Understanding the Financial Products You are Buying with John Shmuel
Posted on: April 30, 2020Posted in Financial Advice, Interviews, Videos | Comments Off on Understanding the Financial Products You are Buying with John Shmuel
Financial Literacy : Understanding the Financial Products You are Buying with John Shmuel
This video episode is about financial literacy. John Shmuel talks about understanding and comparing your options before making your financial decisions on insurance and mortgages.
| Richard | Hi, I’m Richard Killen, welcome to The Glass Is Half Full. We’re going to have a very interesting discussion today about financial literacy. And with us, prepared to do that, is John Shmuel. Who, I’m going to have to read this John, because my memory really is not that good anymore when it comes to the details. John is Managing Editor and Senior Writer for Lowestrates.ca. Is that correct? Before that, he spent seven years covering investigating economics for the National Post, which I still subscribe to, by the way. |
| John | Wow, thank you. |
| Richard | In other words, I’ve read you. His reporting has taken him around the world. And, John’s a graduate of Ryerson University and a board member of Society of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. So, welcome John. |
| John | Thanks for having me. |
| Richard | Pleasure. Now, your company, I understand, has just completed a financial, financial literacy survey. It plays right into the main topic of conversation here. In this survey, you asked 10 questions and many of the finds, of responses, your company found, very, very surprising and interesting. Can you share with us some of those questions and perhaps more, especially some of the answers. |
| John | Yeah, definitely. I’ll start by saying that the goal of this survey wasn’t to confuse or confound people, it was just to really get a sense of how well people understood the financial products that they’re buying. We ask questions like, do you know the difference between a mortgage term and amortization? Which is really important, right? And we found that the majority of people didn’t understand that question. We asked people whether they knew that, whether they were aware that there is no-fee checking accounts available to you, right? Because some banks will offer you checking accounts we have to pay every month. Some do it for free. Most people didn’t know that, that there were free checking accounts. So the questions really were to say, did you know that these kinds of financial products are available? Or do you know what these financial products do? And we didn’t ask, do you know what an E. T. F is or anything complicated? We asked about products that essentially almost everyone needs to use every day. And, we found that a lot of people didn’t know the answers to them. This wasn’t surprising because we’ve done some research into financial literacy, and we found it’s quite low in Canada. And we also found some other interesting stats like people in Canada are more averse to going online and using online products, especially when you look at other countries like the U. S or the U. K. Where there are a lot more comfortable and those marketplaces are a lot more competitive. You can get, there’s a lot more choice for you, there are a lot more customized products. So, we found not only is there a limited understanding of financial literacy and how the products work, but that people are also, for lack of a better word, more conservative when it comes to finances here. They’re afraid to try new things, and that costs them money. |
| Richard | Online is much more popular in the States and then the United Kingdom. |
| John | But by far, those two countries, by far |
| Richard | I wouldn’t have thought there was a difference, maybe it’s part of the Canadian psyche, or something like that? |
| John | Yeah, well, I think one of the reasons is, you know, here we have the big five banks and most people are most comfortable with going to the big five banks. And the U. S. and the UK, you just see a ton of variety. It’s so many small regional players that you can tailor to those regional and local needs. Where it’s here, it’s five banks, five big banks, six to some extent. Yeah, yeah, and you know you’re with them for life, and your parents were probably with them for life and your grandparents were probably with them for life. |
| Richard | That’s interesting. Then, you wrote an article in which you said that there was 40%, let me read this right here, 40% of Canadians don’t realize that mortgage rates are negotiable. |
| John | Yeah, yeah. So this ties into |
| Richard | That’s a staggering statement to make to a lot of people, right? |
| John | Huge. I mean, yeah, it’s almost one in two people that walk into a bank, walk out having never known that they could have negotiated the interest rate they’re paying. Yeah, they had no idea. Right? And that’s such it’s not a level playing field at all. Because if one person goes in, they know they can negotiate, and the other person isn’t even aware that it’s an option. That’s categorically unfair, right? So, yeah, we asked Canadians, did you know that when you get a mortgage, you can do this? And so it’s quite shocking because we’ve run the numbers. I mean, if you get, you know, especially in a city like Toronto, right? The average price of a home here is so expensive. If you get a $1,000,000 mortgage, and you’re talking about 1% point difference in the interest rate that you’re going to pay, I mean, not a lot of people are going to have a $1,000,000 mortgage, but this is just an example, to show you the huge amount of money, just a single percentage point makes, you know you’re talking three versus four every year. Then we’re talking essentially $10,000 a year, right? I mean, it’s huge, it’s a massive amount of money that you’re saving. |
| Richard | Because that will be $10,000 a year for 30 years. |
| John | Yeah, yeah. I mean, |
| Richard | That sounds like about $300,000. |
| John | It’s a lot of money. It’s a lot of money. And even, even a smaller mortgage. Even $400,000. Even $200,000 right? I mean, the percentage points count. |
| Richard | Divided by whatever, right? |
| John | Yeah, Yeah, exactly. And because mortgages, a lot of people spend 25 years paying them, right? So even if you’re saving $1000 a year, that adds up to $25,000 over 25 years. |
| Richard | This goes back to the initial thing said about the people understanding the difference between mortgage term and mortgage amortization, right? |
| John | Yeah, exactly. |
| Richard | If you ask a lot of people when is your mortgage finished? Oh, in five years. |
| John | Exactly. |
| Richard | But it’s not, it’s a 30-year deal. You just have to renew this thing. Renew the rates and renew details of it every five years. |
| John | Exactly. And I think it’s pretty common that people don’t know the difference. I don’t think that’s, I think you could ask anyone, most people you know and they couldn’t tell you the difference, right? So, that all plays into just, you know, it’s good for financial companies when people don’t know, it’s good for them, right? I mean, they don’t want to give you a lower interest rate. Whether they’re renewing or buying, right, they walk in and if they can make that $1000 extra a year, that’s great for their bottom line, right, so they have no incentive to look out for consumers. And so this is one thing where you know, we have to ask, How do you make people aware that when you get a financial product, you could negotiate something like a mortgage, right? So that’s something we’re looking into and trying to help with financial literacy. |
| Richard | Insurance is an integral part of financial planning in the first place, and basically, for anybody, especially a family person, it’s a necessity for the future of your family. |
| John | Absolutely. |
| Richard | How do people see this? Am I right, in that? And secondly, how do they get over that? |
| John | Yeah, well, you’re absolutely right. I mean, we’re, you know, we’re a rate comparison website, that allows you to compare auto insurance and home insurance. And, we find that there are a lot of people that visit, but we also find that there are a lot of people that will follow up and say, wow, I had no idea that this was so important, or I had no idea that I could even do this. And then when we ask people you know what, why didn’t you know that you could compare auto insurance? And it’s like they tell us because it’s the bottom of the list, you know, if they have a to-do list, insurance is on the very bottom. For people, it’s just for them. There’s a couple of things working against insurance. Number one. it’s often optional, right? So you don’t have to get home insurance, right? You don’t have to get life insurance if you’re traveling, you don’t have to get travel insurance. But, it’s also one of those things where you know, if you don’t get a checking account today, you can get a checking account tomorrow. But when you need insurance, if you get into a car accident or something happens to you when you’re traveling, you can’t call your insurance company and say, can I actually get insurance? Yeah. Yeah, right. That’s it. |
| Richard | By the way, the accident happened 40 minutes ago. |
| John | Yeah, exactly, right? No, that’s it. That car is totaled, and you’re going to have to pay out of pocket. Or if you’re traveling and you get sick, that hospital stay, which I mean, you know, you hear the horror stories of $200,000 or $300,000, the hospital bills from traveling overseas without insurance that you’re stuck with that. You know, all of a sudden you’re talking about bankruptcy. You’re talking about, you know, a situation you never want to deal with. |
| Richard | Yeah, I see that in my business. |
| John | Yeah, absolutely, right. I mean, you could probably speak to that more than anyone. And so insurance is one of those things where, unfortunately, you know if you do need it, you don’t have it, it’s too late. And but because of the optional nature, I think a lot of people don’t think about it, and the fact that it’s just, it’s convoluted. It’s complicated. |
| Richard | That’s where I was. My mind was going there, thinking about some of the issues involved. People fighting insurance, basically, I suspect that just an insurance contract, just what you have to look at to sign and all that, just confuses the heck out of people. |
| John | Definitely. It’s this huge text of 1000 situations that it covers. |
| Richard | Written by the lawyers, kind of thing. |
| John | Yeah, it literally is fine print. All of it is fine print. Your entire insurance booklet is fine print, and that scares people. That’s daunting. And that also is |
| Richard | Is there a shortcut to that? Can people, say, look, I can’t read all this stuff? I get lost? |
| John | Absolutely. |
| Richard | But is there something that I can learn and know, that takes me to the part that matters? |
| John | Yeah, I would say, if your getting insurance you need to have, you know, you need to talk to the insurance company or the broker that you’re getting insurance from and say I don’t understand this, can you take me through it? And if they say they don’t have time and you can read it yourself, you know that you’re dealing with a person you don’t want to be getting insurance from, right? So, that’s the first thing. Whether it’s a broker which is essentially someone who will sell insurance from various providers and try to find you the best deal. Or, you know, whether you go directly to an insurance company, like one of the big insurance companies. When you’re buying, you have to say, I don’t understand this product, I would need you to help me understand it before I buy it, can you do that? That’s the first thing you should do. |
| Richard | You mentioned a broker, who does the broker work for? |
| John | I mean, the broker works for themselves, right? Essentially there, |
| Richard | Is he working for you or the insurance company? |
| John | So, brokers on our website, particularly, in general, |
| Richard | We will come back to your website. |
| John | Yeah, definitely. Okay, so I mean, a broker essentially makes commission on insurance policies they sell, right? They need to sell those insurance policies to make commissions. Yeah, exactly. But at the end of the day, they want |
| Richard | You provided the money? |
| John | Our company? As an individual, yeah. |
| Richard | The buyer provides the money. |
| John | Yeah, exactly. So, as a buyer, you pay the premium and the insurance company pays the commission. Yeah, exactly. But at the end of the day, brokers, you know, they thrive on word of mouth, right? They have to have good word of mouth. They have to have a customer that says, Hey, I have a great broker like you should use him, right? So I think intrinsically brokers, they’re driven towards good customer service, right? But insurance companies, to an extent, but at the end of the day, it’s about the bottom line, right? They have to make more money than they pay out in claims, insurance companies have to be profitable. |
| Richard | So you’re, to keep it really relatively simple, maybe overly simple, you’re better off with a broker. |
| John | I think if you don’t understand what you’re doing with insurance, definitely, because you’re paying the broker for advice, right? I mean, that’s the |
| Richard | And the broker can shop. |
| John | What it comes down to is that they can shop for you. And, you know, you can call them up and say, I’m really, I don’t understand this policy, can you help me with it? Yeah. The big advantage of brokers is that they essentially shop for you. They find the best deals for you. Whereas the insurance company you are getting that one price, right? |
| Richard | Who you’re dealing with, is locked into whatever product they have. |
| John | Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I was going to say, you know, when we talk about insurance being extremely boring and people not wanting to deal with it, I think a big problem that arises from that is the fact that this is actually a product that you need to really understand, that, because if you’re buying home insurance and your basement floods, most people don’t know that home insurance actually doesn’t include overland flooding. So you have to buy extra coverage to protect your basement from flooding. So you find people in these situations where they think they’re protected and they’re not. And in some cases, from the most common thing that you’re hoping to insure yourself against, right? Because I think between fires and floods of a home, those are the two most common things. |
| Richard | You’re not likely to have an airplane fall on your head. |
| John | Exactly, right? I mean, you’re not insuring yourself for a missile hitting your house or something in Canada, right? I mean, you’re hoping to protect your home from probably flood or fire, it’s the most common thing. |
| Richard | Unless the Russian aim is off. |
| John | Yeah. Who knows with the geopolitical situation today where things are going to go, but yeah, I mean, you would hope that you would think you have home insurance. My basement floods, you call up your insurance company, my basement flooded. I’m going to have to do a lot of repairs. I hope I’m covered. And then all of a sudden, they tell you, “No, you’re not. You don’t have overland flood insurance”. And it’s because all you had to do was take the time to ask a question, right? What’s covered? Exactly, because you don’t know. |
| Richard | You don’t appreciate that it might not be included. Make assumptions. House insurance is house insurance. |
| John | You would think. And that’s misleading in and of itself, right? While it almost seems random that one of the most common things people hope to ensure for, is not included in a base package. |
| Richard | Incredible. Are there any other pitfalls? Let’s go back to mortgages for a minute, if you don’t mind, John. We’re talking about shopping for mortgages. The same subtleties apply in mortgages? |
| John | Yeah, absolutely. There’s so many different kinds of mortgages. We got a fly in the office. Yeah, absolutely. There’s so many different kind of mortgages. There’s an open mortgage, a closed mortgage, a variable, a fixed. You have mortgages that charge different penalties for canceling early, and that’s an interesting fact. You know, we did a study that says most people break their mortgage before the five-year terms over right, because you might buy a small home, a starter home, and all of a sudden you have a kid and you need to move up, right? So, a lot of people don’t know some mortgages will be very forgiving for breaking early. Others will be very punitive. They’ll hit you with a lot of interest charges for canceling early. |
| Richard | Does this affect the rates? |
| John | Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, whether you’re getting a fixed or a closed, that will affect the rates. |
| Richard | If it’s wide open? |
| John | Excuse me, an open or a closed, that will affect the rates. |
| Richard | So if you were to break a mortgage at the three-year mark, on a five-year term, on a friendly mortgage, you’re not going to pay anything. No penalty. |
| John | You probably will, but it will be, well, if it’s open you won’t. Yeah. Okay. So if it’s a closed mortgage you will. |
| Richard | It’s a mortgage that you can do it and not pay a penalty, but you are going to pay a higher rate for that mortgage. |
| John | Yeah. Yeah, you’re essentially paying for the luxury of freedom, right? But you might want it if you know that, Oh, I might be expecting children in the next few years, and I might want to go up to another house. |
| Richard | You have to give anybody with a mortgage, especially if its the first mortgage when their new to the whole thing, is give a little thought to what the next five years is likely to bring. |
| John | Exactly. And that could be hard, but yeah, I mean, a lot of people aren’t even aware of the differences right? I mean, we were not taught about mortgages in school. |
| Richard | And, this is what financial literacy is. |
| John | Yeah, absolutely. It’s the most, it’s the biggest decision you’re going to make. And most people have a crash course in mortgages when they’re about to bid on a home or in there in a bidding war, and all of a sudden they need to get a mortgage, and they have, you know, 24 hours to decide, and they have to learn everything they can in that 24 hours for the biggest financial decision they’re going to make, right. That’s so common. It’s so common. People find themselves in a situation, and that’s a terrible situation. Being 24 hours to make a $400,000 decision or whatever your home costs. |
| Richard | A lot of things, most people would get much more foresight, too, whatever it is. And here is the biggest thing, and there’s no forethought given. |
| John | Absolutely. |
| Richard | Why is that? |
| John | Well, I think it’s an industry problem. I think it’s an educational problem. I mean, you know, in school we’ll learn, as useful as it is, you know, my sister’s an engineer, but we’ll learn algebra in all these theoretical forms of math. But what’s stopping us… |
| Richard | Nobody teaches you basic budgeting. |
| John | Exactly. Why isn’t there a course right in school that says, here’s what you need to know about your mortgage, here’s what you need to know about your first credit card, here’s what you need to know about getting auto insurance when you’re 16 when you’re most likely in an accident? You know, I wonder if young drivers would be more responsible if they just got sat down and said, you know, here’s what’s going to happen your insurance rates and how mad your parents are going to be when you know your monthly, they have to pay $600 a month or whatever it is, to ensure you because you got into an accident, right? Just taking people through these things because they don’t think through them. Exactly. Yes, and I think because we’re not prepared for it, we don’t think about it. And when you’re buying a home you’re thinking about a mortgage, the home decision itself is so stressful, right? That’s where your laser-focused on what’s a good neighborhood. It’s emotional. There’s so many things going on and playing. You have two people. If, I mean you might be buying by yourself, but let’s say you have two people trying to make a decision on one place to live right, and that can be contentious. And so the mortgages almost you know, the money part is almost an afterthought. Yeah, exactly. And so that’s why we just, you know, I think a), there’s a role for schools to play. Where their part of being an adult is learning about how to manage your finances properly, and you know, it’s good to see that the Ontario government, I think they’re doing a pilot program now. Yeah, for financial literacy. But why, in 2019 is this finally happening, right? Why wasn’t this done 30 years ago? We have so many people in debt as you’re more than aware, you know, people struggling with bankruptcy, because, you know, in some cases, it had nothing to do with financial literacy. In other cases, if they had only known right? If they had only known the repercussions of taking on something you can’t afford. |
| Richard | On the plane of telling people about options that they might not appreciate that they have, is that if you come and see me, you don’t necessarily have to go bankrupt. We have this other product called a proposal that allows you actually pay your way out of the problem, right? Half the people we see nowadays actually prefer that, to use that option. |
| John | And they probably don’t even know what a proposal is, right? |
| Richard | They might see a bit of it on TV, advertisements, and all that. |
| John | About it. |
| Richard | I’d like to go back to something that we discussed just a few minutes ago. We talked about it, but perhaps didn’t focus enough on this, the idea of renewing and probably the rest of the world is something like me, my car insurance has been with the same company for the past 50 years, 51 years I think, and the insurance comes in, we sign, send it back, and that’s it. |
| John | Pretty common. |
| Richard | I didn’t even read it. |
| John | Pretty common. Yeah, |
| Richard | Look at the money, what the premium is going to be, and if it doesn’t differ too much, or perhaps even doesn’t differ at all from last year, sign here, and away she goes. Partly is, we’re fairly happy with the people, although I don’t think they know who we are anymore, but the other thing is that it’s more trouble than it’s worth to do anything about it. We think. But I think you have a different view on this? |
| John | Yeah, definitely. I would like to start by saying it’s, that’s absolutely a very common situation. I think most people when you get insurance, you remember all the paperwork, all the time that went into it, and you just don’t want to relive that, right? In your mind, if you’re switching a provider, you’re going to have to go through all that again. So I think people see that renewal in the mail. Like you said, if the price looks good, why do anything about it, right? But it’s one of those situations where you don’t know what you don’t know, right? So you don’t know whether that price you’re paying is actually good. |
| Richard | I’m going to find out what I don’t know here. |
| John | Yeah. I hope so, yeah. I mean, hopefully, I’m casting. |
| Richard | Some of the folks out there will be finding out something. |
| John | Yeah, hopefully, I’m shining a light on insurance, but, you know, you might think $1400 a year is great. But then there might be other providers out there who, you know, may offer you a discount for, you know, working for a particular company or going to school at a particular school, right? Alumni discounts. They might offer you discounts for X amount of years of safe driving. There might be senior discounts, their might, and not every insurer does this right. Certain insurers offer certain discounts whether they’re targeting a particular demographic or what have you and you don’t know unless you compare your options, right? So even though you think you might be getting a great rate, there might be an even better rate out there, right? And I think…. |
| Richard | But, that sounds like a lot of work. |
| John | Well, I think up until recently it was a lot of work. But with the dawn of the Internet, and I mean our website, you get 30 plus quotes in three minutes. |
| Richard | On your website? |
| John | On our website, you fill out your information, tell us what car you’re driving and then you get the quotes and it’s free. It’s quick. You can see the quote. You don’t actually have to go with the quote, but you should be doing that every year. I mean…. |
| Richard | I’m going to interject something, or interrupt you with, I’m sure there’s a lot of people going, and what’s that Website again? |
| John | Lowestrates.ca |
| Richard | Lowestrates.ca |
| John | So that’s something again because it’s free and because it literally takes three minutes, there’s no reason why before your renewal comes up, you wouldn’t go on the website and compare, right? There’s no obligation to get, you might compare and say, Well, I actually am paying the best rate, and then you have the comfort of knowing that you are. But auto insurance is one of those spaces where it’s so competitive where we find, for instance, if you get a quote on our website between those 30, sometimes the difference between the cheapest and the most expensive can be over $1000 a year. Yeah, it’s incredible, right? You’re talking about serious money that you can save. And again you might find that you are, you know, paying the cheapest. But you don’t lose anything from comparing, right? So that’s something that we try to really educate people on because the renewal letter coming in and people just being like, That’s great. I’m renewed, you know, for another year. No problem. Very easy. It’s it feels so simple. |
| Richard | The renewal comes in and you look at it and you say, it’s not going to change my lifestyle. |
| John | Yeah, you just. That’s it, right? I mean, you don’t have to say yes, right? They take no response as default. Yes, you’ve agreed to another year with us. That’s how easy they’ve made it, right? |
| Richard | Sometimes I wonder if I can be pushing for that in my business. |
| John | I mean it’s a great thing to have in a business. But it’s not, it’s not right for the consumer, right? I mean, it literally lulls consumers into a sense of complacency, which is what any company wants. So they keep using the product, right? So that’s why this all plays into financial literacy. It’s just being aware of what you can do and what you should do to ensure that you’re saving money. And this is not small money. As I said again, it’s like that difference I said, $1000 right between the top and the bottom one. We’re talking about a lot of money here, and just knowing this is just a simple thing. |
| Richard | It’s not just car insurance, it applies to other forms of insurance as well? |
| John | It does. Yeah, it applies to home insurance. Home insurance is an area where we’re seeing prices rise significantly because, you know, we’re seeing these massive storms keeping Toronto flooded basements. That’s one area where your basement floods…. |
| Richard | Climate change. |
| John | Climate change. And the home insurance industry there, you know, saying that home insurance rates are going to go up. You know the forest fires in Alberta that, you know, almost burned down Fort McMurray. Rates are going up for everyone. Just because nothing’s happened to your home, if an insurer is ensuring a lot of people in your province that’s something, if a huge flood hits the province, they’re probably going to raise rates for everyone to compensate for those claims they’re paying out. So you can’t have your head in the sand, you need to be aware of stuff like that. You need to be aware of what you can do, which is comparing and ensuring that your rates don’t go up, and just see what everyone else is offering you. |
| Richard | So Lowestrates.ca |
| John | Lowestrates.ca |
| Richard | Most of those questions, in fact, most of those questions will be asked on your behalf? Just when you dial in, the answers will be there. |
| John | Essentially, yeah, try to make it easy. |
| Richard | I don’t want to make it sound too simple, but simply the better for most people. |
| John | Yeah. |
| Richard | It helps people understand insurance, if I’m any example, and naturally, the illiterate when it comes to finances and insurance, and all that… and for a period of time I tried selling life insurance… |
| John | I think that’s the default position that most people don’t know about insurance. Yeah. |
| Richard | It was certainly a fault for me, but that’s why I don’t do that anymore, hard job. But people do have a tendency to be flummoxed a bit by the whole concept of insurance, we talked about this earlier. Yeah. But start off at the beginning here, when I mentioned that we were going to talk about financial literacy, what you’ve done is you’ve given us a ton of examples of financial literacy, okay, but let you talk about the term itself, financial literacy? |
| John | Yeah, I mean, it just comes down to understanding how to manage your money, right? How to make smart decisions with the financial products you get, understanding what they are and what they do. |
| Richard | Is it kind of like a recognition that no matter what your financial, what you’re dealing with, doesn’t matter, could be dealing with something at WalMart, that there’s always another point of view on this particular price, or product. Yeah. Or sometimes it might be worth investigating. |
| John | Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think more people know that you can get coupons from superstore flyers or, you know, grocery store flyers on and save money on your groceries, and they know that you can essentially do the equivalent of couponing for financial products, right? I mean, there’s, it’s just understanding that you know, you can negotiate certain things that you can get better deals. Yeah, most people. And I think there’s also this preconception that the financial world is so complicated. You know, we always hear this thing. I’m bad with money and, but that’s, you know, don’t make that your default mindset, right? Take the time to say, Well, maybe I don’t understand this, but I can learn about it, right? Just like you can learn about couponing, and you can go through and see what the best deals are. You can do the same thing very easily with financial products, so I think for a long time, and, you know, financial companies don’t want people to know. They’re in a better situation when people don’t know because they can charge more. They can charge more, they can keep consumers complacent. As we said with the renewal situation. So anything that I think especially, you know, Canadians can do to educate themselves about money and finances and financial products. It’s, you know, maybe you’re in a situation where financial literacy isn’t gonna help you, right? You’ve had bad luck in your life and it doesn’t matter if you understand about mortgages, you can’t get yourself out. But the one thing we say about financial literacy is it will never hurt you to learn more, right? And it might not necessarily help you depending on your situation but will never hurt you. And for a lot of people, it will help them. It will help them before you know they renew their car insurance or when they’re getting a credit card, to understand what the best product is or what the best deal is out there. |
| Richard | You mentioned credit cards, we’ve been talking about insurance and mortgages, and all that, but it almost applies to credit cards as well? |
| John | Absolutely. We had a customer the other day email us and say they had no idea that they could, you know, that they were paying 20% in interest, and there was a credit card that allowed them to pay 0% a promotional offer for 12 months, and it was a big game-changer for them. So again, and maybe that’s not right for everyone. But just you’re surprised at how many people will reach out to you when you’re talking about financial literacy and say, I had no idea I could do that. And, wow, that was so big, that was a game-changer for me. |
| Richard | You made a comment about the tendency, put it that way, the tendency of institutions, companies to prefer the buyer, their customer, to be relatively ignorant of the facts of life, if you want, of their product and what they do. It’s an interesting thing, because in my business, the whole point, if you want my being here, is to make sure that people do know everything that they can know before they go ahead and make a decision about what to do about their financial problems. |
| John | Which is how it should be. And I don’t want to say that, you know, banks are actively trying to pull wool over our eyes and keep us ignorant. But you know they don’t have any incentive. Yeah, they don’t have any incentive to educate or say, you know, maybe it’s not a good idea if you take out this line of credit, right? I mean their entire businesses is built on, hopefully you will take that line of credit. |
| Richard | In fact, I would suspect that for a lot of their employees, getting too deeply into all the nuances of things is enough to scare a customer off. |
| John | Probably. Yeah, it goes back to that insurance example, right? It’s… |
| Richard | Like the guy across the street who doesn’t explain anything. |
| John | Yeah, exactly. And you know what? These products are so complicated where customers probably if you haven’t taken it some time to, you know, educate yourself on financial or see they don’t even want, you know, the adviser or whoever you’re dealing with to go too deep, right? It’s going to scare them. |
| Richard | Very, very interesting John. Very interesting. One more thing. I want you to repeat this. Where can people go to get these answers, and in fact, the questions, too, to help themselves become financially literate? |
| John | Definitely. Yeah. Again, that’s Lowestrates.ca. |
| Richard | Sounds great. |
| John | Thanks for having me, Richard. |
| Richard | Thank you. Thank you for being here. |
