If you own a home, are thinking about buying or selling a home, or have a mortgage renewal coming up, today’s episode is here to help you make the best financial decisions in this changing market. Ultimately my goal is to save you some money when it comes to all this, or at least make things less stressful for you. We’re bringing back our trusted mortgage expert and best-selling author, Sean Cooper , to first, break down the potential impact that the new US tariffs may have on our mortgage and r...
Feb 27, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 129
Have you ever wondered how financial planners in Canada plan their own retirement once they decide to retire? Our guest today is a recurring guest that we’ve had on the show many times. He’s a fee-for-service financial planner with decades of experience in the industry, and while he’s not retired yet, he’s gotten to that age where he’s getting really close, and so it makes sense for him to do a more thorough financial plan for himself, for his own retirement. And so, I thought it would be useful...
Jan 30, 2025•59 min•Season 1Ep. 128
With the end of the year arriving and the new year starting shortly, there are certain deadlines that you should be aware of every year , from an investment and tax optimization perspective. There are also some elements to keep top of mind as the new year begins. These happen every year, so even if you are listening to this episode years from now, it will still be relevant to you, as these are things to think about and reevaluate every year. Think of this episode as a checklist that you can use ...
Dec 29, 2024•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 127
Today, we tackle one of the most intricate financial puzzles faced by Canadians: transitioning from accumulating wealth for retirement to effectively managing it during the decumulation phase—when you’re actually living off your investments. In this episode, we’ll explore why this shift can be so complex, even for seasoned savers and investors. You’ll gain insights into balancing financial security with enjoying your retirement lifestyle and sustainably spending the wealth you’ve worked so hard ...
Nov 21, 2024•36 min•Season 1Ep. 126
On today’s episode we have another Canadian guest, Kyle Prevost, who achieved financial independence at an early age (he was able to pull it off in his 30s). He’s also done hundreds of financial talks and interviews over the years with both regular Canadians, and some of the most highly respected financial experts in both Canada and the US. In this episode, we discuss what he’s learned from these hundreds of discussions that he’s had, especially when it comes to best practices and financial tact...
Oct 16, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 125
We all spend decades accumulating and growing our net worth, along with many hours of research and studying to optimize our investments and minimize our taxes as Canadians. But what if a single incident wipes all that out? or even just a large portion of it out? Wouldn't it be completely irrational to not eliminate that risk? The best solution that I can think of for accomplishing this is insurance, so I thought it would be helpful to come up with a checklist that you can use of the different ty...
Oct 02, 2024•51 min•Season 1Ep. 124
This interview will be a bit different as I was recently interviewed by Financial Journalist, Ellen Roseman from Canadian MoneySaver Magazine where she asked me some great questions, and so I thought it would be great to also publish that interview, here on the Build Wealth Canada Show. In the interview, we cover what lessons for Canadians I have learned after doing close to two hundred interviews with financial experts, over the past 10 years. My wife and I have also been either fully or semi-r...
Aug 21, 2024•51 min•Season 1Ep. 123
In this episode, I interview two professional financial planners to discover what are the most common questions that they receive when working with Canadians. Our two guests are also going to cover what the most important and frequently occurring blind spots are that we Canadians tend to make in our own finances. We also cover how to know if you are on-track to reach financial independence and retire early, or if you have enough to retire comfortably. We cover all this and more, as we tackle the...
Jul 30, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 122
When we first hit our financial independence number 8 years ago, one of the financial planners that I asked to look at our numbers before my wife and I quit our full-time jobs was Ed Rempel. At the time, I asked Ed if he could do his own math and analysis on our numbers, to make sure that I didn’t miscalculate something when I was doing it myself, and this way I could be certain that my wife and I could quit our jobs and live off our portfolio going forward. Well, fast forward to today, it’s bee...
Jun 20, 2024•57 min•Season 1Ep. 121
Having your investments pay you large dividends or yield sounds great. It’s truly passive income where money just shows up in your account without you having to do anything, and without you having to sell off any of your investments even when markets are down. But what if you get too focused on maximizing dividends or yield in your portfolio? After all, there is no free lunch when it comes to investing. There are always tradeoffs, and it turns out that there are some pretty significant disadvant...
May 30, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 120
A big thanks to RBC for sponsoring this episode. We talk a lot about growing our net worth as Canadians, but what about actually protecting our assets from threats like fraud? So, I thought we’d get some security experts on the show to teach us some best practices when it comes to protecting ourselves and our family, especially when it comes to our finances, here in Canada. They are part of the security teams at the largest bank in Canada. They have entire teams devoted to security and invest a ...
May 16, 2024•48 min•Season 1Ep. 119
When it comes to managing our investment portfolios, there are definitely some mistakes that are easy to make, and ones that a lot of Canadian investors tend to do. In this episode, we have Peter McMurtry on the show who is going to take us through what the common mistakes are that Canadian investors tend to do, as well as the best practices that he's noticed from his 30+ years in the investing industry. One of the things Peter does is portfolio reviews for his clients, so I wanted to pick his b...
Apr 09, 2024•43 min•Season 1Ep. 118
With inflation slowing down here in Canada, we are starting to hear talks about the Bank of Canada no longer planning to increase our interest rates, or maybe even lowering them. This can have an impact on your investment portfolio, particularly if you hold bonds, because remember there is that inverse relationship between interest rates and bonds, where increases in the interest rate tend to lower the value of the bonds that you hold in your portfolio. On the flip side, if the Bank of Canada lo...
Mar 05, 2024•50 min•Season 1Ep. 117
Today, we’re going to cover what you need to know from a tax, investing, and financial planning perspective as we head into this new year. As you know, the government makes changes every year in these areas and the implications of these changes can have a pretty substantial impact on how much you pay in taxes, your net worth, what government benefits you are eligible to get, and how much you get. These can easily affect your net worth in the thousands of dollars every single year, so it’s defini...
Jan 25, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 116
We’ve all heard of high interest savings accounts that we can open up at our bank. But is that always our one and only best option when it comes to where we keep our short term cash? What about for things like our emergency fund, or when we are saving for something expensive like a car and we want that money to be available immediately when we need it, and not be subject to the sometimes large day-to-day fluctuations that we see in the stock market? In this episode, you are going to learn what y...
Dec 13, 2023•58 min•Season 1Ep. 115
In this episode, you’re going to learn: How to deal with the volatility of the stock market, once you are financially independent and are living off your investments: There are many schools of thought and structures when it comes to dealing with this challenge here in Canada. Retirement expert, Kyle Prevost takes us through his research on the top recommended and respected structures that he has uncovered for us Canadians. We also go through Kyle’s research on the optimum location for the fixed ...
Nov 15, 2023•53 min•Season 1Ep. 114
In this episode, our guest Kyle Prevost is going to take us through how much we need to retire, as Canadians, and how much can we sustainably withdraw from our portfolio to not run out of money once we retire. If you are a long-time listener of the show, then by now you would have definitely heard of the 4% rule, which helps answer these two questions. But, the 4% rule was created by Americans, for Americans, so how do all those findings and statistics apply to us Canadians? (If you are new to t...
Oct 10, 2023•49 min•Season 1Ep. 113
With the multiple interest rate hikes that we’ve been experiencing here in Canada, many Canadians have seen their monthly cashflow take a hit, whether it’s because you have a variable rate mortgage, a line of credit, or other forms of debt. So what are your options if you’re paying more than you’d like on your interest payments, or maybe you have that mortgage coming up for renewal and you’re going to have to make that multi-thousand dollar decision on how you’re going to proceed? Should you go ...
Sep 06, 2023•58 min•Season 1Ep. 112
Today we have Canadian author and speaker Fred Masters on the show. Fred has been a professional financial educator for decades here in Canada. He speaks at different universities to students and alumni, teaching financial wellness. In this episode, he’s going to share his findings on: What he’s found to be the main problem areas that tend to prevent us Canadians from reaching financial independence years earlier. What type of investing he has found to be the most effective in helping us achieve...
Aug 01, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 111
Today, you’re going to learn how you can save money on your investments, by having the right investments, in the right accounts so that you pay as little tax as possible here in Canada. For example, if you hold Canadian stocks, or ETFs that hold Canadian stocks, should you put those in your RRSP? Your TFSA? Or your taxable account? Which one of those is the most tax efficient? What about your US and other international ETFs and stocks? What accounts should they go into so that you pay the least ...
Jun 21, 2023•41 min•Season 1Ep. 110
Today, you are going to learn about how much you can save in fees and taxes on your investments, depending on how much time you want to spend optimizing your investment portfolio. In Canada, there are inexpensive options that make things extremely easy and automated for you, but they are slightly more expensive and slightly less tax efficient. On the other end of the spectrum, there are other investments available to Canadians that are as optimized as you can get in terms of keeping your fees lo...
Jun 14, 2023•52 min•Season 1Ep. 109
Today I’m going to be answering your questions, to help you out as much as I can in the world of personal finance and investing, here in Canada. We’re going to focus on actionable, practical advice, specifically for Canadians while taking into account the investment options that we have here in Canada, factoring in our Canadian taxes to make sure that we’re not overpaying, and much more. In today’s Q&A session, I’m going to be answering questions around: 1. How to determine if you should sell a ...
Jun 07, 2023•56 min•Season 1Ep. 108
It’s graduation season here in Canada, so we thought it would be good to focus this episode on parents with kids, those with nieces and nephews, as well as those that are students or fresh out of school. This week, we cover the topic of how to best set up young Canadians and young adults for success, when it comes to money. Sadly, if you’re my generation or older then you probably got zero education about money when you were in school or fresh out of school. Yet, those are the crucial years wher...
May 31, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 107
In this episode, I interview S&P, the creator of the S&P 500, Dow Jones, and many other popular indices used around the world by millions of investors. On today’s interview, we’re going to be covering the SPIVA scorecards which are semiannual reports published by S&P that compare the performance of active funds (i.e. active investing) vs taking the passive index investing approach. In other words, when you hear the debate of whether you should be a passive index investor, or an active investor, ...
May 25, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 106
Today we have a great case study of somebody that I really respect, and who has been able to achieve financial independence, at a really early age. I wanted this episode to be relevant to you no matter where you are on your financial independence journey, so I thought we could approach it from two angles: If you are in the asset accumulation phase and working towards financial independence, we get into how you can get there quicker AND also enjoy the process and not get burned out as you're work...
May 19, 2023•53 min•Season 1Ep. 105
One critical topic that can have a substantial financial impact on both us and our loved ones, is the subject of inheritance, and how to ensure that you and your loved ones don’t end up overpaying in both taxes and fees, once the whole inheritance process starts taking place. To help me with this subject, I’d like to welcome back Selene Soo on the show. We learned a lot from her last time in the interview on annuities , and this time, we’re going to focus on some best practices, when it comes to...
May 10, 2023•44 min•Season 1Ep. 104
Today’s guest is Jason Heath, one of Canada’s best known fee-only financial planners that you’ve probably seen in all sorts of media here in Canada over the years. He’s a Certified Financial Planner (CFP), has been providing financial planning for over 20 years, and is currently a personal finance columnist for the Financial Post, MoneySense, and is also a regular contributor to RetireHappy.ca. I’ve been reading his insightful financial planning articles for years, so it’s really great to have h...
Apr 11, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 103
With the significant increase in interest rates over the past year, and with home buying and selling season right around the corner, I thought it would be great to have our resident mortgage expert on the show, to go over the implications of this higher interest rate environment that we're in. Whether you’re getting a new mortgage, or are considering refinancing, we tackle whether you should go with a variable rate or fixed rate mortgage in this current interest rate environment. There could als...
Mar 08, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 102
It's RRSP season here in Canada. Remember that March 1 is the deadline for contributing to an RRSP, and have it count towards your 2022 tax year. Also while we’re on the subject, remember that your TFSA contribution room grows every year, and for the 2023 calendar year, you now have an extra $6,500 that you and your partner can contribute each. That's $13,000 total if you both max it out. Last year the limit was $6,000 per person so the government did increase that by $500 per person for this ye...
Feb 15, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 101
In this episode, I interview one of the most experienced Canadian financial planners that I know, and who I tend to go to when I have any complex tax and financial planning questions. His name is Ed Rempel, and in this episode, we tackle: How to determine how much you need to be financially independent? What are some sustainable withdrawal strategies that you can use to not run out of money when you’re living off your investments? How to pay less tax here in Canada And much, much more. Thanks so...
Jan 17, 2023•53 min•Season 1Ep. 100
