I'm excited to announce that John Robertson and I will be hosting Money 201 on Tuesday, February 24th from 6:30-8:00PM at the Port Union branch of the Toronto Public Library.

(Update: John has uploaded a version of his part of our presentation for your viewing pleasure)

What on earth is Money 201?

Once you've already mastered the basics of paying off debt and saving, what are the next steps to take in your financial life? We'll walk through long-term planning to provide the context for how to fit the financial pieces of your life together, that takes into account your individual needs and goals, and will help you make sensible investing decisions.

The workshop will then cover basic investment options with a focus on index funds and doing it yourself. Other items to be briefly discussed include portfolio rebalancing, analysis paralysis, TFSAs and RRSPs, and suggested reading. This workshop is intended for non-professionals who are interested in learning more about planning, investing, and how to take control themselves.

Who on earth are Sandi Martin and John Robertson?

Sandi Martin is a fee-only financial planner at Spring Personal Finance, and works with regular people across Canada to figure out what they want their money to do for them and to find the simplest, smartest way to do it. She moderates the Google+ Canadian Personal Finance online community, co-hosts the Because Money podcast, and writes for several sites (including this one, naturally.)

John Robertson is the author of The Value of Simple, a plain-language guide to investing for Canadians, with a focus on implementing your plan. John works to communicate complex topics in ways that everyone can understand as a scientific writer/editor and personal finance blogger.

He brings a no-nonsense evidence-based approach to managing finances.

Where on earth is the Port Union branch of the Toronto Public Library?

Address: 5450 Lawrence Avenue East, Toronto, ON

Public Transit: 

Go train - Rouge Hill stop

TTC Lawrence Ave. East bus stop #54A or #54E

Parking:Free - community centre parking lot 

Register for Money 201 Here

Please register for Money 201. We will use your email address to notify you of any changes to time or venue.

(Also, we want to make sure we have enough chairs)

As much as I love recording Because Money with my good friends Jackson Middleton and Robb Engen, and getting to shoot the breeze with our knock-out roster of guests, I come away from each episode regretting that I didn't get to say just this one more thing. (And that I waved my hands around too much. Again.)

In our latest episode, we welcomed Alexandra Macqueen to talk generally about the thousand-word financial makeovers that run in nearly every Canadian newspaper, and specifically about the Eric and Ilsa debacle that ran in the Globe and Mail last weekend. The video, transcript. and links to the relevant sites and articles are up on becausemoney.ca for your viewing pleasure.

Here's a point that I wanted to make and didn't quite get to: most of the value in a financial plan (or facelift, or makeover, or what-have-you) is in showing your work, not in the answers themselves. That is, the fact that recommendations are made for you is equally - if not more - important than the fact that recommendations are made at all.

All of the information you'd get in a plan to build your retirement income, pay off your debts, control your spending, decide between renting and buying, take a lifetime pension or the commuted value, or anything else is out there already: online, in a book, or in a research journal. But because it's not specific to you, it is therefore is not as clear or motivating as a plan that addresses your situation directly and in detail.

Let me give you an example: Doug Runchey is a Canada Pension Plan expert who writes very detailed and informative posts over at Retire Happy.

The relevant information to calculate your own pension amount, or the breakeven point to apply for benefits depending on your life-expectancy, or how the Child Rearing Drop Out provision works is all right there in the post, and yet after each one is published there quickly appears 93 comments that are all variations on the question "but what about me and my particular situation?"

Every financial facelift says essentially the same thing: smooth your lifetime consumption and taxes by saving enough in the right kind of registered account, spend less than you earn, think about which goals are the most important and which ones you can move around, make sure you've got appropriate insurance, etc.Is it the right advice? Sure. Is it worth repeating? Absolutely. But unless it's advice for you, addressing your bank balance, your income, your behavioural blind spots, and the values that make you get out of bed every morning, it's the financial health equivalent of  "eat more vegetables, fewer processed foods, and exercise more" repeated over and over again in slightly different words.

This month, we were delighted to welcome Michael Katchen of WealthSimple to the show to talk about what's wrong with the asset management industry, how he and others like him plan to break it, and why regular Canadians who, for whatever reason, shouldn't or can't DIY their portfolios should be very, very excited.

Full transcript can be found here.

Show references:

• WealthSimple website

• That morbid post I wrote for Boomer and Echo

• The article in which Jon Chevreau warns you against calling Michael a robo-advisor

• The HuffPo article about robo-advisors

The folks at Mint.com interviewed me a few weeks ago about working with a financial planner, getting started on a financial makeover, and advice for beginners on investing. 

When enlisting help to manage your money, what should you look for in a planner?

You should look for someone who will emphasize your goals as the starting point, and who acknowledges that life is messy, planning is imprecise and no one can see into the future. Your work with a planner should equip you to make ongoing decisions for yourself down the road by coming to a very clear understanding of your own financial situation, the direction you plan on heading, and the values that are important to you.

For someone who wants to start managing their money responsibly - whether they're just starting a career in their 20s or getting ready to retire in their 60s - where's the best place to start?

The best place to start is the place you want to end. There's no sense in starting with a budget or a financial plan without being absolutely clear about what's really important to you, what you'd like to accomplish and the values you want to build your life around.

What do you think are the biggest mistakes people make when creating a budget? How do you coach them to make a budget they'll stick to?

People starting out so often make the mistake of believing that creating a budget will effect a change right away, and get discouraged the first time they get off track. Sticking to a budget is a matter of training and discipline, and it's a rare person that gets it right the first time. My coaching is always to evaluate where they go wrong and be prepared to adjust course along the way, instead of throwing up their hands in frustration and giving up on purposeful spending...

Read more at Mint.com   

Despite Robb Engen's absence from this week's podcast, Jackson Middleton and I had a great time talking with our guests about why regular Canadians should care about the regulation of financial advice.

I've written about the incentives that are holding even the most decent and ethical commission-based financial advisors from giving the best advice to clients many (many, many) times, most recently here, here, here, here, and - my personal favourite - here, so I'll spare you today.

John Robertson has an excellent follow-up post Regulation of Financial Advisors up on his blog Blessed by the Potato, in which he nails the issue:

"The system needs to be reformed so that someone with no knowledge and no way to evaluate quality in advance can go to get advice from someone and trust in that advice (and get reasonable value for the fees that they pay while they’re at it). And really the best way to build trust for the lay public is to have a trustworthy expert give the thumbs-up — that is, regulation."

Our other esteemed guest Noel D'Souza has also written about the issue on his shiny new blog Do These Look Even? (and I'd bet all of my money that he'll write about it again, so stay tuned):

"For far too long, Canadians have had trouble accessing the financial advice they need,  as opposed to the product sales focused “advice” the industry usually sells. This is one of the unfortunate side-effects of a commission-based advisory model that ties advice to product sales."

As for the rest of our opinions, well, you'll have to watch the episode. (That is, until we pony up for transcripts. Again - and I'm sensing a theme here - stay tuned.)