[Ep. 390] What Every Canadian Should Know About Money

Jessica 

I’m so excited to have you on because I think this course that has been around now I think for a few years, the McGill personal finance essentials course, which is absolutely free. What a great resource. I’ve I took it myself, I think several years ago. So I’m sure it’s gone through many iterations and updates since then. So I think this is I’m really excited to share so people can try it out for themselves. So welcome.

Benjamin 

Good morning, Jessica. Yeah, I’m very excited to I’m very proud of this course, and very pleased with the success it has obtained over the last few years.

Jessica 

Yeah, so let’s let’s start with you first, because I know you had a very important hand in creating it and launching it, how did it all get started?

Benjamin 

It actually started with a discussion between our dean at the DeSoto faculty of Management at McGill University. Our dean had a conversation with people from RBC from the Royal Bank. And they were launching a big, big initiative, something they called Future launch. And the objective is to invest as part of their philanthropic activities. The objective was to better prepare young Canadians for life.

Jessica 

Yeah, give them something that we’re not really prepared for. I mean, I’m sure you hear it from people who finish the course being like, I wish something like this existed when I was in high school and earlier, and unfortunately, most of us don’t start our personal finance education until, I mean, for me, it was after university. Oh,

Benjamin 

absolutely. I think basic personal finance should be taught in high school, if not junior high school, because, yes, finance, if you want to know everything, if you want to have a career in finance, maybe it’s complicated. But I really feel what makes in my opinion, at least 90% of the difference is pretty basic. And absolutely everybody is able to understand and to learn how to avoid the big mistakes.

Jessica 

Absolutely. So it’s how long is the course has been around now.

Benjamin 

It’s been around for how it’s about four years now. And we’re I don’t have the latest figure, but we are definitely well, well over a quarter million people. So hopefully we might have reached 300,000 I’m not sure. But absolutely. It’s been very pleased with this. It’s been more successful than than what we expected. So of course that shows that there’s a real a real need.

Jessica 

A real demand for this kind of thing. Absolutely. And wow. 300,000 That’s a lot. I’m curious. Are you able to get any, you know, a sense of what students They were able to take away or what some of the feedback was once they were able to finish the course. And I think is also really great. People love a certificate, you get a certificate after the horse. People love that. I liked that you get that little here, you accomplish something. So I’m curious what what is kind of some of the general feedback you’re getting from students who finished.

Benjamin 

The feedback has been very positive. I think we found we find the right format that’s attractive to people. We’ve had a really good technical team. I mean, it’s been done with a professional. It’s not been done, you know, on zoom in. In my office, it’s been done with a professional video production team. That’s very good. So I think we found the right format. I think we found the right topics, by the way, as you as you mentioned. So the course has been around for four years. But we have been updating the modules. And we’ve also launched some recently, two new optional optional modules on the crypto crypto assets and sustainable investing. So we’ve been we’ve been trying to well teach people the basics about some of the topics that are really topical trendy these days.

Jessica 

Yeah, I think because I’m still on the email list, I got an email, I think, oh, there’s some new bonus material like, oh, that’s I think that’s amazing. Because that’s the other thing with finances. Although the foundations are pretty much they they’re pretty standard budgeting investing, like, it’s pretty strong. There are we as we’ve seen, over just the course of, you know, 510 15 years, there’s been so many new developments, like ESG was not something that we talked about back then crypto is not something that we talked about, but now they’re being talked about. And I think it’s really important to have some, you know, very organized and in fact checked information in the course, because I’m sure what you’ve seen, too, is a lot of there’s a lot of information out there a lot of misinformation.

Benjamin 

Absolutely. But I like what you said about the basic principles of finance are not changing, you know, they’ve been around for hundreds of years. And look at the kind of bubbles that we’ve seen recently for certain types of investments. They’ve literally been around for hundreds of years. I think the key thing is that yes, there are innovations and a lot of them. You know, of course, there has been a lot of negative things in the news, you know, what happened with some some crypto assets, for example. But I think there have been many positive developments in recent years, basically, a more democratic access to investing at a lower cost than what used to be to be available. So lots of exciting developments, some good but also some additional risks. But the basic principles of finance, you know, the basic mistakes that people make, that people should know how to avoid them, that they’re not, they’re not changing that much.

Jessica 

Yeah. Which for me is like a, you know, that’s a nice, that’s a nice thing, because what the feedback I get from people, especially as they are starting to like listen to my podcast started to educate themselves about personal finance, it can be overwhelming, there’s a lot to know, like you said, if you want to have a career in this, that was kind of a different situation, you can go so many different routes, it can be as complex as you want. But when it comes to like organizing it, doing it on your own, it doesn’t have to be that simple. So I’m curious when you created the syllabus for the course. How did you know what what should be in there? What was crucial to be in there for students?

Benjamin 

I think we have to convince so when we talked about the people. So by the way, one thing that I want to say is that. So as I mentioned, the course has been funded by RBC by the Royal Bank foundation, but I want to, and we talked to them at the beginning of the course, we talked about the general topics we would discuss up, but I want to stress that they’ve been very good. They’ve not influenced the contents.

Jessica 

There’s not like ads in there?

Benjamin 

One thing, by the way, I wanted to say what I heard you talk about finance looking complicated is that I think Part One reason for this is that the financial industry has a tendency to make it look more complicated. And it should be because of course it makes it easier for them to challenge to charge more money, right and inflate their profits. So I’m often very suspicious about the financial industry.

Jessica 

I think it’s a good thing to have a base line level of suspicion. I’m the exact same way. It’s like you’ve always got to take everything with a grain of salt, be careful. But this is why I think it’s so important for people and this is what I’ve been telling people for years and years and years. Why is so important that you have to take your finances, in your own hands, you cannot just handed over to a professional and hope that they are going to do a great job because how will you know if they are if you don’t know what they’re doing?

Benjamin 

What I tell people is that you can so there are a lot of good people, good finance professionals that can help you but you cannot get 100% of your information from people who are trying to sell you something. I tell people you have to educate yourself and get your information well from sources that are more objective. And I believe the core Books, the cost is one of them. So I’m hoping that people will get no information rented out a lot of great books that exist. But yeah, I, what I wanted to say is that the cooks, RBC has not influenced the content, the costs.

Jessica 

Great. I mean, I think that’s really important because that is the other problem. And I get this, you know, myself as someone who is a quote unquote influencer, I work with brands, it’s really important when it comes to the educational component to make sure you aren’t influenced. You know, your work? Yeah, you’re you’re putting the information out there, that’s actually going to help people. But it’s hard when you’re looking online. There’s a lot of people that say certain things, and you’re like, are you saying this? Because it’s true, it’s factual? Or do you believe it? Are you saying this, because you’re getting paid to say it or you have some other you are a professional working for this bank, or whatever you like you. It’s like any industry, there’s always going to be other factors out there. But again, that’s why it’s so important to educate yourself. So you can figure those things out or take everything with a grain of salt, right?

Benjamin 

But it’s not just people who are paid to pass up that message. Just people get too excited. Nowadays, with the internet, every every anybody can post whatever they want.

Jessica 

So you can no one has a strong opinion about something. Yeah, you cannot.

Benjamin 

They don’t always exactly know what they’re talking about. Yeah. So when people asked me where to get information, I, there are some very good books.

Jessica 

So I’m curious, what are some what are some of your your top books, but one that you’d like to recommend?

Benjamin 

So there’s a classic. So it’s a book that has been around for 50 years, but it’s actually been updated, updated regularly. And there’s a new edition that came that came out, I think, just the last few months. It’s a book that’s called A Random Walk Down Wall Street, Burton Malkiel. And I think it’s a it’s a fantastic, it’s a fantastic book. Yeah. And what’s interesting, when he came out 50 years ago, it was quite innovative. And it’s, I mean, it was it came under heavy criticism, I’m sure. But it’s been, as you know, more data has been available over the last 50 years, the central message of this book has only become become stronger. I mean, there are, there are few, certainly some of other resources. There’s, there’s an offer that I like very much, I would say the majority of his books, or maybe a tad to advance for somebody would be just starting. But he actually wrote a very short pamphlet that’s available for free online. So and it’s called if you can, so I believe that if you just Google, if you can is the first thing that shows up. And the author’s name is William Bernstein. Bernstein. And what’s interesting is that he was not originally a finance professor, a finance professional. He’s actually a doctor who got into interested in finance, and you wrote some great books. And now I think he does that for a living. But there’s a short pamphlet that’s targeted to our young people. And it includes some suggestions for further reading. So if you want to read one thing that’s fun, that very accessible, that probably takes less than one hour to read just Google if you can available for free.

Jessica 

And yeah, I think that’s the other important thing. I’m just thinking back to when I was starting my journey. When it comes to books, it is I feel like actually very important to start with books that are at your kind of literacy level, because I remember reading some that were more complex. And then it honestly had the opposite effect. It wasn’t like, oh, I learned all this stuff that was more advanced, it scared me that I didn’t want that I retreated and like, I don’t know what I’m doing. And then it just like hits your confidence a little bit. So it’s really important to like, find those books that are at your level. And then as you develop, you know, more, you know, literacy, you can, you know, keep going.

Benjamin 

I can give you a one wonderful example, something that came out recently that I fought. So don’t agree with 100%. But I still feel overall it’s very good, very accessible. It’s a book called balance by Andrew thing.

Jessica 

I love Andrew, that’s a great book.

Benjamin 

Yeah, it’s very accessible. And yeah, what I like is that he talks about finance, personal finance. The way I think people should talk about it is that it’s it’s part of wellness, right? People are very, a lot of people are very interested, you know what they try to exercise but they feel finance is too complicated. They don’t want to touch that. But actually, I don’t think it’s more complicated. Plus, for a lot of people. Money is the number one source of stress. You know, so So personal finance, it’s not just about having more money. It’s about feeling more secure, and eventually happier, happier.

Jessica 

Having balance in your life in all areas. But yeah, it’s so true that you say that I talk to people all the time and it’s like everything else in my life is good. The one thing I just I keep avoiding or I cannot figure out is money? Absolutely.

Benjamin 

I’m not saying that money buys happiness, I don’t know. But suddenly, when that trombone is our major or major obstacle.

Jessica 

Yeah, when and if you understand money, and you have, and you could figure out a way to get enough to cover your needs and everything else it does. I mean, yeah, that’s what I found, like, I struggled. And I did have maybe more issues and other areas of my life, whether that was my health, my fitness, my mental health, when I didn’t have the finance stuff figured out. And once we can integrate that into your life, and then you realize it’s not that complex, you absolutely are capable. And I believe just like you, everyone is capable of learning this stuff and integrate into their lives and make it take time. And that’s okay. It will, you’ll see an improvement in all the other areas of your life, everything else will seem less amplified and intense. You’re like, oh, okay, we can breathe again. Yeah, completely. So with that, I want to kind of dive into some of the components in the course, I think it’s really well organized, I also really appreciate that there’s even a section on behavioral finance, which I think is being talked about more and more kind of broad things, like I talked about a lot on the podcast now. Because, you know, for when I first started in personal finance, everyone was just talking about the how to use the numbers, the math of it, they never talked about behavior. And that’s usually the thing that trips people up is Why do I keep I know what to do. And I’m just not doing it. I don’t know why it’s the behavior. But to kind of go back to the beginning of this course, we really start at the kind of foundation budgeting and saving, I feel like people get sick of hearing that term budgeting, but it is one of those components where it’s like, if you don’t have that, you can’t really move forward with other areas, you want to kind of talk a little bit about what are some of those key elements? So people can start off on the right foot?

Benjamin 

Yeah, well, we try, you know, to organize the course, basically, around the main steps in someone’s financial journey. So yes, before, obviously, before you can do anything, well, you need to start saving at least a little bit. And having a budget might help. So there was a module of budgeting a module of boring because of course, it’s nice to save. But in many circumstances, it makes sense to borrow money. But there are many different ways to borrow money. And they are not all the same. There are big differences. There’s a module, a couple, there’s a module about investing a module, so maybe something that doesn’t sound too exciting for young people. Retirement Planning,

Jessica 

I think is really important. Because like you said, we talk especially young people will talk about investing, we don’t really talk about the key elements of retirement planning. And that can be like, just so so so so important to figure out is what, especially as a Canadian, I don’t think most people understand some of the programs that we have.

Benjamin 

Absolutely. And I think, I guess I understand what for maybe for millennials is not very exciting to think about retirement, but people should think about the purpose, you know, what, what are they investing for? And for most people, it’s for retirement and to take care of your kids of your family. Okay, so definitely understanding how retirement works, how much you might need. Well, that can be that can help that can help a lot. A lot in your planning and having. Yeah, having realistic expectations, how much do you? How much do you have to save? That’s very helpful. We do have a module about about real estate. So of course, we cannot tell people you know, should they buy? When is the time to buy it? We don’t tell them that. But still we give them I think a good idea of the main factors to take into consideration.

Jessica 

Real Estate, is it? Is it investing in real estate or homeownership?

Benjamin 

Are we talking mostly about homeownership? Okay. Yes, I think for most people, it’s the, for a lot of people. It’s really the number one financial decision in your life. Yes, we do have a module, as you mentioned, on behavioral finance, so learning a little bit about your psychology, how interacts with it interacts with financial issues, I think it’s very useful. Unfortunately, human psychology is not very well adapted to finance to investing. So I think if you know, and probably it has to do with the fact that humans evolved over hundreds of 1000s of years. And for most of that time, there was no finance there were no financial markets, right? So yeah, just naturally, people may don’t naturally take, make the right decisions. So I think knowing a little more about basic human psychology, knowing about the mistakes that you’re likely to make, if you’re not very careful, can be very powerful to help you avoid the domain mistakes. Absolutely.

Jessica 

Like especially I feel like often when we make a financial mistake, we blame ourselves as an individual on the individual level thinking like, oh my gosh, I’m bad at money or I don’t know I you know, and yeah, exactly. Everyone’s actually naturally bad at money.

Benjamin 

I’ve improved, I’ve learned, you know, I tell people a lot, here are the mistakes to avoid. Sometimes maybe I forgot to mention mistakes,

Jessica 

well, that’s the thing. It’s like we’re only human, we’re gonna make those mistakes to just fall into those traps, we get the motions. And, and like you said, because money has not actually been around for that long historically, we’re still running off of, you know, behaviors that were learned back in the stone age’s that we have not unlearned. And so we have to constantly try to regulate that and figure out a path forward, which is not easy to do at all times. Especially, I mean, I’m sure you saw a lot of this too, during COVID, when everyone was just freaking out and didn’t know what to do that people made a lot of mistakes, because we were just running the show off of emotions and not logic, which is difficult to manage.

Benjamin 

You know, I tell one thing I like to tell people, and it’s probably something I read in the book that stuck with me is that investing, I think it’s relatively simple. Again, maybe if you want to know everything, it’s not simple, but I really feel that what makes this 90% of the difference is very simple. But simple is not the same thing as easy. Yeah, and it’s like, and one thing, and again, it’s something I read somewhere, but it’s a good thing, it’s a good comparison, it’s a little like losing weight, you know, losing weight is simple, because you know, that if you if you eat less, if you move more, you are going to lose weight to certainty. That’s, it’s, it’s not

Jessica 

easy to put it into practice. Like a lifetime struggle, it’s like I know what to do, which is hard to actually do it. And that’s the exact same thing,

Benjamin 

the same thing. It’s the same thing with investing. Yeah, it sounds simple. But it’s not easy to avoid the big mistake, because you have to fight your own psychology. And to some extent, you have to fight the financial industry that you know that you, you have to realize that well, they make money by taking it from their customers, which is fine, of course, because they provide a valuable service. And we want financial institutions that are profitable, because it makes the financial system safer. But that’s not a reason to give them more than the than bloods fair than the minimum. Okay? And of course, well, there are there are not charities, they want to make money, they can’t resist the temptation to take a little more from investors from their clients than well, then the minimums often spend a lot of marketing money to make you spend the minimum in more than the minimum in financial services.

Jessica 

And there’s certain I mean, yeah, just talking about the marketing of it all. I mean, one thing that I hear often from people in my audience, or people who enter, I have an investing course, that I sell as well. And the number one thing that I hear is like, you know, ask like, Are you currently investing to like, Yeah, sort of, I don’t really know what I’m doing. But I’m using Wealthsimple. And I’m like, that makes sense. Because, well, simple, spent a lot of money on marketing, but the thing that they didn’t really provide that we need to kind of fill in that gap, unfortunately, as our own, you know, people individuals is the education component, you don’t want to just open an account, and then you’re like, shoot, I don’t actually know what I’m doing. You know, so it’s, it’s again, there’s always, there’s always some gaps, and it’s like, this is why this course I think is so valuable, I suppose will be a great entry point into filling in some of those gaps. So you can feel more confident and knowledgeable and feel good about what you’re doing, whether it’s sticking with what you’re doing. And they’re like, Okay, great. I’m doing it right. Or be like, oh, gosh, no, this is not right. I need to change something.

Benjamin 

Because what I tell people, they’re most likely. So that stuff is very important, of course, but most likely, there is no emergency. Right? It can wait. Whatever you do with your investments, for example, it can wait a few weeks. Yes.

Jessica 

Is that likely?

Benjamin 

It’s a little bit of time getting some some knowledge from Objective sources that are not trying to sell you anything. And, and then you can think, think about the plan. Don’t there’s no need to rush?

Jessica 

Yeah, no, I think that’s something that yeah, does not get talked about, you hear a lot of, oh, the sooner you start, the better. And I think that’s what creates that sense of urgency like, Well, I gotta start now. But it’s like, you can take a few days, you can take a few weeks, a few months. Don’t take a few year, you know, if you can, you know, start sooner than later, but you don’t have to rush you don’t have to do something. And then be like, wait, what, what was I doing? You know, like, you’re not like just going back to the fitness ideas like you’re not going to just start a detox because you want to start losing weight, right? It was like whoa, maybe do some research and be like, is that actually healthy? Is that actually going to work? As you know, find out all the details before diving in, just to kind of talk a touch on the few bonus components because I know there’s a relatively new, the responsible investing component. Do you want to kind of speak to that because that is definitely a topic that is becoming a lot more popular. People want to talk especially young people.

Benjamin 

I mean, we just tried to clarify, clarify. fie what, what it means?

Jessica 

Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Benjamin 

So about responsible investing. Okay, it’s something I feel a little uncomfortable talking about it because I don’t want to look like a bad person. But I just feel I think there’s a lot of people who feel that by doing this, they’re going to get higher returns. And I don’t think it’s completely realistic. So I’m not against, of course, I’m not against responsible investing, or responsible investing. But I think you have to do it for the right reasons. And I think there were some surveys that actually showed that the majority of people felt that they would get higher returns by investing in the in the right businesses, the responsible businesses, and sadly, that’s what I tell my students, you know, investing. It’s not the morality competition.

Jessica 

Yeah.

Benjamin 

The higher returns, doing the right thing is not is not always. Yes. No, unfortunately, life is sometimes not fair. And financial markets are definitely, definitely not fair. So what I tell people about responsible investing is Well, again, get, don’t get too excited. Don’t jump, don’t jump in it. Don’t, I would say, invest 100% of your, of your portfolio in the ingredient businesses? And if you want to do it, do it for the right reasons. And I would say, well, the right reasons could be because it makes you feel better. And of course, I think that’s certainly certainly a good justification for doing this. And also, yes, if you if you feel you are more pessimistic than average, if you if you think that global warming, for example, is going to become even worse than what’s expected. And certainly let’s, let’s not hope we have, let’s hope you’re not going there. But then investing more in green businesses might make sense, basically, as a risk management strategy, because these type of businesses might do better if things become become even walks up. But, guys, I tell people don’t, don’t just do it, like, like many people, because you think that’s the future. And that’s how you’re going to make more money. The other thing I want to say is that, yes, companies care about sustainable investing. But yet, there are some reasons to doubt the effectiveness of sustainable investing, I can give you maybe one or two examples. For example, what you’ve seen, I guess I can I can go to any company, I don’t think they care. The big food company, Nestle, what they did is that they they sold their their bottled water business to a private company. Okay, and bottled water? Well, as you know, it’s an industry that that’s not green, that consumes that consumes a lot, a lot of plastic. So that’s one thing you see, if your company and your shareholders are demanding, you know that you become greener? Well, some things that might happen is what I explained that. Basically, you’re selling, selling, you’re selling, you’re the part of your business that are not so green, to people to private companies, which mean companies that are extremely difficult to control. So definitely, there’s definitely the potential for some unintended consequences of sustainable investing. That, that that might be that might be dangerous.

Jessica 

It’s like that didn’t actually fix the problem. Nestle just looks better, and they made some money from selling that part of their business, you’re like this didn’t actually do any good. And just to kind of reiterate, one of your points that I think you’re getting at is, when a lot of people are focused on I want to do responsible investing, they can do what some other investors do, if they’re really into tech, or some, you know, particular sectors get too concentrated and just be in investing in those types of companies where it’s like, diversification is key. Absolutely.

Benjamin 

No. And one example I want to give is that I think a lot of people, again, are investing in green businesses, because they think it’s the future. And yeah, that might be true. But one thing that’s true in that that’s true in investing. It’s been true for a long time is that you know, having an industry that you think is the is the future. Well, it does not mean it’s going to deliver great performance for investors. And he has a great example of this. And it’s something that that I read a long time ago, but he really stuck with me. I read that in an interview of Warren Buffett, the legendary investor so I think it’s a credible name in investing. And he gave the following example he gave the example of a you know, if you can think of one industry that throughout the, during the 20th century, completely changed people’s lives. lives and went through incredible growth. So as my students, and well, usually people, people guess pretty pretty fast. It’s the car industry. Right? The car industry basically barely existed at the beginning of the 20th century. And of course, it went through incredible growth. So then you might think, well, it’s such a pity that my great great great grandparents didn’t invest in the car industry, all their money in the car industry at the beginning of the 20th century, we’d be multimillionaires by now. But that’s actually that’s absolutely not true. The car industry as a whole has not been generous has not been good to investors. And one way to see this is that how many car manufacturers have existed at some point in the US in the 20th century? Also, I’ve my students, and the answer is actually several 1000. And what happened to probably 99% of the several 1000, I think Buffett countered about Warren Buffett countered about 3000. But he said interview, he does not think he was able to get the comprehensive list. Well, most of them went out of business.

Jessica 

Because that’s you invested in Ford or something. But yeah, most people probably think of just like those big companies, but not others that did not last.

Benjamin 

So that’s something. And so Another similar example is airlines, that’s also an industry that changed people’s life when for incredible growth. It’s been a disaster for investors. Very, very bad returns. And I think there’s a little bit of the same expectations about green and green investing green businesses. So yes, there might be the future. And let’s hope they’re part of the future because, well, we need to do something about climate change. Right. But potential for future growth and changing people’s lives does not mean automatically. Great to good returns for investors.

Jessica 

Yeah, yeah, no, I think that’s really important kind of along the same lines talking about like the future and future growth. That’s where I think the other bonus module about crypto is so important in blockchain, and a lot of people were talking about it, especially during COVID When we’re all sector houses, and people just were like, This is the future, we’re not gonna have cash anymore. It’s all gonna be crypto. And then it didn’t really go that way. Though, people are starting to talk about it getting now. But there was silent for a good while I what, what is involved in that module? What are some of the key things that you wanted people to know? Because I’m sure you’ve seen us too. There’s a lot of confusing and misinformation out there.

Benjamin 

No, I would say the number one thing I tell people about crypto, and that it’s something very basic, but that people seem to forget, let’s compare an investment in crypto and an investment in a stock. And then when you invest in stocks, you as I’m sure your listeners know you own a little little portion of a company. And hopefully the company is going to make profits that goes to investors. So what this means is that when you invest in stocks, there are some money coming from outside the market that go to investors. And what this implies is that, yes, the stock market is very risky, especially in the short term, but the odds are in your favor. Because there’s that money coming from outside the system outside the outside the market that go to investor. So even if you’re not very good at with stocks, on average, it’s possible to make mistakes, of course, but on average, the odds are in your favor. Even if you’re not very good. You can expect to make money. Crypto, well, that’s not the same because there’s no with very few exceptions, but that are basically negligible. With crypto is not the same. There is no money coming from outside the market that go to investor. So if you invest in crypto, well, the only way that you that you’re going to make money is if you find another investor who’s going was willing to buy your crypto for higher price. And, well, if you look at history, that kind of that kind of phenomenon, you can’t really rely on this. Okay, so the odds are not in your favor with crypto. So yeah, people have a tendency to forget that maybe crypto currencies have a role to play as a means of a means of payment. And even that is very questionable, because of where you’ve seen all the volatility problems. The volatility and safety issues. Yes. The fraud that has been taking.

Jessica 

Yeah.

Benjamin 

So, people will get lots of people were excited, you know, getting out of the traditional financial system, decentralizing thing, but maybe what, what the last few years have shown is that, yes, the financial system is maybe too complicated, but there’s a reason why we have all these institutions and these regulations, because they greatly reduce the likelihood of fraud but I think people have had a tendency to forget yes, that, yes, it’s possible that crypto is going to change. To change our life, that is going to become very important as a means of exchange of payment. But it does not mean that it’s going to make a great investment. Same thing as well, keeping a pile of a pile of dollars under your mattress. That’s a terrible investment. Okay, even though of course, dollars are used so much as a means of payments.

Jessica 

You mentioned something and I’m not sure maybe this is touched on in the behavioral finance section. But how, even though like you said earlier, there’s you can look at the history to see what’s probably going to happen in the future, because it’s kind of the same stuff, maybe at different points in time. But it’s pretty like, Oh, I’ve seen something similar like this before. Why do you think we have such bad memories? I mean, people just forget, or they just don’t want to look back on the I

Benjamin 

think it just the psychology, but I like what you said that history has a tendency to repeat itself in financial markets. But of course, it repeats itself in a way that it’s a bit different every time it does not repeat itself in a way that would make it easy to forecast what’s coming next. But still, no, I tell people, one of the best investments you can make with your time is learn about financial history, because you will have an idea of the of the risks, the risks that are there and the mistakes not to not to repeat. But yes, people I think, have a short memory because they have I mean, the big crisis happened in financial markets, but they don’t happen that often. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. And I think it’s basically human human psychology, that, you know, it’s just very hard to resist the temptation when the new type of investments. Sounds very exciting. So what I remember very well, so it was the beginning of my investing life around the.com the.com craze around the 19 92,000. For a short time, I had the impression that everybody except me was making a killing in financial markets. And you know, even though I knew I mean, I knew about vapor bubbles, people knew about bubbles still. When you see when you have the impression that everybody except you is making a killing in financial markets, it’s very, very hard to resist the temptation. It really is, isn’t it? That’s what I was saying about, you know, investing being simple but not easy. Well, it’s not easy to resist the temptation, even if you know about bubbles. It’s not easy to resist the temptation when you think that everybody’s doubling their money in a few months by investing in dot coms. Or cryptos.

Jessica 

You’d be like if I if they’re doing it, and I’m not doing it, am I the idiot?

Benjamin 

The problem is that in this type of situation, there are always some very convincing and qualified experts and very smart people walk them in, you know, it’s not the Bible. This time. It’s different. People when you hear a version of the sentence this time, it’s different. Be very, very careful.

Jessica 

Yeah, you’re like, it’s probably not different. Look at it. Yeah, crack open those history books and see something similar. Yeah, I feel like I see that I saw that, especially. Because I feel like the bubble and the crash and correction we saw during a COVID, which had, it was different in that it was very condensed, and quick, because again, we hadn’t really experienced a pandemic like that before. But it was the first time that I’d ever really recognized and like, this actually feels very similar to 2007 2008 what was going on their different scenario, but the feeling in the air feels very, you know, similar, but even with that, just like everybody else, it was hard for me to not feel that anxiety of like, should I take like, you know, people were like, should I put all my money into these tech, you know, Tesla and all these tech stocks are wishing to take all my money out because the markets going down. And I’m like, it was really hard just to take the advice to give every person ever which is like, stick with whatever, if you made a plan that solid stay with it and don’t do anything different. Very difficult to put that into practice. Especially when all the financial headlines, literally we’re saying different versions of this time is different. Everyone panic. Absolutely.

Benjamin 

But you remember what happened with the COVID crisis? The market went down over 50% in a very short time. Yeah. And it actually recovered amazingly quickly. And I know very, very smart people who sold and I think we lost. We lost quite a bit of money.

Jessica 

Yeah, no. So I know there’s so many great nuggets of information and additional resources that you recommend people to To dive into I think, firstly, this course is such a great starting point, or even if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while you’ve done research. I mean, I took this course just to see what was in there, I thought it was really well organized and the content was so I mean, again, it’s like there’s professors who are doing this, this is really, really great and put together. Where can people find more information? How can they register? Is it always available for people to register? How does it work?

Benjamin 

McGillPersonalFinance.com. And you can just Google McGill, personal finance. So I feel a little embarrassed because it used to be that for technical reason, it was closed once in a while. I believe it’s not the case. I believe it’s not the case anymore.

Jessica 

Yeah, I’m looking on the website. And there’s no timeline. So I think it might be just open enrollment now, which is great, because it’s a great thing to do. You know, this episode is airing in the new year, this is a great thing to do in the new year. I always tell people, it’s like if you, you know, maybe spent a little too much or didn’t maybe make some of the best decisions in 2023. That’s okay. 2024 is here. And you can write those mistakes. And this is a great opportunity that you can do from the comfort of your own home online for free for free. It’s absolutely

Benjamin 

free. It’s been designed to be accessible to everyone who’s willing to spend to spend a few hours. And yeah, again, the information is I’m not saying we’re always right about everything, but at least we objective. We’re not trying to sell you anything.

Jessica 

I think that’s a really important and hard to find. So thank you so much, Benjamin, for coming on the show. Again, I think this is such a great resource for Canadians. And I’m so glad it’s around. I’m excited to see more students enroll. So thank you so much for taking the time to coming on the podcast. It was a pleasure.

Benjamin 

Thank you so much, Jessica. It was my pleasure.