Below you’ll find the answers to some questions you might have about this site. If you have other questions, please email hidden; JavaScript is required.
Who are you?
I am not an investing professional. I don’t work in the financial services industry. I’m a software engineer, a husband and an entrepreneur who, back in 2007, woke up to smell the proverbial ‘coffee’, and started asking some hard questions about money and the generally accepted financial advice that has been preached to us since we were kids:
- Buy RRSPs
- Invest in mutual funds
- Get a financial planner
- Let your banker take care of your investments
- Buy a house
- Pay off your mortgage as fast as you can
- Leverage is bad
- Debt is bad
- Investing is risky
- You know, this kind of stuff
I’ve learned a lot since then, and I’ve still got a lot more I’m learning. I’ve since made several changes to my investing strategies, started a few small but growing companies (one of them with my wife), and made some major changes to the ways that I think about money.
I’m not super-rich or super-wealthy, and I don’t own any giant corporations. I’m probably a lot like you, wanting to learn, wanting to create a good life for my family, and wanting to have more time to spend with my wife, my friends and my (future) kids. I like to help people.
Why are you writing this blog?
I want this to be a place where people can come to learn and understand about money. I want people to question their beliefs about money and whether there are better or smarter ways that they can live and invest. I want people to live their lives from a realist point-of-view, and understand that realism and ‘doom & gloom pessimism’ are two very different things. Even if the economy is in the ‘crapper’, you still have the power to make smart choices about what you do with your money, or how you prepare for rough times.
As Simon Black says:
There are two ways to sleep well at night… Be ignorant or be prepared.
I want to help you look at money and finance through a different light, and realize that most of the time what the media says about money and investing is exactly the opposite of what you should be doing.
I want to help you succeed. I want to help you be prepared.
What can I expect to find here?
Honesty. Sometimes rants. A lot of questions. You’ll hear me talking about gold & silver, limited partnerships, alternative investments and taxes. My goal is to help you think through why you make the decisions you do about money, and question whether that’s the best thing you could be doing. Or force you to think about why you believe something is “risky”. A lot of times, we don’t understand risk at all, except that our banker tells us something is “risky”, so we believe them.
Most of all, I hope you find something helpful. Something informative. Something that helps you.
If you ever have any questions about what I write, you can email hidden; JavaScript is required. If you write me an email, I will always write back.
