this product most people and I actually just did a podcast interview I think it actually comes out this week with Ben Felix and Cameron Passmore on the rational reminder about the difficulties of due diligence so first it's hard and most people who say that

they're doing it they're probably not doing it well enough to to think about it in the context of a full portfolio the other big takeaway that all three of us came to on that podcast episode was if you are a firm, and Dave, I know you're a big supporter of this, if you focus on planning, so if you are going to be a great planner and help people control for their taxes, control for their life, which we have more control over, the chances are you're probably not top 1% in planning and top 1% at due diligence. So anybody... That's very true. Anybody who is going to an advisor who says, oh, yeah, we can get you all of this awesome investing, you know, outperformance. Oh, but don't more we also do the planning, you have to ask yourself, okay, which one is actually your core

expertise, which one is your focus? And the other thing that people don't realize, and what I'm seeing more now, which is really heartbreaking in some ways, is not just that people are being seduced into it and disappointed after the fact, it's we're on the other side now because there have been funds that have performed poorly or they're locked because there are restrictions because public like mutual funds and ETFs for people who are watching this. the rules around when you sell it and when you get your money back are very clear, very transparent and very contractually locked in with the government and the securities regulators. But alternative investments are the Wild West.

And so there are companies that can say, well, we can't sell this big building yet, so we're actually just not going to distribute any money. And they're allowed to do that. And we're seeing it left and right right now in North America. Yep. And so there are people who are reaching out to me, who have reached out to other advisors, who are saying, I'm so close to retirement. And this advisor put 40% of my money and this fund that I actually can't even get my money out.

So how am I going to pay for retirement? And that's a really heartbreaking place to be. And so I would say for most people watching this, a regular portfolio is going to be great. And if you are seduced by this idea, you have to ask yourself, how are they proving to you that they're doing the work? how are they proving to you that they're doing that and also thinking about all of the planning and the planning complexities and the goals that you have? Ask yourself what your conversations have been focused on. Did they talk about you, your family, what your taxes are going to look like when you die? Or have they spent most of the time talking about this new investment idea that they're in the middle of looking through?

And that will tell you where their attention is. You said a lot of that very well. I mean, I always say to my friends, because they see some of the alternative investing I do, You don't want to do this. I mean, this is forever. I mean, I'm sometimes spending three and four straight weeks, literally 40 hours a week, investigating some of these, talking to former employees, talking to the people who've done the analysis, looking at spreadsheet math, even going to the geographical area in some cases, depending on what the, like, this is tough stuff.

And to your point, if someone's going to do that exceptionally well, they can't probably also be a gifted planner who's asking all the right questions, doing all the right organization. It's tough. Now, in the States, there's been some interesting hybrid models where some companies, companies have done the due diligence on the alternative investments, and then the other companies come to trust their judgment. They don't do their own due diligence, but they've watched these guys establish track records. I'm okay with that, but it takes 10 to 15 years for that track record to be established as, yes, they're consistently good at due diligence. You can't partner early. It takes a lot of time to play itself out. And we've seen, so there's actually two

things that you mentioned that I think are really important to consider. The first is you, Dave, I believe, and I don't know enough about the personal side of your life, but my suspicion is that those are direct investments. So you're almost acting in like a GP fashion or something like that, where you're like leading it, you're doing the work, all of those pieces. Most of the people, like your friends, potential clients, they're LPs. So for everyone watching this, you're listening to the podcast, what an LP is is essentially there's like the people like Dave doing the work. And they're saying, well, we will package this into a product that we will then sell to each of you individually.

Dave and Coe, Dave, I'm not actually saying you, but the people that are doing it at the GP level, they're charging large fees. They're going to make money on the deal. Here's the funny thing. I'm never the GP. I'm just, I'm the nutty LP. Okay. Yeah, so I'm not charging any fees.

I'm not getting anything from anybody else. I'm going in oftentimes in partnership. It can be an informal LP. It can be a formal one. But I'm still doing that kind of work. But your point's still well taken that you've got to do all of this homework. And I will say. that for Canada versus the US, the level of disclosure is very different. And so, you know,

in the U.S., when they issue legal disclosures around this, they're basically like, we're going to tell you every which way we're going to charge your fees. If your portfolio goes up, here's how your fee is charged. It goes down. Here's how your fee is charged. That level of detail and disclosure is not the bar in Canada. So even the third party firms, they don't have as much disclosure requirement. And we've seen a lot of chat. challenges in the news. We've seen auditors get sued for lack of full disclosure. We've seen pension funds like with FTX. The level of due diligence hasn't been there. So the concern that I have is, you know, again, what is the performance you're trying to achieve? Can you

map that out? And is it worth the extra headache, uncertainty, risk, the fact that you can't get your money back for many years sometimes? Liquidity is horrible in many instances. FTCs, by the way, I would say the due diligence was literally zero by most of the investing parties. It wasn't weak. It wasn't low. It was zero. They just basically got caught up in the momentum of the crypto space and all of the hype and wrote checks. Anyway, you've been great.

I'm going to pay the ultimate compliment here. I took 36 years to do the update of the wealthy barber. Let's be honest. If I wait another 36 years, it won't be very good. So all those years down the road, we want to update it again. It's going to be you and Aaron Hector that are chosen to do the update because I think you guys, are on the right track. I love the way you communicate. I love the way you think. I've really enjoyed having you on the show. So thank you. Can I share like a two minute story? Because I think

this is really important for your listeners as well. So my dad met Dave way before I even knew the wealthy barber existed. So he opened an account at the bank and part of the, you know, they always have incentives and things like that. And I think they were like giving free copies of your book. And if you did like the open the bank, and, you know, set up a direct deposit or something like that. You could come down and meet Dave Chilton at one of these, like, trade shows or fairs. That was a penalty. My dad did that.

Went downtown Toronto. We're going back probably 20, 30 years. Whenever you first released that book. Yeah, 35 years. And he met you. And he told me he asked you the question, like, oh, were you a teacher before this? And you laughed and said, a lot of people asked me that question because of the main character in the story.

And so he thought it was super. exciting that I get to be on your podcast. But the lesson that I want everybody else listening to this, especially if you're a parent or a grandparent to take away, is my dad bought that book and then he kept it. He never really told me that I should read it, but we just have books around the house. And so I picked it up one day, read it when I was like 13 or 14. And I would say like money and some of those concepts became ingrained in me as a teenager and throughout. And so it's really cool for this to come full circle for me to talk to you Dave but I also think it's really cool when you think about Dave for you the impact that you've had on multiple generations

not just me I'm sure there's so many people and for everyone listening like really think about that pick up the book pick up a copy for your kids and leave it you never know when a kid or a grandkid is going to respond to something like that and this book is so well written it's a very easy read just like the original wealthy barber was so if you're looking at me and thinking, that's so cool, your kids can have that experience, too, because it was my dad picking up this book that really began a lot of this journey that led me to where I am today. Wow, that's great here. And I want our listeners to note, I did not script that. I'm not above that. I'm not above scripting that, but I just didn't in this case. No, thank you so much

for those kind words. And you're welcome back on any time. I can see why are you a young star in the industry. And again, I want to repeat what I said out of the gate. It's pretty cool that we had four different guests recommend that we have you on. You should be very proud of that. I'm honored. I'm humbled, but I would also say that that's the wonderful thing about the evolution of this industry. There's so many great planners out there. So if you are thinking about coming into the space, by all means, give me a shout, give a bunch of us a shout if you're on social media. Many of us are very happy to share with you. All right. Thanks again. Thank you.