The Big Secret of Financial Success with Robert Gignac
Posted on: February 13, 2020Posted in Credit, Financial Advice, Interviews, Videos | Comments Off on The Big Secret of Financial Success with Robert Gignac
The Big Secret Of Financial Success with Robert Gignac
In this episode of The Glass Is Half Full, Richard Killen a Licensed Insolvency Trustee interviews Robert Gignac, a speaker, writer and author talk about The Big Secret Of Financial Success. He is featured in many publications, including The Globe & Mail, Money Magazine, Private Investor and has his own TV show called “We Talk Money:
| Richard | Hi, I’m Richard Killen. Welcome to a very interesting show we hope we have for you today on The Glass Is Half Full. We’re joined by Robert Gignac, am I getting it right, Robert? |
| Robert | Perfect, Richard. Thank you. |
| Richard | Good. Today we’re going to learn about the big secret of financial success, right Robert? |
| Robert | Yes. Absolutely. |
| Richard | Robert is a very, very highly sought after speaker who combines knowledge, passion and visuals to encourage people to take control of their personal finances and to live what you call a richly imagined future, right? |
| Robert | Absolutely. |
| Richard | Robert delivers keynote speeches and interactive workshop programs to International organizations, financial industry and private clients, right? He also featured in many publications, including the Globe & Mail, Money Magazine, Private Investor and you have your own TV show on, what is it? We TV? |
| Robert | We TV? |
| Richard | What’s it called? |
| Robert | It’s called We Talk Money, |
| Richard | And, one of the more interesting things, if you think anything is more interesting than TV, is that you’ve written a Canadian bestseller called Rich Is a State of Mind. |
| Robert | I did, accidentally by chance. I did. I’d never intended to write a best selling book on personal finance. I was trying to help a friend create a marketing brochure. |
| Richard | Some of the best things come from things like that? |
| Robert | Absolutely. |
| Richard | Well, I’m going to get back to your book in some depth little later on Robert. I personally found it very interesting, but I’d liked to ask you, you spend a great deal of time speaking to Canadians about concepts of personal finance and taking control of their financial future, and I’m sure you’re often asked, what is the big secret to financial success? So what is the big secret? |
| Robert | I get asked that a lot. And people are generally incredibly underwhelmed with the answer, which is that there’s no big secret. There’s no magic pill, there’s no silver bullet. There’s no one thing that if I only knew what that one thing is. What it is, is with many things in life, it’s a series of small, little, incremental things that we do over and over and over that allow us to get better with whatever it is, including managing our personal finances. If I were to pick one thing and I was asked this recently in an event because the person was adamant that there must just be the one thing it would be this, marry the right person and stay married. That would be the one thing, right? If anybody’s ever been through an asset-ectomy, i.e. divorce, and lost half their assets, it’s a huge impediment to being successful financially and the…. |
| Richard | Not to mention being a bit of an emotional letdown. |
| Robert | A huge emotional letdown and lots of other issues to deal with there, but If people are looking for that one thing, they’re going to be really disappointed to find out that there just isn’t that one thing. |
| Richard | So essentially you brought marriage counselling to the table? |
| Robert | No, absolutely not. But at the end of the day, |
| Richard | It’s important. |
| Robert | It’s important and it’s important that we do a number of things better than we’re doing today to have a better future tomorrow. There’s a line I’ve heard that I like that said, If you’re willing to do the things today that other people won’t, then tomorrow you can have the life that other people won’t be able to have. If you’re willing to do those things today. |
| Richard | But it has to be today. |
| Robert | But, if not today, certainly tomorrow or next week because we all believe we have huge, vast amounts of time at our disposal. |
| Richard | Especially when we’re young. |
| Robert | When we’re young, certainly. When you’re 25 the concept of being 50 seems ancient, right? |
| Richard | If you think about it at all. |
| Robert | If you think about it at all. But we think about it because we look at our parents and we look at our grandparents and we go, yeah, I’ll get there, but I’ve got lots of time. And the reality is that time disappears before we know it. |
| Richard | You wrote an article called, It’s Possible, and in that article you talk about giving a speech, I guess it is, to a group in Timmons, I think it is, on the subject of, you call, richly imagined future. I understand that an audience member commented, confronted you if you want, to go with his own thought on the matter, saying, basically that this was all well and good for you, but there’s no way that it’s going to be possible for him. Can you explain what happened next? |
| Robert | So it was during the Q and A portion, and the gentleman came up and he said, “he thoroughly enjoyed the presentation”, he said, “but this concept that you talked about won’t work for me”. And I said, “Okay and tell me more?”, because that’s always my favourite question to someone. Tell me more and he said “well, you don’t understand. I just have a high school education. I never went to university.” That’s great. He said, “why is that great”? I said because too many people confuse education with the ability to do better things with money. You don’t need a university degree to do great things with your personal finances. The fact you didn’t go to university is great If you had gone, sure, that’s nice. But don’t let the fact you didn’t go to university determine your financial future, and I drew his attention to a quote that I had put up during the presentation by a British entrepreneur named Brad Sugars. And the quote, I use it all the time, is the quality of your life is determined by the decisions you make, which is determined by the questions you ask, which is determined by the quality of your education. But don’t confuse that education has to come from a school system. It comes from the books we read, the things we watched, the people we associate with, and as long as we’re willing to learn something new and change your behaviour, then we get educated. When we’re educated, we ask better questions. Those better questions could be to financial professionals, the peers around us, and when we ask better questions, we make better decisions. And that’s what determines how successful we’re going to be. Not whether or not you went to University, college or even graduated high school. |
| Richard | In fact, some people will say that your education only really starts when you leave school. |
| Robert | Oh, absolutely, But, many leave the educational sphere, and I’ve actually heard people say this when they were done with school, it’s like, “Oh, thank God I’m done with that, now I don’t have to read any more books.” No, reading books is excellent. It’s a phenomenal way to gain the education to help you do better things. |
| Richard | You could be describing my father, who had a 7th-grade education, but it was possibly the, certainly the most everyday man I’ve ever known. |
| Robert | That’s great. |
| Richard | But he read a lot, quite a bit. |
| Robert | It’s important. |
| Richard | Can I ask you? People are always looking for, easy or shortcut answers to think about that. I’m gonna see if you can provide one here. What is the biggest single thing that somebody can do to improve their financial situation? |
| Robert | If I were to boil it to one thing, Richard, I’d probably boil it to one word. And the word is no. It’s a word that most people in today’s day and age or incredibly unfamiliar with because they’ve never said no. They’ve never had no said to them. Sometimes as parents we don’t say it enough to our kids. Right? Can I have the new Xbox, XYZ killing video game? No. Do I want to go out and buy a new Lexus GS450? Yes, but no. Because the more often we say no to ourselves, the more successful we will be in the long term. That doesn’t mean I’m against spending money. Spending money is a great thing, right? We work hard. We earn money. We should spend some and enjoy what we’re doing. But the reality is, the more often we say no and delay the gratification, the more successful we can be with our finances. |
| Richard | Yep. I’d like to talk to you a bit about your bestseller, Rich Is A State Of Mind, right? Just a comment I’d like to make about the book, is I found it very interesting that you wrote it is a novel instead of the usual how-to-book, which is almost a manual, right? You have very good writing skills, I’ll tell you that. |
| Robert | Thank you. |
| Richard | When I was reading it, I found that I was, it was a page-turner. |
| Robert | When it comes to books on personal finance, I’m flattered to hear that. |
| Richard | And that’s the thing that impressed me the most on it, is that it is very thorough, but because it had it was a novel, had a plot, storyline, characters, that you get involved in, personalities if you want. But using that as a vehicle, what you did is, you brought in everything that I could think of it as a factor in personal finances, personal finance management, everything from how to save to the effect of inflation on things and what not? And because you wrote it as a novel, it all started to kind of make sense. It was explained and explained in a very, very easy, to, understand way. I think anybody could read that, you don’t have to be an MBA to be able to understand. |
| Robert | Oh, and absolutely. And one of the things I tried to do with the book when I picked this format, is I knew if I created a personal finance book that read like a high school or university textbook, nobody would read it, right? But, if I could craft a story of a slightly dysfunctional Canadian family trying to come to grips with everything related to personal finance, if I was lucky, I could create characters that people would read the book and go, “That’s exactly how I feel.” Or that’s my kid sister. That’s my older brother. And if I could do that, then maybe I could keep them turning the pages in order to actually get from one point to the other. There is an email that I received from a reader of the book that I keep posted in my office, right on my filing cabinet. I can see it every day, and it was a reader, who said “Robert, there’s one thing I needed to tell you about your book. I own many books on personal finance. Yours is the first one I actually finished, and I was so grateful to see that, that it’s in a prime spot where I see it every day. |
| Richard | Well, I’ll send you an email that says the same thing. |
| Robert | Thank you. |
| Richard | I want to ask a few questions about the content of the book, the thing that you discussed, if you don’t mind? In it, you talk about the importance of saving. That should be obvious to anybody that if you want a plan for your financial future, it’s going to incorporate an element of savings, and it has to be released. But for somebody living paycheck to paycheck, it’s really hard to see how you can do this. And I know in the book, you do deal with that eventually and so on. But maybe you could talk a little bit about that now. |
| Robert | One of the things that is difficult for all of us to grasp, is that if we want a better or different tomorrow, then we have to do different things today. And as it relates to money that generally the first basic building block is saving money, spending less money than you earn. Now there are a number of different ways, we can attempt to do that, but at the end of the day, taking that first step saving dollar one or dollars one through five can be a significant challenge in today’s economy, and but at the same time there are some simple things we can do. I think that will help us along that path. So, for example, one of the examples I used in the book if any of us were to go through a salary reduction if our employer came along and said sorry times are tough, we could keep the business open. But we’ve got to reduce everybody’s salary by 5%. Our first reaction generally wouldn’t be, “Hey, I’m out of here, and I’m looking for a new job” it would be like, “Wow, this really sucks. But okay, what do I do now?” And one of the things I encourage people to do is if you’re having problems saving dollar one pretend you just got a 5% reduction in pay. You get to spend all the rest, but that 5% has to be set aside for things that you’re going to do in the future. And while you’re doing that, you may go look for a new job. You may create a side hustle that brings in a few extra dollars. There’s a number of things you can do on that front, but it’s taking that first step, that is the most critical piece, Richard. |
| Richard | And by essentially treating it as a fait accompli, where the thing is done, you just don’t have that 5% anymore, right? |
| Robert | And, put that 5% in a bank account that’s not linked to your debit card, because we all know what it’s like. You’re out on Saturday night, you’re out with some friends, it’s like, I need $50, wait a sec, I’ll take it out now and I’ll put it back in on Tuesday. No, it’s not going, it’s gone. So make sure that it’s in an account that is not easily accessible. |
| Richard | Didn’t Wimpy buy his hamburgers like that? |
| Robert | Sort of like that. So, yeah, I’d gladly pay you next week for a burger I can have today. |
| Richard | That’s right. Mind you, that showing my age, you’re not supposed to have heard of them. You say in the book that people, everybody’s interested in money, I find that fairly easy to believe. But you also say that people are afraid of it. |
| Robert | There’s a lot of emotion around money, and it’s not just a Canadian thing. I think it’s more of a global thing. That money tends to make us feel like we’re not successful. I tell people all the time. Money is a crappy way to keep score in life. But the reality is for many of us, it’s the only way we’ve got to keep score or we think we do because we’re always comparing ourselves to others. We compare ourselves to the people we live next door to. People were related to, the people we work with, and we’re always critical of people who look like they have more money because we wonder, what did they do to get this money? Was it illegal or immoral or some other thing? Or somehow, if I don’t have enough money, however much that is, then somehow I have failed and done something wrong. |
| Richard | Would that be because, like it or not, money is one of the very, very few objective things which we can measure things? |
| Robert | It is. |
| Richard | Hard to measure how much love you are receiving or giving? |
| Robert | Absolutely. When you know it’s numbers, it’s paper. We write it down, we add it up, we divide it and we can see it in black and white. But the emotion that goes along with that is where most of us get pretty messed up as it relates to the money. And it’s where the fear comes in because we always think we’re not good enough. And what if I don’t measure up? |
| Richard | If I can’t do it? |
| Robert | But the thing that I always tried to caution people is when you’re making that comparison, make sure that you’re comparing reality to your reality. So, you know, in the age of social media, I try to convince people all the time. Social media is not real, so when you’re seeing your neighbours or your cousin vacationing in…. |
| Richard | So what President Trump says all the time is not real? |
| Robert | Uh, no, I know. But the reality is when we see people we know vacationing in Mexico or they stand beside a new car or we go like, holy crap, they’ve got it all figured out. They never post the picture of them on social media at 2:45 in the morning, curled up in the fetal position in bed, can’t sleep because their visa bills due Friday and they don’t have the money? No. They post the picture of their meal dining out, or a sporting event or on vacation, and their life looks great. We then feel bad about ourselves going, “Why can’t I do all of that?” Well, we could. We just have a different plan. |
| Richard | So, Robert, you talk about the word rich. It’s in the title of your book, right? |
| Robert | It’s in the title. |
| Richard | But you have a very interesting definition of the meaning of that word. |
| Robert | Well, rich means different things to different people. And if you do look it up in the dictionary and I know the younger viewers watching go, what’s a dictionary? If you look it up, the very first Google, very first definition has to do with depth of colour, and hue has nothing to do with money until you get down to the fifth or sixth definition. I chose the title, Rich Is A State Of Mind, because nobody could tell me what rich is or was to them. They didn’t, they quote me a dollar figure. They didn’t say it’s 2,738 something. But they told me how they would feel, what their life would look like, who they’d spend their time with, if they ever answered the question, yes. Which made me think that it’s really a mental thing. It’s how we feel, not what the balance of a bank statement or mutual fund statement says. And the characters having the discussion in the book about the concept of the word rich, Richard, the mentor in the book, went to the whiteboard. |
| Richard | Very good name. |
| Robert | He wrote down one word. Freedom. Now, it was interesting that he chose that word because the other characters in the book in that discussion were freedom from what? And Richard just kind of smiled and said, “Not freedom from, freedom to. Freedom to create the life you want, spending time with who you want to spend it with, doing things that bring you enjoyment, not freedom from something.” And when we look at money is the ability to provide experiences in our life, then I think we get a much deeper appreciation for it. |
| Richard | In your book, you’re also, by definition, if we’re talking about building a better financial future for ourselves we’re going to be eventually talking about saving money. |
| Robert | Yes. |
| Richard | And in the process of that, discussing that in your book, your characters mentioned that, for most people, perhaps, saving is seen as a form of punishment, where you deprive yourself. |
| Robert | It’s denial. |
| Richard | Spending. Yes, denial. And spending is a form of reward. |
| Robert | Yes. |
| Richard | You don’t agree with that? |
| Robert | I don’t agree entirely, because what happens is sometimes we get things reversed when we need to do better things with our money. Saving is actually the rewards side and think of spending it is a little bit of punishment because we’re destroying the wealth we’re creating by doing so. Now, we all need to spend money, right? We have to pay rent. We have to buy gasoline for a car and a metro pass and some groceries. All of these things. But the end of the day is we’re trying to plan a long-range financial future. The savings aspect is actually the reward that we’re going to get later. But in today’s day and age, the concept of delayed gratification doesn’t exist. Where those who came before us? My parents, my parents before them? You didn’t buy things if you didn’t have cash in order to pay for it, you save money for a rainy day. You waited until you could afford to do something. But in today’s day and age where we have this kind of frictionless spending, you know, he used to be with a credit card used to make that noise, like when they actually ran your card. Now it’s tap and beep, the money’s gone, right? We don’t have any physical relationship to it. And that’s what I think messes us up about money today. |
| Richard | Well, you’re not going to get any argument from me. I’m an Insolvency Trustee, as you know Robert, and the whole concept of credit cards, although it has had a very positive effect on this overall standard of living, the economy in general, the size of the economy and |
| Robert | And there are people who use credit cards very well. |
| Richard | In fact, probably the majority. |
| Robert | I think the majority do. |
| Richard | Because it’s not the majority that to come and see me. But in any case, I have to agree completely with you. What you’re talking about there is essentially the difference between short-range thinking and long-range thinking, right? |
| Robert | Yes. |
| Richard | So the idea of instant gratification is that you can’t see beyond right now. A child thinks that way. He sees that he wants that and so on. Where, as an adult is supposed to come along and say, “So I don’t know. What am I gonna have to give up next week or next month or next year to |
| Robert | Right, and we can do a pro and con list if you want. If I do this today, what can’t I do tomorrow? If I’m willing to forgo this today, what will I be able to do tomorrow? And it’s that kind of decision-making process that hopefully allows us to make better decisions financially. |
| Richard | And it kind of leads into my next question, which is you’re referring to savings as something that is essentially, it has become a habit for it to be effective, basically or if you want. If you can get into the habit of doing it, it will really pay dividends. |
| Robert | And it’s the habit that drives us from a financial perspective. But we get into habits all the time, both good habits and bad habits. But when we’re trying to start that saving money process for somebody who’s always struggled with it, or never, ever saved a dollar, saving dollars, one through five is the beginning of a habit, and we do it this week and we do it next week to do it the week after, and the week after that and the lot more we do that, we ingrained the habit, it becomes second nature, and then we don’t even have to think about it anymore. It just happens. |
| Richard | And in your book, you essentially saying that the way to look to achieve this, when you move into this is to start small. So you use the example, one of my favourites that I think I learned when I was about 13 years old or something, I don’t know why, but I learned it, that little example, we’ll call it that of the value of a penny, double daily? |
| Robert | Yes. |
| Richard | Not one cent double daily? |
| Robert | Right. |
| Richard | The value of a penny double daily. So if it doubles tomorrow, you got two pennies, now double two pennies, you’ll have four. So by the end of the month, how much money do you have? |
| Robert | You have approximately $2.7 million now, realistically, there is no investment out there in the world. |
| Richard | But when you tell me where that was. |
| Robert | That will do that for you. But the reason I used the example in the book is to get the characters understanding the concept of time and compound interest in order to help your savings and investments grow over time. |
| Richard | And compound interest is what you call? |
| Robert | The Seventh Wonder of the world. And I didn’t I guess, seventh or eighth right, depending on your perspective, that you know. But the reality, I didn’t think that it was some guy named Baron de Rothschild’s in this 1800’s who eventually coined that phrase. But if you don’t start saving dollar one today, then 38 late days later or 38 months later or 38 years later it won’t matter. You will have lost that time and compounding opportunity in order to make your personal finances better. |
| Richard | I think you mentioned in your book that if used the example, that if a 20-year-old, give or take, is able to save $2000 a year and does it only for 10 years and stops saving at that point but allows it to compound at whatever rate of interest, whatever rate of compounding. But just to keep things simple, we’ll use 10% which is way higher than what you’re going to get today, probably on average, but for the sake of the example, that 10% how much money is a person had by the time they are 65? |
| Robert | Approximately $1.2 million. |
| Richard | And all they’ve saved his $20,000. |
| Robert | Right. But if their friend, who says I’m not going to do this from the time I’m 20 to 30, I’m going to start when I’m 30 and they save that same $2000 a month for 10 years for all the way to 60 |
| Richard | Oh, all the way. |
| Robert | For the next 30 years, they will still not catch up to their friend, who started earlier and stopped. |
| Richard | It’s pretty graphic. |
| Robert | It’s the value of time. Now to a viewer or listener to the podcast, they may go, I’m 48 years old, I’m screwed because I’ve never saved dollar one. No. Start now. The best time to have planted a tree in your backyard if you want to sit in the shade is 35 years ago. The second best time is today, because if you don’t do it today, 30 years from now, you’re still not going to have any shade to sit under. So it’s the point where, regardless of where you are in that spectrum, if you’re 22 and starting it, great. If you’re 32 and starting it, great. If you’re 42 and starting it, great. The key is you have to start. |
| Richard | And along with that starting, goes the idea of goal setting, isn’t it? |
| Robert | Goal setting is |
| Richard | Start, but start what? You can’t just flail around? |
| Robert | No you |
| Richard | I mean you could, I suppose. |
| Robert | You could. |
| Richard | But it’s not smart. |
| Robert | But goal setting is important because it’s what in many cases drives our behaviour in the decisions we make. Why are we doing this? Because I want to accomplish X Y and Zed. “X” in the next year, “Y” five years from now and Zed 10-15 years from now. But without those mileposts out for us to work towards, we don’t see the reason why we are doing this in the first place? So we need to get very clear about that. |
| Richard | Keeps us on point. And keeps us essentially on target. |
| Robert | And one of the cool things that happens about goals is once you start crossing them off the list, you get incentivized to go, cool, how do we get more of these? Well, then we create more of them, and we keep trying to accomplish them. |
| Richard | I’m going to throw an acronym at you, Robert, you may have heard of it before because it’s in your book. Smart. S M A R T. Tell us what that is? |
| Robert | It stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based. It’s the I’ll say, the backbone of goal setting. Everybody talks about goals, talks about this, and what it is creates a structure for you to set goals. Your goal has to be specific. I’m going to lose 36 pounds. It has to be measurable. Already had measured that when you get on a scale every once in a while, is it achievable? Well, it depends on your time frame if you said by the end of the calendar year, but we’re already in October, 36 pounds in a month and a half, may not be really may not be achievable or realistic? |
| Richard | Give up eating. |
| Robert | Well, exactly. But, then here’s what happens. We give up eating for like, three days, and on day four, we head to Tim Hortons for a couple of you know, sour cream doughnuts and a large double-double because after three days we have, we’ve committed ourselves to fail by not setting a realistic goal. |
| Richard | So that’s what SMART is? |
| Robert | Yes. |
| Richard | Okay, now you also mentioned something else. I’ve heard this before, but missed to see it in your book, nice to be reminded of it, the phrase called, Pay Yourself First. |
| Robert | When we think about the concept of money and saving dollar one, we have to, particularly for those of us who get a regular paycheck from an employer, take the money right off the top. So if you received $500 that week, is your paycheck the first X amount? Whether it’s $5, $10, $50 or $100 goes right off the top. You don’t see it. You don’t get it. You can’t spend it. |
| Richard | You don’t put it into the same account that you’re |
| Robert | Exactly. It goes into that account not linked to any of your debit cards, so that you have no access to it without maybe physically going into a bank branch in order to do it. |
| Richard | So this is a bit of takeoff on something you said earlier about, we’re talking about pretending that you have a 5% pay decrease. |
| Robert | Right. |
| Richard | Basically, you’re paying yourself that 5% first. |
| Robert | Right, and that once you do that the rest of the money you get to spend without ever worrying about it. The problem is, many of us try to do the reverse. How much money do I make? Here’s my bills, add all the bills up, and we draw that big line, say, I’ll save what’s left. |
| Richard | Right. |
| Robert | There’s none left. Because our unexpected expenses and our ability to go and hang out with our friends on the weekend and only eat into all of that residual income and then the amount at the bottom is zero, I don’t have any money to save. No, take it off the top and once it’s gone, the rest of the money, go ahead and spend the rest of the money. And I didn’t invent this phrase. I think it was the guy who wrote the book, The Richest Man In Babylon, in 1904, who actually coined the Pay Yourself First. |
| Richard | Nothing new under the Sun. |
| Robert | There really isn’t. |
| Richard | But, are munificent Government invented a couple of things for us, one is called on RRSP and the other one is called a TFSA, registered retirement savings plan, and the tax-free savings account. |
| Robert | Right |
| Richard | Now, you’ve got some ideas on the benefits and, to some extent, the detriments, of one against the other. |
| Robert | There are, I think there are certainly pros to both. The RRSP is thought of as a much longer-term vehicle for saving money. Because, you put money into the account, you get a tax break today, and then that income will be taxed back to you 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 years out. |
| Richard | Presumably at a lower rate because your overall income, |
| Robert | Presumably at a lower rate, because we make hopefully a decent living while we do that when we’re retired, our income falls. We’re taking money out, it should be taxed less. It grows compounds over all that time. And then we can tap into that later. The tax-free savings account, and I guess it’s a decade old now, so but it’s still relatively new in the grand scheme of things, allows us to put money away, and all of the growth has never taxed, in that account. We don’t get a tax break for contributing the way we do with the RRSP, but all of the growth that occurs in the account comes out of it, none taxed. I think, the one thing I wish they had given it a different name because they called it the tax-free savings account, so we tend to think of it as a savings account, like it’s transactional. We put money in this week, take it out two weeks now. Put money in next month, take it out two months from now. It wasn’t designed to be transactional that way, and you can invest inside it and hold stocks, mutual funds, ETF’s. It shouldn’t just be thought of as a savings account. Why? Because you can’t get compound interest when you’re only using, getting 1% on your money, using it as a savings account. |
| Richard | Yeah, and not surprisingly, and not that many people are terribly converse in with what a TFSA is and how it works, the way you’re describing. A lot of people, maybe most people understand what they’ve been, just a retirement savings plan, because CPP is that there’s always talk about providing for yourself when you’re as you get older. Generally, some concern and anxiety that comes into play for probably most people that, what will they be able to live on? Are they going to be totally dependent upon CPP and OAS? Or will they be able to provide for themselves completely, or maybe supplement themselves? |
| Robert | And, do some Canadians have a pension plan? Some of it’s a defined contribution plan based upon what you contributed through your employer and automatic deductions and what they might match. Others are defined benefit, which is more of an older style, which my father had because he worked for the same company for 35 years. But, all of these things, to me, go along with having a conversation with a financial professional because there’s lots of decisions to make, lots of options to have, and sometimes it helps to have another person help walk you through the process. Here’s the pros and cons. You’ve got 15 options. How do we sort our way through that? Yet, sometimes we try to convince ourselves that, I’m smart enough to figure this out all by myself. And, yes, some people are smart enough, but, going right back to where we started this conversation, how you work with your personal finances, has nothing to do with how smart you are it’s how, |
| Richard | What education is. |
| Robert | Or what education you have. It’s what are you willing to learn through the process to make better decisions? |
| Richard | Well, on that note, Robert, I think that wraps it up pretty good. You don’t have to be a PhD or anything like that to be able to manage your finances well. |
| Robert | Absolutely not. You just have to want to. |
| Richard | And, I know a little bit about how, and I can’t think of a better way for anybody to, for anybody to, find out how and to read your book, Rich Is A State Of Mind. Rich Is A State Of Mind. And highly recommend that anybody pick it up. Where can they get this book? |
| Robert | The best place to get a copy of the book is from my website, which is www.richisastateofmind.com. So it’s the book title, just as one word. If they’re interested in the other work I’m doing, It’s robertgignac.com, and they both link to each other. |
