The Wealthy Barber Podcast

Dave Chilton’s book The Wealthy Barber Returns was my gateway book out of banking and into Advice Only Planning in 2013, so chatting with him about that journey thirteen years later was a real treat.

In this episode of The Wealthy Barber Podcast, we chat about all kinds of things, including last year’s CBC Marketplace episode, the complicated intersection of family law, the Income Tax Act, and the Pension Benefits Act, emergency funds vs. lines of credit, RRSPs vs. TFSAs, retirement income planning, and long term care.

A topic we spoke about but didn’t make it into the episode was the stranglehold that Canada’s banks have on investing products and the tremendous profits they make on the backs of everyday people because of it.

Dave’s comment at around minute 45 was that it’s strange that investment fees here in Canada are still so high when fees in other countries have decreased significantly, and that he wished they could bring down their mutual fund fees a bit.

My response was to ask what incentive do the banks have for cutting those fees? Canada is five banks in a trench coat, or two telecoms in a trench coat, or three developers in a trench coat…pick your industry, and it’s concentrated into the hands of a very small group of very rich people. Combined, these industries grab trillions of dollars of profits out of our pockets and the paycheques of their workers every year.

Enforcing and reinforcing existing anti-competition laws and regulating the banks (and the telecoms, and the developers, and the grocers) enough that they have to care what their customers think is the only way to make these essential services available to Canadians at a fair price.