The Personal Finance Show

Gord Stein wants you to build 2 million dollars in wealth over the next 10 years.

If you implement every cashflow savings idea in his book, and then take that saved money and invest it over 10 years at 7%, you will have an extra $2 million.

How does that sound?

Ok, maybe every part of the book doesn’t apply to you, but with 60 different cashflow recipes, you will find some area of your life where you can save.

The point is that, wherever you are spending money in your life, you need to review that spending every so often to see that it makes sense.

Paying $100 a month for a storage locker?  What’s really in there? Could you sell the stuff, and invest the $100 a month instead?

Buy your lunch every day at work for $10?  That’s $50 a week. $2,500 year.

If you invested $50 a week for 10 years, you would have $38,000.  In 20 years $114,000.

This isn’t about giving up stuff, it’s about making little changes in your expenses that don’t really impact your quality of life, but free up small amounts of cash flow.  

And if you apply these little changes to all the areas of your life, the little bits add up.

Gord spent 2 years compiling the list for you and put it all in a handy guide he called the Cashflow Cookbook. He sat down with me in Toronto to tell his personal finance story.

37 - The Future of Payments

Before I introduce this week’s guest, I want to tell you about the new book giveaway.

Last month I gave away a copy of Sean Cooper’s Burn Your Mortgage.  Congrats to Allison from Manitoba as the winner of a signed copy of the book!

From June 15th to July 31st, 2018, I’ll be running a new giveaway for 5 signed copies of the new book Cashflow Cookbook, written by today’s guest, Gord Stein.  Thank you Gord for donating 5 copies and signing them all.

So if you like the episode and want a copy of the book, just go to beauhumphreys.com/giveaway/ and enter for a chance to win one of the books.

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Gord Stein wants you to build 2 million dollars in wealth over the next 10 years.

If you implement every cashflow savings idea in his book, and then take that saved money and invest it over 10 years at 7%, you will have an extra $2 million.

How does that sound?

Ok, maybe every part of the book doesn’t apply to you, but with 60 different cashflow recipes, you will find some area of your life where you can save.

The point is that, wherever you are spending money in your life, you need to review that spending every so often to see that it makes sense.

Paying $100 a month for a storage locker?  What’s really in there? Could you sell the stuff, and invest the $100 a month instead?

Buy your lunch every day at work for $10?  That’s $50 a week. $2,500 year.

If you invested $50 a week for 10 years, you would have $38,000.  In 20 years $114,000.

This isn’t about giving up stuff, it’s about making little changes in your expenses that don’t really impact your quality of life, but free up small amounts of cash flow.  

And if you apply these little changes to all the areas of your life, the little bits add up.

Gord spent 2 years compiling the list for you and put it all in a handy guide he called the Cashflow Cookbook. He sat down with me in Toronto to tell his personal finance story.

If you liked this episode please subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.  It would mean a lot to me and it only takes a few seconds.

Don’t forget to head over to https://beauhumphreys.com/giveaway and enter to win one of 5 signed copies of Cashflow Cookbook.  I watched Gord sign them all so I can verify their authenticity.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Personal Finance Show.

Barry Choi wasn't always a personal finance expert.  Back in his 20s he didn't know anything about investment fees or what he should be investing in.

But when someone suggested that he might be paying more than he needed to, he quickly found that it was even worse than he thought.

That incident from 10 years ago kicked Barry into high gear and created the personal finance expert we know him to be today.

Barry is also one of Canada’s leading travel experts and blogs about his travels, and various personal finance topics on his site moneywehave.com

Barry has been published in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Financial Post and MoneySense magazine, just to name a few, and he’s made many appearances on Canadian TV over the years.

Barry joined me in Toronto to tell his personal finance story.

36 - Gordon Stein

Jeff Cates is the president and CEO of Intuit Canada, the company behind QuickBooks Online, TurboTax and Mint.com.

There are 13 guests on this episode!

Here are the times they all appear if you’re looking for someone specific: 

4:55 - Jeff Cates, President and CEO of Intuit Canada 

25:34 - Claire Niburski from Knit Technologies  

26:50 - Rhys Mohun from FundThrough 

27:50 - Christian Ali from Dream Payments 

29:43 - Brendan Woods from AutoEntry 

31:01 - Paul Abrams from WayPay 

31:54 - Geoffrey Gualano from HubDoc 

32:52 - Charmaine Cheung from Plooto 

33:59 - Lisa Zamparo from lisazamparo.com 

35:03 - Elliott Stone from MDTax 

36:42 - Cathy Bonch from ACCPro Services 

37:33 - Londale Lindo-Sewell from ACCPro Services 

38:10 - Vicki Curtis from Curtis-Villar and her new company Digitfy Inc. 

I am sooo excited about this episode. If you listen to the show, you probably know that I'm a personal finance coach. I help people organize and simplify their personal finances. 

But I also have tons of experience with bookkeeping and accounting so, on the small business side I am also a bookkeeping coach. I help people learn how to do their basic small business bookkeeping. And because QuickBooks Online (QBO) has this awesome program for accountants and bookkeepers, I became a QBO ProAdvisor. 

But maybe you don't need a coach like me. Maybe you need an experienced bookkeeper or accountant who knows your type of business. Maybe someone who's done small business tax returns for the last 20 years and understands how to make sure the Canada Revenue Agency doesn't come knocking at your door, and if they do, you’re ready for them. 

People ask me to recommend an accountant all the time.

They want someone they can trust.

So I decided to build my new site https://financialaccounting.ca.

Financialaccounting.ca is Canada's Bookkeeping and Accounting Hub and it is live today!

I have featured accountants who I've met and are real people. You will hear from them later in this episode.

There are tons of companies that have created apps that are integrated with QBO. These are apps that make data entry easier, help you get paid quicker and make payroll and benefits really easy, just to name a few. I met some of these QBO partners and you'll hear from a few of them later in the show too.

But first up in the show, I was lucky enough to get an interview with Jeff Cates, president and CEO of Intuit Canada, the company behind QuickBooks Online, TurboTax and Mint.com.

At the December 2017 QuickBooks Connect conference in Toronto we talked about how automation and artificial intelligence are changing the way we manage business finances. There’s some really fascinating stuff coming that is going to ultimately make it easier for the user, YOU, to focus on growing your business, instead of worrying about your accounting.

I put all this together to help you get your business organized. That’s what my new site is about. Whether it’s me or someone else you find on the site, I want to make sure you know where to find the tools you need and the right people to help you. So head over to https://financialaccounting.ca to find all the links that were mentioned by any of the 13 guests on today’s episode. 

35 - Barry Choi 

Click here to book a FREE 15-minute personal finance consultation with Beau Humphreys, Personal Finance Coach

Click here to become a patron of The Personal Finance Show via Patreon

To register for my next available personal finance webinar click here.

There are 13 guests on this episode!

Here are the times they all appear if you’re looking for someone specific:

4:55 - Jeff Cates, President and CEO of Intuit Canada

25:34 - Claire Niburski from Knit Technologies 

26:50 - Rhys Mohun from FundThrough

27:50 - Christian Ali from Dream Payments

29:43 - Brendan Woods from AutoEntry 

31:01 - Paul Abrams from WayPay 

31:54 - Geoffrey Gualano from HubDoc 

32:52 - Charmaine Cheung from Plooto 

33:59 - Lisa Zamparo from lisazamparo.com

35:03 - Elliott Stone from MDTax 

36:42 - Cathy Bonch from ACCPro Services

37:33 - Londale Lindo-Sewell from ACCPro Services

38:10 - Vicki Curtis from Curtis-Villar and her new company Digitfy Inc.

I am sooo excited about this episode. If you listen to the show, you probably know that I'm a personal finance coach. I help people organize and simplify their personal finances.

But I also have tons of experience with bookkeeping and accounting so, on the small business side I am also a bookkeeping coach. I help people learn how to do their basic small business bookkeeping. And because QuickBooks Online (QBO) has this awesome program for accountants and bookkeepers, I became a QBO ProAdvisor.

But maybe you don't need a coach like me. Maybe you need an experienced bookkeeper or accountant who knows your type of business. Maybe someone who's done small business tax returns for the last 20 years and understands how to make sure the Canada Revenue Agency doesn't come knocking at your door, and if they do, you’re ready for them.

People ask me to recommend an accountant all the time.

They want someone they can trust.

So I decided to build my new site https://financialaccounting.ca.

Financialaccounting.ca is Canada's Bookkeeping and Accounting Hub and it is live today!

I have featured accountants who I've met and are real people. You will hear from them later in this episode.

There are tons of companies that have created apps that are integrated with QBO. These are apps that make data entry easier, help you get paid quicker and make payroll and benefits really easy, just to name a few. I met some of these QBO partners and you'll hear from a few of them later in the show too.

But first up in the show, I was lucky enough to get an interview with Jeff Cates, president and CEO of Intuit Canada, the company behind QuickBooks Online, TurboTax and Mint.com.

At the December 2017 QuickBooks Connect conference in Toronto we talked about how automation and artificial intelligence are changing the way we manage business finances. There’s some really fascinating stuff coming that is going to ultimately make it easier for the user, YOU, to focus on growing your business, instead of worrying about your accounting.

I put all this together to help you get your business organized. That’s what my new site is about. Whether it’s me or someone else you find on the site, I want to make sure you know wh

Raj Lala is an investment fund artist.

I talk about exchange traded funds(ETFs) a lot.

How the best portfolio is a diversified portfolio. And how the simplest way to diversify is to buy a handful of ETFs that are built to mimic certain parts of the market.

Robo-advisors, for example will usually have what we like to call “buckets” made up of ETFs that balance each other out to try to achieve an overall return, depending on your level of risk tolerance.

But how are these ETFs built?

Who creates funds and how are they created?

The answer is that there are a handful of people out there who are skilled at taking a bunch of investments and packaging them together in a bundle, or fund.

This is more of an art form than something you can learn about in books.

The art of fund-building is something that is acquired over years of practice, but there’s also a lot of natural talent to start with, like someone who is a great artist or musician. You have to have some talent to start with and then you hone your craft.

Raj Lala is one of these artists.

With his new company Evolve ETFs, Raj is focused on investments encompassing topics that intersect in Canadians’ daily lives.

Products like their North American Gender Diversity ETF, which invests in top North American companies as ranked by Equileap’s extensive Gender Scorecard, which includes 19 criteria of gender balance and gender equality.

I met Raj at the Evolve office in Toronto where he shared his personal finance journey and the idea of investing in financial products that mean something to you.

34 - Jeff Cates

Laurie Campbell is very passionate about improving financial literacy.

When I saw her speak at the Financial Wellness and Retirement Readiness Conference in February of 2018, I was impressed by her devotion to helping people solve debt problems.

Getting out of debt is hard and involves a lot of sacrifice.

But for some people it’s even harder to not get into debt in the first place. There are people, like myself, who had mental health and addiction issues in the past, and that led to an overwhelming amount of debt.

This is very hard to avoid, but as Laurie and I discuss in the interview, you can get out sooner if you reach out for help early. The problem is that there is still so much stigma, shame and embarrassment surrounding consumer debt, and people feel that they need to keep it to themselves and fix it on their own.

What happens is that their consumer debt gets larger and by the time people end up at Laurie’s office, they’re in big trouble.

But as Laurie has found out in her 25 years at Credit Canada, it’s never too late to make the changes to your life that are needed to get yourself out of debt and on the right track.

I visited Laurie at her office in Toronto to learn about her personal finance story and how she ended up as CEO of Credit Canada, a Canadian Registered Charity dedicated to helping Canadians overcome debt problems and improve their personal money management skills.

33 - Raj Lala

Matthew Jarvis is not a magician.

Yet there are those that come to him when they are about to retire and expect him to make a small amount of retirement savings last for 30 years.

Matthew is a Certified Financial Planner who’s clients are exclusively retired, or within 5 years of doing so, with at least $500,000 saved up.

Depending on your current lifestyle, half a million dollars might seems like either a lot of money, or very little, to last for 30 years. And that’s the thing about retirement planning. It’s very specific to the individual or couple, and what they intend to do with those next 30 years.

The truth is, everyone’s afraid of running out of money and there’s no shame in that. What’s important is that you talk to someone about it before it’s too late.

Though he is still a young man of 36, Matthew has been able to build Jarvis Financial into a very successful business since he started in the industry in the early 2000s.

He currently manages over $115 million in assets for his clients and has structured his business in a way that allows him to take over 80 days of vacation every year, spending quality time with his 3 kids, while still providing full service to his clients.

Matthew joined me from the Seattle, Washington area to tell his personal finance story.

32 - Laurie Campbell

Hamza Khan had a toxic relationship with money.

Obsessing about saving and spending caused a lot of stress in his family when he was young, so when he started making his own money, he just didn’t want to go there at all.

But when you’re not paying attention to your finances, things can get out of hand, even if you’re making good money.

During this time, Hamza was also experiencing what he now realizes was burnout.

Driven by his need to prove to his family that he could be successful in the world of marketing, he would forego sleep and work insane hours to achieve as much as possible.

But a series of troubling incidents led him to question his way of doing things.

This introspection ultimately led him to write his new book “The Burnout Gamble”. Hamza joined me to talk about burnout, productivity, freedom, mental health and his personal finance story.

“If a budget for your money is a reflection of your priorities, then your calendar is a reflection of your most valuable resource, which is time.” - Hamza Khan

31 - Matthew Jarvis

John Kalos worked in a bank for a long time.

Over the years he realized that the bank’s mandate was to sell products first and helping people took a back seat to this mandate.

He found himself in a situation where he was being told he had to sell investment products that weren’t right for his clients.

John had enough and decided he could be a financial planner on his own, without the bank forcing sales quotas on him. He could offer his clients the right products for them, based on their individual life situation and goals.

Once out on his own, he could so clearly see that people were still being taken advantage of by the banks, so he created his podcast “Confessions of an Ex-Banker”, which strives to inform Canadians about the important financial stuff that the banks won’t tell you, because it’s not going to help them sell more products.

John is very passionate about actually helping people, and not just selling them a product to get a commission, and then hanging them out to dry, which is unfortunately what many financial professionals have done in the past, leading to mistrust and skepticism of everyone in the personal finance business.

John joined me from Montreal, Quebec to tell his personal finance story and how he’s trying to help people achieve their financial goals.

30 - Hamza Khan