Regular readers of this column will know that I am a big fan of RRSPs. Used correctly, they are usually the premier retirement savings option for high income employees.

But, as with everything that is good, there will be the critics. And one of the things that critics will say is that you have to turn your RRSPs into a taxable income stream by the end of the year that you turn 71. Potentially this means paying tax on money that you may not need, or having income-tested government benefits clawed back.

If the idea of forced withdrawals from your retirement plan sounds nasty to you, let me reassure you that this is usually more of a theoretical problem than an actual one. It is undeniably true that with the tax-sheltered growth of RRSPs you absolutely can grow your money into a very large amount, and if you have to pay tax on a very large amount then the tax bill will be proportionate.

But here is the difference between theory and practice. What I have found is that the people who have a lot of money usually want to spend a lot of money. Usually people aren’t taking money out of their retirement plans because they are forced to by the mandated RRIF minimums. People are taking money out because they want to enjoy their retirement.

Still, it is true that mandatory withdrawals by age 71 may not always be optimal. Which brings me to this week’s topic. The retirement option that nobody knows about. The Advanced Life Deferred Annuity, or ALDA.

An ALDA allows you to take a portion of your registered money and push the income start date out as late as age 85. This offers some relief for the forced withdrawals early in retirement, which can create unnecessary taxable income and exposure to government benefit clawbacks.

An ALDA allows you to reduce those withdrawals by carving out up to 25 percent of your registered assets, subject to a lifetime cap of about $180,000. That portion no longer generates forced income during the early years of retirement.

While the tax planning may be interesting, the real reason why ALDAs were created was so that people don’t run out of money in retirement. With an ALDA you are locking in a future income stream that will pay you for the rest of your lifetime. ALDAs are insurance against longevity. You can’t outlive your money.

Not everyone is concerned about longevity risk, but you probably should be. People are living longer and longer, and with modern medicine you can survive things that used to be fatal.

But living longer exposes you to the risk of running out of money. Especially in a rising cost world. On that note, have you seen the price of gas lately? Is your money keeping pace with inflation?

Here’s what the planning might look like. Your retirement is not likely to be static.

In the early years you are probably still relatively healthy, and now you finally have both the time and the money to do all those things that you always wanted to, but couldn’t because up until now you were too busy with work. During this stage in life you probably want flexibility. TFSAs and RRIFs are appropriate income vehicles to match your lifestyle.

Later in retirement you are likely to slow down. Your health will probably deteriorate. You probably aren’t travelling so much. Now you are not spending as much on discretionary expenses. But you probably are spending more money than ever on health care.

Now you want predictability from your money to make sure your basic needs will be covered for your lifetime. This is the type of scenario where ALDAs can be appealing. ALDAs will produce pension style income that you can’t outlive, with no market fluctuations to worry about. That can allow you to spend more confidently in your 60s and 70s, knowing that a baseline income will be there in your 80s and beyond.

The ALDA is locked in, which is both the strength and the weakness. You have a guaranteed income for life. But you lose flexibility. The decision is permanent. Once you buy it, you cannot change it. You cannot surrender it. You cannot access the capital. As with any annuity, you are giving up liquidity in exchange for certainty.

The Advanced Life Deferred Annuity. The retirement income option that you have never heard of. They are not going to solve every financial planning problem. But they could be a brilliant fit in the right circumstances.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

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Artificial Intelligence is a revolutionary technological development that will change the world.

That does not make it qualified to be your financial advisor.

The seeds for this column were planted when I received an email from someone who is not a client, taking issue with some things I have done and said back in 2025. The letter tosses around some industry jargon, and it makes some bold statements. It is clearly written by AI.

And its total crap. Superficially the letter sounds great. But its pure nonsense.

Hey, I have nothing against Artificial Intelligence. I use it myself, when appropriate. That’s how I know its limitations.

People who use AI know what I am talking about. AI will confidently give you an answer on absolutely anything that you ask of it. Even if that answer is absolutely wrong.

Here is an example. I have a paid subscription with ChatGPT. This means that ChatGPT remembers and learns from my interactions with it. This is important. ChatGPT knows Brad Brain. So ChatGPT should know the answer when I asked it, “what is the number one rule about money according to Brad Brain?”

Chat GPT responded, “The first rule of money is simple: Don’t lose it. Everything else in finance, growth, returns, strategies, comes after that. If you lose capital, especially early or in retirement, the math works against you. Recovering losses requires disproportionately higher returns, and time may not be on your side. Protecting capital is the foundation. Growth is optional without it.”

The only problem is, I never said that. Well, not quite anyway.

I think what ChatGPT is referring to is when Warren Buffett’s first rule of investing, which is “Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1.”

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But that’s not what I asked. Good advice, sure. But wrong person and wrong rule so clearly not the correct answer to the question that I asked. My first rule of money is to live within your means.

ChatGPT confidently gave the wrong answer, with no references to where it got this information. In this case, there is not much harm that will come from it.

But a while ago I had an argument with a Chartered Accountant who was absolutely convinced that spousal rollovers of RRSPs on death are taxable. That is a big problem. This accountant, who absolutely should have known better, was unequivocably wrong. Harm will absolutely come from relying on this wrong answer.

This is the blessing and the curse of AI. The blessing is that you can use it to find out anything you want. The curse is that the answer might be rubbish.

When you use AI you should always ask it for the sources from which it is basing its answer. When I asked ChatGPT for the source for what it claimed to be Brad Brain’s first rule of money, it said “I do not have a direct source where Brad Brain says, verbatim, “the first rule of money is don’t lose it. That wording was my paraphrase of a theme in his writing. The source-supported takeaway is this: Brad Brain places a very high priority on avoiding losses, but my earlier sentence was a summary, not a direct quote.”

In other words, I didn’t actually say what ChatGPT confidently attributed to me. In this case, no big deal.

The problem is, if you don’t know the subject matter, you don’t know what is crap and what is real. Like the accountant who did not know that spousal rollovers are tax free.

And that email that I received? The one taking issue with some things I have done and said back in 2025? Here is what ChatGPT has to say about the AI-written letter that I received…

“This letter has several signs of AI assisted drafting, but the bigger problem is not whether AI wrote it. The bigger problem is that it reasons like AI: broad accusations, thin facts, wrong terminology, hindsight bias, and confusion between possible planning options and actual professional duties. That is exactly why using AI in place of an informed advisor is dangerous. It can generate something that looks smart while being substantively weak.”

See? Even ChatGPT knows the dangers of using ChatGPT as your financial advisor.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

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Human beings are imperfect. We all have flaws. My own flaws include impatience and intolerance for stupidity.

Another flaw that humans can have is the tendency to want to blame others rather than taking responsibility for their own actions. You probably know what I am talking about. When “Karen” wants to “speak with the manager” because she feels she is entitled to having things done her way.

This is more than social commentary. There are implications for personal financial planning.

Hey, problems in financial services happen. If your bank fails to process a transfer, or your RESP contribution is not being allocated to the right beneficiary, or your RRIF payment is not happening on schedule, these are the types of things that are probably not your fault. You absolutely may need someone to help you sort it out.

But, to be clear, the fixing of real problems is not the topic of this column. What I am talking about is lack of accountability for your own financial success. As the expression goes, I can lead the horse to water, but I can’t make her drink.

I can tell you about RRSPs, but you are the one that has to make the contribution. I can tell you about insurance policies, but you are the one that has to pay the premium. I can tell you about financial planning, but you are the one that has to decide what your important goals are.

If you want financial success, you are going to need to take responsibility for your own outcomes. Sure, you can hire a professional to help you with the technical parts. But the best financial plan in the world is useless if you don’t implement it.

And you are the one that has to implement it. That’s the one thing that you can’t pawn off on others. If you don’t make the commitment to take action, then action will not be taken.

Be accountable for your own success.

Set your goals. If you never take a few moments and spend some thoughtful time on what it is that you want to achieve, then there is no point in asking me what you should do with your money. If you have no idea where you are going, then any road will do.

Update your will. Every single person that reads this column will die. Yet, statistically, only half of readers will have a will. And the number of readers with a current will is even less than that. If your will still talks about naming a guardian for your children, who are now grown with kids of their own, it’s time for an update.

Do you know what will happen to your stuff if you die without a will? Guess what, neither does anyone else. The will is the document that speaks on your behalf when you are no longer here to do it for yourself.

Talk to your parents about their estate plan. The first time that you are hearing what they want should not be when the will is read.

Talk to your kids about financial literacy. If you don’t explain to your kids how money works, then who will? Do you really want them to try to figure it out for themselves, the hard way?

If you are getting financial advice from random people on social media, or equivalent unqualified sources, don’t get all grumpy when it turns out the people you listened to, even relied on, have no idea what they are talking about.

If things end up not going the way you wanted with your money, it is certainly possible that the people your hired to do a job did not meet expectations. But blaming others might merely be a feeble excuse and attempt to shift blame.

Blaming others means that we don’t need to take a long look in the mirror. And sometimes the reason you don’t get the results you want is because of the person in the mirror, and all the temper tantrums, and feelings of entitlement, and demands to speak to the manager, do not alter the facts.

You may not be able to rely on someone to do everything for you. Make an effort. Be accountable.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

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People react to market volatility in different ways.

When investments go down, some people will think they need to get out fast before they lose more money. Other people will realize that you can’t change the past and just ride things out. And some investors – the astute ones – will look at market volatility not as a crisis, but as an opportunity.

Think about it. Would you rather pay a high price for something, or a low price? I know when I go shopping for groceries I like to buy things on sale. Why would it be any different if I am shopping for investments? If it is a well-run, profitable business with a bright future, and you liked it at $100, then you should love it if you can buy more at $80.

People also react to the anticipation of future market volatility in different ways. And that’s what I want to talk about today.

When the news came out of more military conflict in the Middle East I took a call from a client. The consensus at the time was that energy prices were going to head sharply higher. He was wondering what we should do next.

Higher energy prices can be good for some businesses, but bad for others. So, do we buy more oil stocks? Do we sell some other stocks? What’s good? What’s bad? What do we do now?

My advice to him was to worry neither about trying to pick the right sectors to be in, nor the sectors to avoid. Just be diversified and take the long-term view.

Don’t have all your eggs in one basket, as the old saying goes. There is a reason why this is an old saying. It has stood the test of time. Put all your eggs in one basket and you can lose everything if something happens to the basket.

The problem with trying to make bets on what you think is going to be hot is that things go in and out of favour quickly. If you get too concentrated, you can be left holding the bag when sentiment turns.

This problem can also happen in reverse. Avoid a sector that you think will be cold, and you miss out when that sector heats up.

It wasn’t too long ago that people shunned energy stocks. Now everyone wants more. It wasn’t too long ago that tech stocks were rocketing up. Now they are in free fall.

This is the problem with betting on sectors. What’s good now can be bad later. Volatility works both ways. What goes up fast can come down just as fast. And vice-versa. What’s bad now can be good later. And usually there is no advance notice of future events.

So rather than trying to be in precisely the right spot at the right time, a far more reliable strategy is to be diversified, knowing that you will not have all your money in the best place to be, but also knowing that you won’t have all your money in the worst place.

Being properly diversified also means that you can have the peace of mind of knowing when the hot sectors rotate, you will have a piece of that action too. No need to overthink things. No need to try to pick the right winners at the right time.

A word of caution. Owning three different Canadian Balanced mutual funds from three different banks doesn’t make you diversified. It just means you bought more of what you already have. Its duplication, not diversification.

True diversification means that not all your investments move in the same direction at the same time. Its not good enough to simply hold multiple investments if the investment performance is correlated.

A good indication of true diversification is that you should always hate part of your portfolio. Just not always the same part.

Look at market volatility opportunistically. Be diversified. Stay focused on your long-term goals. This is the way.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

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Anniversary Special

I just had my annual audit from my investment dealer. It’s a routine procedure.

These mandatory compliance obligations have to be done, but they are not much fun. For half a day, it was “show me your notes for this transaction” and “what’s your process for this hypothetical scenario”, with the auditor looking for anything out of place. Even the tiniest detail can be questioned.

One of the things that gets looked at is something called “Know Your Product.” As a Portfolio Manager, it is my responsibility to make sure I recommend the best investment options for every individual client.

I can’t simply say “this investment fund is the best.” I have to show my work. Why did I recommend this product? What alternatives did I compare it to? Let’s see your analysis. Where is the documentation?

I am getting grilled. I have to justify all the decisions I have made, not only on the investments that I recommended, but also the rationale for not recommending the ones that I passed on.

In the middle of this, I had a moment of introspection. When I was asked how I make my investment recommendations, I realized that my better answer to the auditor’s questions is not simply comparing the MER on mutual funds and recommending the cheapest product. Of course, we do all that mundane stuff too. And I know that was the type of answer that the auditor was expecting to hear.

But the real thing that guides my hand - my truth, my north star, the inuksuk that guides me across the barren tundra – is something that is much more principled. For me, the foundation of the Know Your Product process is my investment philosophy. It’s how I look at what makes for a good investment. It’s what has often kept me from doing dumb things with money.

My investment philosophy is not the topic of this column though. The topic is why you want to have your own process. If you don’t stand for something, then you may fall for anything.

What got me thinking about this was when I realized that ESG investments have fallen off the radar. Nobody really talks about ESG these days, when it wasn’t that long ago that ESG was the fashionable investment topic.

ESG stands for environmental, social and governance. The idea is that people can invest according to their values. Sounds good, right? Is saving the environment important to you? We have an investment for that!

I am not saying that the ESG concept is bad, but the implementation of the concept did not live up to expectations. For one thing, the investment performance was not always satisfactory. But maybe worse was when the marketing departments took over and tried to brand just about everything as ESG.

My cynicism peaked when I was at an investment conference and we were discussing a “Low Carbon Exchange Traded Fund.” What a great idea, eh? You can save for retirement and fight global warming at the same time!

The problem was, this “Low Carbon” investment contained oil companies. Their justification was that these companies produced less carbon than their peers, so they could be included in a “low carbon” fund. Personally, I think that if you are going to brand yourself as low carbon, maybe don’t include fossil fuels in your asset mix.

Why do people do things like slap a “low carbon” label on a fund that holds oil companies? The answer is not complicated.

Because it will sell.

There is a seemingly insatiable demand for innovative investment products. People are always looking for something that will grow faster, be less volatile, produce more income, have better guarantees, and smell spring-time fresh. So, naturally, there are going to be products that promise more and more and more.

Problems happen is when this search for a better mousetrap turns curiosity into gullibility. New investment thesis are rolled out all the time. Why? Because someone will buy them.

It’s not just the amateur investors that can regret chasing the newest trend. The Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, a major player on the Canadian investment landscape, just announced that they lost $7 billion in 2025 investing in private equity.

There is no shortage of ideas that seem to sparkle. ESG. Private equity. Private credit. Cryptocurrency. Dividend aristocrats. Real estate investment trusts. Silver. Marijuana stocks. Meme stocks. Blackberry.

There are lots of good stories out there. But that doesn’t mean that they are going to be good investments. That flash that you see in the pan may not be a golden nugget after all.

Stand for something, or you may fall for anything.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

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An unexpected side gig from my long career as a professional financial advisor is that I frequently get asked to speak at industry conferences.

I am not exaggerating when I describe this as unexpected. Public speaking is a learned skill for me, not something that just came naturally. The first time someone approached me to see if I was available to speak to 1200 financial advisors in Toronto, I was confused. It seemed like an April Fools joke. I was waiting for the punchline, but they were serious.

Over the years I have spoken at financial advisor conferences from coast to coast across Canada and the USA, and multiple times in Australia and in Asia. To my surprise, I discovered that I actually quite like sharing my ideas on financial planning with my peers. It forces me to focus my thinking and articulate my messages.

Usually, my conference presentations and my day job of advising clients are separate perspectives. But last week, as I was delivering a presentation to a group of financial advisors, it struck me that my message to them was on point with the same stuff that I have been sharing with clients lately.

The topic of my presentation was building a successful financial advisory business. The transferable part of that presentation is that you can’t keep doing what you are doing now and expect different results from what you are getting now.

Here’s what I mean.

You say you want to get out of debt, but you never make more than the minimum monthly payment.

You say you want to retire, but you are not saving any money for when you stop working.

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You say you want to give your kids a headstart, but you still haven’t opened that RESP account.

You say you want to make sure your family is going to be okay if something was to happen to you, but you still haven’t followed through with the life insurance application.

You say you don’t want to leave a big mess behind, but you never get around to updating your will.

Hey, as long as you are happy with where you are now, keep doing what you are doing now.

But if you want different results than what you are currently getting, then you probably need to change up what you are currently doing. This only make any sense.

This presentation that I was doing for financial advisors was in Vancouver. To have a little fun, I included some Northern flavour. I brought some deer antlers!

All winter long I have had about a dozen deer living in my horse pasture. Up here, when deer shed their antlers, it is just the natural course of events. But if you live in Vancouver, seeing some deer antlers up close is not a typical experience.

The antlers were more than just a curiosity though. There is a lesson here too.

Deer shed their antlers every year after mating season. It’s a normal cycle. Whenever you see deer antlers, that is always just one year of growth. Which is pretty impressive, to have that much growth in just one year.

My message to that group of financial advisors, which also is a good message for everyone, is if we were going to get together one year from today, what will your one year of growth look like?

Will you have made progress on paying down your debt? On saving for retirement and your kid’s education? On protecting your family?

The difference between scarcity and abundance starts with making the commitment. These things don’t really happen by accident. You need to work towards the results that you want

If you want different results you need to do different things. And you need to start somewhere. So, my challenge to you is to get out there and grow a great big set of antlers over the next year.

Deer grow their antlers naturally. You are probably going to need to take a more active role. Do what you need to move yourself closer to your Great Goals.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

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The Winter Olympics just wrapped up. Over 2800 athletes from 92 countries competed in 16 sports.

Naturally there was much attention given to big name sports like hockey and curling. But I started thinking about all the other sports.

If you are like me then you probably only think about sports like bobsleigh, luge and biathlon every four years, when the Olympics are on. Of course, just because these sports are not on my radar doesn’t mean that the athletes that participate aren’t just as serious about their particular discipline.

They are no casual participants in the Winter Olympics. No athlete just shows up at the Olympics and jumps on the rink, or track, or mountain ready to go. Every one of these athletes spent years preparing to get to this spot, where they are ready to compete amongst the best in the world in their chosen field.

Just making it to the Olympics is an achievement, and none of this was by accident. Every one of those competitors had a plan. They put the effort in. They put the time in. They did the things that they needed to do to be successful. They stayed focused on their goals, and now they can call themselves an Olympian.

Here’s my point.

If you are an athlete, and you have the goal of making it to the Olympics, you are going to work seriously to prepare. You will have a training plan. You are going to identify what it is going to take to be successful, and then you are going to act accordingly.

There is an obvious parallel when it comes to money goals.

Some people are great at money. They know exactly what is important to them, and they have a plan for what they need to do with their money in order to achieve their Great Goals in life. These people are financial Olympians.

The fantastic news is that you can be a financial Olympian too. But it won’t happen by accident.

Many people are just too casual with their money. They don’t really plan for the future. They make decisions based on instant gratification. They think about today, and not tomorrow. These are the people that spend more time planning their vacation than they will their retirement.

Some people think that the future will look after itself. Or they think that they just don’t have the time, or the knowledge, to plan for the future. Maybe they think that things are beyond their control, so why bother? Or they have some other self-talk that they use as an excuse for procrastination.

The crazy part is, the future is where we all are going to end up. Does it not make sense to do what we need to make it a good one?

It is just not very likely that you will one day wake up retired, and also have the lifestyle that you aspire to, if you don’t prepare ahead of time. It is not realistic to drift through your working years and then hope that the numbers magically add up at the end.

Being a real Olympic athlete is really hard. It takes years of training and sacrifice, and even then you just might not be fast enough to win a medal. Not everyone has what it takes. The good news here is that making good financial decisions is not limited to the world’s best. The preparation does not have to be extreme.

But you do need a plan. You need to know what you are aiming for. You cannot ignore savings, ignore debt, ignore investment discipline, and then expect to perform like an Olympic athlete when the moment arrives.

You need to set aside money consistently. You need to review your progress. You need to make adjustments when life throws a curveball. Most importantly, you need to start before the moment of competition arrives.

Olympic athletes do not wait until the year of the Games to get serious. They start years in advance.

Financial success works the same way. The visible result - a comfortable retirement, a debt free household, the ability to help your kids or your parents - does not happen in a single year. It is the outcome of small, consistent, thoughtful decisions made over a long period of time.

Will your future be one of achievement, or one of regret?

The difference between abundance and scarcity is preparation. It doesn’t happen by accident.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

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Last week I got to wear my tuxedo!

It was for a fancy dinner celebrating Lunar New Year. The theme was the Roaring Twenties. People leaned into it. Sharp suits, bow ties, suspenders. Some of the women wore flapper dresses with fringe and headbands. Super fun event.

The Roaring Twenties theme got me thinking…

The Roaring Twenties earned its name honestly. It was a decade that seemed to hum with energy. The First World War had ended. Technology was advancing quickly. Radios were spreading into homes. Automobiles were becoming more common. Factories were booming.

These boom times had a big impact on personal finance. Credit was easier to obtain. Stock markets were rising. People felt modern, optimistic, and wealthy. For many, it felt like the start of something permanent. Prosperity was not just expected. It was assumed to be natural, automatic progression. It was taken for granted.

By the mid to late 1920s, the party felt like it could never end. Stocks had been climbing for years. Ordinary people opened brokerage accounts. They bought shares on margin. Newspapers ran stories of fortunes made quickly. Investment clubs formed in barber shops and living rooms.

It seemed like everyone had a hot tip. And since the investment markets kept going up and up and up, it also seemed like everyone was right.

There is a famous story from that period involving Joseph Kennedy, father of future U.S. president John F. Kennedy. Joe Kennedy was already a wealthy and sophisticated investor. One day in 1929, he was getting his shoes shined. The shoeshine boy began offering him stock tips.

According to the story, the young man confidently recommended several companies that were sure to rise. Kennedy listened. Then he walked away.

When he got back to his office Kennedy began selling his stocks. All of them, liquidating his entire portfolio. His reasoning was simple. If the shoeshine boy was giving investment advice, speculation had reached a dangerous extreme. When people far removed from financial markets believe they have easy answers and can’t miss investments, it often means the cycle has gone too far.

By 1929, taxi drivers, shoeshine boys, and neighbours were all discussing stocks with certainty. The belief that markets only went up had become widespread. Caution was dismissed as pessimism. Valuations no longer mattered. Earnings no longer mattered. The idea that the party might end felt almost ridiculous.

But then it ended. Big time.

The market began to crack in October 1929. What followed was not just a normal correction. It was a collapse. Stocks fell sharply, then recovered briefly, then fell again. Margin calls forced investors to sell into a falling market. Banks failed. Credit dried up. Businesses closed. Unemployment surged.

The Great Depression followed and lingered for years. The optimism of the Roaring Twenties gave way to bread lines and hardship. It was a reminder that markets can move in cycles and that excess, when left unchecked, often carries a price.

I am not saying that a crash is coming. In fact, earlier today I was laughing at something I saw that was mocking a very popular financial guru who has been calling for a crash for the last 14 years. Hey, sooner or later he will be right.

What I am getting at is I think people being unjustifiably overconfident in their own investment expertise is happening more than ever in the age of social media. How many times have you heard someone in the lunchroom at work confidently extoll the virtues of silver, or cryptocurrency, or meme stocks. But the thing is, you work in a warehouse, or a school, or on a drilling site.

To be clear, I am not besmirching any other profession. I am also not saying that these folks are dumb, or not good at their own job. I am only saying that they might not be very good at mine.

When it comes to investing, they may be the modern equivalent of the 1920s shoeshine boy. They are passing along something they heard. They are repeating the latest story of easy gains. They are convinced that this time is different. But that doesn’t mean that they are right.

To be clear, I am not saying they are wrong either. There are lots of informed, knowledgeable people out there. That’s not really what I am getting at.

It’s the shoeshine boy scenario that I want to highlight. When everyone thinks they are an expert. Even the ones that clearly are not.

Financial planning is about articulating your Great Goals in life, and making decisions that are consistent with achieving them. That probably does not include taking investment tips from the shoeshine boy.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

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99 percent of the time the financial industry works the way we all want it to. Clients are well cared for by honest, capable professionals who really do want to see the client succeed.

But not always.

The reality is that sometimes clients get ripped off. Sometimes clients are lied to. Sometimes the trust that clients put in their financial institution or advisor is betrayed. It doesn’t happen a lot, but it does happen. The purpose of this column is talk about where you can turn if it happens to you.

And, while you are very unlikely to ever need this information, you might. The reason that this subject is on my mind is because I am on the verge of initiating an escalation on behalf of an aggrieved party against another firm.

For nine years I served on the Insurance Council of British Columbia, the provincial regulator for insurance activities in the province of BC. My main role was to serve on Investigative Review Committees. When there was an allegation of wrongdoing by an insurance agent, we were the people tasked with determining what happened, if it was offside, and what to do next.

When it was warranted, we would reprimand people, prescribe remedial education, levy fines, or even end their careers. I have also appeared as an expert witness in court cases, testifying on behalf of clients when financial advisors do bad, bad things.

I mention my background so that you know that I have no hesitation in going after bad advisors. Having said that, the first thing I am going to tell you is that most things – even if they really, really piss you off – are not the type of issues that get escalated.

I understand that it is irritating if your mail is going to the wrong address even after you told your advisor about this over and over, or you told your advisor you wanted growth from your portfolio over the long term and now you are down five percent, or the waiting time on hold is unacceptably long before the call center answers the phone. Sort it out. These are solvable problems.

It is not your anger or disappointment that merits escalation. Put your emotions aside. The types of things you may consider escalating involve matters of suitability, competence, ethics, and breaking the law.

Normal market volatility is not misconduct. If markets decline and your diversified portfolio falls with them, that is part of investing. But if the investments themselves were unsuitable or misrepresented, that’s a different story.

Regulators exist for serious issues involving public protection. Illegal activity sits at the top of the list. But if you are materially worse off because of someone’s actions or inaction, that also may merit escalation. If you were placed into investments that were clearly inappropriate for your situation. Or if your instructions were ignored. Or if professional standards were breached. These are the kind of things where escalation may be the right option.

So, reminding readers that 99 percent of the time things work the way we all want them to, and that not everything that pisses you off warrants escalation, here is what you can do if you something bad happens to you.

The first thing to do is to talk to your advisor. Even if they are the one that caused the mistake in the first place, they may be one that can quickly find the solution. If you can get a fast, painless resolution instead of going nuclear, that might save you a lot of time and further aggravation.

If that doesn’t work, its time to talk to the financial institution. Every investment dealer, insurance agency, and advisory firm has a compliance department. If you believe something has gone wrong, document your concerns and submit them in writing. Ask for a formal response. Compliance departments are obligated to take a client complaint seriously, and the last thing that they want is for this to escalate further. Many issues resolve at this stage. Skipping this step and going straight to a regulator is often premature.

If you can’t make any progress with the financial institution, its time to get out the big guns. Financial services are a heavily regulated industry, and there are a number of allies that you can enlist if your think you have been a victim of misconduct, incompetence, or an ethical breach. If you get to this point, then it is probably time to consult with a knowledgeable advocate because things are about to get real serious.

Chances are very good that you will never need this information. But if you do, now you know.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

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Sometimes people start with a good idea, but then they implement it in a weird way, and in doing so end up negating the good in the idea.

Let’s take diversification for example. A simple idea that makes lots of sense. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

The problem is sometimes people blindly follow the adage and not really think about the logic behind it.

Dogmatically getting more and more and more stuff because “we can’t have all our eggs in one basket” is not the same thing as proper diversification. In fact, getting more and more and more can make things worse, not better.

Sometimes people will own multiple mutual funds with the same mandate. Let’s say that you own four different Canadian equity funds held at four different banks. You might think that you have lots of eggs in lots of baskets, but you would be wrong. You have the same thing four times over. You have duplication, not diversification.

Super easy for me to prove this to you. Pull up the top ten holdings of four different Canadian equity funds, run by four different portfolio managers, who work for four different banks. What you will find is that all four funds own the same stocks.

That’s not what people mean by not having all your eggs in one basket. You are just buying more of what you already have. You are adding the complexity of holding multiple accounts without the actual benefit of diversification.

Here’s another example. Let’s say you have $500,000 to invest, and you are thinking of buying five $100,000 GICs at five different banks. To be fair, there could be some valid reasons to do this, but today we are talking about the unintended consequences of having eggs in too many baskets.

The drawback of taking your GIC business to multiple institutions is that you are also reducing your negotiating position. If you go to the bank and say, “I have $500,000, what’s the best rate you can do?” you are much more likely to get their attention than if you try to haggle with a smaller amount. Especially if you are prepared to take your business across the street if your banker is not prepared to sharpen their pencil. If you are trying to negotiate a better deal, then spreading your money out may actually be counter productive.

Some people will put their investments with multiple financial advisors because they “can’t have all their eggs in one basket.” Believe it or not, this can end up being a really bad idea.

The practical problems of getting your advice from multiple sources can mean it costs you far more than the potential benefits. Mistakes and missed opportunities happen when you are getting your advice from multiple sources. And I don’t mean only things like differences of opinion on subjective matters.

Mistakes like missing a TFSA contribution because of an assumption that it was made elsewhere. Or exceeding the TFSA contribution limit because both advisors agree that topping up the TFSA makes sense, and so it happens twice.

Or maybe both advisors think too much alike, and both start recommending the same type of funds. The irony is, you went with two advisors because you didn’t want to have all your eggs in one basket, but we already discussed how duplication is not diversification.

Sometimes people might think, “I will give half my account to one advisor, and half my account to another, and at the end of the year we will see who performed better.”

Folks, this is not a horse race.

Here is why that idea is setting you up to fail. Past performance is not a good indicator of future performance. Just ask all the people who invested in silver because it did so well in recent months, only to see it collapse by more than 25 percent in just 24 hours.

Perversely, if you do try to pit financial advisors against each other in a battle of who can produce the most short-term performance, you are actually incentivizing your advisor to take on additional risk with your money. Think about it. If your advisor knows he is going to get fired in a year if he doesn’t outperform the other guy, he might as well go all-in on cryptocurrency or something crazy. If he gets lucky then he wins the entire account. If he’s wrong, oh well, you were going to fire him anyway. But it’s your money that he is making these bets with. Is that really what you want?

The objective is not to see who can introduce the most risk into your portfolio. The objective is to help you reach your Great Goals in life.

Not having all your eggs in one basket is a great idea. Just make sure you understand how to do it properly.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

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Every once and a while, someone will say that they don’t believe in RRSPs.

Folks, we are not talking about Santa Clause or the Tooth Fairy here. Whether you believe is not the question.

Now, if would be a different conversation if these people were saying “I don’t think that RRSPs are the optimal solution for my particular situation.” That statement could certainly be true.

But that’s not the way that the “I don’t believe in RRSPs” conversation unfolds. Generally speaking, the people who are inclined to say they don’t believe in RRSPs are usually of the misguided opinion that RRSPs are a losing proposition.

Folks, there is no ambiguity about this. Used correctly, the Registered Retirement Savings Plan is one of the best, time-tested, widely available, proven tax planning and wealth creation techniques available to the average Canadian. If not the very best option.

Never mind the “what about…” scenarios. Used properly, RRSPs work great.

If you are wondering whether the people who say they don’t believe in RRSPs may have a point, let me ask you a question…

Do you believe in math? Do you believe in making rational, evidence- based decisions?

Because the math is convincing.

If you live in British Columbia and earn $140,000, you are facing a combined marginal tax rate of roughly 38 percent. If you contribute $20,000 to an RRSP, you will get a tax refund of about $7,600. Already, the math is working.

But possibly even more impactful than the up-front tax deduction is the tax-sheltered growth. Inside an RRSP, you will not pay any tax on the interest, dividends, or capital gains that you make on your investment. If your $20,000 RRSP earns 6 percent annually for 30 years, that single contribution will grow to roughly $114,870.

This tax-sheltered growth is the part that people often don’t fully appreciate. If you compound your money in a tax-free environment for a few decades you are going to end up with substantially more money than if your money had been exposed to taxes along the way.

Critics will say “Yeah, but RRSPs are taxed at withdrawal!”

So what? Most everyone is in a higher tax bracket when they are working then they will be after they stop. This means the RRSP gives you the chance to save money while you are in a high tax bracket, not pay any tax at all while you are growing your wealth, and when you do have the money taxed it’s in a lower tax bracket. And, on top of all that, you can even split income with your spouse, reducing your taxes even further.

When someone says they do not believe in RRSPs there is a good chance that they had a bad experience once. Maybe they had terrible investments. Maybe they took money out at the wrong time. Maybe they were never shown how to use RRSPs properly. None of these things are the fault of the Registered Retirement Savings Plan.

I am not saying that RRSPs are a perfect fit for every scenario. If you are in a very low tax bracket now then you are probably going to look at the TFSA, or even the FHSA, before the RRSP. If you are a high-net-worth person with access to advanced strategies, then there may be other choices. You may go in a different direction if your focus on estate planning rather than retirement income. This is why planning matters.

But rejecting RRSPs outright is not a strategy. It is a misunderstanding.

The RRSP deadline for 2025 is March 2, 2026. It is not too late to save on your 2025 tax return.

Unless you don’t believe in tax refunds either.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

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BY BRAD BRAIN

This past week has seen some quick movement in the stock market. And I took advantage. I am not going to get into details on what I did, but I will tell you something even more important.

Why I did it.

As Warren Buffett famously said, “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”

This past week the stock market went a little crazy, due to the current adversarial political landscape. Investor consensus was manic depression. Stock prices plunged, including for some of my favourite businesses.

One business in particular is a money-making machine. Massively profitable. Great management team. In an indispensable industry. Already trading at an attractive level. This business makes so much money it literally generates more cash than it can intelligently use, and so it puts the surplus to both a share repurchase plan and consistent dividend increases.

When the politically-inspired pessimism hit, this stock dips by around ten percent. Note, the business has not changed. Just people’s perception of the business has changed, due to the evolving political landscape.

So what did I do?

I bought more, or course. A lot more. If I liked the business when it was trading at $100, I am going to love it if I can buy it for $90. Be greedy when others are fearful.

On the other hand, there are some extremely popular investments that I just cannot rationalize. Sure, I understand their popularity. But I don’t understand their share price.

One company in particular is valued at a stratospheric level, despite not having that great a financial picture. Its marginally profitable, and that is a recent development. It wasn’t that long ago when this company was hemorrhaging money. Its earnings are volatile, and right now the quarterly earnings are down 36%. Despite the unattractive financial metrics, the company trades at a price earnings ratio of almost $300.

Translating that into English, for every $300 that you spend, you get $1 of earnings. If that sounds like a lousy deal to you, well, I think you are right. It sounds like a lousy deal to me too.

Yet this is one of the most popular stocks on the planet. Be fearful when others are greedy.

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Buffett is famous for his great insight, but realistically it can be really challenging to be a contrarian. You need to be willing to stand out from the herd in times when rational analysis gets replaced by emotion.

There is a reason why that stock I liked plunged. It was because that the world viewed the prospects with dread. People are fearful.

And when fear dominates the headlines, prices often disconnect from reality. Some investors will extrapolate worst-case scenarios indefinitely into the future. They just can’t see things ending well. They feel the pressure to sell, even if it means losing some money. In their mind they want to get out now before the lose the rest.

That is precisely when long-term investors should be paying attention. When people are willing to sell their shares in great companies to you at cheap prices.

To be clear, being greedy when others are fearful does not mean being reckless. It does not mean ignoring risk or blindly buying falling stocks. We need to distinguish between temporary uncertainty and permanent impairment. Temporary uncertainty is when a great business is out of favour. Permanent impairment is when it is not a great business in the first place.

On the other end of the spectrum is unfettered optimism, also disconnected from reality. This is when everyone agrees that an investment is going to the moon, and the pressure is to get in quick, lest we risk missing out on the next big thing.

There is a reason why that other stock, the one I avoid, is so popular. Its because the world thinks this is the future and they want a piece of the action.

Risk appears when everyone agrees on how great something is. When all you hear is how much money people are making. When people stop paying attention to the price, because everyone expects it to go even higher tomorrow.

When enthusiasm turns to euphoria, watch out. The higher the expectations climb, the less room there is for disappointment. When the price is so high that there is no margin for error, even good investments can crash quickly. And lousy investments can be wiped out.

So, the next time you see a bold headline about the stock market, keep Buffett’s wise words in mind.

Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

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BY BRAD BRAIN

A bit of bad news for the Brain household. My teenage son, the hockey player, broke his wrist.

As a former high school athlete, I can confirm that this is indeed devastating news. He is out of action for 4 to 6 weeks. He will miss most, or even all, of the rest of the regular season. Hopefully he will be able to return in time for the playoffs.

As unwelcome as the broken bone is, this is a temporary situation. Inconvenient, yes. Painful, yes. Disruptive, yes. But not permanent. Not life changing.

Still, though, when this happened there were implications. Events were set in motion on a Monday morning when the team’s athletic therapist confirmed he needed x-rays. So, my kid is off from school. And he needs a ride to emergency, which means someone is taking time off work. Then the typical 8-plus hour wait in the hospital emergency room to see the doctor. In the days that follow there are more medical appointments. More missed school. More time off work for the caregivers.

And this was just for a broken bone. My son is going to be fine.

But imagine if he wasn’t.

What if when my kid went into the emergency ward the doctor had a totally different diagnosis? What if instead of the family members passing the time on their phones in the emergency waiting room, the news was it is a medivac flight to Children’s Hospital?

If something really bad was to happen to my kid, do you think that I would be operating as normal? Do you think if my kid was hospitalized that I would be sitting in my office, doing the work that pays the bills?

Obviously not.

Unfortunately, I can tell you from firsthand experience if that terrible phone call comes that my kid has been hurt, I will drop everything I am doing without any hesitation whatsoever. I have had it happen before. I was at the hospital before the ambulance arrived.

Okay, Brad Brain, we’re happy that your kid is going to be alright, but what does this have to do with a column on finances?

Everything.

Like virtually all of you, if I am not at work my personal income slows. Eventually it would stop.

So if I have a sick kid, or sick spouse, or sick parent, or any other sick loved one, and I am at their hospital bedside, and the implication (which is at the same time both initially far less important, but also eventually inescapable) is that my income is reduced, and perhaps even severed completely, how do I pay my three mortgages? How do I pay my staff? How do I pay my kid’s hospital bills, or the hotel and restaurant bills that I will incur to be near their side?

Most people recognize that insuring the income of the family breadwinner is clearly a good idea. In my own situation, if I was to be run over by a drunk driver, or contracted prostate cancer, or lost my eyesight my family’s income would shrink by as much as 99.9%. My bills wouldn’t shrink by 99.9% though. And that’s why I gladly pay the premiums my own personal life insurance, critical illness insurance, and disability insurance premiums every year.

What I’m talking about here, though, isn’t about insuring the family’s income in case the breadwinner gets sick. I’m talking about insuring the family’s income in case the non-income earning spouse gets sick. Or, God forbid, your kid gets sick.

Shortly after my first child was born I added a rider to my own critical illness insurance policy that would pay me a tax-free lump sum payment of $50,000 if she was diagnosed with a covered critical illness.

I did this as the new and proud parent of a wonderful, healthy and happy daughter, but also recognizing, from a purely financial perspective that my family’s financial situation would be jeopardized if something were to happen to my child.

In later years I bought additional polices for my kids when it became clear to me that only having them covered on a rider was not as much protection as I wanted.

The odds of contracting a critical illness are mind-blowing. 1 in 2 males and 1 in 3 females will have heart disease. 1 in 2.3 males and 1 in 2.6 females will develop cancer. And serious medical conditions can also have serious financial implications.

Terrible things don’t only happen to grown men. Protect your family’s finances from bad things happening. To any member of the family.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

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BY BRAD BRAIN

People will often think of money problems as math problems. They think that if they could earn more, or save more, or have better investments then everything would settle down, and things would turn out okay. But if that were true, high-income earners would be the calmest people in the room.

I want to talk about is how money is often not a math problem, but an emotional one, and what you can do to reduce your money stress.

I have high-net worth clients who realistically have all the money that they will ever need for the entirety of their lifetimes but nonetheless are constantly anxious about money. I have clients that will consistently do objectively dumb things with their money because, in their mind, it makes sense. I have clients who will check on the value of their long-term portfolio on a daily basis. I have clients who are unable to make real progress because they can’t bring themselves to make a decision. I have clients that will impulsively spend a lot of money because they think it will make them happier, only to suffer with regret and remorse from doing something they logically knew made no sense to do.

These are not bad people. All of them, in their own way, is stressed out about money. And that stress is grinding them down.

One of the most common stressors is the fear of not having enough. The fear of running out of money often shows up around retirement. People will worry that they won’t have enough to afford to do the things that they want, or that they won’t be able to keep up with the cost of living, or that a bad investment could wipe them out.

These fears can drive unproductive behaviour. Sometimes people will just perpetually roll over low-interest, short term GICs rather than considering investments more appropriate for long-term planning. Sometimes people put off making important, necessary decisions because they “need to think about it”, but needing to think about it turns to permanent procrastination. Sometimes people will feel compelled to make an emotional, knee-jerk reaction decision to every alarming headline.

The irony is that these unproductive behaviours often increase risk rather than reduce it.

Another source of stress is human tendency to compare ourselves to others, which has only gotten worse in the age of social media. People see vacations, renovations, new vehicles, early retirements, and think they are falling behind. But the filtered world of social media has very little to do with financial reality and everything to do with perception. Comparison feeds anxiety, and anxiety leads to poor financial decisions.

Some people try in vain to deal with financial stress by avoiding their finances altogether. They will not open their account statements because they do not want to think about money. They will avoid conversations with their spouse because that leads to nasty arguments. Avoidance is not a solution though. Pretending an issue does not exist is not the same thing as solving it.

Then there is market noise. Every correction is framed as a crisis. Every rally comes with the urgency to get in before it is “too late.” Some people consume financial news like junk food. A little might be fine. Too much is unhealthy. Compulsively checking your account balance over and over and over does not create control. It creates anxiety.

Money matters. Money lets you do the important things. But when money becomes a constant source of mental strain, it stops being a tool and starts becoming a weight.

What I have found is that the difference between clients who are stressed about money, and those who are not, is not the size of the account. It is clarity. People who have a financial plan that they understand are at ease.

Good financial planning is not about chasing maximum returns or proving how smart you are. It is about creating stability and predictability. It is about understanding what you can control and letting go of what you cannot.

Here is what I want readers to take away from this.

• Clarity reduces anxiety. Know your numbers and your plan. Uncertainty is more stressful than reality.

• Stop measuring your life against other people’s highlight reels. Comparison is corrosive and financially useless.

• Limit noise. Constant market monitoring rarely improves outcomes and often damages peace of mind.

• Have a plan you trust. Not because it predicts the future, but because it gives you a framework for decisions.

• Remember the purpose of money. It is not just to buy things. It is to help you do the things that are really important.

Taking care of your finances is not just about building wealth. It is about protecting your ability to live well under pressure. When managed properly, money should reduce stress, not add to it.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

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By Brad Brain

I started writing for the broken typewriter one year ago. My first column was on the Trump Tariffs.

Back then the idea of imposing tariffs on your historical allies and biggest trading partners was still just an ambiguous threat that most people were not taking seriously, myself included. To be honest, I really didn’t think Trump was actually going to implement something with legitimate heavy downside risk for such questionable upside benefit.

I am an economist. I like free markets. So do generations of economists and politicians before me. For decades North Americans have been trying to reduce barriers to trade, not impose new ones. Yet here we are.

Bear with me on this. I have some important points to make, which will have real life relevance for the common reader.

But first let me rewind the calendar. Recall what it was like back in January 2025. Our country was in political disarray. The Prime Minister had announced he is resigning, and at the time there was no clear succession. Donald Trump was newly elected after another close and controversial election, back in the White House but with less than fifty percent of the popular vote.

In this environment, Trump says some outlandish things. He talks about making Canada the 51st state. He talks about imposing tariffs on the U.S.A.’s trading partners.

Like many others, I thought Trump must have some kind of agenda. For whatever it is worth, my personal thoughts were that Trump could not seriously be considering such absurd policies. I thought he was just being opportunistic to try to extract some favourable concessions from what he may have perceived as a gap in Canadian leadership. Or maybe he was pandering to his base because of his own tepid election results. Distract people with something outlandish, but the real objective was something else, that kind of thing.

Because if Trump were to actually follow through with his threat of tariffs it is not us here in Canada that will pay them. It’s the American consumer that will foot the bill. A tariff is basically a tax on imports, paid by the American consumer. And the trade war that would inevitably follow the imposition of punitive tariffs will hurt almost everyone, Americans included.

So why would an American president want to make life more expensive for Americans? My guess was that it had to be a negotiating tactic. Surely, he can’t actually be considering something this dumb, could he?

Alas, I was mistaken. As we now know, Trump was indeed serious about taxing his own citizens, to the detriment of almost everybody, and to the benefit of virtually no one.

Let’s say I have a time machine, and I can travel back in time from today to when I wrote that first column in January of 2025. Since I know what is about to occur, I can tell you that not only does Trump follow through on his tariff threats, we are also about to face all sorts of serious additional economic and political challenges. All year long people are going to be worried about a hard-landing recession. The Ukraine war continues, threatening to drag NATO in. The Middle East risks military escalation. There will be ongoing worries about reduced demand from China slowing global growth. And so on. 2025 was exhausting.

Individually, any of these concerns is a plausible source of bad stock market performance. Surely if we suffered all of this and more, 2025 must have been a rotten year for the stock markets, right?

Wrong.

In 2025 the TSX Composite index returned about 29%, the best annual return in more than 15 years. The S&P 500 index was up almost 18%.

Here is the takeaway.

We can think we know what will happen in the short term, but that doesn’t mean that it will actually happen, and it doesn’t mean that the consequences will be what we expect.

I didn’t think Trump would enact tariffs. He did. I thought tariffs would be bad for the markets. They weren’t.

Good thing I did not let my expectations for the short-term impact my long-term investment strategy. If I had fell for the mental trap of thinking I can predict the future, then my clients would have missed out on some really good performance.

In my career I have seen people try to time the markets many times. It rarely works out. It’s almost always a good idea to keep your short-term predictions separate from your long-term investment strategy.

This is not new insight. Back in January 2025 I wrote, “Will the threats of tariffs actually materialize? Maybe. There isn’t much that you and I can do about that. What we can do is to stay focused on our own financial objectives. There are things that you will need to do in order to reach your Great Goals in life. Don’t let the potential for future tariffs, or any other noise, distract you from what you need to do.”

Those conclusions still stand. If anything, 2025 again proved them true.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

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BY BRAD BRAIN

This is the time of the year where people will think about making improvements in their life. In the spirit of New Year’s Resolutions, here are some suggestions to improve your financial situation.

Resolution One. Get out of debt.

There are different kinds of debts, and while some debts are not that bad, some debts are ugly.

Carrying a balance on your credit cards is a great example of an ugly debt and eliminating it should be prioritized. The typical credit card carries a significantly higher interest rate than other borrowing options. That high interest rate can be magnified by the way that some credit cards calculate how much interest that you owe. If you carry a balance from month to month you can find yourself paying interest on the interest.

Resolution Two. Educate yourself.

It is a real shame that more people don’t take a few hours to invest in their own financial knowledge. There are so many wonderful tools available.

But here is the important part. Let’s distinguish between actual financial education, and whatever is the latest thing trending on Twitter. There is all sorts of wackiness out there, and when I refer to financial education I am not talking about this superficial “doing your own research” nonsense. Doing actual research is great, but actual research does not come from watching a few TikTok videos.

There are a number of common mistakes that people are prone to make. Chasing past performance. Throwing good money after bad. Assuming that everything is bad, and just avoiding the perceived unpleasantness of planning for the future altogether. Locking in low interest rates on long-term investments. Mistakes like these can be avoided when you have a decent foundation of financial knowledge to work from.

Resolution Three. Look after yourself.

Many people don’t plan for the future. That’s weird, because you are going to spend the rest of your life there. You can greatly improve the odds of things working out by taking responsibility for your financial health.

Build up your cash reserves. Many people do not have the ability to cope with an emergency, or take advantage of an opportunity, because they have spent all their money already.

Make sure your insurance coverage is adequate. Not just life insurance, but disability and critical illness insurance as well.

Pay yourself first. Many people scramble to get some money together to beat the RRSP deadline. Perhaps a better way is to contribute to your RRSP on a regular basis. Even making small contributions regularly can have a powerful impact on the growth of your account. You can take advantage of dollar-cost-averaging, your money will compound throughout the year, and perhaps best of all, the job actually gets done with no more last-minute scrambling.

Update your will. The sad facts are that too many Canadians who need a will do not have one. If you die without a will it can be a mess; it can cost more money and take longer to settle your affairs, and you have a higher chance of an unexpected outcome. Why would you put your loved ones in the situation of sorting out your affairs without a will to guide them?

Resolution Four. Get some help with the stuff that you are unfamiliar with.

In my own life I just had a heated automatic waterer installed in the pasture for my horses. Do you think I tried to do that one myself? When it involves both electricity and water? Forget that, I hired professionals. I don’t need a horse, or anything else for that matter, getting zapped.

It’s the same thing with money. Get professional help for things that you are not familiar with. Should you pay down your mortgage or top up your RRSP? Is your RRSP alone adequate to provide you with the retirement lifestyle you want? Are you adequately insured? Are you doing the right things with your money? What should you be doing that you are not currently doing? A professionally prepared financial plan can help answer these questions.

Have a wonderful and prosperous New Year! Good luck with all your resolutions.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

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By Brad Brain

One of my dominant personality traits is that I am a fact-finder. Many times it is just not good enough to simply tell me something. I am going to need more than that. I need to see the proof for myself. I need to see the facts.

In my profession, this trait has served me well over the years. Because people tell me stories all the time. And, sometimes, those stories just don’t add up.

Take, for example, the resurgence of alternative investments. If you listen to some of the stories, alternative investments are the magic elixir that will answer all your financial prayers.

Traditional investment vehicles, such stocks, bonds, real estate and bank deposits,

will all have their pros and cons. Because there is no one perfect investment, some people are always trying to figure out if there is a way to make some improvements.

Alternative investments, collectively known as “alts”, are sexy. Private equity. Private credit. Infrastructure. Private real estate. Hedge funds. Absolute return funds. Special situations. The language of alternative investments can make you feel like its an exclusive club with special perks.

But there are some drawbacks too. Alternative investments can be complicated. Their investment strategy and fee structure can be opaque. The transparency of their holdings can be lacking. The accounting standards can be flexible. They might be exposed to additional risks, especially because of the use of leverage. And your ability to access your own money can be restricted.

The alternative investments story is always some variation on above-average performance, or below-average volatility, or both. The various nuances are not important for the purposes of this column.

All you really need to know is that alts promise more. Promises of better performance. Promises of lower volatility. Promises of something special. It’s a good story. But I am going to need more than just a story. I want to see the proof.

The seeds for this column were planted when I attended an investment conference that was heavy in alternative investment content. I am an open-minded guy. If something has the potential to be beneficial, I will listen.

I was listening to one presentation, and they were talking about their target rate of return being 7% to 9%. That left me underwhelmed. 7% to 9% is not that special. It’s in line with historical average for the Canadian stock market.

Another presentation was talking about how these strategies were used by university endowment funds and pension plans. But these funds also lost money. I didn’t see why it mattered that the firm had big clients. Losing money is losing money.

More recently I was talking to other advisors at two different firms. Both were very happy with the alts that they were using because they lost relatively less money than the benchmark stock index in 2022, which was a bad year for many asset categories. “So what?” I thought. The stuff I used in 2022 didn’t lost money at all. In a tough year, they were happy that they didn’t lose much for their clients, but I actually made money for clients that year.

These same other advisors were telling me how good the long-term performance of their alts had been. “So what?” I thought. The long-term performance of the stuff I used was even better, with less risk.

But, if they performance is not any better, surely alts will protect you from catastrophic losses then, right? Nope. Lots of alts have been wiped out.

Meanwhile, alternative investments almost always have reduced liquidity. Sometimes a lot less. Sometimes you can’t get your money out for years. There’s even a term for it. “Gating” means that a firm has suspended redemptions. In other words, you are stuck. You can’t sell. You can’t get your money back until the firm lets you. At least three firms in Canada have gated their private real estate funds this year.

My point is that there is a lot of noise about alternative investments. But when you look at the actual results, I find them wanting. Alts tell a good story. But I’m going to need more than that.

I am still waiting for the proof that I should incorporate alternative investments into my client’s portfolios. It would be one thing if the target rate of return was significantly higher. Or if the long-term performance was better. Or if it helped me avoid big declines. But I don’t see that.

So why would I put client’s money in illiquid assets unless there was a clear payoff? A fancy story without supporting evidence is just a sales pitch. I am going to need more than that.

I am not saying that all alternative investments are bad. I am just saying I am going to need more than that before I can say that they aren’t.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

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By Brad Brain

Its Sunday afternoon, and I am on the phone with my kid. My daughter Emily is in her second year of studies at the University of Alberta.

She asks me what I am doing. I tell her I am trying to think of a good topic to write about for this week’s column. Then inspiration hits me.

I ask her, as a young adult, what is her number one financial question or concern?

Unprompted, she says that without me, and her RESP, she would currently be drowning in student loans. Forget about being able to put aside a little money for the future, despite the life changing impact of compound interest when you get an early start on your savings. Without my help, there would be no chance that she would be able to put away money into her FHSA or RRSP, she would be struggling to just to pay rent and groceries.

The reason this is on her mind is that she is seeing her friends and classmates dealing with these very issues right now. When her friends should be thinking about their upcoming final exams, they are distracted by trying to make ends meet.

Now that my kids are entering adulthood and starting to think about their own careers, they are asking more questions about my work. They know I am a financial planner, but what is it that I do?

This, folks, is what I do. I help people make smart decisions about their money so that they can do the things that are really important to them. Like giving their kids a massive head start in life by taking care of post-secondary education costs so they can focus on their studies and not on their bills. That’s exactly what I do.

But my purpose in telling you this is not because this is an advertisement for my own services. You can get a great RESP from almost any professional financial advisor. You don’t have to specifically see me for that.

Rather my purpose is to make sure that people know how easy financial planning is if you get an early start, and consistently work your plan.

Both my kids already have the money in their education accounts to fully pay for four years of post secondary education. And I don’t mind telling you that this is NOT because I made brilliant tactical investments. This is NOT because I am so rich that I can just throw money around no problem. This is NOT because I am smarter than everyone else.

The reason that my kids can pursue their post-secondary aspirations without worrying about affordability is because I started early. It’s because I put away money for them consistently. Its because I invested in products and programs that were appropriate for the situation. That’s it. There is no magic here, and there is nothing that you can’t replicate for your own kids and grandkids.

This is the takeaway that I want to impress upon you. The sooner you start planning for the future, the easier it is to have the life you want. My kid can sweat over her finals instead of her bills right now because of what I started 19 years ago.

Of course, procrastination is easy too. And, right now, maybe some of those other kids who are currently wondering if they can pay their rent or afford groceries are living the consequences of what procrastination looks like.

Maybe future education costs are not important to you, and that’s fine. Financial planning is all about making smart decisions so that you can reach your own unique Great Goals.

So, two questions for you.

First question.

What is really important to you? Educating your kids or grandkids? Being able to stop working and still have all the income you could ever want? Making sure your loved ones are protected in case something terrible happens? Passing on your fortune to the next generation? Supporting your favourite charity? Travel? A winter home?

Second question.

What are you doing about it?

The future is coming. Whether or not you prepare for it is up to you.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

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By Brad Brain

I spent a lot of money last week, and I feel pretty happy about it.

This past week was Black Friday, and I took full advantage. Bought all my Christmas presents. Booked some flights and hotel rooms. Updated some cell phone contracts. It was an expensive week.

So why am I happy?

I am happy because I was going to do all these things anyway, and by taking advantage of Black Friday pricing, I was able to do all of these things when they were on sale.

Sure, last week cost me a lot of money. But it would have cost me much more if I had waited until the prices returned to normal before I did my shopping.

Here is my point. What is intuitively obvious when it comes to retail purchases (buying things when they are on sale is good) can be scary and bewildering when it comes to investment purchases. From time to time, prices will come down for both investments and airline tickets, but far fewer people will be excited for the opportunity to buy their investments on sale.

There are two reasons why this is so.

The first reason why people think about Black Friday differently than they do bear markets is the narrative around the two scenarios.

Think of what you see in the media when the topic is Black Friday. Stories of bargains, and people clamoring to get in on the good deals. Stories of how good the drop in price is.

Now think of what you see in the media when the topic is a bear market. Stories of how uncertain the future is, and people fleeing from the markets. Stories of how bad the drop in price is.

It’s natural for people to be influenced by the stories that they are bombarded with. If the media is telling you how bad things are, you are likely to be persuaded by that narrative.

The second, and biggest, reason why people think about Black Friday differently than they do bear markets is that most people make money decisions based not on fact, but on emotion.

When an investment goes up, many people fear that they are missing out and so they will want to buy. Logically, this doesn’t make sense. Why would you wait until after something goes up in price to buy it?

When an investment goes down, and many people fear it will keep going down, so they will want to sell. Logically, this doesn’t make sense. Why would you wait until after something goes down in price to sell it?

Make no mistake, the evidence is overwhelming that this is exactly what the majority of people will do. The key to understanding this phenomenon is to understand that logic has nothing to do with this specific decision-making process. When it comes to money decisions, the majority of people are driven by fear and greed.

Why do people buy investments after they have gone up? Greed.

Why do people sell investments after they have gone down? Fear.

People understand the phrase “buy low, sell high”. But they don’t behave that way. As I say, the evidence is overwhelming. Money will pour into high-flying investments, and it will evaporate from investments that are struggling.

But, believe it or not, if you are a long-term investor, with an appropriate tolerance for variable returns and you own high quality investments, you actually want to see investments go on sale from time to time.

So you can buy more.

Think about it. Let’s say there is a wonderful business, run by honest and competent management, in an industry with a bright future. This business is profitable, and very competitive. It is here to stay.

Let’s say that the shares of this business are trading were trading at $100 last month. But today you can buy them at $80. Does that make you sad? It shouldn’t. If you liked the stock at $100, you should love it at $80.

Yes, you read that right. Assuming that it is appropriate for your situation, you want to buy, not sell, the next time that investments go on sale. Despite the media’s narrative about the uncertain future. Despite whatever value your portfolio used to be.

Now, of course, there are all sorts of “what ifs”. What if it is a lousy investment to begin with? What if you need to sell for estate planning purposes? What if you are drowning in debt? Be sure to talk to a professional financial planner about your own unique situation.

But the mindset for bear markets is, it’s Black Friday. Things are on sale.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.

By Brad Brain

This one is for the people that I am probably never going to work with.

I got the idea for this column when a fellow came into my office, asking me if I could do some things on his investment account. Although I could do what he requested, my response was “You don’t want me for that.”

For the purposes of this column there are two scenarios where you don’t want me for that, and both will lead to me making the same recommendation: check out the discount brokers.

In the past discount brokers have had a bad reputation for things like horribly long times waiting for the client services people to answer the phone, clunky technology, poor transparency, and shenanigans with under-the-table fees being charged, both directly and indirectly.

But technology has come a long way and nowadays, although there will still be some unhappy clients, some people are quite pleased with their discount broker.

The first scenario where you might want to consider a discount broker is if you have already made up your mind on what you want to do, and you are determined to proceed. This is the scenario that prompted this column. The fellow that came in to see me already thought he knew what stocks he wanted to own; he just needed someone to act as an order-taker.

Folks, if all you are looking for is someone to execute your trades, there is no need to pay my expensive rate. I can promise you there are people out there that will do it far cheaper than I will. There is no need to pay a full-service price for simple trade processing.

The second scenario is when the size of the account does not justify the costs involved. If you are just starting out then potentially the costs are going to be a substantial percentage of the account size. It might make sense to just get started with a diversified, low-cost investment to get you going.

Either way, from time to time I suggest to people that they may be better served with a discount brokerage. Usually the next question is, which discount brokerage should I talk with?

There are quite a few options. To find the right one for you, start with a google search of the online providers. Check out the reviews to see what other users are saying.

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What you will want to look at is not just the cost of the trades, but what the platform offers and is that consistent with what you are looking for. Do you want sophisticated analytical tools? Do you plan on doing a lot of trading? What are the costs to transfer your account out when you are done? There are lots of people that will take your business, you want to find the right one for you.

You can also talk to your local bank branch and see what they have to offer. You will almost certainly still be dealing with a call center or online platform, but there may be some benefits like reduced bank service charges if you also have an online investment account, or integration with your banking app.

Discount brokers can be a legitimate option. Now, having said that…

For 30 years now I have watched people turn $5000 into $2000 because of their buddy’s hot stock tip. Or because of what the guys in the coffee shop said was going to happen. Or because they saw something on social media that seemed like a good opportunity.

Yes, you can choose to buy stock online. Just as I could choose to go down a black diamond run on my snowboard.

To be clear, I am a raw beginner at snowboarding. I have difficulty doing the bunny run without falling over. Black diamond runs are the steepest, most challenging, most dangerous runs on the mountain.

But, in theory, I could navigate a black diamond run, enjoy the thrills and arrive safely. Just like, in theory, you can buy stock online and make a lot of money.

Like black diamond runs, discount brokerages can be great if you know what you are doing, and dangerous if you don’t. So be sure that you know what you are doing.

I am not trying to be adversarial here. Regular people absolutely can learn about investing, and make good decisions with their money. But you are very unlikely to pull that off just by watching a few YouTube videos. If you want to make a commitment to learning about all the stuff that you need to know, then go for it. If you aren’t going to make that commitment, then best to be self-aware.

Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com