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My latest MoneySense Retired Money column is a bit of a departure in that its focus is on 57-year old blogger and YouTuber Alain Guillot, who came to Canada from Columbia with nothing but entrepreneurial gumption and a dream of being part of the North America depicted on TV at home.
For the full MoneySense column, click on this headline: The first $100,000 is the hardest to save for newcomers.
The re-election of Donald Trump is almost certain to make Immigration an even more contentious issue. However, as I am myself the child of (British) immigrants I am naturally sympathetic to those who are brave or desperate enough to leave the land of their births to find opportunities in North America.
Which is one reason that over the past year, I’ve been corresponding with an interesting blogger and former financial advisor, Alain Guillot, and occasionally republish his blogs on my site, Findependence Hub. It’s called simply AlainGuillot.com
He aims to write at least one blog a week and has 600 subscribers on his YouTube channel, where he is more than half way to being able to monetize it. Now Guillot has just self-published a short e-book entitled The Wealth Paradox: Navigating Money, Free will, and Success, which you can find on Kindle for a very reasonable price. The subtitle explains more: How unconventional thinking influences your Financial and Personal Life.
Side hustles and Entrepreneurism
One reason Guillot got my attention in the first place was that he emigrated to Canada from Colombia, a place I once visited (San Andres). He soon discovered he was almost forced to become an entrepreneur in Canada.
Initially Guillot tried various side hustles in his first days in Canada: like being a Salsa/Tango dance instructor, corporate photographer, and professional wedding witness, all of which he still dabbles in. He wanted to become a financial advisor here but felt he could only do justice to clients by being a fee-for-service planner, then discovered it was hard to make a business out of that model. Next he positioned himself as a personal finance “coach,” but decided to stop because “no one wants to listen.”
Still, he admits he’s personally obsessed about money, so is trying to make a go out of blogging about money and doing video podcasts about it. He did become a financial advisor but was soon disillusioned to discover the industry is “riddled with conflicts of interest …I was unable to sell financial products to my clients because most products had exorbitant high management fees.”
So he quit and started his blog in hopes of transitioning to becoming a fee-only financial advisor. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t successful in convincing people of the value of fee-only financial advice, but I continued the habit of writing about personal finance and sharing my ideas. I do make some money from my blog, but not enough to compensate for all the hours I put into thinking and writing new articles.”
As this column is titled Retired Money, what are Guillot’s own plans for ultimate retirement? At age 57, he’s well on the road to Findependence: “If I don’t work a single day for the rest of my life and the market gives 6% or more, I can spend about $3,000/month until age 100. At age 65 I will start claiming my QPP [Quebec Pension Plan] and that will bump my income up to $4,000 a month for the rest of my life.” He expects a $1 million inheritance when his parents pass away.
At one point Guillot tried being an insurance sales person but didn’t enjoy the experience. “All I see is waste … I have a few friends who are insurance sales persons and they always use the techniques of inciting fear in their clients, which is effective but I find it a bit immoral. I invest in insurance only through the S&P 500. Whenever insurance benefits the client more than the company, that insurance is not sold any more, like it’s happening in areas affected by climate change … Insurance companies have so many regulations and overhead that they don’t make that much money either. It’s a lose-lose situation. People are better off self insuring.”
