On Twitter [X] I was asked what the heck is going on. “I don’t get it” offered a follower and blog reader. The Canadian economy is entering a rough patch, things are supposed to get much worse, and Canadian stocks are surging higher. In fact, the TSX Composite just reached an all-time high. More proof that no one knows what is going to happen. We can’t time the market or sitting Presidents.
Around Tuesday April 8, President Trump began to walk away from his nonsensical tariff war blabbering, just as I had predicted on March 20th.
My take on the global tariff war concept was and is …
The bad news is a global tariff war spells economic destruction.
The good news is a global tariff war spells economic destruction. Essentially, it can’t happen, I think and hope. The markets will push back …
The markets pushed back on Trump’s plans, Trump listened, and then stocks moved on to higher prices.
And remember, the stock market is not the economy. And nearly 50% of TSX companies’ revenues originate outside of Canada.
What sectors are driving the TSX Composite?
From April 8, the TSX Composite is up 19% [as of May 16]. We know that financials and energy and resources drive Canadian stock markets so let’s have a look there first.
Sure enough, during that period the financials XFN-T are up 28%. The banks ZEB-T are up 16%. The insurers that are within the financials indexes have helped to drive returns well above that of the banking index. Diversifed financial Brookfield is up 36%. Fairfax Financial (Canada’s Berkshire Hathaway) is up over 44% over that last year and an incredible 540% over the last 5 years, not including the modest dividend.
So ya, the financials are humming. As I wrote in investing in Canadian banks, the banks are a proxy for the Canadian economy. But they are much more as well with considerable earnings in the U.S. and in other economies and regions. Same for the insurers who are very international.
I’m more than happy to hold this ETF in my personal RRSP. My wife holds most of the indivdual stocks in her RRSP.
Not including dividends
Canadian energy stocks
Let’s move on to energy and other resources. In October of 2020 I suggested that readers consider Canadian oil and gas stocks. The timing was fortunate as the sector went on an incredible run, up over 400% at the peak. The sector did some heavy lifting along the way.
But the sector has cooled and is down some 7.3% over the last year. The returns are also negative from April 8.
That said, the Canadian pipelines have been carrying the energy sector. Enbridge ENB-T and TC Energy TRP-T are leading constituents in the Canadian TSX Composite and they have greatly outperformed over the last year. They’ve made a minor contribution.
TC Energy is up about 35% over the last year while Enbridge is up in the area of 30%. Enbridge is the forth largest holding in the TSX while TC Energy is top 15.
The materials sector XMA-T helped to lift the TSX over the last year, up 26% at its peak a week ago. Gold stocks drove the index. Gold was and is the perfect hedge for Trump’s unpredictability and potential inflation-inducing tariff strategy. Materials did some lifting along the way.
Defensive equities rise to the occasion
Consumer staples XST-T have outperformed over the last year. They have been a wonderful defensive holding. They shone during the worst of the Trump fears. That said, they (unfortunately) have a very small weighting in the TSX.
Utilities XUT-T have kept pace with the markets over the last year and have offered recent support, as the sector is near all-time highs. More on this below when we discuss retirement and managing risk with defensive equities.
Canadian tech rocks
One of the main drivers to the new highs is the tech XIT-T sector. It’s up over 41% over the last year. Shopify is up 95% over the last year. Constellation Software is up 37.5% over one year. Shopify has the second largest weighting in the TSX. It will often trade places with RBC for top spot.
From April 8, XIT is up 26%, largely driven by Shopify.
Here’s the lift from Financials and Tech from 2023 … Continue Reading…
Having listened to a few episodes of Ramit Sethi’s podcast where he helps couples face and conquer their money issues, I looked forward to reading his book, Money for Couples.
In it, Sethi distills his experience helping hundreds of couples into strategies that cover a wide range of problems.
It’s clear that Sethi has the skills and experience necessary to help couples with their financial problems.
However, creating a book to help people solve these difficult issues on their own is a different challenge. I’m optimistic that this book will be helpful for some couples with big money problems.
For many couples, talking about money is painful and ends in a fight. A common theme throughout this book is that couples need to find a way to have money discussions that feel good. To this end, Sethi provides many strategies as well as actual scripts of what to say. These strategies go a long way to help draw in a spouse who avoids all talk about money.
Money personalities
Although many people think they’re just bad with money, “there’s no question you can get good at managing money, just like you became good at driving and speaking English.” The way forward depends on your money personality. Sethi sees four common money types: avoiders, optimizers, worriers, and dreamers (who think some big score will come soon to solve all their money problems).
The book gives specific advice for each money personality. For example, “Worriers change when they have skin in the game (for example, they manage part of the family finances), when they’re educated about money, and when their finances are extremely simple so they can understand them.” In the case of dreamers, “I have no advice, because you’re not reading this book.” Instead, Sethi offers advice to spouses of dreamers.
I saw myself a little bit in the optimizer personality description, but not much in the other personalities. Even the optimizer personality doesn’t fit well, though: I’ve never tried to maintain a budget and have only tracked spending a few times. I don’t seem to fit into any of these personalities. Perhaps, these are the money personalities of people who have money issues, and there are other money personalities for people who don’t have money issues. I’m not sure.
Moving toward a rich life
Sethi is known for saying people should stop focusing on $3 questions and start focusing on $30,000 questions. This is the difference between deciding whether to buy $3 coffee vs. big-ticket items like “automating investments,” “minimizing investment fees,” and “creating a debt -payoff plan.”
Some take this to mean that it’s always okay to spend small amounts. I’m not sure this is what Sethi means. In any case, as I see it, it’s a mistake to agonize over small amounts every day. Analyze how you spend money in small amounts, add up a full year’s worth of small amount spending in each category, and then decide if each category of spending fits in your financial plan. You now have a quick yes or no answer to every type of small amount for the next year. This frees up some mental bandwidth for thinking about bigger questions.
This shift to thinking about big money questions is an important part of what Sethi calls “designing your rich life vision.” When a couple agree on what really matters to them and how they want to live in the future, they can take steps to make their vision a reality. Otherwise, they might just continue wasting money on things they don’t care much about and never get where they’d really like to be.
As I read this book, I decided to do some of the exercises myself, and I squirmed a little as I got to the big questions about what kind of life I really want. These questions can be daunting, but they’re important. Even for a retiree like me who has already found the life I want for now, thinking about what I want my future to look like isn’t easy. Facing these questions and coming to agreement with a spouse matters.
Couples dynamics or … how to stop fighting over money
The book describes three common problematic couples dynamics: sitcom (where couples take jabs at each other to entertain others rather than really communicating), chaser/avoider, and innocent doe/enabler. For each dynamic, Sethi describes specific ways to break dysfunctional patterns, create meaningful communication, and handle money better. He also provides scripts of what healthy conversations about money look like.
After solving some of these emotional issues, couples are ready to move into some of the more numerical pursuits, like creating what Sethi calls a Conscious Spending Plan (CSP) and setting up an automated system of bank accounts and credit card accounts. A CSP lays out what percentage of income should go toward fixed costs, short-term savings, long-term investments, and guilt-free spending. Putting an end to feeling guilty every time you buy something is a dream for many people!
I’ve seen enough young couples mess up their finances to see the value in Sethi’s methods, but I wonder how many couples out there are like my wife and me. We kept all our accounts separate, which Sethi doesn’t recommend. We never automated our savings and just saved what was left over. This turned out to be a lot of money most of the time, despite the warnings from the Wealthy Barber, Sethi, and others that you must pay yourself first.
Although we’ve made good strides in spending meaningfully, my wife and I tend more toward underspending. Many joke about how they wish they (or their spouses) were underspenders, but it can be a real problem. The book mainly focuses on the more common problems relating to overspending, but it does have a subsection specifically about underspending.
Calling out businesses
One thing Sethi does that I find useful and amusing is calling out businesses to avoid. In one example, a couple closes their Wells Fargo account “because they are one of the worst predatory banks in the world.”
For many people, “their parents never talked about money, so when they reached adulthood, they were defenseless, left to make sense of the world against companies like Wells Fargo and Ameriprise as well as whole-life insurance scammers.”
Specific advice
Sethi advises couples to set a “worry-free spending number.” The idea is that anything under some threshold, like $20, is automatically not subject to criticism by a spouse. I find this lacks a time component. My wife and I have a number like this, but the threshold is very different depending on whether it is a one-off or if it’s daily. I can buy $1,000 worth of sports equipment a few times a year without a family discussion, but I can’t spend $200 on lunch a few times a week. Continue Reading…
On Wednesday, BMO ETFs conducted its second annual ETF Investor day. Conducted at the Toronto Stock Exchange, Do-it-yourself investors and finfluencers [Financial Influencers] were on hand for the ceremonial opening of the exchange, shown in the photo on the left (including myself).
Hard to believe, but this marks BMO’s 16th year as a Canadian ETF provider.
Before we get to the individual expert picks from BMO’s large ETF stable, the morning began with the obligatory analysis of the current Trump-inspired global trade war, and its implications for the Canadian economy and stock market.
Economic Update
In an Economic update Amber Kanwar, Host of the In the Money Podcast interviewed Bipan Rai, Head of ETF & Structured Solutions Strategy at BMO ETFs. Rai said the protectionist measures being imposed by the Trump administration have “not been seen since the Great Depression.” In the U.S. tariffs are now north of 20%, or ten times the 2% average tariffs that were previously in place.
Asked what will happen next, Rai said probably one of three things: Trump might rescind the Tariffs, or there will be a massive expansion of U.S. fiscal policy to fund its Tax Cuts, or the Federal Reserve will cut rates. But he doesn’t think a U.S. recession will show up this year, as its economy is “too dynamic.”
BMO ETFs Bipan Rai
However, Rai was less confident that Canada won’t face a Recession: “I’m very concerned about the Canadian economy in coming quarters.” The two most recent scenarios from the Bank of Canada are mixed: one is “far more benign,” the second “more malignant.” He thinks the former is more likely, with a few negative quarters of GDP growth but not likely exhibiting Stagflation risk. 70% of Canada’s GDP is generated from trade, “most of it with the U.S. As much as [Prime Minister Mark] Carney talks about diversifying away from the U.S., that’s not going to happen. The U.S. is way too big and is right next door. We may do more with the United Kingdom but it and the European Union won’t replace the U.S. Jobs may be lost, especially in the auto sector.”
Asked if he expects more rate cuts from central banks around the world, Rai said he thinks the BOC is likely closer to the end, with one or two more rate cuts, after which fiscal stimulus will kick in. England or the ECB may cut a few more times, then Japan and a few “others divorced from the rest.”
How retail investors can play Defence
Kanwar also probed the views of two experts in a session titled Playing Defense: Positioning Your Portfolio in today’s environment. Now that the U.S. market has rebounded 18% from the lows around early April’s Liberation Day, Kanwar asked how Do-it-yourself [DIY] investors can deal with volatility. Jimmy Xu, Head of Liquid Alternatives & Non-linear solutions, BMO ETFs, said it depends on investor goals. Those with a long-term 20- or 30-year time horizon before Retirement would be “best to sit tight,” Xu said, “Overtrading is the enemy of growing assets and market timing is hard.”
Freelance writer Tony Dong, founder of ETF Portfolio Blueprint, said volatility is the price of admission to create investment returns that are superior to risk-free treasury bills. Betting on certain sectors may expose DIY investors to uncompensated risk, Dong said. Even equal-weight products provide imperfect exposure to the size premium commanded by small- and mid-cap stocks. But investors can overweight less volatile stocks concentrated in structurally defensive sectors like health care, utilities and consumer staples. Jimmy Xu said sector-agnostic low-volatility strategies can help investors get around this problem. BMO’s low-volatility ETFs own low-volatility stocks that have a low beta relative to the broad market, which amounts to “a better tool than picking top sectors.” Continue Reading…
Looking to break away from the traditional 9-to-5 path to Financial Independence? In this expert roundup, professionals share the platforms and resources that helped them explore alternative ways to build wealth, from niche investment tools to entrepreneurship communities.
Whether you’re just starting out or refining your strategy, you’ll find practical insights and trusted recommendations to guide your journey.
Prioritize Autonomy Over Liquidity
The Motley Fool: Comprehensive Financial Education
Tim Ferriss Show: Disciplined Wealth-Building Systems
Side Hustle School: Practical Income Ideas
Mad Fientist: Balanced Approach to Saving
NAPFA: Personalized Financial Guidance
Morningstar: Diverse Investment Strategies
Prioritize Autonomy over Liquidity
Frameworks that map autonomy before liquidity targets have reshaped how to allocate personal capital. For example, layering $25,000 into private credit offerings that yield predictable monthly payments has more impact on Financial Independence than a $300,000 retirement account you cannot touch for 20 years. This logic came from dissecting how quiet operators generate cash flow without public scale or visibility. Their systems work because they are boring, consistent, and mechanical. That mindset shift pulled me away from chasing numbers and toward protecting hours.
Skip platforms that market freedom as a finish line and look for models that treat Financial Independence as a structural asset class. Follow people who explain how they built repeatable systems with clean numbers: no fluff, no pitch. If someone makes $900 monthly from a vending machine route and spends 4 hours managing it, study that. It might be low-scale, but the math still applies. What I am getting at is this: financial freedom shows up in how your time behaves, not how your balance sheet looks. — Eric Croak, CFP, President, Croak Capital
The Motley Fool: Comprehensive Financial Education
One resource that has been crucial for my understanding of alternative financial paths is The Motley Fool. This site provides wide-ranging content around personal finance, investing, and wealth-building processes, encouraging me to be a more critical thinker regarding the diversification of my financial portfolio. While my experience has centered so far around the precious metals exchange, The Motley Fool‘s observations about stock, bond, and market trends have made my thinking about various ways of wealth-building more comprehensive.
What makes The Motley Fool stand out is that it offers a synthesis of research, educational articles, and investment analysis that contains actionable tips to realize Financial Independence. The ongoing posts about current market conditions and performances of individual stocks have proven particularly useful in judging risk and uncovering emerging opportunities. It has assisted me in streamlining my investment plan and made me comfortable venturing outside my original area of interest in order not to be heavily reliant on a given asset class.
For anyone interested in designing financial liberty, I recommend researching The Motley Fool’s publications. They foster a balanced attitude toward building wealth through a combination of long-term investing and general financial advice. Whether you are a new investor or a professional investor, the site provides simple techniques and information that are easily understandable and implementable into any financial process. The most important thing to take away is to stay educated, diversified, and calculated in your choices. — Brandon Thor, CEO, Thor Metals Group
Investopedia: Up-to-Date Financial Knowledge
One of the most useful resources I have used is the Investopedia website. I recommend that others explore this resource and the various articles it offers, specifically in the personal finance category. This is a website that is constantly updated with new information that is relevant and comprehensive. When learning about alternative paths to financial independence, it’s important to have a source that contains a network of resources covering all financial levels. For some people, this is a site to learn about the basics of finance, while for others like me, it allows us to constantly get updates within the field we work in. — Peter Reagan, Financial Market Strategist, Birch Gold Group
Indie Hackers changed my approach to business and entrepreneurship. The content on Indie Hackers provides examples of how independent creators and small business owners develop digital products, content brands, or niche services that support their independence.
As someone running a blog rooted in curation and personal shopping, it’s given me real-world examples of monetization through affiliate content, digital products, and community building. If you’re even a little curious about earning independently through content or software, I’d say spend a weekend exploring Indie Hackers. — Danilo Miranda, Managing Director, Presenteverso
Reddit: Diverse Financial Wisdom
One of the key resources that has been instrumental in informing my road to financial freedom is the collaborative platform, “Personal Finance Subreddits.” These forums are filled with experiences from individuals at various points in their financial journeys, sharing straightforward advice on topics such as the best investing tips and how to shed costly habits. The diversity of experience gained has served me well in challenging conventional financial wisdom and in innovating more freely toward building wealth.
What is interesting about these subreddits is their emphasis on real-world strategies individuals implement to accumulate wealth. Whether learning to take advantage of tax benefits, following stock market trends, or investing in alternative assets such as precious metals and cryptocurrencies, these communities offer actionable information. I discovered that engaging in dialogue around alternative investments, especially in sectors such as precious metals, has been instrumental in informing Alloy’s financial product approach.
If you are considering venturing into alternative routes to fiscal freedom, I highly recommend exploring these kinds of forums. They have a treasure trove of information at your fingertips, which tends to be backed up by real-world case studies and anecdotes. You’ll find techniques that defy mainstream wisdom and encourage you to think differently about how to build your wealth. The icing on the cake is that all these communities evolve continuously, which means you stay informed about current trends and thinking as they emerge. — Brandon Aversano, CEO, The Alloy Market
X: Direct Access to Wealth-Building Minds
I’ve explored countless resources for alternative wealth-building paths. The platform that has been absolutely game-changing for me is Twitter (now X).
Most people use Twitter incorrectly: they scroll mindlessly or argue about politics. However, when you curate your feed with the right financial minds, it becomes an incredible learning tool that costs nothing but attention.
What makes Twitter invaluable is the real-time access to people who have actually built wealth through unconventional means, not just theory. You get daily insights from entrepreneurs, investors, and creators who are doing the work right now.
For example, I learned about affiliate marketing strategies that helped me scale by following people who were transparent about their successes and failures. No nonsense, just practical advice you can implement immediately.
The beauty of Twitter is that it’s not just consumption: you can directly engage with these people. Ask questions, share your progress, build relationships. That kind of access used to require expensive masterminds or conferences.
If you’re serious about Financial Independence, start by following 20-30 people who have built what you want to build. Don’t just follow the big names: find the practitioners who are openly sharing their journeys. Then actually implement what resonates, don’t just collect information.
Remember though: no platform will make you wealthy if you’re just consuming content. The magic happens when you take what you learn and actually execute on it consistently. — John Talasi, Entrepreneur, JohnTalasi.com
One resource that has really stood out to me is ChooseFI, both the podcast and the broader community around it. It’s not flashy, but it’s full of practical, real-world conversations that challenge traditional ideas of work and retirement. As someone who works in the construction value stream, I appreciate systems thinking, and ChooseFI breaks down Financial Independence like a process: identifying waste, streamlining inputs, and looking for long-term sustainability.
It helped me rethink how I approach personal finance, not just for myself but in advising others on business efficiency and risk. What really makes it valuable is the variety of stories — teachers, tradespeople, small business owners — people who found unique paths to build security and freedom, often without earning six figures.
I’d recommend diving into the early episodes where they lay out the core principles. Even if you’re not aiming for full early retirement, the mindset shift around intentional spending, value-based living, and building flexibility into your life is incredibly useful. It’s not just about money: it’s about designing a life that actually works for you. — Andrew Moore, Director, Rubicon Wigzell Limited
Reframe Expenses in Hours Worked
Reddit’s r/financialindependence has reshaped how I think about money, especially after reading a post where someone broke down the true cost of their car in hours worked, not just in dollars. They added up the loan payment, insurance, and maintenance, then compared it against their take-home pay. It came out to roughly 21 hours a month just to keep the car. That hit me harder than any financial advice I had read before, because it shifted the decision from, “Can I afford this?” to, “Is this worth that much of my life?”
I took that same method and applied it to a few things in my own budget. I started with recurring costs like software subscriptions and monthly meals out. Some of them made sense. Others felt absurd once I saw the time attached to them. That one shift made it easier to simplify without turning everything into a sacrifice. Framing expenses through time instead of just money gave me a cleaner way to decide what stayed. The posts in that subreddit don’t offer perfect answers, but they push you to ask sharper questions. That’s what I keep returning for. — Robbin Schuchmann, Co-founder / SEO Specialist, EOR Overview
Podcasts: Accessible Financial Insights
I’m always on the lookout for tools and resources that offer fresh perspectives, both for my clients and myself. One that has consistently stood out over the years is podcasts. They’re accessible, insightful, and often make complex financial ideas feel surprisingly relatable. Two podcasts I frequently recommend are The Ramsey Show and Odd Lots from Bloomberg.
The Ramsey Show is a great example of how powerful simple financial habits can be. It focuses on helping people get out of debt, live within their means, and build a strong foundation for long-term Financial Independence. It’s full of real-life stories that remind you you’re not alone in trying to figure it all out. Financial freedom doesn’t always require complex strategies; it often starts with small, consistent steps.
Odd Lots, on the other hand, offers a deeper dive into the financial world. It’s ideal for anyone curious about how investing, markets, and the wider economy work. It’s helped me, and many on our team, stay informed and engaged with the broader forces that shape our clients’ financial plans. Continue Reading…
In mid-April, my monthly Retired Money column for MoneySense looked at the experience of new retirees who have just shifted from RRSPs to Registered Retirement Income Funds (RRIFs), including my own.
Now my followup May column has been published, and it looks in more detail at how such new retirees should handle their Asset Allocation, particularly in light of this volatile Trump Trade War era we are now in. You can find the full column by clicking on the highlighted headline: How to allocate a RRIF for Secure Income in Retirement.
The column begins with an old rule of thumb that advisor John De Goey says is now obsolete: that your age should roughly equal your Fixed-Income exposure. So, for example, that rule would suggest a new RRIF owner aged 71 might have 71% fixed-income and just 29% stock exposure.
I bounced that off De Goey, who recently aired his views on Trump’s second reign of Error in this recent Findependence Hub blog: The Gangster in the White House.
A new Rule of Thumb for Retirement Asset Allocation
He introduced me to a novel formula that was new to me and perhaps to most readers. “I believe longevity has made that [previous] rule of thumb out of date for at least a generation now. My view, after taking longevity into account, is that you should use age times the decimal of your age until you get to RRIF age (71). This assumes that the client is not particularly risk averse. The portfolio still has to be suitable.”
So under this new rule and assuming the other qualifications apply to your personal -circumstances, a 50-year-old should be 50 x .50 = 25% in fixed income; a 60-year-old should be 60 x .60 = 36% in income; and a 71-year old-should be 71 x .71 = ~ 50% in income. However, beyond that age, De Goey thinks 50% fixed income is the maximum. “People over the age of 71 should be able to withstand having half their money in equities even if they’re in their 90s, because the risk associated with the 50/50 portfolio is quite low.
I was recently interviewed by Allan Small on his Allan Small Financial Show, along with financial commentator and broadcaster Patricia Lovett-Reid, formerly a TD Waterhouse senior vice president and later CTV commentator. Allan, who is Senior Investment Advisor for Scarborough-based IA Private Wealth Inc., probed us about current investor psyche and how to position for the global trade war.
Coping with the Triple T
Patricia coined the term Triple T: for Trump, Trade and Tension. Reviewing past investor panics, she said it is “different this time in that we have an individual wreaking havoc on a global platform.” Even so, she suggested staying the course with quality holdings, albeit being a more defensive with utilities, telecom, financials and Gold. Since we may all spend a third of our lives in Retirement, retirees should not abandon the “stocks for the long run” stance, she said. If you can’t sleep at night, ask your advisor what you can do about it but personally, Lovett-Reid says she has not made any drastic changes to her family’s Asset Allocation.
One focus of the interview, some of which also aired on CFRB 1010 Radio, was our “crystal ball” for markets by the end of the year. All three of us thought they would likely be a bit higher from where they were in late April. Patricia said the TSX should outperform for the rest of 2025, based on its resource and materials stocks (Gold, Oil). My view assumed Trump would partly back down from his harder-nosed Tariff positions but if he doesn’t, I said, “Look out below.”
One observation was that those with Defined Benefit pension plans can consider those to be a form of fixed income. That leaves more room to take risk with equities in other parts of one’s retirement portfolio. In a followup email, Patricia told me that “As someone with a DB [pension], I tend to skew toward more equities. And yet I do like the 60/40 split (equities to bonds). I’m very much about asset protection versus accumulation, so we are erring on the cautious side.”
What role can Annuities play?
The full MoneySense column closes with a look at annuities, which resemble Fixed Income.
In the past, I have referenced retired actuary Fred Vettese’s suggestion in various Globe & Mail columns that – at least for those who don’t have employer-sponsored Defined Benefit pension plans – they should partly annuitize when their RRSP must be converted to a RRIF. Continue Reading…
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