The Wealthy Barber Podcast - #71 — Jonathan Chevreau: Lessons from Decades as a Personal Finance Author & Journalist

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

Our guest this episode is Jonathan Chevreau — veteran personal finance journalist, author and founder of the Financial Independence Hub. Jonathan spent nearly two decades as the National Post's personal finance columnist, served as Editor-in-Chief of MoneySense and still writes the magazine's Retired Money column. In this episode, Dave and Jonathan dive into the lessons of a career spent covering Canadian money, from Jonathan's early years sounding the alarm on mutual fund fees to the discipline of filing a story a day for a national newspaper. They explore why Jonathan sees a paid-off house as the foundation of financial independence, what the "12 good years" of retirement are, and what it looks like to keep working on your own terms well past the traditional finish line. Whether you're planning your own path to financial independence or already living it, this episode offers a hard-won perspective from one of the most experienced voices in Canadian personal finance.    Show Notes (00:00) Intro & Disclaimer (00:55) Intro to Jonathan Chevreau (02:25) Jonathan Was Early to Criticize High-Cost Mutual Funds (04:32) Jonathan's Semi-Retirement (06:32) Handling the Pressure of Daily Writing Deadlines (08:53) The 12 Best Years of Retirement & Travelling (12:25) Exploring the Annuity Puzzle (16:28) Home Affordability Challenges, FHSAs and the Bank of Mom and Dad (20:39) Debating Downsizing Versus Aging in Place (23:02) The Growing Strain on the Long-Term Care System (24:55) Staying Active in Retirement (27:04) Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence and the Job Market (29:25) Sector ETFs vs. Index Funds (30:48) Avoiding Crypto and NFT Investment Hype (32:21) Long-Term Optimism for Canada's Economy (33:28) Retaining Innovative Tech Talent and Funding in Canada (35:03) Highlighting Outstanding Canadian Financial Educators (37:47) Conclusion

Hey, it's Dave Chilton, the wealthy barber and former Dragon on Dragon's Dent. Welcome to the Wealthy Barber podcast. Well, 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 this 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, will be here to help you.

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. I mentioned last episode, how much momentum the podcast, test right now everywhere I go. People come up and talk to me about how much they're enjoying the guests. A couple weeks ago, a lady said to me, it is my absolute favorite financial

podcast. And I said, oh, great, thank you. What other ones do you listen to you? And she paused and said, actually, I don't listen to any other financial podcast. So really, it's not that big a compliment, to be honest with you. I'm pretty excited about today's podcast because I've got an old friend, someone I respect greatly on the show. A lot of you will recognize him, Jonathan Chevro, We've known each other for over 30 years. I think he started the globe. He can correct me if I'm wrong, but I really didn't know him well then. I got to know him, as many of you got to know him when he was the personal finance call in this for the financial post, national post, for 20 years.

And became one of the strongest and most influential voices in the country in the world of personal finance, talked about a wide variety of subjects intelligently. And this is a sharp guy. And that's why I'm looking forward to having him on. He's gone from there on to be the editor-in-chief at Money Sense. Now he's the editor at large at Money Sense. He has Findependencehub.com. He's involved in a lot of things.

He's prolific. He's put out a great number of books over the years, including the novel Findependence Day. So we've got a lot to discuss. Jonathan, welcome to the show. Thanks, David. I've enjoyed his writing immensely. Learned a lot from him over the years.

Interesting how we first got to know each other. Jonathan was a head of the curve by a long story. by a long shot in Canada at criticizing the high-cost mutual funds in this country. And talking about the potential benefits of passive investing, using index funds, what he was seeing stateside, when it would make its move to the Canadian marketplace, etc. That's how a lot of us got to know you initially. Talk a little bit about what you've seen on that front over the last 20 and 25 years.

Well, ironically, David, that was in my book, The Wealthy Barber, throwing the wealthy boomer. Sort of ripped off your title and I always worried that I had annoyed you by doing so. Originally, actually, I was with key port of books. That's right. And they said it was, the working title was Life After Mutual Funds.

They said, what do you mean? Life after Mutual Funds? What's the market? What's the Democrat? I said, well, like wealthy boomers. And they're eyes lit up. The marketing people go, wealthy boomer, that's it. So I wasn't going out of my way to rip off the wealthy barber, but even now, I should have started a week of Independence Day.

Anyway, but the process of that book, which came out in 1998, was written by an actuary, I know you really respect Malcolm Hamilton. So he wrote something I think was on the Rule of 702 was sort of a really explanatory reason as to what you've discussed with Ben Felix and Pete Banerjee and most of your other guests about indexing in the high cost of fees.

It's not just 2% of this year. It's 3 or 40% over 3 or 40 years. So that was all explained in the preface to the wealthy boomer. And from there, I would write occasional articles. Probably didn't make myself too popular with the mutual fund industry. You didn't, but again, I give you a lot of credit. In Canada, you were the first big voice who started shining a light on that. And of course, it's a very important subject.

You mentioned Malcolm Hamilton. What a brilliant guy. Even among the actuaries, he's thought of as being the tops of the top. He was incredibly gracious to me. When I wrote The Wealthy Barber Returns, he did the review on the math in the book. and was just delightful to deal with, and he commands so much respect. So good for you for getting him involved in project number one.

You've had quite the writing career, but interestingly, it's hard to say it's over. You keep going and going and going. You're 96 years old now, and you're still pumping out incredible amounts of material. Your retirement is not a retirement. Yeah, I'm even older than your dad, Dave. Yeah, well, I am 73,

and there are days, people say, well, I'm still going, but I call it semi-retirement, which I define in practice, it's like three-hour day. That's three hours of invoicable. I kept three or four advertising clients and money. It's like that. I'm not doing much. Unlike you, I'm not really on the speaking circuit.

I think I've stopped writing new books. I haven't even got one on the go. I've been there, done that. So I just enjoy the, it's probably an eight-hour day, but I only do three that you could actually count as work. The rest would be like an hour or two of social media, reading the paper, reading a couple of papers, going for long walks, listening to podcasts. Another than that, you know, married, you just, well, you can't tell him setting up just now,

our daughter, her only daughter. And it's just a nice little life. I find it's a nice rhythm, a nice balance. Before we get into finance, a couple of things from personal friends. Your wife is absolutely lovely. The three of us went out for dinner once in Edmonton, I believe it was. I think you, when I was giving a speech and you guys were there. And you guys have had a longstanding, excellent marriage.

You're very lucky because you enjoy each other's company, and I'm sure that's a big part of your retirement as well. Yes. Ruth does have a great sense of humor, and I guess she thinks I do. She needs it. Yeah, she needs it. She's so well-organized. She is fully retired. She's no longer working for a living.

She's working for the man. She does a lot of church work, like yourself, a lot more job, charity stuff. I think I continue to work in order to have an excuse not to do all this volunteer. I do little with the church, but not anywhere near as her. as hers. Choose the right partner at your halfway bad. I agree.

She's fantastic. Okay, before we get on to finance, I want to ask you one more question on the past. Deadlines writing, the pressure that comes with that, the average person cannot understand what it's like to be a columnist

when you have to put out three, four, five articles a week and you have to hit the deadline. There's an immense pressure than that. You get used to it. But now that you look back on it, you realize, wow, that really is hard.

I found it was relatively simple. To me, bigger assignments are tougher. When you got a big feature story for a magazine and enough that you have to justify putting three weeks of work in, grind out a bit of research every day, and then he packs it all together. Basically, if you're writing every day to deadline, it's like a quick kit.

If you've got a file by 4 o'clock, which is usually about as late as the Globe of the Post, will let you're file by for a breaking story. You basically are, you start writing at 2 and at like 2.45. they better be done and you do it could polish and it's like the best that can be done under the circumstances is it going to be perfect no that's why they call newspapers the first draft of history historians can write up make their full books later but they're going to have some raw material to work with so that's where i found it relatively restful and easy the deadline actually simplified it and at the end

of the day it'd be like you left the factory or something you're done for the day you file the story it's in the papers too late you need nothing you can do about it next morning you wake up and go back. Punch it back in and you do it again and again, but it's over within six hours. So I found that. Did you have extras in case one day you had complete writers block? Did you always have one or two kind of emergency articles? You would bank some. Typically, the Monday papers are written three days in advance. So you bank that one. But usually there's so many other people and there's a fair bit of competition to get into the paper. If you don't produce something, they're not going to fire you if you're looking one day. And so I always

had a, I was self-induced pressure. I had a saying when I was a reporter as opposed to columnist, a story a day keeps the editor away. So, right. Here's my story for today. Here's my story for a day. So after that, they stop asking, hey, you, go cover the fire or you go cover City Hall. I didn't want to do that. I used to write about money or actually technology when I first started the globe. And so by saying, you get them trained, your editors, that, yeah, you're going to have a story from Chevro by four o'clock every day. The story you day keeps the editor with it. Yeah, leave them alone.

I think we talked about it for another article we were working on this, your 12 best years. And we decided that was from age 60 to age 72 is the optimum time to really get to enjoy retirement. So I've missed it. I'm already a year or too late for that window. You smarter than I am are still, you could still have what, seven, I've done the math yet, seven more years. Let's look at that a little bit more seriously because a lot of people don't like hearing

this. They don't really want to accept the fact that at seven years. 72 often, not always, but often a lot of changes come in on the health front. They want to think they're going to live a lot longer than that in a healthy way. But the data is very supportive of your argument of 12 good years. The 60 to 72 tends to match up to the formal evidence, to the formal data. And I think when people do defer retirement late into their 60s, they may be enjoying that immensely, by the way. It may be a great use of their time. They may need to financially. But for some people, they may look back and go, wow, I wish I hadn't done that.

It's not that easy to travel at 75, 77, et cetera. I've run into health challenges, or my spouse has run into health challenges. We travel. We try to avoid Toronto in January and February, so we go to pretty warm clans usually. The moment after Christmas and New Year's is over, the fun's gone. I often in my more cynical moments, say travel is expensive and time-consuming. It's a bit of a hassle. Now, I'm lucky. My Ruth is practically like a born-again, travel agents, so she does all that. It was up to me. We'd be lucky to get to Hamilton. When people say I'm going to retire, quit my job, and just travel the world,

well, how are you going to travel? Two months a year, six months a year? Right. I plan not to even have any winter at all. I find six weeks, it's about right. I mean, four weeks is good. If you go to one place, we just try to go to one place. We've gone to Bahamas and various places in Spain.

I just rent an Airbnb because it's cheaper by the month. That's interesting. and I tend to echo those sentiments. Also, I like being around here. For whatever reason, it's become quite fashionable to bash Canada, but I'm very happy here. I have friends and family here. I enjoy most of what I do. You're right. In January and February, particularly last year, it would be nice to get away from some of that weather. And your idea is an interesting one. I have a lot of friends doing the same thing. You mentioned Spain and they're going to either Spain or Portugal for four to six weeks. Taking an Airbnb, they're eating a lot of their meals in. It's not

overly expensive, the climate's quite reasonable, they love the culture there. Everything you're saying, they echo. It's funny, because we live right by Lake Ontario, that we're literally 25 seconds from the lake. We're kind of about spoiled to have these lovely walks along, you know, there's ducks and geese and swans and all the rest of it all the wildlife. And so whenever we do travel to the various places, we always make a point of having a body of water. We can walk either a lake or river or creek, something that's watery. But the funny part is we've yet to come across a place with a walk as nice as right here in Long Branch, Ontario in the summer, where it's just gorgeous one direction or the other. Haven't topped it yet. Maybe somebody could

let me know there's a better place with a body water. I'm with you. I went to Mexico last August, and unusual move when you live on the beach in Sarnia. And frankly, maybe not a very clever move, because the beach in Bright's Grove and Sarnia is gorgeous. As you say, both ways, east and west, the sunsets are second to none. And it's absolutely fantastic. There are a lot of stunning views here. Now we go back to the January-February theme. I get it. I can see why people may want to escape the weather at that particular point. Okay, let's go on to some finance. You've talked recently about the annuity puzzle. And annuities have come up a fair amount on the podcast. And we've both brought up the point that even though a lot of experts, very smart people think

they should be playing some role, not necessarily a dominant role, but some role for a lot of Canadians, for whatever reason the consumer wants no part of them. What are your thoughts? I know you and Ben Felix discussed this. Here's what, maybe your second guest or something like that. And number one, as he made the point, that CPP, the pension plan, is really an annuity and an inflation indexed annuity and is kept a guaranteeed by the taxpayer of the government. So the number one piece of personal advice, highness advice, really, is pick CPP in 70 if you can. Personally, I didn't. I didn't do 66.

I tried to get Ruth to wait right till 70, but Fred Fattice kept writing about it in the globe, the last couple of rules. that there was an inflation adjustment. We actually waited to 68. But that's a heck of a lot better than 60. I have friends who took it right the moment they could have 60, and they're going like, it's not that much. I said, you could have made it more. You can do it again with OES.

I guess less critical. It's a smaller amount. But if you want to be a purist, that's a one annuity. But apart from that, I think one of your guests probably discussed this as well. It really depends whether you have a defined benefit pension plan from an employer. So an employer-sponsored defined benefit plan.

Now, my case, having been on staff of the newspaper, I have a little bit of a pension, and then I was on money since not that long. So I call it the mini pension and the micro pension, but at least they are in little defined benefit pensions. Ruth and my wife has no such defined pension at all. But a nice RRSP, we practice what we preach and invest in all the usual things. So in her case, and I give credit to the retirement club, he had a couple of good annuity experts. And after listening to the second one, I said to Ruth, we've got to. to put 10% of your RSP, or maybe it was 50, into annuity because she hadn't, apart from CBB.

That's all she had. So she did. Whatever you say, John. So personally, I feel guilty because I'm going like, I personally haven't yet. As any of my riff, it's riff now, not RSP. But again, I at least have these little mini pensions. But even then, I would be tempted to, like yourself, pretty interested in financial markets. Whether you're using asset allocation ETFs like Ben and other people, or you tend to do a little more stock picking,

The thing it was better who said people probably are not taking enough risk. In retirement, I'm 73. So in theory, the old you should have fixed income equal your age. I should be 73% fixed income. But I'm not. Maybe it's closer to 50-50. But it all depends on your risk preferences and how much. I think an annuity really helps.

Better to have 20 or 30% a guaranteed income if you really screw it up or you get dementia or whatever, at least some money's coming in there. And then if you're staying sharp, you can play around with. the edges and see if you can outperform. I doubt you can outperform, but if you can just match the marker with an asset allocation, an ETF, pin your gold. Yeah, and I mean, beyond the mathematical advantages, and of course you could get hit by inflation, there are risks here. It's one of the reasons that people haven't embraced them, but there is a psychological component to all of this, especially for people who do not, as you point out, have the defined benefit pension plan.

They're psychologically very soothed by having a certain amount of money coming each month, no matter what. And yes, it's not indexed to inflation, but it's still coming in that really does help. And again, that's just not me theorizing. There's good studies supporting that, that it makes a big difference for people. It's so nice to have those defined benefit pension plans, though, like, wow, a lot of the government employees don't realize just what a tremendous advantage they have over so many others. Those are indexed to inflation in many cases. They eliminate the market risk. They eliminate the longevity risk. You talk about peace of mind. Wow. Yeah, when I see these articles or people saying, I want to commute the value, I go, why would you want to do

that. A great deal. Unless you're working for some really rinky dinkie company that's likely to go bust tomorrow. And even then, you probably have some protections, just like with annuities, you have protections through a series. But, no, I think if you got a good deal, pay it. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Yeah, no, I agree with you. You've talked a little bit about FHSAs. And in the broader area, we've talked together about how challenging it is for young people to buy homes and single young people in particular. Oh, my gosh. I mean, just the down payment math alone is overwhelming. So an idea that you've pushed aggressively is, hey, not everybody can help their kids out

with a massive down payment, et cetera, but can you help them out at least to make sure they're fully taking advantage of the FHSA, truly the best vehicle we've ever had for saving in Canada with the full deduction up front, the tax-free compounding, the tax-free withdrawal when you go to buy the qualified home. Talk a little bit about that. Well, our daughter enrolled in as soon as she could. We also had her enrolled in FSA as soon as she could have just. Luckily, it was the year she turned 18, which is half a lifetime ago already. Right. We've got sort of the basis for a down payment, but it is, like you say, the prices are so expensive.

Like yourself, I do believe in homeownership for the most part. Yes, there's an argument for renting, and I may have its place for a while. But as I say, one of the lines I repeat over and over again in Independence Day is a paid for a house is the foundation of financial independence. And so if you believe that, then if FHSA in combination with the TFSA, and maybe, as you call it, a bank of mom and dad, some combination of those three and maybe a regular Canadian bank should get you into the market. Yes, it's a heck of a lot easier with a partner. Personally, I don't think I even attempted to buy a house when I was single. Something that goes, there's marriage mortgage.

I know the young kids these days, they tend to go baby first, house second, marriage third, whatever order they go. Personally, I think it helps to have a real commitment before you do the baby in the house. But that's me. I'm old time. Now, mind you, in Toronto at least, topped out in 2022, prices have come down.

Well, and you're right. I mean, home prices in many parts of Ontario, not necessarily across the country, would have come down as much as 30 to 35 percent from their peak. In fact, in a few areas, almost 40. So the affordability issue in some of those areas, obviously is much better incomes have crept up. And so some people are in a better spot,

But again, to your point, if you're single, oh my gosh, if you're trying to buy, let's say, $650,000 place and you want a 20% down payment, that's $130,000. And you have to save that $130,000 on your own after tax and you're often facing high rents, although rents are coming down in many parts of the country right now because we've built up so many purpose bill rentals. But still, the math is very challenging indeed. Show me the $650,000 a house. Yeah, I'm not talking just Toronto. But remember, in other parts of Ontario, there's lots of houses in that. that price range. For example, Sarnia, where I'm from, you darn people in Toronto think there is no other part of the country, but there are parts of the country that you can find reasonably priced housing.

But again, even reasonably priced housing is expensive by historical standards when compared to incomes. The down payment challenge, though, in Toronto, I mean, if you're looking at a million dollar home, again, you've got to get together 200, maybe more to qualify for the mortgage you would need. Again, that has to all be saved with after tax money. How do you not get your parents involved? almost the only way to make it happen. We're in this situation. Even as parents, yeah, we could probably buy a thing outright, but it's going to mean paying huge capital gains tax

because on the accumulated non-registered gains. Yes, we'll do the TFSAs, we'll do the home-the-home the homoishing plan. But above and beyond that, if you can't get a paying mortgage, then you've got to use your savings. Personally, I would love it if the government would say, look, we're going to waive the capital gains taxes from the parents if it's going towards the kid's house.

They won't do that. No, they won't do that. In theory, that would be, that would make things a lot easier. I think a lot of people like ourselves are delaying, going, letting the kid get into the market because I saw a bunch of articles the last couple of weeks saying how taxes are big a single expense, above and beyond shelter, even though shelters are expensive we discussed, and above and beyond food. So the problem in capital gains taxes, that's tax on top of tax, on top of tax. Yes, I understand that we get some great services, we live in a great country.

But I think the government could at least consider that tax measure. I talked about this in another podcast and people find it interesting. A lot of people don't want to sell their home later in life. You still live in your home. You're 73. I don't think you're intending on selling soon. It's a part of your lifestyle. You enjoy your neighborhood.

You're comfortable there. There's room for family when they come to visit, et cetera, et cetera. There's lots of good reasons to stay. But what I've noticed over and over again among my parents' friends and now my friends is, when they have moved, they've often gone, I'm in a rental unit, I'm in a smaller condo, I wish I'd done this earlier. So even though they wanted to stay,

once they've moved, they thought, I'm not sure I was right about that. I can just lock and walk. I don't have to take care of the lot anymore. I don't have to shovel the snow. I just find it a lot easier lifestyle from every perspective. What are your thoughts on that? And have you guys thought about moving it all downsizing

or going to a rental unit? Yes, we cover this all the time. In a way, it's sort of like Helen and her new chap, would prefer probably just to live in our house here in Long Branch, and then why don't we buy a condo? And maybe three or five years, and now that might make sense. It might happen in the same way.

We're talking like, wouldn't it be nice to have a cottage? That would be nice, but we don't need a cottage because the lake is 22nd away. But in theory, like you say, a lock and leave condo by a lake in cottage country or even just an hour drive from Toronto would be nice. going back to the six weeks or eight weeks off that you go to the sunny places, that's going to be the equivalent of a condo anyway. Usually you're renting your BMW from a condo or somebody who owns their own apartment. Very seldom are these single family homes. They tend to be that kind of thing. So, yes, I understand the beauty of it. And like anybody else, I don't really love shoveling snow or cutting grass. And as you get older, you hate it. Yeah, I haven't got to hate to the hate part yet. But. Oh, I'm at the hate. Not with the shoveling snow. I'm definitely there with.

the snow. No, for sure. Yeah, unless you're just skiing, which I'm not particularly, once upon the time, my wives would have. Now, I want to point out to our viewers that Jonathan said, Helen and her new fella, I want to make sure you understand, Helen is his daughter, his wife has not got a new fella. She is open-minded to that, by the way. But at this point, nothing has come on that front. You have the conclusion, they both have the same name Helen. Helen Ruth is my wife, and Helen Caput. Yes. And Helen Mary was their grandmother, but she's no longer around the scene. So yes, thank you for that clarification.

Now, are you seeing late life, we've talked about this too in the podcast where we're now getting a lot of people in their late 80s and 90s. They don't qualify for long-term care facilities yet, but they need a lot of ongoing help. And so they need 12-hour help, 24-hour help. Even if they go into an assisted living facility at 6, 7, 8, 10,000 a month, they need help beyond that. And it's draining resources.

It's involving both the family's time and often the family. family's money, I'm seeing so much more of that. Some of it because that's where my friends are, their parents are at that age, but some of it just because there's so many baby boomers now that we're overwhelming the long-term care system. This is becoming a fairly big problem in financial planning. Yeah, I was thinking that in our church. We have quite a few acquaintances that might be anywhere from 85 to as much as much as 95. And in fact, even a couple that made it to 100. 102. Most of them are blessed with pretty good health and surprising a lot of marriages. Two-thirds of time they end up, the women do outlive the men statistically, which I'd say

is about two to one. So for every, we probably have two widows for every widower at this particular place. As for the, we have a friend who we think should. We're still living in the 87, something like that, still living on his own in a condo. But we're actually saying maybe it should start thinking about this is the living because the maintenance starts going up, these mobility issues, like you say. At age 72, you start to experience significant health issues. It hasn't affected us personally yet, and our own parents all live to the state at home, right to the bitter end, and didn't have long protracted illnesses or the need to go to nursing homes or retirement homes. I don't have a lot of personal experience, but I can see it's going to be an issue, particularly for the baby boomers.

And the longer you succeed in staying in your house, the better. But there's a lot of costs, as you say. Now, how seriously are you taking fitness, working out, staying in as good as shape as possible as you're in your 70s now and semi-retired? Are you up walking every day? Do you do leg strengthening, exercising? Is that something that's important to you? Yeah, all the above, really. Probably walk two or three times a day.

And then you build in errands, et cetera. So I'm part of the 10,000 step a day regime. Younger next year is a good book. In fact, there's a younger next year. Facebook group on a co-moderate for those who are interested. Yeah, younger next year, and it was a good style, too. You know, it was an unusual delivery where you had one person talking, one voice, very casual, et cetera. And then you had the doctor.

And I like that book. It was really good. So an entire Facebook group is built around it. So apart from walking, yeah, I try to go to the gym two or three times a week. Good for you. Humber College is a nice little cheap place. And not a lot. It tends to be a middleweight stuff.

because you're going to have strength training and then various forms of cardio. I still play hockey. I've just joined a men's over 75 league, even though we've already confessed that. I don't quite. So let me get this straight. You're cheating and getting into and over. You're going to dominate these people. I like it.

Yeah, that's the only way I can play. I promised that I'd be just as bad as them. There was full disclosure. So did you actually use fake ID to get in this hockey league? Is that what it's come to? Oh, my gosh, Jonathan. We were a bunch of guys that we were living. We were all in a previous league.

that it stopped that 70 and for a while we just go drinking and talk about the good old days and playing hockey until it's like why don't we start our own thing and so you go with the guys sell like a year ago ideally at 75 plus

some of these guys are in their late 80s so we always say if you're still playing hockey in your 70s you're pretty blessed to begin with if you were flying on the wall David and you heard some of these conversations over beers it'd be the world's boring conversation

so-and-so-and-so just had his leg operated his knee surgery and his hip replaced and it's like the only people who be remotely interested in or people who are about to enter that. And you're actually a point about 72. Are you cheating to get in that league, but you are over 75 with HST? And I think that's kind of the argument that you can make. What are you seeing on the AI front? I mean, there's a lot of things happening in the world of finance on the AI.

The chatbots haven't quite got there, but over the last six months, they've really improved. And many of them aren't in the marketplace. I get to see them because I'm pitched on them. And people are working on them using all kinds of different techniques, fighting the hallucinations, proper guardrails. There have been some breakthroughs. And it's just a matter of time now until some of these get to be very helpful to people. You're just seeing more and more things come on that front.

So specific to financial planning, what do you see? But also in general, are you concerned what AI is going to do on the job front, its impact in the economy? Where do you see all this headed? Here again, I wrote about AI for the Money Century. money column maybe three, four months ago. I'll start with Jetson Wong, the founder of Nudidia. He's a great quote saying that basically, no, you shouldn't worry about AI replacing you. You should worry about being replaced by somebody else, another human who has mastered or knows

how to use the AI book. Personally, I don't use them much. The irony is in 1984, like yourself, you wrote a play when you were a young man. I tried to write a screenplay about AI. It kind of got off the ground but didn't really take off. So I'm watching the arrival of it with interest, but not enough to really jump into it. I don't write with it. I prefer going back to how I write on deadline. It just stuff, it just happens in your hand and I don't see the need for.

Yes, I understand for research, it's good, but you shouldn't be expecting it to write your pieces. You've got all these... Agreed totally. Yeah, all these universities worrying about plagiarism and lipping them to the grade system off. As for financial tools, I haven't really used them yet. I know a lot of people, like Jim Kramer, Mad Money, he's always talking about Claude and Anthropic and all this.

I am interested in AI as an investor. There's a couple of ETS, which sort of a broad exposure to the sector, and the memory stocks like Micron and H.S.K. Heinex and all that. So I find it as an interesting investor theme, not to put your whole portfolio in AI, but it might go no means, but as one of five or six sectors that are definitely growth-oriented, I feel comfortable. So I find AI interesting from that perspective. In a way, I'm a bit of a hypocrite because I don't really use the tools, which is even as my white and daughter do.

It's fascinating. You're talking about some sector ETS. Is that something you use a lot of, or do you tend to use more of a broad-based ETF that's focused on the S&P 500 or focused on the major indices throughout the world on a globally balanced way? or do you tend to pick sectors that you think are going to have strong performance in the upcoming years? Well, the Retirement Club, that I mentioned, Dale Roberts, we discussed a lot of these. Yes, in theory, one single asset allocation, ETF is only any, whether it's from ICE years,

Vanguard or BMO or BMO or anybody else. But that's in practice, I tend to listen to financial podcasts and the more you learn, the more you're like, oh, that makes sense, whether it's a single stock or a sector. Single stock risk is can be, to me, I have a mix of everything to the short answer, where you can't really unaccompelling single idea in the sector. For example, financials are you going to own all the Canadian banks, which is one or two of them. It's like they're all the same to me. So when it comes to AI picks, if you say, I don't have the expertise here, so I'm just going to go with the ATF. On the other hand, if you work that, I don't know, you work a shopify or someplace like that and you already know a sector, then you've got an inside edge and you could probably take more risks,

in them. So I'm just a giant hybrid of dividend-paying stocks and asked allocation ETFs and a couple of sector ETFs and a couple of single picks. So probably not very interesting to look at. Do you use the alternative investment landscape at all? Do you get involved in private equity, private credit, any of that? No, the closest I've got to, and I know you've discussed it on your podcast, is early on I had a bit of crypto ETFs like prepersize, your basic Bitcoin ETF or an Ethereum ETF. Beyond that, I have not gone. Yeah, I have not, might own coin base or some of the suppliers or riot or somebody like that. Beyond that, no.

And I'm glad I. Glad you have it. It was basically like maybe it's worth one or two percent of your total portfolio. If you get a double sell half right off the back because you were kind of lucky. To me, Bitcoin could go to a million or if you go to zero. I don't know which one is going to be or probably just right now it's like just wafting around, not doing much of anything. I don't think it's an asset class to be relied upon.

You shouldn't be betting a farm on it. Nor do I believe in a leverage or any of that stuff. Crypto, I shake my head at the whole thing. And obviously some people have done very well. But I stay away from giving strong opinions. Where I did give a pretty strong opinion was when the NFT market took off. Because I thought it was absurd. And I had friends buying into it.

Even Moe in our office bought into it, which by the way means it's at its height. If Mo buys into something, get out. She is the master of getting in at the top of every asset class. So I knew that was the start of the downturn. But I thought NFTs were silly. And of course, many of them would collapse 95%. I never bought NFTs. And the moment Trump got into them, he knew the top was in and it was time to get out.

Same with crypto. He basically signaled the top. But we're not going to talk about that. I'm going to extend that one little minute here, though. Let's talk about Canada. You know, you're a long-time financial journalist. You're a very smart guy. You've had some excellent observations over the years about personal finance.

When you look at the Canadian landscape right now, what's your optimist? level. Do you think we're on the right track? Are you feeling good about the future? Are you worried about big picture things? Where do you sit? So as far as Canada is concerned, it's a great country. I mean, look at our resources. We've got a huge landmass. We've got energy. We've got potash. We've got a lot of our universities, Waterloo and UFT and all that. We produce some real high-end talent. A lot of them is fueling the AI talent. Some of them go south. To companies like Shopify are great bastions of Waterloo. We were, you know all about that. the rim, I guess they used to call them research in motion and that whole thing, the Northern

Telecom before that. So I am long-term positive on Canada and bullish on. I certainly go underway Canadian stocks or equities worth more than to 3% that we would justify from a world index point of view. I'd say Canada's worth maybe 20% of a portfolio, roughly speaking. Yeah, you know, I'm bullish long-term too, which surprises people. I think one of the things we need to do is we need to figure out how to get proper funding to some of the young founders, and not so young founders in some of the technology spaces, AI in particular, because you're right. Our university is not just the ones you mentioned, but several across the country are doing a wonderful job of creating a strong environment for people to come up with ideas, tap into the alumni,

tap into the professors, tap into the resources available, starting businesses, but they're having trouble getting that first capital amount to get them going and then really having trouble getting the scaling money. So they end up turning to the states, to the capital pools down there, And then sadly, often moving down there and taking the business with them. So how can we be more supportive on the capital front? What innovative ideas can we come up with either through the tax code or through other means that can make a difference? I think that's something we need to address and quickly because we are seeing some people move that we don't want moving. People are going to create employment, broaden the tax base, lead Canada's innovation effort.

So I'm hoping that we make some changes there. Jim Balsley has had some great ideas on IP and some of the things we need to do. so hopefully we'll see those changes. But like you, for whatever reason, I'm very optimistic. I think one of the reasons is I've traveled across the country for 30-something years and you're non-stop meeting Canadians and what a great lot. When you get all your information from the news, you tend to get this distorted negative view. But when you're out there meeting people on a daily basis, most people are kind, caring,

they want to raise good kids, they love the country, they want to add value. How do we best harness all of that? Okay, I'll let you go, but one last question. And you look at the influencers, the educators, the people who have good platforms out there. Who do you think, wow, that person is really talented and people should be giving him or her a lot more attention? I think your podcast is basically focused in on that whole group, from Ben Felix to Dan Bordalotti, to creep Banerjee, to Rob Carrick, and a number of financial advisors. As I said to an article, I'm writing on your retirement for money since. Your own podcast is a who's who of Canadian personal finance.

I have a good start. You know what, 70 or 80 people already on board there. And I'm glad that I could make some crack, crack the lineup before you got through 100. Oh, are you kidding? We had you high in the list. And we've had Julia Chung and a number of people on like that whose knowledge just blow me away. And they're excellent communicators to boot. We've been very fortunate. And I think when you mentioned Ben Felix, you go on and you watch his YouTube videos. And I've said this many times. I think he's better than anything I see in the States. And there's a lot of very good ones down there.

this guy is a master communicator who's incredibly knowledgeable can be quite funny when he chooses to be. I mean, he's a talented, talented man. I like the plain bagel too. We had Richard on early in our podcast run. He's excellent, good sense of humor, but there are a lot of good voices out there. There are a lot of younger people getting on to TikTok and Instagram who are starting to add a lot of value and doing better and better things. Like there's good information out there. It's tough for the average consumer to know whom to trust.

You know, who out there is truly an expert. That's all difficult to figure out. And to give credit to my predecessor, which is Bruce Cohen, and you did give credit to them out, you know, Jim Daw, Ellen Roseman, these people. Great group. Even before Bruce Cohen, I was in Mike Grandby? And it wasn't before.

Yep, it was. Yeah. I think there were some great people. They've all hung it up now. And I'm not that far from hanging it up. So it's good that we discussed the fit fluors and the younger generation coming up. You're identifying some of them in your podcast. You're not exactly younger generation.

but you're certainly picked up the torch. I'm with you. Are you kidding? I'm with you. I'm old. But Bruce Cohen was great. I used to really enjoy his stuff

and he was a very nice fellow. He actually did some of the revisions to the wealthy barber when I got caught up running some other businesses and was really helpful and just a very smart guy and a talented writer. If you know how newsrooms work, we have little cubicles and Bruce and I

used to sit right across each other. So we just could hear each other's conversation. It's the way a newsroom is. Gary Marr, who's now also at the boat still. Yeah. Same thing. So I learned everything from Bruce. And at some point, he actually said, I'm leaving. I think you should do this because I didn't think I was worthy of finishing his shoes at the time. No, very sharp guy. And we've been very lucky in Canada. Ellen Rose, when we mentioned was excellent. Anyway, it's been great having you on the show. It really has been. You're somebody I have a lot of respect for. I've been a fan of. I've read, obviously, hundreds and hundreds of your columns over the years and benefited from that. And we'll continue to do so. And good luck. Are you thinking? of actually slowing down at some point in the next 12 to 24 months?

I remember once in a while I mentioned that, and I have friends, they said, you said that 10 years ago. The truth is, as long as I got advertisers willing to support the website and MoneySense wants to take my pontifications, I'll probably continue to do it. I look at it. I'm very interested in the markets like I think yourself are, and I'm researching a lot every day, probably a couple hours a day, if you count podcasts. They said to journalists are somebody who who educates themselves at the public expense. So I figure, well, I'm learning all this stuff myself and if there are a few people who want to latch on to what I've learnt, I'm happy to share. It doesn't cost anything to join my website. A few advertisers pick up the tab. So I think it'll come

to a natural end when it comes to a natural end. I would be looking forward to going through the full retirement you are about to experience when I wish you well in it. I suspect you're going to keep on doing a bunch of things, but we'll see. I am, but I'm not going to do anything wealthy barber related. I'm ready to kind of move on from that. But listen, thank you so, much for coming on the show. Please give your wife my best as well. And that was a lot of fun for me today. Me too, David. I'm honored to be part of it. Thank you.