The Wealthy Barber Podcast - #73 — Jason Heath (Returns): The Future of Financial Planning

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

Our guest this episode is Jason Heath — Founder and Managing Director of Objective Financial Partners, one of Canada's largest advice-only financial planning firms. A Certified Financial Planner with more than 20 years in practice, Jason is a longtime personal finance columnist for the Financial Post and MoneySense and one of the country's most consistent voices for conflict-free financial advice. He last joined us on Episode #27 for Financial Planning 101, and this time the conversation looks ahead. In this episode, Dave and Jason dive into where financial planning is headed. They explore the role of technology in democratizing planning, from financial planning software to the future of AI in financial advice, including a look at The Wealthy Barber's own AI planning tool. Along the way, Jason shares how often a plan should be updated, why implementation matters as much as the plan itself, how tax optimization gets trickier with corporate assets and why even financial professionals need advice. They close with the chronic gap in life and disability insurance and the secret behind Jason's famously calm demeanour. Whether you're weighing the cost of an advice-only plan, curious how AI will change the way Canadians get financial guidance or simply want to make sure your retirement projections are realistic, this episode is full of clear, practical insights.    Show Notes (00:00) Intro & Disclaimer (00:55) Intro to Jason Heath (02:49) Projected Rates of Return in Financial Planning (05:06) Are Retirees Taking on More Investment Risk? (06:10) The Danger of Forgetting Prolonged Market Downturns (07:24) The Rarity of Average Stock Market Returns (08:49) The Advice-Only Financial Industry (11:07) Conflicts of Interest and Biases in Wealth Management (13:50) The Evolution of Financial Planning (15:30) Democratizing Financial Planning with Technology (17:11) The True Cost and Value of an Advice-Only Financial Plan (18:18) How Often Should You Update Your Financial Plan? (21:00) Implementation and Financial Planning Through Conversation (22:57) Why You Need a Solid Plan Before Retirement (24:59) The Future of AI in Financial Advice (29:17) Conquest Financial Planning Software (32:06) Navigating Tax Optimization and Corporate Assets (33:32) Even Financial Professionals Need Advice (35:18) The Challenge of Asking AI the Right Financial Questions (37:58) The Wealthy Barber's AI Tool for Financial Planning (40:15) The Chronic Gap in Life and Disability Insurance (43:18) Jason's Calm Demeanour (45:45) Conclusion

Hey, it's Dave Chilton, the wealthy barber and former Dragon on Dragonstant. 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. Hello everybody. Thanks again for tuning in. We have a return guest today, one of our most popular guests. We brought him back because we had so many positive comments and literally zero negative around his first appearance, Jason Heath. Jason is he won't like me staying this, but he has a star in the Canadian financial planning industry. He really is.

I came to know him through his articles. He writes for Money Sense, Ask a Planner. I love them. I read them over the years. And this is the ultimate compliment to him when I started getting back into this and was going to host the podcast, I had Mo print off every one of his articles, every one of them going back years and over a weekend, I read them all again because I wanted to be back up to snuff on things. He's an outstanding mind, but he's also a great communicator. The hardest part when you're writing an article, when you're doing a podcast and you're putting out a video is how do you help people, give them the basics, give them the key points, but also cover off the important nuances and exceptions. You don't want to push people down the wrong path. Jason's very

gifted at that. He really is. He's been the advice only industry for 24 years. I didn't even know there was an advice only industry 24 years ago. He might have been the first. We'll talk about that in a few moments. He's owned his own firm. He founded objective financial partners, I think, in 2012, and has been running it ever since. It's a growing firm that's done exceptionally well. Has this CFP honors economics degree and just a very sharp guy with a great reputation. Can you live up to all of that? I hope so. Pressure's on, but I really appreciate the opportunity to be back again for a second time.

Well, you know, in some ways, there's no pressure because you hit such a home run your first time on. And even if you suck today, you can say I went one for two. One for two is, yeah, that's actually pretty solid. So you have no pressure whatsoever. Look, I want to start by looking at a couple pieces you put out recently that I thought were very interesting. one of them you talked about projected rates of return, how you feel about them, how you meld them into your plans.

Go ahead and give us a little bit of that. Yeah, you know, I based it actually on the FP Canada guidelines. FB Canada is the governing body for certified financial planners in Canada. They put out every April guidelines that financial planners should use for future projections, whether it relates to inflation, investment rates of return, life expectancy, real estate price appreciation, things like that. And I think the assumptions that we are encouraged to use are a lot more conservative than what a lot of Canadians would assume when they're doing their own back of the napkin math,

particularly coming off of the last 10 years. The last decade has been exceptional for stock market rates of return. And going forward, stock market rates of return when you're running a projection are basically half what they've been over the last 10 years. So I think that's really important that just because things have been great over the last 10 years doesn't necessarily mean you can count on them being so great over the next 10. Yeah, I agree with that. In fact, in some respects, logically, if they've been spectacular over the last 10, they're likely to underperform in the next 10 because you've got fairly rich valuations. And I think that you guys are probably taking all that into account.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's really important, particularly when you're coming to the end of your accumulation phase and you're moving into retirement, you're starting. to decumulate your assets. You want to take into account the potential variability of returns, the potential that stock markets are taking a tumble early in retirement and your starting value for your financial assets is lower than where it is today. Not to say that FB Canada or myself or anybody can predict the future, not to say that stocks are going to fall, but they are volatile. And I think it's important to use conservative assumptions when you're doing long-term retirement planning projections, whether you're working with a professional, Dave, or whether you're doing it on your own.

I couldn't agree more. I think it makes no sense, especially later in life, not to be relatively conservative as you plan out your spending, your asset allocation, all of it. In general, do you think that we're seeing a trend towards people being more aggressively positioned in retirement now than they were 20, 30, and 40 years ago, at least with a lot of the portfolios that people say, me, they have a higher equity component than they used to. I'm not saying that's wrong, by the way. I'm just saying it's a change over 30 and 40 years ago. I would tend to agree. And I think there's a couple things at play, particularly if you go back 40 years ago, interest rates were a lot higher than they are currently. Even though interest rates spiked a little bit in the last few years, on a relative basis compared to the last 40, 50, 60 years, they were average interest rates,

not high interest rates. So bond returns were a lot lower. People are looking to stocks for performance. And there's a lot less people who have defined benefit pension plans. They're trying to make their money work. People are living longer too. I think that's really important. And stocks, despite the volatility and despite the fear that sometimes they instill, are a great way to ensure that your money outlast to you. Yeah, no, that's all very well said. And you brought a lot of good points in there. I worry a little bit that people have forgotten what a prolonged downturn is like. We've had some sharp pullbacks, but they've been that V-shaped type market where the recovery's been equally quick. We haven't had one of those long, drawn-out periods of sub-par performance where

it affects people mentally, maybe makes them make some not-so-good moves, et cetera. Inevitably, we will have one of those again. That's the nature of markets. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what we have seen certainly over the last 15 years where the pullbacks have been short. The bounce backs have been quite strong. And, you know, it's interesting. I think a lot of today's investors, whether they're younger investors who were not investing at the time or older investors who maybe have a shorter memory as it comes to their investing success. There was a 10-year period between 1999 and 2009 where the SMP 500 had a negative rate of return. Everybody forgets that. And that's not that long ago. And everybody forgets that. And the last 10 years, I think the S&P 500 has

done 13 or 14 percent annualized. So I mean, quite a difference. And it's not to say that we don't see another lost decade at some point. And it really reinforces, I think, the need for diversification. Before we move on, a point that I brought up in the wealthy barber returns that I've still fascinated by, not my own point, but the underlying metric is how few years the market gives the average return or anything close to the average return. So if you think equity is on average return, and 8% let's use the S&P number over the last 75, 80 years. It can be 7, whatever number you're using. But it's usually not even close to that.

It's negative 3 or it's 28. You just don't see a lot in that area. It's not a normal distribution at all. I think one of the important things to it, if you look back a year ago or a little over a year ago, last spring, we were talking about tariffs. I mean, we're still talking about tariffs a year and a half later. But there was this sense that Canada was in big trouble.

I remember doing interviews at the time where there were questions being asked about whether Canada was going to have a deep recession, even a depression. Absolutely. And you look at the last 10 years, or the last year, rather, it's been spectacular for stock markets. Whereas a year ago, the sort of concern was that the economy was going to crater and stock markets were going to fall. A year ago, if somebody looked at the headlines, they would have thought, terrible time to be investing in stocks. And in retrospect, it's been a great year for stock. Yeah, that's such a great example. And I don't believe in stock market forecasting.

I don't do it. I'm no good at it, but my point is nobody else is either. And you and I are on the same page there. We just tend to focus very long term, recognize there'll be some challenging times and go from there. You know, then the next thing I want to take a quick look at is you wrote a piece on the advice only industry. And I found it interesting, some of the facts.

Share that with our audience. It's funny. When I first started in the advice only industry, as you mentioned earlier 24 years ago, which is crazy, I remember coming across. a statistic and I don't remember where it was that there were an estimated 150 at the time fee only financial planners in Canada when fee only actually described I think much better what we do and over the years it's interesting there's been different lists that have been developed online I've met a lot of people in the industry and I don't think the industry has grown and my latest sort of research

suggests there might only be 75 to 100 true advice only certified financial planner in Canada. Certainly there are companies that will charge a fee, like a flat dollar amount for financial planning for consumers, but most of them also manage investments. So there might only be 75 to 100. I really don't think the industry has grown. Demand has grown, certainly. We have seen that. And we credit certainly, Dave, a lot of the work that you've done bringing awareness to the industry because it's, I think it's a really important way for people to obtain financial advice in Canada. Now, this is fairly blunt, but one of the reasons why you see fewer people go your path and they go the AUM, the assets under management path, is because they can make more money.

Oh, for sure. If they do well, I mean, it's a lot more lucrative. Why didn't that pull you in that same direction? Why were you able to rise above that? You know what? I was a little bit disillusioned when I first got into the financial industry about the way things worked, seeing behind the scenes candidly how financial advice was sold to the public and the conflicts of interest and the biases.

were disheartening. And I almost left the financial industry early on. If I had not found the advice-only sort of niche, I don't think I would still be here, to be honest. And I think the challenge is that when I look at all the clients that I work with and I add up all the money that they have to invest, and I take 1% of that and do the math, it's like, huh, okay, it's a lot. You can make a lot more money for managing investments. It's a grind really to become an advice-only financial planner. It's a lot users to sell investments or insurance there. No, it's true. Now, the AUM model, there are a lot of very competent, honest, conscientious people in that model. They're not, you know, they get the 1% or 70 basis points, whatever it is. They charge regardless of where they place the money. They

provide the comprehensive financial plan in some, but not all cases, of course. But you still think there are some biases seeping in there at all because of that model relative to advice only? There can be particular. And then it's not to paint everybody that works at a bank with the same brush. Because again, there's some great people there. But particularly if you're a smaller producer, let's say, at a bank, in order to keep your job and certainly in order to get ahead, you need to sell what needs to be sold and you need to achieve certain revenue targets.

And there's a lot of financial planners, particularly in the banks where they're bonus on selling life insurance candidly. So I think that independent wealth management, firms, let's say, have a lot more focus on doing right by clients, a lot more independence, and we're seeing that space grow in Canada, as it should. Yeah, in the U.S., that is the model now, is kind of the independent wealth management at 100 basis points or less with the comprehensive financial plan using some of the advanced software. We'll talk more about that in a few moments. And I think you'll see more and more of that in Canada. But it's interesting to me, I am seeing some

young people, 25 to 35, pulled to the advice only. They like the fact that you're not selling, that they feel that they're adding a lot of value doing that. There's less pressure maybe to go out and find it all. And as you point out, there's excess demand. So if they can come in and they can somehow get the word out there, maybe through social media that they're doing this, they can grow a very nice business. I would agree. I think a lot more people who've expressed an interest in doing like money, coaching and different ways of providing financial education. even. And I think it's great. Even from a client perspective, it's interesting. When I first started, Dave, the majority of my clients were sort of traditional wealth management clients, I suppose, they were in

their 50s and 60s. They were approaching or entering retirement. And now it's interesting. We've got clients their 20s and their 30s and their 40s and their 70s and their 80s, all different types of demographics that are looking for different types of financial advice. But ultimately, what they're trying to figure out is, am I making the right choices with my money? What do you want? need to know that I don't know, and I like having somebody look over their shoulder. You said all that very well. What do I need to know that I don't know? That's a question that gets asked a lot as people get older especially, and am I missing something? And I think a lot of people in the back of their mind recognize they're probably not handling their assets in a tax

optimally way in terms of the decumulation and everything else. Okay, we're going to move into the evolution of financial planning advice and investment advice, but I want to start with a huge frustration I had, but 15 years ago, it's less so now. You had a tremendous number of advisors out there managing the investments, but not doing any financial planning. I'm not talking about bad financial planning. Financial planning wasn't a part of the process. That is leased as improved dramatically.

Most of the bigger shops, the independents, the banks, whomever, as they do, the investment management now, they're providing some financial planning, cash phone management, estate planning, advice, etc. Do you think the trend is at least good in that area? I think it is. more that I talk to people, particularly at the banks, in order to get access to that advice, you might need to have a million dollars, $2 and a half million, $5 million, and I think the real challenge is that when you look at the way the industry has developed,

the first wave of financial technology that really sort of, that you needed to have a ton of money back in the 70s and the 80s to hire a stock broker. It's very expensive to buy stock and sell stocks. and through the advent of exchange traded funds and roblo advisors and self-directed brokerages, investing has really been democratized. That's not to say that people don't invest in traditional ways they do. There's everything from discretionary portfolio managers to self-directed stockbrokers. I think the next wave is really going to be the democratization of financial planning.

And it's very difficult to do it at scale at the banks. It's expensive to do, and that's why we're seeing it most. focused on high net worth investors, but there's millions and millions of other people who need financial advice in this country. Even someone like you, obviously one of the most competent financial planning minds in the country, scale is challenging. You're having to spend a lot of time on these plans. So you've turned, I'm sure, to more and more software. AI will become a bigger and bigger part of this. Walk us through relative to 24 years ago, the kinds of tools you're able to access now and what that's led to on the efficiency and even on the excellence front.

I think the great thing, when I look back when I first started, there were much fewer options in terms of technology. Financial planning software, even now in Canada, there really are not a lot of different financial planning technology options to do retirement projections and to do investment analysis and do other things like that. The U.S. is obviously a much bigger market and we're sort of jealous at times about what they have there. Technology has definitely improved things. There's a lot quicker ways to collect data. There's a lot quicker ways to produce retirement projections and decumulation plans and financial plans. I think the challenge is it still is very labor intensive. And there is still, I think, a misunderstanding amongst consumers about how much work goes into producing a personalized financial plan.

This isn't just a quick answer or a quick calculation, the 4% rule or something like that. There's a lot of work that goes into it. And it's expensive to be able to provide it. And I think that as time has gone on, consumers have started to understand that financial planning is a professional service. And certainly advice-only financial planners are trying to push that message, that it takes work to be able to provide this advice and do it on a personalized basis. And it's tough to do with a low price.

Technology makes it easier. But you know what's interesting is I think a lot of you do it at quite a low price, a very fair price. I'm going to, to your horn, I saw one of your plans. years ago, did not know you. You and I are not friends. We don't hang around at all. The plan was excellent. It was very strong. It's not hard to see why you've gone on to become the star in the industry, et cetera. But then I learned what the person had paid you. I thought you were undercharging to be perfectly honest. Like I actually went, what? That's crazy. That's a heck of a financial

plan. I thought you were charging too little, not too much. Look, I think if you do the math on how much people pay on an annual basis for their investment advice. And in many cases, it's more than what an advice-only financial planner would charge for a financial plan or for annual financial planning, for that matter. I would agree. But the challenge is people are used to getting their financial advice in Canada in a non-transparent way where they don't feel like they're paying for it, even though they are. Although it's changing. But it used to be a real grind, Dave, to get people to write a check for financial advice. And now people are going out of the way to find advisors that work this way.

Now, someone comes to you now and they write a check for a few thousand dollars. Obviously, you can't quote a price because every situation is a little different, every type of plan involves. But how often do they have to go to see you? How often do they have to get updates? You know, it depends. I have clients that I have worked with for 20 plus years and who will be ongoing clients that I meet with every year going forward.

And they are not necessarily. the wealthiest or most complicated clients that I have. And then there are other clients that you meet with once and you never see again. You hope it's because you did such a good job. They don't need you and not that they didn't value it. But there's a lot of people who come and go and it might be every few years. It really depends. I always tell people I'm biased and the conflict of interest to tell people you need to do this every year. You need to update your financial plan. It depends. Some people get a lot of value out of it, whether there are couples who are forced to have different money decisions, whether they are individuals that don't have somebody else to talk

candidly about money. Everybody has a different approach, but certainly there are lots of people who work on an annual basis with a financial planner like us. I found a lot of the people use advice only go and then they go about every three or four years unless there's a major life change. So they don't not go back again, but they don't necessarily go annually. Do you see that pattern a fair amount? Yes, certainly some people, that's what it is and you sort of blink your eyes, you think it's been a year and has been a few years. In some cases, there's them lots of changes, in some cases, not so many. I really think it's like value is in the eye of the beholder. It's almost like taking your car out of the car wash. Your car is definitely going to be cleaner if you take it on a

frequent basis. Some people are concerned about doing that. The challenge is that some people need a third party to force them to be accountable to their money goals. Some people don't know what mistakes they might be making if they didn't have somebody there to speak up. So there's a value even that I think is a peace of mind factor working with a financial planner on an annual basis. Sometimes we can quantify our value in terms of tax savings or lower investment fees or more accountability, the goals or other things like that. Sometimes it is truly peace of mind and that's hard to be value on. It is, but I have to say I'm on your side on that front. I see it over and over again. and so I'm very supportive of that argument,

that people who go more often, do get a peace of mind, they do get stress reduction, they're on the right path, but most importantly, they're more likely to implement. If you walk in and just get a plan with the intention of never going back,

there's no accountability, where if on the other hand, you know you're going to see that person again in six months a year, etc., you tend to move forward with the suggestions. When you give these plans, I mean, I used to see those old 70-page financial plans.

They were very thick. I thought a lot of people wouldn't read through them, Are there strong executive summaries that have action plans, which is kind of this is how you have to implement the advice and this is the easiest way to do it? You have to watch the regulatory lines obviously and not crossing them. But how do you push people towards implementation? I think that is more important, having an executive summary, having an action plan, having what on the olden days we used to call Cole's notes if they're still around. I think that's really important. And one of the things with quote financial plans, there's still those 70, 80, 100 page.

financial plans that people create in order to wow a prospective client or whatever. But I think it really is the discussion, the recommendations. I've got clients that I haven't created sort of a traditional financial plan for in many years or in some cases ever, Dave, where the financial advice we're providing is more conversational. It's more recommendations, decision making. And I'll tell you what, I wish I had spent more time on psychology and sociology and courses that had to do with providing advice and understanding people because a lot of times it's coaching, it's marital counseling, it's financial trauma from people's childhood. It's amazing types of conversations you end up in.

It's not stuff that you can factor into AI, for example. I couldn't agree more. In fact, that's why I think people are wrong when they criticize a lot of the American industry where they've got the coaches and the coaches, are pushing people along, helping them a lot with the basics like cash flow management, but a lot of them come from psychology backgrounds and are now very good at dealing with people. And as you said, their trauma around spending money or their divorce and how it's impacted the way they view finances, et cetera.

There's a lot of moving parts here. And people that come from that kind of background tend to be very good communicators and be able to factor a lot of that into play quite effectively. Absolutely. Okay. Last thing before we move on, we want to talk software and AI, et cetera. That's the big thrust today. but you're biased.

So I'm going to say this. I think people are crazy not to get a solid plan together when they're nearing retirement. I don't care if you're a strong DIYer and you're very sharp and you're reading all the books, etc. That's for sure in my mind when you want an outside set of eyes, someone experienced, someone who's got the software, someone who's seen it all before. I mean, obviously you're going to agree because you do it. But do you not agree beyond that? I would agree.

And I'll tell you one of the main reasons that I do agree is I can't tell you how many people I've met with over the years who think they need to work for 10 more years and they don't. They're financially independent already. They're working because they want to, not because they have to. And that knowledge is very important. And look, in some cases, Dave, we need to be the bad guys and gals and tell somebody, hey, you're not on a good trajectory. You're not going to be able to maintain the same standard of living.

You need to spend less, work longer, sell your house, take your kids out of private school, whatever. And I think that there's value to knowing that even. The earlier you know the bad news, certainly the early you know the good news. You can make decisions with the confidence and intentionally. I think the biggest favor I've ever done in my entire career, all the people have reached out to me was a scenario like that.

We're a couple probably 48 to 50, sat down with me at a restaurant in Waterloo, it kind of badgered me into taking the meeting and said, this is kind of where we want ahead. Can you take a quick look at our current situation and this is what we want to do? and I basically said zero chance. Like zero chance that you're getting where you want to go. You have to be realistic. And I remember at one point, the woman actually became a bit agitated,

said, you know, you're supposed to be an expert in this. This is arithmetic. Not a magician. I'm sorry. It's pretty basic stuff. You're not going to be able to do this. So you're right. Sometimes you have to be that blunt and you try to work with them better ways to get

where they want to go eventually or sacrifices that have to be made, etc. You seem like you'd be naturally very good at that. Okay. On to the topic. today. We're seeing some major pushes now for people to use more software. AI is going to become a bigger part of our lives. Where is all this headed in your mind in the next five to 10 years? Well, look, I think that the thing that I like the most about AI is that it can improve

active financial advice. It doesn't necessarily improve the advice or automatically ensure that the advice is good advice. I've done interviews over the years. The last couple of years where I pointed out that influencers who are not financial planners or not experts, I see a value because they're bringing awareness. They're getting people talking about financial planning and financial advice. And there are things that people can ask AI that they would never ask their financial advisor, that they would never ask their spouse or their coworker or whoever else. And I think sometimes people are hesitant to ask questions. They don't want to look dumb. They don't want to be sold something. So AI is a very safe place to ask questions, it can also be a dangerous place to get answers. Yeah, it's not

there yet. You and I have both experimented with enough to know there are some wrong answers that are spit out. I've talked many times in interviews about only six months, eight months, maybe 10 months ago, Mo and I were asking some fairly basic questions of chat GPT around RESPs. And it had some truly horrible answers for whatever reason. And by the way, you may have asked the same questions the same day and not got those same answers. That's the nature of how of all this is generated, but these were not good. And so we're not there, but there's a lot of improvement with rag and with Kag and with fine tuning and with all the things that the different chat companies are starting to do and they're putting checks and balance systems in and proper guardrails.

There's some pretty good product coming online. And can you imagine where it is in a year or two as the AI starts improving itself? What does that do to the industry, though? What does that do to you? I think it's a net benefit to tell you the truth because you've got people that are better educated as it comes to financial concepts, people that are asking questions that can make the advice to provide more suitable and suited to them. I think for a lot of Canadians, AI, isn't going to replace a financial advisor, but it may be the first advisor like experience they've ever had. It may be, not maybe, it will be something that advisors can use to provide. advice at scale to more clients at a lower price. Certainly as it relates to investments in investing, investments are an important part of wealth accumulation and financial planning, but I think as advisors spend less time managing investments and more time doing the things that really matter, tax planning, a cash flow planning and goals setting and things like that, I think financial advisors will actually start to provide more financial advice because

the less important stuff is taken care of by technology. Yeah, that's all well said. And I want to go back to something you said there, and that is that the investment approach, again, I wouldn't say it's been solved, although that's an expression that Ben Felix has used, and of course I have great respect for him. But most people are probably better off just to use low-cost ETFs, asset allocation funds, et cetera. You don't need a lot of advice necessarily there. But cash flow management, estate planning, insurance needs analysis, et cetera, that's where a planner slash advisor can add tremendous value. And maybe you're right, the AI is a tool that helps on the communication, helps to educate the client, helps to better that relationship. Absolutely. I think even

there's a lot of sort of old school financial advisors, let's say, that they grew up at a time where financial advice was investing. Hyundai retire. That's right. Hit lots of home runs, buy stocks and make as much money as you can. And I think even for advisors that are, less well-versed from a financial planning perspective, AI can help them ask the right questions, answer some of the right questions. Again, it may not be perfect. It may not be as qualified as an experienced certified financial planner. But I do think technology on a net basis is going to improve things, particularly for an industry that has focused so much on investments and investing for too long. When you go back away from AI just to deterministic software,

And you think Canada has one of the big players with Conquest, a Winnipeg firm. We're all very proud to have a Canadian firm that's entering the states and doing very well right now and having a lot of success and a lot of positive comments come back. Do you use that software or something like it? Where is it added value for you? And boy, that's a tough thing for them to put together. I give them a lot of credit. That is a lot of moving parts when you design that software.

Yeah. It's funny. I think back years ago trying to put together Excel spreadsheets to calculate financial planning and decumulation stuff. And it's just, it's mind-boggling. The amount of work goes into some of those financial planning software. And we do use Conquest. We use a few different financial planning software as we've used now. Redactions over the years, plan worth. And Conquest has come a long way. They've got a lot of the market share in Canada. They're expanding internationally. They're doing a lot of cool

stuff with AI. We're actually just about to unveil a new part of our business where we'll be distributing Conquest software to independent financial advisors like us. It's tough to get access to Conquest if you're not at a big bank or a wealth management firm. They're doing some really cool stuff as well as it relates to self-directed planning. Planning software that is self-directed individual can access and using AI and using guided tools get access to financial planning advice that we're trying to figure out how best we're going to leverage it, whether we'll leave people to their own devices to do self-directed planning or whether we couple it with one of our financial planners at objective financial partners because software can be great. But if you don't know how to use

it, it's just like AI. If you're asking the wrong questions, if you're not using it the right way, it can lead you in the wrong direction. So when they put the software together initially, when they started X years ago, they had to have an unusual team. They had to have outstanding coders. but beyond that, they had to have financial experts woven into that process in a big way too. And I would think that some people even had to have both skills. You would need the odd person in the group who could code but also knew what direction to take it based on the financial planning expertise required. Oh, yeah.

Financial planning is often very tax driven. What are the implications of withdrawing money from one account versus another, particularly when you incorporate things like corporate assets and real estate and things like that? but it's even how you present it. I've seen financial planning software that I think behind the scenes is pretty good, but the way in which it conveys the message to a consumer may not be something that a layperson would understand very well. So it's a lot of different things, a lot of different beyond coding, beyond financial and tax knowledge, it's presentation.

It's how do you make things look nice and understandable to average people. You hit on a key point there. I talked about a few podcasts ago, about for a lot of Canadians now, when they're looking at decumulation, yes, they're talking RSP, TFSA, non-registered accounts, but there's also corpse involved in a lot of cases. They were professionals and figuring out how to mesh all those together and the most taxed op-em away.

That is tricky, tricky stuff. Like, I don't care if you have good math skills. You're not sitting down with Bristol board over 30 hours and working all that out yourself because there's so many moving parts that affect each other. Oh, it's tough for sure. And particularly early over the last 20 years or so, there's a lot more professionals like doctors and lawyers and dentists that can incorporate

and have businesses, have businesses they'll sell, have investments that are saved up in a holding company, who have real estate where they operate their practice that they'll sell. And the advice that you get on an annual basis to file your income tax return is very different from the advice you get to draw down the money that you built up in your corporate assets over time. So it's really tricky. We're certainly seeing a lot of business owner clients that gravitate towards advice-only financial planning because it's very different from somebody who has a pension plan and an RSP and a higher some mortgage.

There's a lot more moving parts. But I think advice-only financial planning can be a good fit for a lot of people at a lot of different pages and stages. That's interesting. I've never said this on the podcast, but I probably should have. I'm the wealthy barber and I don't do this myself. Yeah. You know, I've got RSP's TFS, Corp, et cetera.

And there's no way I'm doing all that on my own. I did it once as I've talked about in the podcast years ago for a colleague, took me forever, not even sure I got it perfectly done, of course, because you don't know whether all your assumptions will come to be. But I'm getting outside help. I'm looking at software. Again, this is my background. I think for most people, they have to recognize you need help with decumulation,

especially. I would argue with most of financial planning later in life, but with decumulation especially. No, it's so true. And I manage my own investments. I do my own personal tax return. I've got an account that does my corporate tax return. I get corporate and legal advice and insurance advice and other advice from other professionals. And it's amazing the number of clients that we have that are financial advisors, insurance agents, accountants, people in the personal finance industry, even that looked to us for advice. It's very difficult to know all the answers.

And I think even sometimes the professionals need professional advice in areas where they may not be the expert. Absolutely. We had a funny one. We had back-to-back days when the wealthy barber redo came out. Back-to-back days, we had accountants get in touch with us and say, you know that RSP versus TFSA chapter, I had that wrong. I'm glad you fully explained all the different ways to look at that.

Back-to-back days, we had an accountant say that. So you're right. There's a lot for them to take it. and a lot of them doing corporate work, et cetera. And, you know, when someone like you who has written forever, so respect in the industry still turns to some outside help, I think that speaks volumes to our listeners, why you need some professional advice.

Yeah, no, it's very interesting. Where is this headed, as I said earlier in the next three to five years? Are we going to see consumer products, for example, from the big software companies where people can just on their phone, ask questions, and will those be helpful for the, the average person, do they know what to ask? Do they know that needed context for all of this? Are they going to provide enough information to the AI and to the software to get the proper responses? I think we're going to see a lot more advice given by technology providers, AI, more and more people ask

questions to AI, more and more companies that are introducing AI and chat bots and things like that. Again, on a net-knap basis, I think it's good. It democratizes the personal finance advice. industry. But you do need to know the right questions to ask. It's not enough if you asked, does contribute into my RSP take tax? Yes. Should I contribute to my RSP? Maybe. Should I withdraw from my RSP? Maybe. Should I take money from my RSP or start my Canada pension plan? Maybe. Like, there's so many questions like, can I think without the proper context is difficult. And sometimes it's not just the math. Sometimes it's the psychology of the individual as somebody a conservative individual, as somebody a more aggressive individual, as somebody a self-directed investor,

does somebody work with a financial advisor? Somebody have, you know, a health history or short life expectancy. There's so many factors, I think, that need to be taken into account. I find that with homeownership, too. You know, people ask you about homeownership. I mean, a lot of that comes back to a desired lifestyle. All of those things come into. play. It's very tricky. A question that you're asked a lot because of your expertise is, do I go the RESP route or the RRSP route? If I only have X number of dollars, well, those are two completely different objectives. And so it's very hard to make an apples versus apples comparison. You can't boil that down to straight math. Because of course, you're deciding what are your priorities first,

which is more important to you, helping your kids get to school or building your retirement funds, etc. And even that answer can vary dramatically depending on potential inheritances and all of these types of things. So there's a lot that the planner needs to know before they can give you a device. And that's going to hold true whether it's AI, whether it's AI mixed with software or whether it's Jason Heath. It depends is one of my favorite answers that I give. And it's interesting because AI rarely gives that answer. I can provide a very confident answer that you sort of shake your head and like, you miss destiny

ones, destiny ones, destiny ones, destiny ones. So you've got to be careful. Now, you've seen an AI that we've been playing around with here for a couple years. We've put a lot of money and time into it. And I'm not going to lie, it didn't get off to a good start. We were running into the same problems that the LLMs and the LLM

wraps run into. We had wrong answers. We had things come out that just made no sense in some cases or maybe even worse. We're close to being right, but we're wrong. But through a lot of changes and breakthroughs, we've now got something I think is coming on, not ready for the marketplace, certainly, and we don't know what we're going to do with it, if anything. But you can see after

playing with it where this is all headed. I think at some point in the next few years, some very smart people probably won't be us, are going to figure out how to come up with a chat bot that really does add a lot of value to people's lives. I played around with it a little bit. I appreciate the opportunity to take a look. And I've got to be honest, Dave, when when you're changing sent it to me, I thought, okay, let's see how this works. And I can say in all honesty that I was pleasantly surprised. And I think one of the things that struck me the most when I was asking questions, I started off asking relatively easy questions.

And then I got pretty complicated with like estate planning and corporate questions. And I was very impressed. And one of the things that I liked most about what you put together is that it answered questions in much the same way that I were. It kind of reminded me of the way that I would write a Money Sense article where it's like, Here's the question. It could be a three-line answer, but there's actually two pages that have considered this, consider that. Here's all the rest of the things that you should think about. But Jason, we're no dummies. We put that right into our prompt. Pretend you're Jason Heath.

It was very good, though, because I think that's the way that financial planning advice should be delivered. It's not yes or no. It's here are the considerations. And it leads somebody to, based on all the different considerations, figure out what the best approach is for them. Because I don't think, that it's a right size fits all answer to a lot of financial challenges you know it's one of the advantages of the wealthy barber format accidental i did it that way to take the intimidation out but having all those characters in the barbershop let me cover off a wider variety of scenarios exceptions nuances then it typically would have it was just author speaking to reader and so i kind of lucked into that hey before i let you go i want to go to completely different direction and this is recency bias

but in the last six months, I've seen a number of plans. I've seen a number of people who've approached me. And they are not close to properly insured. It still is falling between the cracks way too often. I don't know what it is about entrepreneurs, but so many of them don't have enough life insurance that it is wacky or no disability insurance in a lot of cases. Can you speak to that a little bit?

I would say that is probably the area where I see the biggest gaps that people have. With life insurance, I would say you certainly see people that are underinsured from a life insurance perspective. And life insurance, particularly term life insurance, is relatively cheap to buy. I certainly see people who have fancy life insurance who should not, who've not maxed out RSPs and TFSAs and RES and done other things in their life that they should have done. Because fancy life insurance is, I think, beneficial for a very small part of the population. but disability insurance, that's definitely where I see the biggest gap. Even if somebody has a disability insurance plan at work,

oftentimes if you're a high-income individual, there's a monthly max that leaves you grossly underage. And again, like you said, tons of entrepreneurs that are underinsured from a disability perspective. And one of the main reasons, two of the main reasons. One is that insurance agents focus on life insurance. Two is that disability insurance is expensive. So people buy us away from it.

But the reason it's expensive is because it's more likely to happen. That's right. Clearly up until your mid-40s and it's more financially devastating if it happens than dying. You've done a good job of spotlighting that. I think the industry in general lately, some of the better voices are trying to draw attention more to, hey, you should be checking out your needs here, giving it more thought than you are, going back to the life insurance front. Again, I'm amazed that people tend to have a little too little instead of a little too much often. And I'll look at and I'll look at the needs analysis, even if it's well done by the insurance aging. So he or she has sold the right type of insurance, put the work in. I still think in a lot

of cases I would have a little bit more. It's not very expensive for most of the people in need. And there's a certain peace of mind that comes with being property insured beyond the obvious financial benefit of something horrible happens. That's it. I would tend to agree. And I think it's reflective of how many here stats about wills and the number of people, the number of things that don't have wills and not I know what it is, but like half of Canadians don't have an up-to-date will. And I think people don't want to think about dying and becoming disabled. And I've got the opposite problem. I think I speak a little bit too candidly about it.

Sometimes I've got to tone down my conversations about death and disability. But it's a reality. It's a fact of life. It's something that you should be talking about with your financial advisor. And if you're a self-directed investor, you are your financial advisor. or you need to educate yourself. Now, you seem like a very calm person. Are you always this way? I am almost always this way. And I think that particularly when it comes to making financial decisions with clients, I'm very calm, I'm very deliberate, I'm very intentional. And I've commented on this before to people,

it's interesting. If I have a very difficult financial decision to make for a client, I find it can be relatively easy. I can have the same decision to make for myself a much easier decision. And I will dwell over and agonize and worry about it. And I find it's a lot easier to give financial advice to strangers than to people know and even yourself sometimes. That's funny. Do you have a partner? And if so, does he or she find you calm at all times? My wife, Teresa, is I think somebody particularly as it relates to finances, considers me to be the ship, the calm ship or whatever you would otherwise say.

And I think that between the two of us, we have our strength and our weaknesses. And I often joke with her that I'm very good at a very short list of things in life in the financial planning realm. I'm not very good at much else if I needed to fix something around the house or needed to make other decisions or do other things. It's not going to go well. I've got nothing. I used all of my expertise in a very narrow area.

Well, you're very good at that. And we've all benefited from it. This is a bit of a corny question. You must be quite proud right now of the fact that your articles have been so well received over the years by the industry. So obviously the end user, reading money sense, et cetera, has benefit. But so many people in the Canadian financial industry have read your pieces. I mean, that's something if I are you, I'd be very proud of. I am for sure.

And I'm really appreciative of the people that I've met, the opportunities that I've had, people like you, frankly, have given me this sort of forum. And it's interesting. When I think back years ago, the prize. was different. And it's not to say that I'm not proud currently, but it's interesting. One thing that I've found is my life and my career has gone on. I really wanted to have public recognition in the past. And as life has evolved and as my family has evolved and other things, you find your focus and your goals change somewhat. So true. I am proud. I am happy to have the forum that I have. I am happy to be where I'm at. But there's a lot of other things with my life and my family and goals that are. I'm proud. I am happy to be. I'm happy to be where I'm at. I'm

and the goals that I have that are more important, especially these days. Yeah, that's good. Listen, you seem like a great guy. You know, you really do. You always come across as a classy person, as a gentleman. It was really nice having you back on the show. I'm sure the listeners will benefit and continued success going forward. Yeah, thank you, Dave.

I'd appreciate it and certainly appreciate everything that you've done, particularly over the last year, actually for the advice-only financial planning and community. You brought a lot of awareness. And I told you this the first time I was on the show that I'm sure the first personal finance book I ever read, it was The Balthy Barber. So I feel like you've helped sort of spring my career. And it's the second time I've been on the show. I know you're planning to retire, but maybe one more victory or not? No, I don't think so. I'm old. I'm ready to move out. There's young people like you still doing wonderful things. No, listen, you did a great job. Thank you so much again.

Thanks, Dave. Appreciate it.