Dave Chilton, best-selling author of “The Wealthy Barber” and “The Wealthy Barber Returns,” has helped millions of Canadians to better manage their money. With over 2 million copies sold, “The Wealthy Barber” became an all-time personal finance classic—loved for its relatable and easy-to-follow advice. Dave went on to become a Dragon on CBC's "Dragons' Den," (Canada's version of "Shark Tank") where he invested in a wide range of Canadian businesses and was
known for his practical wisdom, sharp wit and no-nonsense approach to entrepreneurship.
Now, Dave’s back to his roots—creating videos and hosting The Wealthy Barber Podcast to answer personal finance questions in a clear, relatable way. With over 220,000 followers on social media and tens of thousands of podcast listeners tuning in each week, he’s once again demystifying money for all Canadians.
In this episode, we welcome back Dave Chilton, author of The Wealthy Barber and one of Canada's most influential voices in personal finance. With his retirement approaching, Dave joins Ben Felix and Cameron Passmore for a wide-ranging conversation about the success of The Wealthy Barber Podcast, the evolution of financial advice in Canada, and the lessons he's learned from decades of helping people navigate their financial lives.
We explore why retirement income planning remains an underserved area of financial advice, how to evaluate different advisor fee models, and why strategies like the RRSP meltdown can be valuable for some people but inappropriate for others. Dave also shares his concerns about rising living costs, high investment fees, and the potential economic disruption from AI, while explaining why he remains optimistic about the future of financial planning. Along the way, he reflects on the importance of saving consistently, the challenges of communicating complex financial ideas, and why the best advice starts with understanding the individual.
As Dave prepares to step away from The Wealthy Barber, he also opens up about what retirement means to him, the importance of spending time with family and friends, and the habits that contribute to a happier life. It's a thoughtful, funny, and practical conversation about financial advice, personal finance education, and making the most of the time we have.
Key Points From This Episode:
(0:02:02) The unexpected success of The Wealthy Barber Podcast and how carefully chosen guests helped build a loyal audience.
(0:04:38) Why retirement income planning and estate planning became two of the most popular topics, and where financial advice has often fallen short.
(0:06:22) How podcasts create a unique connection through storytelling, conversation, and answering real audience questions.
(0:08:15) How the demographics of The Wealthy Barber book differ from those of the podcast, including a stronger female readership for the book.
(0:09:25) What Dave learned from interviewing financial experts and why retirement-related topics generated so much interest.
(0:11:01) Why credible, unbiased educators are needed to continue improving financial literacy after the podcast ends.
(0:14:20) The challenge of simplifying financial concepts without ignoring important exceptions and nuances.
(0:15:21) How humor and storytelling help make personal finance accessible to people of different ages and backgrounds.
(0:20:26) Why Dave tested The Wealthy Barber manuscript with ordinary readers and valued their feedback more than industry opinions.
(0:21:39) Reasons for optimism about Canadian financial advice, including better communication, greater fee awareness, and higher professional standards.
(0:23:11) Concerns about affordability, AI-driven economic disruption, and the long-term impact of government debt.
(0:25:10) How rising costs for housing, transportation, children’s activities, and pets are increasing financial stress.
(0:27:12) How Canadians should choose financial advisors and why addressing debt and retirement-plan matching should come first.
(0:29:17) Comparing assets-under-management and advice-only planning models, including the challenge of ensuring clients follow through.
(0:31:00) How AI may improve advisor effectiveness before it significantly replaces human advisors.
(0:32:49) Why retirement income planning and tax-efficient withdrawal strategies can add substantial value without increasing investment risk.
(0:36:16) The RRSP meltdown strategy and why useful planning tools can be misleading when promoted as universal solutions.
(0:39:26) Why financial professionals should help clients think through the right questions rather than offer one-size-fits-all answers.
(0:42:43) Why effective financial planning begins with understanding a client's goals, circumstances, and priorities through meaningful conversations.
(0:44:54) How financial education helps investors understand risk tolerance better than questionnaires alone.
(0:45:15) The risks of borrowing to invest, including borrowing costs, investment fees, market volatility, and investor behavior.
(0:49:57) Common financial mistakes such as outdated wills, inadequate insurance, excessive cash holdings, and high investment fees.
(0:52:00) Why "pay yourself first" remains Dave's most important financial principle and why automating savings works.
(0:57:29) Why Dave chose retirement: family, friends, health, and a desire to enjoy life while his work remains successful.
(1:01:00) Dave's reflections on mortality, gratitude, happiness, and making the most of the time we have.
(1:08:00) His final advice for a fulfilling life: be kind, stay positive, practice gratitude, and help others whenever possible.
Read The Transcript:
Ben Felix: Welcome to episode 433 of the Rational Reminder Podcast. I'm Ben Felix, Chief Investment Officer at PWL Capital.
Cameron Passmore: And I'm Cameron Passmore, Chief Executive Officer at PWL Capital. And today, we are joined by The Wealthy Barber himself, Dave Chilton, who was last here on episode 370.
Ben Felix: Dave, as listeners likely know, is one of the most influential voices in Canadian personal finance and has been for decades. His book, The Wealthy Barber, has helped millions of Canadians manage their money, and he released an updated edition in 2025. In 2024, he launched The Wealthy Barber Podcast, which I was a guest on twice, I think, and probably a third time before the podcast ends. Dave is retiring at the end of this year, so we wanted to have him back on this podcast.
Cameron Passmore: And in this episode, we get into the success of The Wealthy Barber Podcast and what Dave has learned from his guests and listeners, his views on the state of Canadian personal finance and financial advice, and also how he plans to make the most of his retirement.
Ben Felix: Really thoughtful discussion. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think listeners will too, and stick around to the end to hear our thoughts on the conversation.
But for now, let's go ahead and do our conversation with Dave. Dave Chilton, aka The Wealthy Barber, welcome back to the Rational Reminder Podcast.
Dave Chilton: You know, it's always an honor to be on this podcast. It is my favorite podcast I listen to, number one.
Ben Felix: Wow.
Dave Chilton: And people will ask me, what do you listen to? And I say, Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy. I've always liked him.
He's a great person and I like the podcast, but this is my go-to podcast. So congratulations. You guys have really helped a lot of people. I love the podcast. Really enjoy it immensely.
Ben Felix: Wow. That means a lot, Dave. Your podcast, The Wealthy Barber Podcast, I believe has impacted many people too, even though it's been relatively short-lived.
I'd love to ask you to start. How would you describe the success of The Wealthy Barber Podcast?
Dave Chilton: Well, surprising to me in that Aidan, and you guys have dealt with Aidan, he deserves all the credit. I didn't want to do a podcast. And I said, it's Canadian-only content and we're not doing investment advice at all.
We're doing general financial planning. It could be a little boring. It could get quite repetitive.
Are there enough guests to fill it out if we do it weekly, et cetera, et cetera. And he said, let's give it a shot. And wow, it's ended up going way beyond what we'd hoped it would. We don't do that well on YouTube. I really don't think people want to see me. Okay. I think that's what the big issue there. They want to listen.
Cameron Passmore: I was waiting for that joke.
Dave Chilton: Yeah. They want to listen to me on Spotify or on Apple Music, but on those two, it's been a huge hit and it's the guests. I mean, we started quickly right out of the gate with Preet Banerjee. He's so articulate and such a nice person.
Cameron Passmore: So good.
Dave Chilton: Beyond the fact he's super knowledgeable, but he's also a great guy and that got us going.
And then of course we followed up with you and Rob Carrick. And so we got kind of three big ones and it got momentum very quickly. And then Aidan did a very good job of finding top drawer guests with great credentials, but also listening to them do other podcasts to make sure that they were articulate and interesting, et cetera. And it just kept going. And it really has been a lot of fun and a big surprise.
Cameron Passmore: How important do you think it was to launch the podcast beside your updated book?
Dave Chilton: I think our social media offerings probably helped the book sales more and helped draw attention to it than the podcast. Interestingly, the podcast has got a very different demographic than the book. The book is the under-45 crowd and the podcast tends to be people who read the book 25 years ago and now have some money and are looking for retirement advice, estate planning advice.
Those are always our two hot topics, by the way, on the podcast and on the clips. But the social media seemed to have a broad appeal, young and old. We put those clips out for about two years, didn't monetize in any way.
We didn't take advertising revenue. We just wanted to give back and they went over very, very well. And then the clips from the podcast, of course, started getting stuck in the social media sites.
And Aidan's very good at picking the ones that will resonate or create controversy or draw interest. And they all fed off each other and definitely helped the brand profile, which in turn, of course, helped book sales and drew attention back to The Wealthy Barber.
Cameron Passmore: What's the dynamic that's going on there with that age group? That's my age group.
Dave Chilton: It is. And mine too, although I'm older than you, sadly.
Cameron Passmore: Not too much, but what's the dots that are being connected? Is it social media, the demand for retirement help? You're a familiar, trusted voice. What's going on there in that dynamic?
Dave Chilton: I think being a familiar, trusted voice helped. I've been out there for so, so long. But interestingly, I think it's beyond that.
A lot of people just weren't getting retirement planning advice at all and retirement income planning advice at all. And in fact, we've had many people listen to the podcast and go, I didn't know my advisor was supposed to be doing that. And so they weren't getting any of those offerings.
And so they started telling friends and started telling colleagues and listening over and over again. And we try to vary it up. We don't do just retirement and estate planning, of course, but that's been a big part of the success, no doubt.
So I think there's a thirst out there for that information among the boomers. And unfortunately, there's been a weakness in the industry. Now it's improving.
There's no doubt we're seeing more and more advice and better software and people realizing this is a part of what you better be offering as a good financial advisor. Five, 10 years ago, it was a bit of a disaster to be perfectly honest. But it is getting better.
And I was saying off air, I give you two a lot of credit. PWL with their educational efforts, with Ben's videos, with your podcast, et cetera, has really raised the bar. And one of the big impacts you guys have had is that all the other advisors are listening to you and they go, great, I got to be pretty sharp here.
If I want to keep up with what they're doing, what they're offering their clients, and I use the expression echo impact earlier off air, where you're impacting other advisors and how they're pushing themselves. And of course that's helping those clients. So right now the industry is on a nice trajectory. There are still flaws, but I think the general trends are quite positive.
Ben Felix: So Dave, I've never written a book. Maybe one day, you and I have chatted about that a couple of times. I don't know what the connection that you have with a reader is like, but I'm really curious.
How do you think that the connection that you have built with your podcast audience differs or at least compares to the connection that you built with people who have read your book?
Dave Chilton: In general, I think it's tough to compete with the connection you get through a podcast because voice is so important. People hear your voice. They are truly connected to you and it resonates in their mind, et cetera.
And then of course, there is some visual aid if they're watching it on YouTube. But I think The Wealthy Barber is an exception because it was written in such an unusual style with the characters, the narrator had said, people kind of thought it was me. It was my voice coming through all the time and they felt they knew me.
And then I've been out there so long on stage too, that I think that connection was relatively deep too. So the podcast has been a different way to get at it, but I think it's been a very positive way and a different way. And voice, again, has a tremendous ability to pull people in and to make them feel like they know you and you're a part of the whole story.
And we've worked hard to try to ask questions that we thought the average person wants answered. I mean, one of the advantages of being The Wealthy Barber is you're inundated with questions. And so you know what people are confused by, what they want more clarity on.
And you inject that back into the podcast by me asking the experts. And so I think that's one of the reasons it's done well is people say, well, Dave, you're a good question asker. I'm stealing all those questions.
That's not because I'm sharp. I just take them from all people who get in touch with us. I wish I was that smart. And so that's really, I think why it got a lot of the flow.
Ben Felix: Yeah, that's interesting. The point about voice is really interesting. Something we did pretty early on is invested in just really good quality audio equipment because we kind of figured that. So it's really interesting to hear you say that.
Dave Chilton: It's so, so important. And I mean, even with audio books now, if you do a book, you have to have an audio version, especially in my case where I write for the under-45 crowd, a lot of them prefer audio books, males especially. And you know, it's interesting by the way, a little bit off topic, but the book, the updated, The Wealthy Barber has sold much better to females than males, much better. I would say it might be 75, 25.
Cameron Passmore: Holy.
Dave Chilton: Which is disappointing. I mean, I'm thrilled that women are embracing it, but I want the young men reading it too. And I think they're turning more and more to YouTube and other things, but I think that it's interesting. It really is that big a split. We see it in all of our feedback.
Ben Felix: You mentioned the age demographic difference for the book and the podcast. What's the gender demographic difference like?
Dave Chilton: The podcast seems to be pretty evenly split. Whereas the book again has been much more heavily skewed towards female, but the podcast seems to be kind of down the middle. And the podcast, we do have some younger listeners for sure, but we have a lot of listeners in their fifties and sixties.
That's a big part of our audience. And a lot of advisors, a ton of financial advisors. I mean, I've had the head of wealth management at major institutions say to me, we never miss a podcast.
And so it's funny, a lot of them are listening to kind of figure out, okay, where are the experts focused now and what questions are being asked because that probably does represent the vast audiences, queries, et cetera. So we have a lot of advisors and top people in the industry listening, which I think it's interesting because that certainly wasn't our target market.
Cameron Passmore: Did any of your podcast interviews change your views or really surprise you?
Dave Chilton: Well, not a lot. I mean, I'm going to be honest. I am as geeky as they get. I really am. I live and breathe this stuff. Like I'm just reading all the time.
I'm as fascinated by all of it as I was when I started out at age 17, 18, 19. And so most of the stuff I have a fairly good feel for, but also most of the people we have on, I've been following them in some way, shape or form. Like I watch all Ben's videos.
And so he's probably not going to come on and shock me, but it's definitely confirmed a lot of what I've thought. What I've liked is that a lot of the experts and Ben is great because he's frontline. He's dealing with clients and has for years, but he also has all the backup research.
And I find in financial planning, the good news is a lot of the backup research matches up pretty well to the frontline. Whereas in economics, I'm not sure that's always the case. I find a lot of economists are quite out of touch with the world of personal finance and a lot of their stuff doesn't transfer particularly well.
Not all of them, by the way, we've had a few on who I really think have done a good job making that transition. So nothing really caught me too, too off guard, but the response from our listeners did a little bit. I didn't realize how big an item retirement income planning was until the podcast and same with estate planning.
Again, I think it's all demographics. We've got these baby boomers and they have the money and they've seen their parents die and they've gone through all the troubles of being an executor. And they've seen the problems that can jump up with powers of attorney and they're saying any advice you can give us there that can ease that burden, avoid the pitfalls, we'll take it.
So when we have someone on who's been doing that for 20 and 30 years and he or she is talking about, watch this or think this way. I think people have found that a big help.
Ben Felix: I've got more questions I want to come back to later on retirement income planning. I want to ask, so with your podcast ending, my statement that I'm making is it is going to leave a big gap in Canadian personal finance content. You created something that was less nerdy than Rational Reminder.
I don't think Rational Reminder can fill the gap because I don't have a sense of humor and you do. We're too nerdy. Like that's the reality.
A lot of people listen to one of our episodes and like, what is this? Who do you want to see step up to fill the void that your podcast ending is going to leave?
Dave Chilton: Well, do you follow Brian at calm money at all on Instagram?
Ben Felix: Only through you.
Dave Chilton: He's really good. You know, a CPA, he's got a lot of good material and he delivers it. It's funny. He's very captivating without using stories and humor.
And I've had other people say that to me about him. I'm not sure what it is he's doing that's kind of pulling me in and making me watch all of these, but he's quite good at it. But I don't agree that you won't be a big part of this.
I really don't. You'll obviously have certain nerdy episodes when you go on and on and on about the 19 different ways you've looked at covered call writing funds. Okay.
Yeah. You're, you're going to lose some people. I think I might've dropped out at some point, even on some of those that I'll give you. But you are very good at covering basic personal finance.
You have a good sense of humor, despite you saying that. So I think you'll play a part of that. And then there's some other young and up and comers, but we've got to make sure that they are true experts, number one. And number two, that there's no biases that are affecting the advice. And I think that that is absolutely crucial to all of this, because if you gain people's trust, you want to justify that by really trying to do a conscientious job of helping them.
And not steering them down the wrong path. So I'm sure there'll be new voices come. Some of the female voices that we've had on the podcast have been fantastic.
And I'd like to see more and more of them get bigger and bigger platforms because they connect not just with the female audience, our male audiences have loved them too. We've had Julia Chung on twice and she's been, oh, fantastic. Oh, what a nice person.
And then she's got a great sense of humor. So she's able to inject that a lot of times into her answers. I think she could play a role, but she's so darn busy that creating content in addition to that is tough.
And then like a lot of the advice only planners, she doesn't need to go out and create business. She's got a waiting list. And so therefore maybe social media content and podcasts won't play a huge role in what she's doing, but she certainly has the skills.
But yeah, I think that group will come up with lots of things and I think you'll be a big part of it. And you're wrong about you not being funny. You made a lot of jokes about your hair. Not as many as I made, but a lot of them.
Ben Felix: The avoiding biases thing is so important. I worry about that a lot. I know that if I make a video or an episode about covered calls, for example, about why a product is bad or why some other product is good, people will just listen to it because they've come to trust what I say because they trust that I'm not going to be biased.
But that makes me worry a lot about whether what I'm saying is biased. So it makes me like extra nervous and do extra background work to make sure I'm being balanced.
Dave Chilton: Well, you're a very conscientious guy and you'll always do the research so thoroughly to make sure that's not the case. And I mean, I actually love the work you did in the covered call writing. And as you know, you and I are completely in agreement on all of that.
By the way, I should mention The Plain Bagel. I think he's another guy who produces really good content and his sense of humor is sneaky.
Ben Felix: Yeah, he's funny.
Dave Chilton: Like it is sneaky. He gets in some great dry humor. He's a very smart guy too.
You can see in his ability to distill all of this and bring it across in an understandable fashion. He's good at covering the what ifs. Listen, this is an important part for the listeners to get.
The hardest part of what we do is you're making a big picture point that's bang on, but you have to cover off the nuances and the exceptions in some way, shape or form, or X percentage of your listeners can be steered down the wrong path. Did I ever find that hard when we started doing those one and two and three minute videos. I was pulling my hair out because I would create the content around the basic point, but then I wanted to say, but what if, or watch out for this.
And it would have been a 17 minute video or a 39 minute video. So a lot of the things that people said, Dave, I want you to cover, I couldn't because I couldn't boil them down and get the important exceptions through in a fair fashion.
Walking that line, striking all those balances. That is the hardest part about communicating in the new medium.
Cameron Passmore: So Ben mentioned your sense of humor, Dave, how important do you think that has been to the impact you've had for so many years?
Dave Chilton: Well, thanks for saying that. I know some people would disagree that it's been important at all, more annoying they would find it, but I think on stage, especially it's been a big part. It's so tough to give a public public speech.
And what I mean by that is you're speaking in front of a public audience as opposed to for a corporation, because remember I walk up there and I've got 17-year-olds and 87-year-olds. I've got wealthy and I've got people just starting out who haven't accumulated anything. How do you deliver messages that can kind of resonate with everybody?
You can't. And so you go in a fast paced fashion and try to cover off eight, nine, 10 subjects, and you try to wrap them all in humor. Because if you can do that, then even if it's not relevant to somebody in the audience, they're still enjoying it.
And so I've tried to carry that over a lot in the interview formats and all those types of things I've done. I think it's helped. It's the old "spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down."
And I always thought when I started out using a lot of stories and humor that I would get a lot of competition. But the funny thing is I never really did. For the most part, the other people who came into the communication game, both North and South of the border, didn't use much humor.
Some of them use stories effectively, but they didn't use much humor.
Cameron Passmore: And you were using humor from the get-go, right? Because I remember when you spoke for us back in 91, like you were funny back then. This is part of your presentation DNA, right?
Dave Chilton: Yeah, it really was. I started doing that probably as you say in 90, 91, when I first hit the road and that one was in Ottawa. And do you remember how I used to use a little easel with a pull sheet and I used to write things on it.
And people used to say, Dave, like there's a thousand people here and nobody could see that. So that was a little flawed. So then I went to an overhead projector.
That was the days we're talking about here 35, 36 years ago. And I always tried to use the humor and again, a lot of stories. And so when I'm trying to talk about how home ownership is often more expensive than people recognize.
And again, Ben and I are completely aligned on the math there. I tend to use a story to tell that and I'll draw down from things I've seen, et cetera. And I think that that helps the audience kind of sink their teeth into it.
Ben Felix: Maybe stories are the answer to my next question, but how do you think we can make our nerdy content more appealing to more Canadians?
Dave Chilton: I do think it's stories for sure. I think it really is. And I think obviously if you're chatting a lot to people, you're trying to communicate it and seeing where am I getting off here and what aren't they quite getting, you factor all that in.
I mean, I've always been a big believer in testing. And so when I write the books, I test tremendous numbers of times with the target audience and I weave their comments back in and I can make the story go a little different route, et cetera, and wrap the humor around it. The advantage I have with the updated version of The Wealthy Barber was I was able to weave true stories in.
I didn't have to fabricate anything. Obviously, I'm putting them into character's mouths, but by this point I've seen so much that stories about the guy spending too much on the boat relative to the joy he got, et cetera. I basically just took that from a letter we got six months ago and incorporated it into the book.
So you're able to do that. And again, you're doing it because it resonates with people. I find a lot of the best math teachers do that too, that they're able to use real life experiences.
How is the math going to be used? And that makes people understand it a little bit better. And I think that's what I've tried to do.
But I honestly think you guys are being hard on yourselves. I find that the podcast, you're going to have some flow that's very, very positive in most of them. Obviously, when you get down to the nitty gritty stuff in certain instances, it's tough.
And I bring up the one about the cover call writing, because how do you cover that off and not be nerdy? If you can wrap humor and stories around that, you're a lot better communicator than I am. That is a tough one for sure.
What you've done that's very difficult is you've tackled some subjects where people have an emotional attachment to the other end of the argument. And you can see it in the comment sections that you're dealing with. That is tough.
Rational Reminder. Unfortunately, a lot of the people arguing with you are not rational and they're coming back and they've got a vested interest and they say, yeah, but this is how well it's worked, but they're not comparing it. What if you'd gone this route instead?
All of that is very tricky. I think you're lucky. Your mind tends to work that way automatically.
So yes, you do a lot of research, but you tend to think I've got to look at the opportunity costs. What are other paths could I have taken? All of those types of things that the average person doesn't tend to think through.
Ben Felix: You got to still give consideration to what the average person cares about. That's the balance.
Dave Chilton: You absolutely do. And when you read through all the comments, occasionally you find a very good one that makes you look at things differently, even if it's from somebody who doesn't deliver it in a very polite fashion. They'll occasionally go, okay, that's not a bad way to look at it either.
And so all of that's very interesting to me. I mean, we talk about home ownership and I have some people come back and they'll say to me, Dave, you make a lot of good points. I'm buying smaller, all these types of things.
But what I did was I bought the biggest home I could possibly afford 30 years ago because of the tax free capital gains. And I felt the real estate was going to do well. And until relatively recently in some areas it did spectacularly well.
And again, it's tax free on sale. And I'm glad I went that route and it was relatively simple to do. And so there's lots of good counterpoints to all of these arguments.
Ben Felix: You mentioned testing earlier. I'm curious what that means. Are you writing a paragraph or a chapter and then like literally bringing it to people and being like, hey, what do you think about this?
Dave Chilton: Yeah. And I mean, if I had to say on average, it's about a page and a half that I'll test at a time. I started doing that with the original Wealthy Barber back in 87, 88, because the first few people I sent it to didn't really like it that much.
They were in the industry and they thought it was a weird way to get at the material. Then I gave it to the guys on my slow pitch team, my target audience, beer swigging, illiterate Canadians, and they loved it. And I thought, okay, I've got to test with the target audience, not the experts.
This is written for that group. But I also got a lot of feedback from them was I didn't understand this, or why don't you talk about this? Or I always thought about doing this instead.
And I thought, this is a gold mine. And I started incorporating it. And now I've done that with everything I've been involved with over the years, the second book, the third book, anything I do, but it's time consuming.
Like, holy smokes, it takes a long time to write a book when you're running it up the flagpole with 20 and 30 and 40 people all the time, and then getting it back and making the subtle adjustments. There's a bit of an art to it all, figuring what do you give weight to? And what don't you give weight to?
What is their bias coming through? All of that. So it's tricky, but I think it's really helped the books.
Cameron Passmore: Following all of your interviews and your audience interactions, what are you most optimistic about in Canadian personal finance?
Dave Chilton: Well, for sure, it's the trend in the advice industry. No doubt about it. I was pretty down, to be honest with you, I would say 2007 to 2015.
In those years, I was seeing a lot of plans and going, are you kidding me? Just crazy stuff, but also no retirement income planning being offered at all. Yet the fees associated with the plans were very high, often embedded in the high cost mutual funds, et cetera.
And then all of a sudden you started seeing these young stars come in. Ben, obviously, being one, Jason Pereira. We mentioned Julia Chung, go on and on and on, and feeding off each other and raising the standards in the industry, but also general knowledge.
People started realizing, wow, fees hurt, and I better start watching that. I don't want to pay 2.2% a year. You remember some of the fees in the old days, Cameron.
Truly bizarre. I think people, they think I'm lying when I say this, but there was a company in Canada, I won't say the name, that had an international fund at 3.8%, but they put it in a wrap account often where they charged 1%. You're paying 4.8%. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of historical market returns when you're doing that. And we saw a fair amount of that. Now, obviously, those days of absolute craziness are gone, but we still have a lot of high fee products, of course, in Canada relative to the rest of the world. So the general trends in terms of thinking all of this through, broad awareness of the patterns you need to recognize, better ethics, better communication, that is what gives me a lot of optimism going forward.
Ben Felix: What about pessimism? What are you most pessimistic about when you look at Canadian personal finance or financial services?
Dave Chilton: I would say on the Canadian personal finance front, man, it's expensive out there. I think all these people coming to me and saying, Dave, the cost of living is killing me here. They're right.
When you look at what it costs just to put kids in sports now, and you and I've talked about not just the prices of mortgages, but when you think about property tax, insurance, upkeep, renovations, all those things seem to have risen at a greater than CPI pace. Car insurance, I can go on and on. And a lot of people are going, geez, I'm trying to pay myself first.
I'm trying to take advantage of all the things you've taught me in The Wealthy Barber, but it's tough. It's tight. It's very tight.
So that always worries me. And I think like you and I've talked off air as well, I'm worried about AI. I think it'll bring a lot of positives to our life for sure.
But I think the speed of change could overwhelm society. Can we keep up to it in the policymakers' front? Probably not.
Will it lead to massive disruption that could affect employment and that could spin into all kinds of aspects of problems in our economy? All of that worries me. So those two things keep me up.
And then the final one is one I've talked about for a long, long time, and that is the US debt level. When you look at the US government debt, but you add in the unfunded liabilities for social security, Medicare, Medicaid, et cetera, the math doesn't make sense. I mean, frankly, they're not paying it back.
At least they're not paying it back in dollars worth anything close to what today's are. So at some point, I don't know whether it's now, whether it's five years from now, whether it's 45 years from now, but at some point, this is going to be a major issue. And it's going to be dealt with either through a deflationary spiral, a massive inflation, but a lot of pain is going to result from this.
So those kinds of things worry me. But on the positive front, man, are people smart. We will figure out ways around a lot of these problems.
We will get ingenious. We'll maybe use AI to help us be more productive and more creative, and it'll be an enhancing tool, et cetera. And people persevere and hopefully we'll keep moving in the right direction. But there are definitely concerns out there, no question.
Cameron Passmore: Of all the people that you interact with regularly, how would you articulate what the main source of money stress is?
Dave Chilton: That's interesting. I think lately, it's definitely just been affordability. It's been cost of living.
And I don't think that one's been a tough read just because you hear it over and over again from younger people. I mean, they have such a high percentage of their income tied up in their home. And again, it's not just the mortgage payment.
It's all those other payments we've spoken about. I mentioned kids' sports, but it keeps jumping at me when I see people's spending summaries, when they actually put it on paper and show it to me and they categorize it properly, and they add in the hotels and the gas and all those things and allocate it properly. You're going, what the heck?
You really are. You're going, it's crazy. I've said that for years about cars to the point, I think people got sick of listening to me talk about the wacky amount a lot of couples were spending on cars and people were spending cars.
But the kids' sports thing now has become a major issue. I did a video a while ago on pets and how if you're starting out in life, we all love dogs. I have a dog and it gives me tremendous joy.
But when you're starting out in life, it's tough now to take a dog on because you don't know the costs. You can't budget for them all. Yes, you can budget for food and the odd night at the kennel, but what about surgeries?
And we're seeing the diagnostic equipment tell us you better do this, you better do that. So much more often private equity has entered the veterinarian business in a fairly big way, and they're more aggressive in terms of recommendations. So just tying this all together, it all comes back to affordability.
That's the problem I hear most often from people. And then good news for you two. A lot of times people are saying to me, I've read the book, but I'm listening to the podcasts more.
I'm not getting the advice that I'm hearing coming from the Ben Felixes of the world. In fact, I'm not even really hearing from my advisor a whole lot. So you hear some worry there.
Do I need to find somebody else? How do I find somebody else? And nobody wants to broach that subject with the current advisor.
Often they really like that person, but they're now looking for a little deeper relationship, especially as they head towards retirement. They get in those pre-retirement years, they're thinking I probably need some counsel here to navigate this in the best way. And from a tax optimization perspective, I'm absolutely going to need some help.
Ben Felix: How do most Canadians choose a financial advisor?
Dave Chilton: Sometimes word of mouth, but I mean, as you know, a lot of them walk into the banks when they're relatively young and they're opening up their first RRSP or TFSA and they'll walk in. And sometimes they luck in and get a very good person. In fact, out of fairness, I should tell this story.
When I first moved down and bought a place in Sarnia, I guess 13, 14 years ago, just coincidentally, I had two plans sent to me done by the same person. Didn't know the young woman who put them together. She was with one of the banks and they were fantastic.
All the right questions asked, really well done, really well communicated, like full marks across the board. But of course, that's the exception. A lot of times I don't even see a sophisticated plan or even a not so sophisticated plan come back and product sales tend to hold the weight, et cetera.
I mean, even to this day, and I mean, this has been true, Cameron, since you and I came in. The joke people often make about the right questions not being asked, the examples they'll give, somebody comes in and says, I want to get a TFSA and the person doesn't say to them, do you have any credit card debt? Do you have a match available with your group RRSP?
Those are always the two examples you use. Well, they should be the examples you use because that still happens all the time. You still see it all the time.
And I'm like, how can we be in 2026? And those basic questions aren't being asked, as you two know, because you do it for a living. You need to know a lot about that person before you can start giving them counsel.
Like I'm in airports all the time. If people come up to me, they say, hey, just let me give you a quick sketch of where I am. What do you think I should do?
And I say, I have no clue what you should do. I don't know your risk tolerance level, your pension involvement, your income needs, your potential inheritance. What do you want to do with your kids?
There's a lot of moving parts here that have to be assessed before you can give any kind of advice at all. But not asking people whether they have non-deductible high interest rate debt, whether they have a group RRSP match, dollar for dollar work. Are you kidding me? But we see it all the time.
Cameron Passmore: Where do you land on the different fee models and when they make sense? Like the difference between the AUM or assets under management model, percentage based versus the fee only advice model. When do you think it makes sense for each of those?
Dave Chilton: Well, when you look at the advice only model, there's still only a few hundred people doing it in Canada. And so it's not like we're going to be able to swing wildly over there and all Canadians are going to be able to take advantage of that. My fear with that model, I've really liked the model.
And a lot of the practitioners in Canada are phenomenal. They're friends of yours and you know how good they are. But I worry sometimes about the implementation.
I know when the model first took off in the States, that was beyond a big problem. Even the top practitioners admitted to me that the implementation just wasn't taking place. Now we're seeing some corrective measures come in where they're monitoring that or they're sending them off to another party but not taking any kickback.
Because then they can look the client in the eye and say, yes, I'm sending you somewhere to get this implemented, but there's no bias because I'm getting no money from it. But I want to make sure you're doing what I'm laying out for you. And you're going to see more and more of that or they have instructional videos on if you want to implement on your own, you're a DIYer.
Here's the best ways to do it. Here's how to use the platforms. And you're trying to raise the odds of the implementation taking place.
But that has been traditionally a weak spot, but it is improving a lot. I like both models. I mean, I think they can both play major roles, but here's the key.
It's the person you're dealing with. A lot of times with the AUM model, you guys are dealing obviously with more affluent people for the most part. And if someone's coming to you and let's say they have $9 million and they're dealing with Ben.
And he's so knowledgeable. And really, I mean that very sincerely. And he's giving them estate planning advice.
He's walking through their insurance needs analysis. He is looking, oh my gosh, you have a corporation. We've got to make sure we factor all that into play. And he's doing it all. And he's optimizing the tax and retirement. Are you kidding me?
What a valuable service. Beyond the fact that financially, it's going to make a huge difference, but even peace of mind. I've now got somebody who does this for a living, who's beyond competent, who's making sure we've dotted our I's and crossed our T's.
So I think the models matter for certain, but the individual you're dealing with really matters too. Go back to the example I gave you about those two bank financial plans. A lot of us would criticize that model and high fee products were still used, but geez, those plans were good.
And the person was still probably adding value, certainly relative to colleagues in that particular environment. So I don't really say either model's the best by far. I do think we're going to see margin suppression in your model.
I think over the next five to 10 years, you'll see what you're doing come down on the margins. And I also think you're going to see more people enter into the advice only over time. And that'll be a bigger offering, a bigger competition for you.
And of course, where's AI taking all of this? And are people going to be able to turn to AI at some point and get a quite comprehensive financial plan and bounce back and forth with Clara, their new AI, who knows them intimately and knows how they handle risk and all of those things. I don't pretend to be able to figure out where that's going in the next five to 10 years.
I think the most likely scenario is it's a tool that already very competent people use to make themselves even more impactful.
Ben Felix: It will be interesting to see how people or if people who otherwise would have relied on a human advisor will shift toward getting advice from AI. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is.
Dave Chilton: And I mean, I would say in the advice only business, there's nobody with Ben's height. I've noticed that over and over again. Yeah. I've met those people and they're just don't have that height.
Ben Felix: You can't trust them. They're not 6'10".
Dave Chilton: 6'10 is the cutoff point for trust. Yeah, absolutely.
Ben Felix: You mentioned retirement planning advice earlier, fee model aside, whether it's fee only or AUM or whatever, can you try and articulate how important retirement planning and retirement income planning advice are?
Dave Chilton: This got me so frustrated 10 years ago. It was crazy because of course I turn 65 in the next few weeks, but my friends tend to be kind of two to five years older than I am in many instances. And so they started getting to that point where they needed to look at this and they were getting no advice.
I'm not talking bad advice. And I've been very careful to say that in interviews and in our own podcast, I didn't see a lot of bad advice. I saw no advice.
That old fashioned advice was just always leave it in the registered accounts as long as you possibly can, because you're getting the tax deferred growth, et cetera, which by the way, in some cases still makes perfect sense. So that was what I saw. And now we have seen a group of people come in and draw attention to this.
The software has improved tremendously. And we've recognized that with proper counsel, you can optimize in the tax front and match up to your needs and your desires and the spending and really end up quite far ahead. You're not changing your risk profile at all, but you're doing things that again on the tax front can make a difference of tens of thousands of dollars.
In fact, in the odd case with enough wealth, a lot more than that. And so I think it's absolutely crucial that people get that counsel and you can't do it on your own. You need the software and you need the expert who's seen what can go wrong.
And they've been through it enough before. Hey, you may not have thought of this. You may not have thought of that, et cetera, all of it.
And some people are trying to use AI for it, but you've got to still be very careful. Lots of mistakes coming out of AI, especially if it's math oriented, it's getting better because it's API-ing out to software, et cetera. And there's calculators built in and we've got RAG and KAG and everything else, but there's still flaws with it.
But I find when I look at some of it, it's not yet asking you all the questions that it should to know what the right responses are. So it's basing its advice on the in general situation. But as you two know, that doesn't work in retirement planning.
Everybody's situation is just different enough that you need the customized planning. There is a reason the retiring barber was never written and released because that kind of generic advice, hey, here's what in general you all should do, doesn't work with retirement planning. Some people know they're going to have health issues.
Other people want to give a lot of money to kids. There's some people that are going to inherit a lot of money 10 to 12 years down the road. There are a lot of moving parts here.
It truly is a puzzle that you're putting together. And it's a dynamic puzzle where the sizes of the pieces change quite frequently too. So I'm a big pusher towards you have got to get a good financial advisor for pre-retirement retirement planning.
It's absolutely imperative. And I've had some friends, DIYers who've not done this very well. So they've done it and they're smart people, by the way, like you're talking people who are normally quite good at putting all this together.
But when they've shown me some things, I thought, geez, I wouldn't do that. And here's, you talk to this person. So be careful.
We had Robb Engen on the show a couple of times. Great guy, such a nice person too. And he brought up an example that matched up to my real life experiences so well.
He said a lot of DIYers, including very good ones, ones that are very detail oriented, constantly underestimate lump sum spending that they're going to have to do in retirement. And I said, that is bang on. I've seen that play out so many times.
You still got to buy a car at some point. If you're retiring at 65, you could live to another 25 years, 20 years driving, et cetera. So you still have to, how am I going to be able to afford that when I need it?
I might need a new roof because I want to stay in my home. All of those things often tend to get forgotten. Robb is bang on when he says that.
So I'm not saying this because it's you two interviewing me and it's to your advantage. That's one time in life I really pushed my friends and colleagues get help.
Cameron Passmore: What problems do you see with the RRSP meltdown strategy being promoted as good advice for everyone?
Dave Chilton: What a great question, because that unfortunately is what happened. I like the RRSP meltdown strategy in many instances, but I remember meeting an insurance executive about 30 years ago and he knew that I was kind of all over some of the weaknesses I saw in that industry and going back and forth with them. And he said, Dave, I, for the most part, I agree with you.
He was an actuary. And he said, often we come up with a product that's a tool and it's a good tool in many instances. Then it goes to marketing and becomes a great tool in most instances.
And then by the time the agent gets ahold of it, it's a phenomenal tool in all instances. And I worry a little bit that the RRSP meltdown is falling onto that same path now where it can be a very good idea for some people, but it's not for everybody. Your individual circumstances will dictate, and it goes right back to my previous answer.
You need an expert. You need the proper software. You need to be able to work through this analysis with somebody who's seen it all.
And I know I'm being repetitive, is asking the right questions. I mean, you guys see, I'm sure certain situations where you don't think the RRSP meltdown is the right move.
Ben Felix: We worry about this too, because we know that from seeing many different client cases, we know there are cases where we have advised people not to do that. We're not going to bring ahead at least significant RRSP withdrawals. Usually it's a lot more nuanced, like looking at what their taxable income is every year and maybe bringing them up to a certain level.
But the idea that we're going to deplete your RRSP before an age or something like that, we find I would go as far as saying irresponsible when we see content out there saying, everybody should do this. Like, oh, that's probably not true.
Dave Chilton: This goes back to what we talked about moments ago about the problem with being an educator and trying to cover off the exceptions and the nuances that are such an important part of these discussions. And so you can really be trying to help and saying, this is how it works. And this is why it's often advantageous, but you've really got to get into, but it may not work in this circumstance.
Oh, you've got a much younger spouse and all these different moving parts. And again, there's so many of them that you have to be careful with it. So I think it's like so many things in our financial lives, it's a tool.
And some instances it can be used very productively and in some cases shouldn't be touched. And in other cases, you're using it a little bit to your point, Ben, where there's nuances where you try to even out the income a little bit and going down that path. So I think we're in full agreement on that.
Ben Felix: I'm working on a bunch of different cases. I'm going to try and do a video on this and show like, here's a case where, or a few cases where this makes a lot of sense. Here's a case where it adds nothing and maybe just adds complexity to your life. And here's some cases where it's actually detrimental. That should be interesting content.
Dave Chilton: Well, even in retirement, I'll be watching your videos.
Ben Felix: Glad to hear it.
Dave Chilton: Maybe even twice. Cause I don't have a lot on my plate. I'll just get up and watch Ben Felix all day, every day. This could, might be very bad for my relationship actually, just sitting there and watching you.
She's already mad at my involvement with my hockey pool. Now, if I start watching each of your videos twice, I could see this ending in a breakup.
Ben Felix: I'll make sure to give you a heads up if I plan on increasing content frequency, just so you can plan for it.
Dave Chilton: Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
Ben Felix: You must get just inundated with questions from listeners and readers and all that kind of stuff. I would guess, and maybe this speaks to the point you made earlier about connection with the podcast audience.
I would guess even more so now with the podcast than historically with the book. How do you decide who to respond to?
Dave Chilton: We still try to get back to everybody. Everybody. Now I'm sure we've had a few fall between the cracks because you have the comments sections where people throw their numbers, but I've tried to get back to everybody over the years.
I try to do it mostly from my car on the phone. So when somebody sends us an email, Mo responds by saying, what's your phone number? And we do that because I can't type all these responses, but when I'm in the car anyway, I can get back to them and I try to be as polite as possible and helpful and point them in the right direction.
But you can't give advice. I mean, I've never given investment advice because obviously that's not appropriate at all. And even the general financial planning advice, the challenge is I have to ask so many questions before I can steer them in the right direction.
I mean, Ben, you know, one of the most common questions in the country is, should I pay off my mortgage or max my RRSP? Well, it's a fairly nuanced answer, but also you need to know, do you have other non-deductible debt? Like in a lot of cases, they'll have credit card debt, et cetera.
I can't really get too involved in that. So what I often do is I'll say, when you're thinking that through, here are some questions you should be asking of yourself, of your advisor, et cetera, that are going to help you have a better answer. Here's a way you should be thinking as opposed to giving an answer.
Because again, I don't think that would be appropriate in the vast majority of cases. You get the odd circumstance where I'll say, hey, I'd be pretty careful of that. By the way, this is a little off topic, but you know what I find that one of the toughest questions I get asked is people will say, should I max my RRSP or my RESP?
We don't have a lot of money right now. We're hurting a little bit on the cashflow. How tricky is that?
Because they're two completely different objectives. So that's not like the RRSP versus the TFSA to build a retirement pool where you and I can walk through all of that math and the nuances and everything else. This is two different objectives.
There's no real answer to that. That comes down to your priorities. I, by the way, tend to think more people should still go RRSP and make sure they've got a retirement pool.
I'm worried about this. I think you and I talked off air once about the number of parents aggressively giving kids money. That's fine if you're truly affluent.
But in the last 10 years, we've seen a fair amount from people who, wow, they put themselves in a bit of a gray area for their own retirement plan, especially if they live to be very old or they have to get assisted living, etc. They could be a little pinched. And of course, some of them did it by taking out a line of credit.
And now the interest rates on the line of credit have elevated significantly and their cash flow is being hit hard. Again, this is why a competent financial advisor is always asking you questions and is always saying, OK, but what if rates went up? Have you thought that through?
This is what we're all doing. We're all playing those what if games and walking them through all these scenarios. That old joke about you ask a financial advisor a question and they always say it depends.
Well, it's because it does. There's a reason that joke has been around for 40 years, that it's because it does depend on so many different things.
Cameron Passmore: Do you have any key questions that you ask people when they come to you for financial advice? Like I realize you bounce back and give them questions to ask themselves, but do you have any like real key ones you fall back on?
Dave Chilton: When I started, so we're talking way back when in the early 80s and I was doing the full financial plans. And I know this is going to seem crazy to you two, but I think I was one of the only people doing full financial plans when I started. You just didn't see it at all in the industry.
Then I had a million questions and my philosophy was get all the information you can. And so I had an annoyingly thick intake form even then, where I asked as many questions. And then I learned quite quickly, you don't want to take it all in with pen to paper.
You want to be sitting across from people a lot too, reading their eyes, their body language, seeing what's important to them. I'm very, very shaky on financial advisors who don't ask a million questions upfront before they start giving out the plans. I think it's so important.
The best firms have always emphasized that. I've seen some of the intake forms from a couple of the US firms that I really like, and they're as extreme as mine was. And they do tend to want to sit down with the people.
It can be over Zoom now, but they want to make sure they have the eye to eye connection and ask a lot of the questions. So I don't do comprehensive plans now at all, help out the odd friends' kids. But even then, I'll say you better get more advice than this.
But you have to know a lot about all of these people. And then again, I'm going a little off topic, but I remember my early days, one of the things that jumped to me was, this is back when Canadians were buying GICs only. I mean, mutual funds weren't even a thing.
One of the jobs I felt I had was not to assess people's risk tolerance level, not just to assess it, but it was often to change it. Because people were so conservative in that day. I'm just buying my GIC.
They wouldn't look at equities, et cetera. And they wouldn't want to put up with that kind of volatility. But you're thinking the opportunity cost, because you're looking 30 years out in many instances, is going to be high.
I've got to educate to whatever extent I can to get them to open their mind to taking some risk into their portfolio. I mean, to this day, by the way, not with your clients at all, because they're getting your advice. But when you help the average Canadian, it's amazing how many have their TFSA sitting almost exclusively in cash.
They put the money in there to get the tax free, and then they're growing at a one, two, and 3% a year because they've never gone on to invest in any way, shape, or form. That is commonplace.
Ben Felix: I love that comment about the educational component of assessing someone's risk tolerance. If you just ask someone on the street, if you get them to do even a good risk tolerance questionnaire with no education, they might get a result that's not indicative of how much risk they should actually be taking or could actually handle with 10 minutes of high quality education.
Dave Chilton: Absolutely. And you know those old-fashioned, boring charts about rolling five-year periods, average returns, or what percentage of 10 years does the market do good? Those are good charts.
I don't care if they've been around forever. You show people enough of those, they start to go, okay, I get it. The time is really what I need to do here to make sure that I have a relatively low risk involvement, et cetera.
But I'll tell you what you really learn when you do all of this is it's impossible to even come close to assessing somebody's risk tolerance if they're using borrowed money. I saw that a ton early in my career. People, it really got hot there for a while, where people were borrowing money to buy mutual funds, let's say, equity funds.
The pitch is pretty straightforward. You're borrowing it at 6%, you're borrowing it at 7%, we think it's going to average 10, da-da-da-da. Well, there's a few challenges.
Number one is you've got to include the expense ratio. So if you think the market's going to average 10, and of course, historically, they haven't averaged 10 for the most part. But even if you're projecting that, you've still got to take off the expense ratio.
But of course, the salesperson at that point was thinking, well, they'll average more than 10 because we've got the best of the funds. We've picked the best past performer. We now know so much more about all of that.
And it's not going to happen. We're not going to be able to pick the best performing funds. The challenge is when the market's softened up, even if those returns were reasonable projections, people get very jittery in many, not all, but in many instances when it's borrowed money.
If you think it's stressful having your own money go down, how about having the bank's money go down? And a lot of people panicked. And she doesn't mind me telling you this, so I'm going to.
Mo was one of them. She wasn't working for me then, but she was just about to come in and they did that. And when the markets had a big drawdown, they said, we can't do this.
And of course, you get out at the exact wrong time. I'm still seeing that a fair amount. It's interesting.
A lot of people match that up to seg funds. And they match it up to seg funds because they think at least then over 10 years, I know that I'll get the monies back and I don't have a lot of exposure. And also if I die, blah, blah, blah.
Makes some sense. But of course, the expense ratio embedded in the seg fund can often take away the equity premium. The difference between the loan cost and the projected return in the market can disappear because instead of the equity premium being bonds versus the equity, it's the loan cost versus the equity.
And then it's not the equity. It's the equity less the very significant fee, including the insurance wrap. And all of a sudden, when you do the math, they come out being about even, if not a little under, and that's if we have historical performance. But we're now at very rich markets. I don't predict markets. I stink at it.
But if you did have a soft next 10 years, some of those could be underwater by a fairly significant amount.
Ben Felix: Yeah. It hasn't come out yet. We covered a bit of this in an episode that I know you listened to, Dave, about leverage.
But we have an episode that I'm pretty sure it's the episode that comes out, I believe this week, the week that we're recording. I'm pretty sure the nerdiest episode in the podcast history. It's with two academics.
Dave Chilton: That's a high bar.
Ben Felix: Two guys. One's a professor at Harvard, and one is a guy who works in industry, but writes papers with the Harvard professor.
And it's all about leverage. We get into the nittiest, grittiest details about when leverage can perform well, but all of the problems that come with it, like how big of an issue volatility becomes to reducing your compound returns when you have leverage, the cost of leverage, like you were mentioning, Dave. But you add all that up, and you kind of need this perfect storm of low cost of leverage, low volatility, high market returns for leverage to really pay off.
I don't think people realize that you can have positive returns in an investment and still lose relative to the underlying by being leveraged.
Dave Chilton: Yeah, absolutely. And what's interesting, the people who did it 10 years ago, of course, especially if they use the S&P as the heavy part, they've done very well. They borrowed at low cost.
And of course, the S&P's averaged, what, 13, 14, 15 percentage. And so they're going, what are you guys, are you idiots? This has been the greatest thing that's ever happened to me.
But of course, there's no guarantees going forward. And you've got to think through the odds and all of these things as things play out. You know, one guy I give a lot of credit to, I love when people can be open-minded and change their mind or see exceptions.
And Jonathan Chevreau, the old National Post writer, had a great one. He was very worried about the amount of leverage he saw 15, 20, 30 years ago. And he would say, I don't know, for a lot of the people.
But then when we had the great credit crisis, and we had the markets collapse, and interest rates went down to almost zero, and the markets were down 40 and 50%, he went, wow, I think that was a pretty good time to leverage. You're getting markets way down and you're getting the interest rate way down. And I thought good for him to be kind of always cautious about that.
And now saying, if you're going to do it, and he wasn't saying you should do it, but if you're going to do it, now would be the time. And of course, he ended up being bang on.
Ben Felix: Interesting. You mentioned people holding too much cash in their TFSAs. I would say that's one of the biggest mistakes in personal finance.
But I'm curious, Dave, what is the most common mistake you see people making with their personal finances?
Dave Chilton: That's one of them. I know this is corny, but it's still a lot of people don't have wills and powers of attorney that are updated. It's frustrating beyond belief.
Entrepreneurs in particular, and you deal with a lot of entrepreneurs, especially post-sale. I'm sure that's a big part of your client base is they sell a business and come in. They tend to be very bad on that front.
They tend to be optimistic by nature. Nobody's going to start a business unless they're optimistic by nature. And they tend therefore to think, I'll worry about the wills and the powers of attorney later.
People, by the way, still are in many cases underinsured. And I'll tell you something very interesting. So for years, the CFP is a great course.
The RFP, CFP, they've done a marvelous job with those courses over the years. And I'll see people go through them, or they'll go through the inside insurance education, and they'll get a very strong education on the amount of insurance. And then they'll do the insurance needs analysis.
And I'll do one for, say, a friend. And my number always ends up being 10% to 15% higher than the number produced by the very, very smart, fully educated person. And for years, I thought, how can this consistently happen? Am I wrong in this, or am I right? I really think I'm right. And I'll tell you why I say that.
Because of course, I'm so old that I've had people die. And when they die, you're looking at, would my number have made more sense? And I think it would.
And you know why I think it's happening? I think even a lot of insurance experts, and even when they've taken the right courses, they also underestimate the lump sum expenses coming at the surviving spouse, in many instances, over the next 10 to 15 years. That part gets forgotten in the regular expense layout.
Not every time, but too often. And that's why that extra 10% to 15%. In fact, I saw this so often, I once said on stage, if you figure out your insurance, multiply it by 1.1 or 1.15, and you'll probably have a better number. And of course, with term insurance, if you're buying when you're relatively young, the cost is more or less inconsequential to get that extra 10 or 15%. But we mentioned staying in cash, the high fee products in Canada, we still see so much money, you know, crazy amounts of money. I mean, you've seen some of the balance funds in Canada that have expense ratios of 1.5, 1.7%. And really, if you just bought GICs and an index fund, you don't perform all of them, all the time over every 5, 10, 15 year period. So those are all mistakes. But the biggest mistake I still see 40 years later is too many people don't pay themselves first. And my favorite moment on the podcast was when I said to Rob Carrick, do you still think pay yourself first after seeing all these plans and all these questions?
Globe and Mail, personal finance columnist, I think for 29 years, he led that. Do you still think it's the most important thing? He said, yes, and there's no close second.
And I agree with that. If you look at the people who've done well with their money, it's because they saved it first. Ben can help you to invest it, but you got to save it.
And you've got to automate that. You've got to pay yourself first. If you try to do it through just human nature and budgeting, it won't happen.
That's still the biggest mistake for people is getting it off the top of the paycheck. In fact, probably the biggest learning I've had in all the years I've been doing this is that we had this mistaken thought that if you made sacrifices now, you're a little less happy now. That was a good trade-off because you'd be happier later in life.
You'd have this pool of capital for retirement. But when you see it in real life, the people who make the sacrifices now are also happier now. They're less stressed about their money and they're in better spirits.
And so it's a win-win. And this is why I'm always saying to young people, get on top of your finances, read The Wealthy Barber. I don't say that because I want to make money.
We don't even monetize half our stuff. Like read The Wealthy Barber, start doing the little things right. Get on top of this and pay yourself first remains the most important commandment.
Cameron Passmore: I would agree, Dave. I can remember reading your book 35 years ago and that was my key takeaway reading it. And I remember that moment like it was yesterday.
Dave Chilton: That's good to hear. That's nice of you to bring all that up. It really is. And obviously you did well and you invested in yourself too, which I'm a huge believer in and went on to start this firm. And you guys should be very proud of what you've done. As I say, you've become an industry standard, which is a really pretty exciting thing to be able to look in the mirror and say is that you've got a lot of people in this industry in Canada looking at you guys going, so wow, that's as good as it gets. So good for you.
Cameron Passmore: What did you enjoy the most about this last leg of your Wealthy Barber journey?
Dave Chilton: It's been fun. I mean, I was a little bit nervous about the social media part of it because again, you have to be so concise and so brief, but I've enjoyed that. And I've really enjoyed the podcast and bouncing back and forth with the experts.
But I think the thing I've always enjoyed most and everything I've done is the interaction with the general public, getting to know them and having them reach out and they trust you. And you try to always honor that to make sure that you help in any way you possibly can. And a lot of people have come to me in the last two, three years.
And as I've come back into the public and said, hey, you, I phoned you 30 years ago and you actually returned my call, helped me or told me to read this book, or I was going to sell my business. And you said, make sure you check this book out, etc. And so just the interactions with the general public then and now have been the highlights.
I would say the highlight of my whole career, not just the last few coming back was the speaking across the country so much. There's not a place in the country I haven't spoken several times. It's kind of wacky, actually.
Northwest territories, all of them. I've been there many, many, many, many times. Somebody said to me recently, have you ever spoken in Halifax?
And I said, over a hundred times. It's been great traveling across the country, doing all of those speeches, seeing all the smaller communities, so many funny stories. The one that always jumps to me was not that long ago.
It was the last year I was on Dragons' Den. So 2014, I spoke in rural Alberta and it's a two story, relatively small hotel. And my room was really cold at about one in the morning.
So I called down and nobody answered. And I thought, I've got to get this fixed. So I went down to the front desk, nobody was there.
And I went back to the room and just extra blanket, go to sleep. The next morning I come down, you know, I'm always very polite. I said, hey, I couldn't reach anybody last night.
And the lady says, yeah, yeah, there was nobody here, but you, and I went home. So you're telling me I was the only person in this entire hotel? She goes, yeah, there was no rooms being used. There was no staff. There was no, no, nobody. There was just me in the hotel.
Oh yeah. I don't know why, but I always felt that was very funny. I should have trashed the place except I was too cold. I was too cold to trash the place.
Ben Felix: It's a very Canadian story.
Dave Chilton: It really is.
Ben Felix: Have there been any aspects of this last Wealthy Barber push, if we can call it that, that you did not enjoy or found more difficult than maybe you expected?
Dave Chilton: It's a great question. There is one. We've found the reach out to us a little bit overwhelming.
Aidan was tied up doing other things as were Scott and Emily. So they had their roles and responsibilities. So all the reach out fell to Mo and fell to me and we don't have enough infrastructure to deal with thousands of questions a month.
And so even though we weren't answering them specifically, we do want to get back to everybody. You want to be as polite as possible and you want to reach out and people now have great access to you because you're on Instagram, you're on all these places and can you help with the book or we're selling a business. Is there any way I can ask you a few questions on that?
And you want to help. You really do. That part was quite overwhelming and there's a little bit of guilt when you can't get back to people or at least get back to them in a prompt fashion.
Just again, the numbers were so big. So that was the only part that I think both of us found a little bit stressful. But the flip side of that is it's also one of the most positive aspects.
You're meeting so many nice people, so many caring people. Occasionally you're able to make a big difference by pointing them towards the right resource. And so it's a mixed bag.
But I'll be glad when I retire fully in the next five to six weeks to get a little bit more peace and quiet in my life on that front.
Cameron Passmore: What made you decide to retire now?
Dave Chilton: I had a lot of friends start battling major health issues in about a six-month to one-year period.
It made me reassess. Could happen to me obviously, but I want to spend more time with them. Then I mentioned my daughter was about to have a child.
She's had it now and I want to be a big part of that life because my parents were so influential in my kids'. I think there was a small part of me that liked going out when things were going well too. The books selling really well, the podcast doing really well.
You want to get out before people are completely sick of you. So I thought, go to this particular point and there's still some things I wanted to do in retirement. So I just had this gut feeling it was the right time.
And I made a snap decision. I hadn't talked to the team about it at all. And I went in one day and said, hey, this is where I sit on this.
And I think Mo in particular went, yeah, I think that might not be a bad idea. She's definitely tired of me. No question after 30 years, she wants me to retire.
Ben Felix: When you say retire, are we talking about you're going to disappear from the public eye or are you still going to be on social media a little bit?
Dave Chilton: No, I'm going to disappear. On the social media, we're going to keep up our content that's already been created. We're going to leave the site up and we're going to leave the podcast episodes up.
We'll close down the comment sections because of course we're not going to be moderating them, but I'm not going to produce any more. I think the only thing I'll do is the odd speech. I actually committed to a few before I announced my retirement and I may do a few more because I like doing that.
But even that I'm not sure of, but that's it. I'm not doing any more interviews. I really am going to walk away and stop being The Wealthy Barber come December.
Ben Felix: That's wild. Well, I'm super grateful to have you here for one last episode before you're going to disappear.
Dave Chilton: Well, I would never miss this one. As I say, this is my favorite podcast. Aidan got me onto this five, six years ago.
Absolutely loved it from the very first one I listened to. And you're a bit of a nutty guy. I was joking when I was out at the IAFP speaking at Winnipeg.
They were talking about how brilliant Ben was and his ability to cite all these studies. And I quite seriously said to them, you know he makes all that up. Like I said, he does.
He just says, oh yeah, well Harvard 77 did a study on that. And they say, who knows? Nobody's going to check. So he just, yeah, he just says all that stuff. He was, I was Johnson and McHenry. Yeah.
At Yale in 1964, they did a study on that, on people who are very tall and how much better they are with money. And they proved it. But no, you're a guy that I really consider one of my favorite people in the industry.
And Cameron, as everybody says, what a wonderful person you are and how nice you are and how fair you've been in your business dealings over the years. You should be proud of that. At the end of the day, what's more important than that?
You want people to think of you as being nice and kind and fair. It's an honor to come on the show. I mean that and I'll continue to listen to it for years and years to come.
Cameron Passmore: You're very kind.
Dave Chilton: And you got rid of Mark too, which really took it up a notch.
Ben Felix: Yeah, yeah. Had to happen. Had to happen.
Dave Chilton: Had to happen. I'd say it was time.
Cameron Passmore: Now that you're retiring, how do you feel about being an owner, not a loner? So being an equity investor, not a bond investor.
Dave Chilton: Okay, you're going to laugh at this, but I've never in my life bought a bond or a GIC. Is that crazy? I've had cash for extended times, but often I kept cash because I invest in private companies, something I don't tell your listeners to do.
So I wanted to keep my powder dry. And then of course, equities, et cetera. I don't think I'll change that a whole lot because I don't spend the time and I'm in a position where I'll be leaving money to my kids and I'm tending to invest more to match their objectives and their timeframes than my own.
So I'm not sure I'll change the whole mix very much at all. And I'm comfortable playing in that arena and pretty comfortable with the volatility. And in fact, I've said to Ben before, I don't even pay much attention to it, to be honest with you.
If I have a few individual stocks, and again, that's not something for most people I recommend, but when I do that, I'll watch them on occasion. But for the most part, I don't watch the markets. In fact, it's interesting how many friends I'll see them at a baseball game or whatever and they say, oh my gosh, did you see that market was down 3% today?
And I'll say no, I didn't. I don't really watch any of that very closely, not because I don't care. It's because I can't harness it productively.
If I know the market's moving on a daily or weekly, I can't do anything with that knowledge that makes a difference in my plan or is likely to increase my wealth in any way, shape or form. So I tend just to stay away from it and view it as noise.
Ben Felix: I expect to be the same way. I mean, I don't invest in fixed income either. Sometimes I'll say that and people will say, well, you will when you get closer to retirement.
And it's like, I don't know. And then I hear you say that. I don't think you're crazy, Dave. I expect that I'll be like you, but we'll see.
Dave Chilton: I'll never know. Cause I'll be long dead when you're my age. So I'll never know.
Ben Felix: The other person that's in our camp is Elroy Dimson, who of course has done tons of historical research. He was on this podcast. He said something to the same effect. So we're in good company with him, I'd say.
Dave Chilton: I think that Elroy Dimson, by the way, has the greatest name ever for what he does. If you were writing a play and you're going to write it about a guy who'd done that kind of research, what could I call him? Elroy Dimson. Do you not agree? That is the perfect name for a guy who does that kind of research.
Ben Felix: It is.
Dave Chilton: You and I are so much alike. We talked on the phone once about this, is when the 4% rule first came out. And remember, I told you, I just phoned the guy up.
I just, because I was a little concerned about a couple of things, like the fact that fees weren't included and how that wasn't getting any attention in the different articles in SmartMoney way back in the day that was written. And remember I told you, he answered his phone. He was a very nice guy.
Cameron Passmore: Bill's a nice guy.
Dave Chilton: My best one for that is when I launched the US version of The Wealthy Barber in 1990, I got John Templeton's phone number from Bill Holland at CI Mutual Funds. And I called him and he answered his phone. He goes, John Templeton speaking. I'm like, what? Why don't you have somebody answering your phone? And I told him who I was.
And I said, do you mind if I send you the book for a cover endorsement? He goes, yeah, he was in the Bahamas, I think. And I sent him down the book and I got a beautiful handwritten note back from him with the quote for the front cover of the book. And he said, he read it cover to cover. That was a big thrill for me.
Ben Felix: That's wild.
Dave Chilton: Back then you could reach people via the phone. You really could. People tended to answer their phone before all the spam calls and everything else.
And I took full advantage of that. I used to argue with writers all the time. I would read a financial planning article or an investment article in SmartMoney or the Wall Street Journal or any of those places.
And I'd say, I don't think that's right. And I would phone up and argue. I would do that all the time to the point I think I actually quite annoyed a lot of people. And I was only like 25, 28 years old. You know Joel Greenblatt?
Ben Felix: Yeah.
Dave Chilton: That's how I got to know him. He came out with You Too Can Be A Stock Market Genius, one of my all-time favorite books, by the way. And there was a math mistake in there.
And he was talking about how he could earn 10% more than 10%, 20%. And I said, 10% more than 10% is 11%, not 20%. I ended up getting in touch with him. We went back and forth on things. And I told him about The Wealthy Barber. He read it.
He ended up writing using the fictional format in his very next book. By the way, he is a phenomenal investor. So when you and I talk about how hard it is to beat the stock market, well, there's a guy who's done it over and over again. He's just a very sharp guy.
Ben Felix: Last time we talked, Dave, you made a comment off air. I thought it had been part of the recording, but I went and checked the transcript to see exactly what you said. And it's not in there, which is a shame.
You said something to the effect of how much you enjoy your life and how you feel a sadness that life is finite. And that hit me hard when you said it. It's like, man, because it's true, obviously.
What are you going to be doing with your time in retirement to make the most of the time you have left?
Dave Chilton: It sucks that life is finite. I've been so lucky in my life. I've mentioned to you before.
I had the greatest parents ever. Is that not the biggest break you can get in life to have two out of two wonderful parents? It kind of sets you up.
And I'm close to my sister. My kids are healthy. I mean, I've just had so many things fall my way.
I'm excited every day. I have trouble going to sleep some nights because I'm so excited about getting up the next day and doing whatever's coming at me. I'm disappointed that I'm in the late stages of all of this and it's winding down.
And so I will try to take full advantage of retirement. The one thing I really want to do is write a play. I've always wanted to do that.
I wrote one when I was very young and I want to get back at that and I'll play a little bit more golf. Although the way I played this year, that may be a very imprudent decision. And I may be back being The Wealthy Barber by the time that summer's over next year.
I want to see a lot of friends more. I mean, the one downside to doing what I did in my career with the travel and the charity speeches and all that is you missed a lot of things for sure. You missed a lot of events and a missed a lot of weddings and funerals and all those things. And I want to get back doing those things for sure.
Cameron Passmore: And what would be the biggest lifestyle changes for you between pre and post retirement?
Dave Chilton: Well, that's a great question. You know, the answer, I think you'll find this interesting because I'm already going through it a bit. Now that we're not having to think long-term, the big change I've noticed is that when I'm driving my car, when I'm alone, I'm not having to think about business all the time.
My mind was just trained that you're always thinking about, okay, what about business? What do you have coming at you? What are some opportunities? What are some things you better take care of? How are you going to market this? All those. And I enjoyed that by the way. I'm not saying that to be negative. That was a fun part of my life.
Like I viewed it as a game, a puzzle. It was exciting. And now all of a sudden, when there's no long-term thinking needed, I'm in the car driving from Sarnia to Kitchener.
I'm going, I got to think about my hockey pool now. Or think about this or think about that. That was such a big part of my life.
Maybe too big in some ways. Anytime I did stuff with the kids, I wouldn't think about it. And there were certain things like going to a movie that I tended for whatever reason not to think about it.
But work can be close to all consuming. In your down moments, it's always going through. I mean, you're both entrepreneurs, Cameron.
You've built one of the most successful firms in that industry. You're thinking about it a lot. And I mean, it's just the nature of the beast.
There's always problems. There's always opportunities. So now that I'm kind of out of that already, that has been a big adjustment.
And I've had to kind of think, okay, where else do you take your mind and what else can you do? What else can you think of? I've enjoyed that.
And podcasts, by the way, have played a bit of a role because I've started listening to some more podcasts as I drive and I've learned a lot and I've enjoyed that.
Cameron Passmore: Are you not involved with a lot of the Dragon's Den investments? Because I think you were quite heavily involved, weren't you?
Dave Chilton: I was, and I still have a few of them, but I have a lot of other private company investments. And I've been lucky like Blue J, the big Canadian success.
I was one of their first investors and I've been very fortunate with my private company investing. And that's been a big part of what I've done. At one point, I really enjoyed doing the due diligence, less so as I've gotten older.
And in some cases you're directly involved and in many I haven't been, but I'll keep my fingers in all of that. But my kids are saying, holy smokes, you need to get rid of a lot of this before you die because they don't want to take over a lot of private company stuff. How do you value it?
How do you stay involved? How do you get out of it, et cetera. So I'm doing less in that.
I made a fairly big investment last year, but for the most part, I think I may stop making the investments in that arena.
Ben Felix: When you reflect back on your career, Dave, you're incredible career. What advice do you have for people who are 30 or 40 years younger than you are today?
Dave Chilton: Always stay positive. I know this is going to sound a little bit corny, but I'm very much into be nice to everybody, stay positive, emphasize gratitude. All those things you hear, they truly work in terms of positively impacting happiness.
And you tend to be looking for opportunity and looking for ways to help. It's so easy right now to get negative. The world is a very combustible place.
We've got the problems in the Middle East. We've got disagreements with the United States. We've got the fear of AI coming.
It's very easy to get overwhelmed by all of that and become anxiety ridden. Somehow you have to compartmentalize that and recognize that if you're in Canada and you're healthy, we're still in a very good spot here. We really are.
We're the lucky ones. And of course, some people are struggling here. How do we help them?
How do we play a role in fixing things up? Staying positive is such a big, big, important part of life. It really is.
Again, easy for me to say, because I was lucky to have early success and also lucky to have great parents. But even the people who struggled a lot more than I have in my life, the ones who've chosen to try to see the positive and be grateful whenever they can, they've weathered the storms better than those who haven't. So that's one big piece of advice.
But also in these times of tumultuous change, it's intimidating, but it's also exciting. And there's a lot of things coming down the pipe that I think if people throw themselves into and learn about, they can do good things with. I admit that it's very pinched out there cost-wise, but what a great time if you like looking at side gigs.
There's so many possibilities now because of the digital era, AI and all the things happening. If you want to, again, throw yourself into that, you should. I admit, by the way, when I say that on stage, young parents come up to me and say, Dave, you've forgotten what it's like to have little kids.
I agree. When you have little kids around, you're not throwing yourself into side gigs at night. It's just, you've got a lot on your plate for sure. Ben, you've got 17 kids or something like that. So, you know, it's busy.
Ben Felix: We've got four kids and it is crazy, man, between their activities and just everything involved with having kids and having a job. And it's no joke. My wife and I, like a week goes by and we're like, what, what happened?
Dave Chilton: What happened? And where were you? I didn't see you at all this week. Now, do your kids have your athletic genes?
Ben Felix: Yeah. My two boys right now are in basketball. I take them every Thursday night. I usually end up helping to coach, even though I didn't want to commit to being a coach for this basketball program. I usually end up walking into the court and saying, hey, do this, not that. And then the woman who runs the program will involve me in drills.
They're into it. I was never a great athlete. I'm just tall and worked really hard to get to a point where despite my lack of athleticism, I could hold my own on the basketball court.
Dave Chilton: I doubt that, but I think you do have a lot of self-discipline. And so I think you would work very hard. I do have this vision right now of you just blocking over and over again, seven-year-old shots.
Ben Felix: Oh yeah. No, I do that.
Dave Chilton: I just say, don't bring that in here. Like, don't bring that in here.
Ben Felix: We have a hoop in our house. That was one of the things we did some big renovations. I put like a proper NBA glass backboard basketball hoop in our living room. Basically.
Dave Chilton: That's very cool.
Ben Felix: It's very cool. And so I do play with the kids and I do relentlessly block their shots. And I'd tell them like, you guys are never going to be scared of a shot blocker in your life.
Dave Chilton: Yeah, exactly. You grew up with it. By the way, for all the people watching this podcast, the books you see behind Ben, he read all those this weekend.
That was this weekend's reading. Okay. I said he was nutty. Well, there's the proof right there.
Ben Felix: Oh man. All right, Dave, this has been awesome. It's so good to have you back on the podcast and congratulations on your upcoming retirement.
Dave Chilton: Thank you.
Ben Felix: You mentioned your propensity to just call people. I've been on the receiving end of many of your random phone calls.
Dave Chilton: Absolutely.
Ben Felix: I hope those won't stop when you're retired.
Dave Chilton: No, of course they won't. It's great seeing you two guys. Again, you should be very proud of yourselves and what you've built and what you've accomplished.
And you're both very nice guys. Everybody in the industry has great respect for you. So well done. And thank you for having me back on. Much appreciated.
Cameron Passmore: You're a treasure, Dave. Thanks. Wow. So where do you start recapping that? I mean, he means so much for different reasons to each of us.
I can remember getting his book. I was downtown Ottawa. I was at the Sheraton Hotel reading his book.
It's like 1991, around the time of the first US invasion of Iraq, I believe. I remember the war time being that summer. But I remember that pay yourself first and reading the book.
And we got him to speak for us at the Talisman Hotel in 1991, I'm sure. We were selling mutual funds back in the day. And this is back in the days of the best mutual funds you could pick.
And we were picking active mutual funds. I mean, it was a completely insane time. And I remember he was an incredible speaker.
He would have been mid-20s, I would guess, something like that, mid to late 20s. And was such a great speaker. But I mean, that's the relationship that I had with him going back this long. But the relationship you have is unreal.
Ben Felix: I don't know. Yours is probably an even better story than mine. I grew up as him just being the sensible personal finance guy.
That's what he stood for and what his books helped people to understand and put into practice for themselves. So I knew who he was. I mean, he was a celebrity in Canada too.
He was on TV and all that kind of stuff. The thing that happened that blew my mind was one day I got a comment from The Wealthy Barber on one of my YouTube videos. This is before he'd launched his content channels.
I went to dig into it to see if it was actually him and it was, and I was like blown away. And it turned out that he'd been watching my videos and listening to the Rational Reminder podcast and had become a big fan, which again, to me, it was completely mind-blowing. But we've developed a pretty good relationship, which I think, I mean, that comes out in our conversations.
We thoroughly enjoy talking to each other. I would never have guessed if you told me 10 years ago that I'd be buddies with Dave Chilton talking about personal finance and having a great time. I would not have believed you.
Cameron Passmore: I remember he commented on how nice all of us are. Remember the first time we invited him on? I don't know if I told this story last time when he was on or not.
Maybe I did. So forgive me. But he ended up calling after I reached out because he's notorious for calling people and left me a voicemail saying like nothing personal, but I just have to say no because I get so many of these.
It's just too hard to choose whose podcasts I go on. So this was early on. This would be probably eight years ago.
So it's just neat how things evolve. But man, the impact that his book and he has had, he talked about in the episode, how many events he's done and speaking gigs he's done. It's like hundreds or thousands of speaking gigs over the years.
Ben Felix: Well, it's got to be thousands. He said he spoke in Halifax a hundred times alone.
Cameron Passmore: Yeah.
Ben Felix: He's helped to shape what personal finance in Canada is. So it's pretty cool that he's even aware of us, but that he's a big fan and he's willing to come onto our podcast and not just willing, but excited. And that in a lot of ways, he said this during the conversation, he's kind of passing the torch to us to continue the education that he's been so passionate about throughout his career.
And that's a bit of a heavy weight to carry, big shoes to fill. I've got big feet, but I don't know if they're that big.
Cameron Passmore: It's also nice of him to say that perhaps you're underplaying your ability to bring this nerdy take on the content. So it's encouraging to hear him say that he thinks that it can continue to break through because that's kind of been our default position that it might be too nerdy for the normal people. So that's encouraging.
Ben Felix: Dave's a pretty big nerd. I don't know. I don't know if I believe him on that.
Cameron Passmore: He's a big nerd. Maybe that's a bias he has. He appreciates it because he is a big nerd.
He's got a style though. Like I listen to pretty much every one of his episodes and they're just so good and so friendly, a little bit of humor, just such an easy listen. We'll see how it all plays out.
It's an interesting time for content in our space in Canada because so many people need the advice, not just better advice, but need advice as Dave talked about and how people choose who they work with and how they get that content. Like his discussion about the difference in who reads the book versus who listens to the podcast. The podcast listeners are the people who read the first version of the book. So my vintage, which is interesting.
Ben Felix: Well, I think it's fascinating and that's why we asked about it during our conversation with Dave that he's built up and his team have built up such a widely listened to popular podcast. They went from nothing to consistently one of the top business and investing podcasts in Canada. I mean, it took us years to get there and Dave did it in a year, but I think it does speak to his style, his ability to bring things down to a practical level, his ability to speak.
He talked about this with his public speaking, being able to speak to different levels at once to communicate to younger people and older people and less educated, more educated people. He's just able to strike that balance of communication. And I think the success of their podcast reflects that.
And that's the piece that I think is really hard for anyone, including us to fill. We'll do our best. It is something that we have always strived for.
I mean, this episode's coming out after the episode with Marco Sammon and Chris Murray, which was one of the nerdiest episodes we've ever done. I don't want to stop doing episodes like that, but it's hard to strike that balance between doing an episode like that, where the average person listens to that and says, I'm never going to listen to the podcast again. So I don't know how you strike that balance between what Dave's been able to do with The Wealthy Barber podcast and kind of the DNA of who we are and what this podcast is.
Cameron Passmore: Right. But that is your DNA. And that also gives you pleasure too, to do that kind of deep dive.
And it is your brand. I don't see you giving up on that. And I don't see you just simply making puff type content. You don't have much tolerance to that kind of stuff.
Ben Felix: No. Interesting to think about how to strike that balance.
Cameron Passmore: Anyways, we were lucky to have him on. He's a real treat, real gem, interesting, fun guy, kind of going out like Seinfeld, right? Going out at the absolute top of his game. Absolute top.
Ben Felix: His whole story is incredible. Like you said, him retiring at the absolute top is incredible. It's also, as he talked about it at the end of our conversation there, it's kind of sad.
It hits me so hard hearing him. And I think in many ways, because I relate to it, where he's just had such a lucky, blessed, whatever you want to call it, life. And he's so happy with everything and how it's gone for him.
Then you look ahead and it's like, there's not that much time left. And it's just like, man, that just hits you. It's me.
Cameron Passmore: Yeah. That episode might've come out around the time that you had your own diagnosis. Was there overlap there?
Ben Felix: Yeah, I think so.
Cameron Passmore: Perspective, man.
Ben Felix: Yep. All right. Well, I hope people enjoyed that conversation with Dave as always.
Love to hear people's feedback. Thanks for listening.
Cameron Passmore: You bet.
Disclaimer:
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Sources From Today’s Episode:
https://zbib.org/bfd0e870f53f49f7beae3ef7975e60ff
Links From Today’s Episode:
Stay Safe From Scams — https://pwlcapital.com/stay-safe-online/
Rational Reminder on Apple Podcasts — https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-rational-reminder-podcast/id1426530582.
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