{"id":2133,"date":"2018-11-21T04:27:29","date_gmt":"2018-11-21T09:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/?p=2133"},"modified":"2018-12-09T00:42:45","modified_gmt":"2018-12-09T05:42:45","slug":"financial-literacy-month-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/?p=2133","title":{"rendered":"Financial Literacy Month 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a buyer beware world when it comes to your finances in Canada, with lots of high fees and a fractured regulatory system where we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re lucky if they even close the barn door after the horse has left (hi there FSCO<\/a>).<\/p>\n

And it won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get better any time soon: as Sandi points out in this Twitter thread<\/a>, the Ontario government is strongly signalling that this is going to be the case for a while. Financial literacy may not be the best answer for how we would arrange our society given the choice, but at this point it is our last, best hope.<\/p>\n

So happy financial literacy month!<\/p>\n

So how <\/em>do you get financially literate? As loud as the call is to add this stuff to the curriculum, it’s too late for anyone reading this to be helped by a developing mandatory program for high schools. Besides, just-in-time education seems to work better. Though that means you will have to take it upon yourself (or hope that whoever is already financially literate and reading this post has forwarded it to you) to seek out appropriate resources and learn before it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too late.<\/p>\n

There are lots of ways of doing that. You could subscribe to blogs like this one and follow along for a decade or so. You could hit up the reading guide<\/a>. You could take a course<\/a>. You can hire someone<\/a> (but then you need enough to know that good advice costs money and isn’t free at your local bank branch).<\/p>\n

I love blogs — I have one! — and follow many. But if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just starting out, I think there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s value to some structure, so books or courses are likely the better way to go. <\/p>\n

I have a course on investing. I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fantastic<\/em><\/a>, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the only option. In a recent episode of the Canadian Couch Potato podcast Dan Bortolotti did a good take-down of the consumer-focused CSI course on investing (the segment starts at about the 37:50 mark)<\/a>, and I thought that the points he mentioned that a course should cover were really good, and also something that I think my course covers.<\/p>\n

Need some other options? <\/p>\n

In Toronto, Ellen Roseman and Teri Courchene teach courses through UofT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s School of Continuing Studies, with multi-day evening options (winter<\/a>, fall<\/a>), and a one-day workshop<\/a> ($225). <\/p>\n

Your local college or university\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s continuing education department may have some offerings. Plus there are one-off seminars, like at the Toronto Public Library<\/a> (and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be presenting in the winter\/spring<\/a>).<\/p>\n

And if you have a business (or are part of one), a somewhat common thing is to have lunch-and-learns, or other non-work-related educational seminars, where a someone comes in to speak to the group, which can be a good way to help improve your employee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s financial literacy. Sometimes these take the form of a sales pitch from the big banks and mutual fund companies (which you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want), but for a modest fee there are lots of independent people who will do this (I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t advertise it but have done it once or twice, and know lots of others who do or would be interested if you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find someone).<\/p>\n

Back to the online courses, Kornel Szrejber (Build Wealth Canada) has How to Invest (for Canadians)<\/a>, an online course focusing on ETFs ($125). Bridget Casey (Money After Graduation) teaches the online Six Figure Stock Portfolio<\/a> (~$495 CAD) which includes trading as well as passive investing. Aman Raina (Sage Investors) has two How to Invest in ETFs<\/a> for those looking to take a passive approach ($149), and a more expensive one for would-be active investors. And those are just the ones on investing — I’m not sure I could catalogue the books, challenges, programs, and courses out there for budgeting. <\/p>\n

And a final tip for financial literacy month that comes from Sandi Martin<\/a>: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Start talking to other people about money. Normalize conversations about the choices we make about our investments (beyond “I’ve got a guy” or whatever it is people say) and spending. If we imagine the bad\/lazy\/corrupted actors as the enemy, our job as the resistance is to conspire with each other by sharing information and overcoming the urge to either feel shame (because we’re not doing the “right” things and want to wait before we share until we are) or shame others.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a buyer beware world when it comes to your finances in Canada, with lots of high fees and a fractured regulatory system where we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re lucky if they even close the barn door after the horse has left (hi there FSCO). And it won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get better any time soon: as Sandi points out in this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2133"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2146,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133\/revisions\/2146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}