10 Years Helping Canadians Retire: Here's What I've Learned

In episode 200 of the Canadian Money Roadmap, Evan reflects on how his views on financial planning have evolved over his first decade in the industry. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to episode 200 of the Canadian Money Roadmap Podcast. I'm your host, Evan Neufeld, and 200 episodes is something that I kind of have a hard time believing is actually the case. I started this podcast back in 2020. Everybody was stuck at home during COVID, and I was answering a lot of the same questions over and over again, and so I wanted to, you know, make some content that I could share with people about investing, retirement taxes, whatever, just money stuff in general, so that I could help people make better decisions with their money. And that's still broadly the goal. I'm focusing more so on the retirement readiness side of things or the that stage of life. But right now, you know, 200 episodes later, I kind of wanted to reflect on some things that have changed in the way that I see the world of financial planning, investing, and all this kind of stuff, because I learned from a lot of very generous people over the years. But, you know, over a decade of time, things really change. And so over time I have changed my mind about a few things. And I thought it'd be kind of fun on this 200th episode to kind of look back and see some of the really like specific things, not like vague, you know, how I see the world type of things, but like some really specific things that I've changed my mind about over the years. You know, not because everything that I learned was wrong and I had to unlearn a bunch of problems necessarily or anything like that. But like I said, the world has changed, investment products have very much changed, technology has changed, access to information has changed, consumer expectations have changed, and you know, I've had the benefit of seeing that in the real world play out with real people, helping them with their money. One of my early mentors in this business was a man named Frank Enz. Frank used to say some version of this, anyways, but he the goal is to have 30 years of experience, not one year of experience repeated 30 times. And that kind of stuck with me. You know, to me, that means you don't necessarily need to keep doing the same thing over and over again just because you learned it at one point or because it's comfortable, or because changing your mind feels awkward or something like that. I think you should keep paying attention, you should keep learning and willing to adjust things when the evidence or experience or the world around you gives you a better way to see things and to serve our clients. Now, there's definitely some people in the industry who would disagree with some of the changes I made, and honestly, I don't care like that's totally fine. There are many thoughtful, ethical people in the business that see things differently than I do. This is not some sort of argument with anybody or anything like that, but I do want the way that I work and the advice that I give and the firm that I'm building here to be defendable. I want to have a backbone for why I'm suggesting the things that I do for my clients. And I want that to reflect what I've learned. I want it to reflect the evidence as I understand it, and I want it to be organized around what is best for the people that I serve. So again, for episode 200 here, I want to take a look at some of the really practical, specific things that I've changed my mind about over the first 10 years of my career. Some of these things happened slowly, some of them were pretty quick changes at some point, and some of them, you know, are still an ongoing thing. And there's many others, of course, but I just want to put a few practical ones in here, just so you can kind of see how my line of thinking has changed over the years. I just never want to be the type of person that says, well, this is how we've always done it, and just be okay with that. Sometimes that's okay, and sometimes you need to have that type of consistency. But in general, I think having a philosophy that looks at more of, you know, why does this actually make sense today based on you know what's going on in the world and what the evidence actually suggests. So I don't think changing your mind means that you're foolish before or you're chasing a shiny object or something like that. But sometimes you're just observing new and better options going forward. Sometimes evidence becomes clearer. For me, again, that's just a constant pursuit that I want to have. So the first thing that I kind of wanted to take a look at was definitely a hot button issue in our industry. If you're a DIY investor, this might sound obvious or things like that, but it's active management for investments. Truthfully, I don't believe it's foolish or dishonest. Like there's so much garbage online, but it's you know, it's it's a big scam or anything like that. It's honestly just very, very hard to rely on it to provide consistent results in my experience. So when I first got into uh into the business, I really wanted to learn a ton. And so I said yes to meeting with every representative from any every investment company that was willing to knock on our door. And I would listen and hear all these different stories and hear from managers specifically, like right from the horse's mouth, about what they were doing with their portfolios. And the more I did that, the more I was like, oh my goodness, there's so many brilliant people out there that dedicate their lives to this stuff. You know, they've got these sophisticated research teams, they're flying all over the world, meeting with company leadership, they've got satellite images of parking lots, you know, full of shipping containers, trying to get out in front of, you know, all these different delivery timelines that these companies are suggesting they might have, like trying to get an edge. Like there's so, so much of that. And this is not reading headlines on CNBC and trying to trade. Like the more I met with people, the more I realized what was going on behind the scenes, the more impressed I was with what active management actually looked like. Because when I was in university, I honestly I was an index fund investor. I picked a few stocks on the side because I thought it would be fun and whatever. But then I kind of was swayed by a lot of what I saw there. And again, it's not because they're being dishonest or anything like that. It's just like the the level of effort that goes into active management is truly astonishing. And so, you know, I thought that knowledge and their process in particular was very, very impressive. And some funds, and many of them, especially over specific periods of time, they come with very attractive results. The challenges that I've kind of learned over time is that those results can kind of be skewed either by, you know, finding a certain benchmark or a specific time period or something like that. It's very easy or it's possible to make anything look like a really good option. But like when you see that, the numbers on the page, like, oh, this strategy has performed really well. And you hear the story about it and you shake hands with the manager, and they you can kind of see the whites of their eyes as they're explaining why they do what they do, and then you can see the results on the page. It's like if you it feels logical that their skill should continue to produce better returns. And in some cases, that is actually true. And you know, like the numbers are small for managers that can perform well over time or outperform over time. And I have a blessing and a curse of having some of those outperforming funds as part of my book earlier on in my career. And so the blessing is, of course, that the clients benefit from that of having that strong performance over time. The curse is that the strong results from very few make it easy to believe that there's a repeatable advantage that's out there. So it kind of creates this cognitive dissonance of like you kind of you're trying to figure out what to believe on a go-forward basis, right? And so over time, you know, I've had the opposite experience as well of seeing some of these managers that I've met in person, they had past performance that was really strong. The strategy makes sense, like it's completely rooted in intelligence and you know, research and hard work and all these kind of things that you think lead to outsized returns, or you know, you put in more effort, you get better results in the end. And I just have seen time and again now, after having 10 years of experience, and some of these very highly celebrated funds and managers eventually have periods of time where they really get it wrong. And again, it's not because they're stealing money or anything like that, it's just so hard, it's really, really tough. And so the the there's there's periods of time where you know these managers that you had to see paraded around at at events and on billboards and whatever, they start to look pretty ordinary or kind of the opposite. And that makes it really tough because if you have a client's money invested with that type of strategy, how do you explain that? It's like, okay, is this person now completely foolish, or do we just need to wait it out, or how do we know that they're gonna do better next time? Right? There's a few terms that that have now become a little bit r red flaggy for me, whereas in the past they were interesting. Things like high conviction and like best ideas. It's like this fund is full of only our best ideas. And you think, oh well, you know, it's not any of the shot shots in the dark here, but it's still concentration, it's still hard to pick the winners in the stock market, it's still really tough. And honestly, those high conviction, high concentration strategies have the greatest ability to underperform because you have to get them right. And so again, I think there's some important nuance here that it doesn't mean that these managers or active management is a scam or anything like that, doesn't mean that anyone stopped being intelligent, doesn't mean that people weren't working hard for the fees or anything like that. It just means that outperforming other highly informed investors after costs over a long period of time is just incredibly difficult. And so over the last five or six years in particular, since I've started the the podcast, I've I've been moving more, more aggressively, I guess, towards an index or an index plus type of approach that that doesn't like factor investing. I've talked about that on the podcast here before. I'm not gonna kind of get into the details there, but essentially the main idea is of broad diversification, very low cost, systematic exposure instead of being dependent on a specific manager and a clear philosophy that you can implement seven days a week. This is kind of the approach that I want to take. It's so much easier to explain it to people. And, you know, when you're you're not trying to explain the decisions of a team that that you don't know, you might hear from them in an email from time to time or at a conference or something like that. It's really tough to actually have enough conviction in these people to make good decisions there, especially when the evidence points to the fact that very, very, very few of them are going to outperform over time. And so my investment philosophy, developing that over time, it just doesn't need to change when a particular manager fund or story goes out of favor necessarily because of that broad diversification philosophy that seems to work very, very well, especially over time. It's a strategy that the odds of success improves over time as opposed to the opposite with pure active management there. So the philosophy is more moved to like having a product match the philosophy instead of trying to build the philosophy around a manager that sounds smart or anything like that, because again, it's too tough to actually do it. So rather build portfolios around things that I can control, like cost, diversification, risk, exposure, tax efficiency, those kind of things, and match that to the client's plan. So, kind of second to this of like active management, the industry in general, like the fund creation industry, that they're always launching new products. And again, not all of them are scams or whatever, but many of them are just not worth having in the portfolio. But even just more benign investment strategies at different managers. This one's hot, this guy's not, whatever, as you can imagine. So seeing some of these managers do well over time and then do poorly in the next period of time, when you're meeting with representatives of these companies, it might try to sway you to move over here. And it again, it always sounds like a good idea. So, this is what I call actively managing active managers. If you want to have active management, that's totally fine. But I think again, you have to have a consistent philosophy that you can implement or have a manager that has a very clear philosophy that's not just kind of blowing in the wind trying to find the next good idea necessarily. And earlier on in my career, again, when you're just kind of learning how all this stuff works, learning all of these new managers and what their strategies are and all the different options that are available, I don't know, it it makes you, as the advisor made me anyways, feel like I was being attentive and active and valuable to my clients because, like, okay, well, this is what's going on in the world, and you feel like you really have the finger on the pulse, but it's just again, it's just really difficult. So not only is it difficult for one of those managers to outperform over time, the ability for me or anyone else to pick out which manager that's going to do that is nearly impossible, right? So it's it's kind of that sub-activity of active management that often has similar or perhaps worse odds, even of outperformance over time, because first the active manager needs to outperform or even just perform, like match in line with its benchmark. Then me as the advisor, I need to identify that manager before the outperformance happens. Then I need to avoid selling during the inevitable periods of lagging performance because there's no one that outperforms ever all the time, right? And then I have to figure out when someone has completely lost their lost their edge versus simply going through a normal period of time where different strategies um look a little bit different compared to the index and things like that. And then if I'm going to replace somebody, who do you replace it with next? It was just like this constant changing, and it's you know, the the end uh fund industry is incentivized to do this so that they can get new flows. They always have to good have a next good idea, next star waiting in the wings to gather um assets for that strategy. So again, I just had a hard time being convinced that that was uh a good strategy to continue with because picking those managers in advance of their next round of outperformance is just very, very difficult. So again, my preference now is to have more of a clear investment philosophy, use very well diversified, systematic, low-cost investment products to implement that philosophy. And then we make changes more so on the client side of things as opposed to on the fund manager side of things, right? So when a client changes their goals, their tax situation changes, their time horizon changes, they need some more spending or less spending, they have different risk capacity based on health or preferences or anything like that. Don't need to necessarily change investment products based on the market predictions or manager turnover, different stories playing out or anything like that. We make investment changes based on what is going on with clients. And you've heard me talk about this on the podcast before. And so this has been something that I've been working on for a long time, but it's something that's pervasive in the industry that I'm always very aware to steer clear of if possible. So I just I just never want to have the story of a client's retirement or whatever their big picture goal is to depend on me having a better prediction about the markets or investment managers than everyone else. It just doesn't work reliably enough over time for me to have confidence in that kind of approach. So again, more of a systematic approach that's repeatable every single day. That is kind of the direction that I have decided to go. The next thing that I've kind of changed my mind, uh it's not really changing my mind specifically, but more leaning into it is that financial planning is the core of investment decisions, or it should be the core of how we make investment decisions, because you know, the goal is not necessarily just to big build the biggest portfolio possible. The goal is to be able to use our money to build a fulfilling life, to meet our needs and be generous with others and uh any number of things like that. But just building the biggest pile of money or being the richest guy in the graveyard isn't is not something that I subscribe to. So this is something that I've kind of always believed. So it's not really like a complete reversal or anything like that. But just over time, especially as I've acquired my financial planning credentials, and again, that was right around the time I launched the podcast, planning has become much more central to how I believe investment decisions should be made. So maybe earlier on, I was just getting started, I was meeting with a lot of people that were in my age demographic of people, their early careers and whatnot. So it was very easy to kind of lean into the save more, invest more, grow as much as possible, more money is better, and this kind of thing. But now that I'm working with folks that are closer to the retirement years, I'm kind of needing to untrain some of that initial gut reaction. Of course, saving and investing are very important, and having more assets kind of generally provides more flexibility, but more isn't a financial plan. And in many cases, it actually causes more problems than anything. And so the questions that we should ask around the building of one's nest egg is like, what is this money actually for? Giving it a purpose, stating that purpose, being clear with that over time. What would enough look like? Sam and I were talking about this just last week of like the the pursuit of more is such an empty pursuit, whereas we should be in pursuit of enough and knowing what enough is for us. It's it can be much more freeing that way. You know, it's more questions of like do you do you actually need to save more? And could you use some of that money that you're wanting to save to improve your life right now or to to improve someone else's life right now? Do you need to take this much investment risk? We don't necessarily have to in many cases. Would paying down debt provide more peace of mind? Could you retire earlier? Could you help your children sooner? Could you be more generous in and in general? Or maybe you just want to spend some more money while you are healthy and you're in a stage of life where that would provide a lot of joy for you. And so, you know, investing without a plan, it can kind of optimize for the wrong things and kind of train wrong behaviors. And so my change or the area that I've kind of leaned into more since since day one is making sure that the portfolio has a purpose as much as I can, right? So like this isn't my money that I'm investing on behalf of uh of other people, of course. Like try to encourage those conversations at the very least with clients of finding the purpose for the portfolio and using the money to fit those needs, as opposed to just making the pile as big as possible. So this is kind of one of the major reasons why Cedar Point Wealth, we're kind of a planning first firm here, because again, I think having that plan or those objectives laid out should guide all of the investment decisions. Um so I I think those conversations should start around clarity of goals as opposed to what funds or what investments are you going to recommend that it give me the best returns. So we we always start every new client engagement with a plan, and and then if if our clients decide to have us invest money for them, we kind of implement our philosophy around meeting the objectives of that plan. And so another area specific to financial planning that I've kind of changed my mind about or kind of again, kind of leaned away from or leaned into, I guess, is in regards to insurance. And there's like a few different ideas that I've had about insurance over time. Permanent insurance is the big thing that that I see as a kind of a problem in the industry, and this is something that I've always kind of been aware of because there's so many permanent insurance products that are sold inappropriately, but there's also some more innocent ideas, I guess, of having some permanent insurance, or everybody should have some permanent insurance. And, you know, I thought, okay, well, that makes sense. It's everybody's gonna die at some point, and so having some coverage to cover off your funeral or whatever, whenever you pass away, it seems responsible, whatever. But now over time, I've kind of been less convinced that these small permanent policies are actually meaningfully helpful for people. Because again, back to the plan, you know, that small permanent insurance policy probably doesn't really solve a significant planning problem. And those premiums that you're paying today might actually reduce your ability to save enough or to buy enough term insurance, for example, to actually cover the needs that you have today. So, you know, in many cases, the bigger risk is not the expenses at death, it's someone dying when they have young kids at home or when, you know, family still depends on their income. Well, there's a mortgage, you know, all those kind of things. And so I've always had a term insurance focus, but I've I've really leaned into that even more of like I'm really struggling to find really strong use cases for permanent insurance for the average person. And so, you know, really. Increasing coverage and actually buying more term insurance. So maybe that's kind of like the opposite side of the same coin of like, I'm not changing my mind on the need for insurance in particular, but it's actually buying more insurance when people have the greatest need and less insurance later on in life. Yeah, and that's that's something that I've again I've I've kind of always believed, but just really leaning into that even more over time. So don't hear me saying that permanent insurance is bad necessarily, of course. It's often sold inappropriately, but permanent insurance still has legitimate use cases for sure. Won't get into those here today, but there's there's plenty of products out there that are probably better suited than what is generally being sold out there, anyways. There's another issue around permanent insurance in particular, I think that many of my colleagues would probably agree with, is that the commission structure kind of presents a lot of conflicts of interest. So the more premiums you pay as someone who buys a policy, the more commission the agent gets. There's some people that are really trying to push to make some changes in this regard because clearly there's a conflict of interest there. And you know, even a very ethical advisor can be placed in an uncomfortable position when certain products have different compensation structures. And so for me, one way that I've gotten around some of these issues over time is to actually, I got rid of my insurance license entirely. And so, because I'm focusing more so on the planning side of things, part of the financial plans that we do for people is looking at their insurance need if they have any. And from there, I can very comfortably recommend exactly what they need because I can refer that out to someone else that I trust. Don't get any kickbacks or any commission splitting or anything like that. Some people do, and again, that's that's totally fine. But I I just wanted to have that clear delineation from what is needed versus what they're actually going to buy. I just wanted to have a clear separation there. So I think I've been able to get more of my clients to purchase appropriate amounts of insurance by not being the one to sell it to them, actually. And so that I guess that's kind of the broader change that I've kind of made. I don't think there's any like significant issues there necessarily, but whether you act on a conflict of interest or not, it's like it doesn't like there's still uh a conflict there. So this is kind of my attempt to minimize that with insurance when it's one of those products that no one really wants to buy. But as advisors, we can kind of see the great need that exists and that can be solved by having some insurance there. So again, I don't think permanent insurance is bad. I think it's often oversold or missold entirely, but that change for me has kind of focused more so on the greatest need at the greatest time, young families in particular, just buy enough coverage to make sure that everybody is is covered at that point. And yeah, and permanent insurance can be best suited for those situations where there is a true need at one's estate. The last kind of major change I want to talk about is one that might sound maybe a little unusual coming from someone that manages investments for clients, but I don't necessarily believe anymore that everybody needs an investment advisor at every stage of life. So when I first got into the business, you know, I was pretty excited about the opportunity and learning a ton and just knowing the value that having a third party manage some investments or make recommendations for people, especially for those who don't want to do it themselves, and like, oh, this is this is great. We can really take the load off somebody's mind and take that off of their plate and make sure that they're saving enough for the long term. And I was fortunate enough to join a firm where we had a pretty sizable client base, and so I had some evidence put before me of like, yeah, these are people that have worked with us for 30 years and like they've they've done a really great job. And so I got really, really excited about that. And I really started to believe that everybody should be using advisor, and DIY investors probably aren't doing themselves a whole lot of favors. And so now, what hasn't changed here is like I still think me and our team we do a really good job managing investments, in particular with this philosophy that we've built out over the last decade or so to make things really evidence-based and low cost for people. And so, you know, having someone that's qualified to administer, monitor, rebalance, coordinate, do everything for you can be a very significant benefit for people who want that, for sure. So, because you know, for for many people that do higher S, I would hope most people, I guess, outsourcing that part of your life brings some confidence, simplicity, and helps with the discipline side of things, of course, when we can implement it for you, for sure. So that that's hasn't changed. And I have also seen many DIY portfolios, even from people that listen to the podcast that reach out and whatnot, that are truthfully pretty concerning. The really concentrated positions in a small number of stocks, chasing performance from stuff you see in the headlines, or you know, just being generally late to the party with like, oh, I see AI everywhere. Why don't I buy some of this AI stuff? It's like, great, go for it. Like after buying stocks after they go up is is pretty difficult. So again, that's chasing performance. On the other end, too, having too much cash sitting on the sideline, so you're not able to meet your objectives because you're not investing enough, but needs security, so just having conversations broadly about risk, too much tinkering going on, switching in and out of this, buying and selling that, whatever. And along with that, no clear risk management strategy, having investments completely disconnected from what you actually need for retirement, thinking tax efficiency is something that it really isn't, chasing dividends and non-registered accounts. That's that's a loaded one there for sure. But just like people getting pulled towards whatever investment theme is being advertised at them online or through forums or on YouTube channels or whatever the case is, and be it covered calls or leverage strategies or private equity, all sorts of different stuff. It's like you can just see the advertising works because people are buying this stuff, right? So I'm not saying now, obviously, that everyone should be investing on their own, and many people still benefit from advice, accountability planning, professional implementation for sure. But what has changed, I think, is that DIY investing has become dramatically more accessible even since I started a decade ago. So, like low costs, asset allocation, ETFs, and mutual funds, they didn't really exist. Like there was index funds or whatever, and you but you kind of had to pick and choose, and there's very few providers for them. But like these all-in-one products have become really good to have a prudent investment strategy that anyone can implement quite easily. So now a younger investor they can build a globally diversified, automatically rebalanced portfolio with one simple product in a way that was not as straightforward years ago. Like even when I started the podcast, it was still before most of these all-in-one ETFs even launched. And so these things are still new, and so prudent investing is no longer limited to people who have the time or knowledge to build these complex portfolios or even like marginally complex. It's it's a lot more doable, right? So for someone that's you know, their situation is quite simple, they've got a long time horizon, they're using some of these broadly diversified low-cost options. You've got the discipline to not be bouncing around from thing to thing and you know, understanding their own limitations and being willing to ask when their situation changes. You know, you still have to have the time, talent, and temperament to make DIY investing work out well for you. And but the products are are simple. The behavior side of things is not always simple, of course, and one fund doesn't protect people from abandoning a good strategy at the worst possible time, of course. But you know, DIY investing has gotten a lot better. And so the areas where I've found we can add probably the most value for people on average is when those retirement timelines get a little bit closer. We've heard from people time and again, it's like, okay, well, I I feel pretty good about this. Now I want someone else to have a hand on the wheel with me here for sure. So, you know, when someone's getting closer to those retirement years and they need to start turning the savings into income, when you've got registered and non-registered accounts that need to be coordinated with minimum withdrawals or taxable distributions, all these kinds of things. So taxes in general, how all of these things integrate with CPP and OAS, when RIF withdrawals need to be planned and you know, all these other things, plus the emotional aspect that really comes from that flip of the switch from saving to spending. For many people, it can be really difficult. And also now it's just a different level of trust in the strategy or the philosophy, the implementation now that you're actually living off of the portfolio that you've taken years to build. And so this is why myself and our team here at Cedar Point, we've become more focused on that area of people approaching retirement, you know, mostly kind of within that five to 10 years of like where most of our clients, our new clients are at that stage of life. It's like you've done all of that hard work of building up the savings, but now you want a little bit of clarity. Now you want to be able to change your mindset for like I'm working hard, I'm working hard too. Now I want to relax, I want to spend my time, I want to spend my money. I'd love to outsource some of this stuff to make sure that something prudent is happening with my money and that we can continue to engage on a plan on an ongoing basis to make sure that this is still going to keep working, besides just the first few years of retirement. And so, you know, people who want to delegate thoughtfully rather than continuing to carry every financial decision themselves, that's the area where we've really started to add focus to our client base of like where our new clients are coming from, as opposed to absolutely everyone. Also, things change over time too, and it's it's much more expensive to provide a high level of service to people just on this side of things. And so the capacity to actually invest for younger clients who don't necessarily have a whole lot saved yet, is is just harder. And so it's it's kind of nice that that challenge on the business side of things has coincided with the ability to have really prudent DIY options that are available because that just wasn't the case before, even in those first few years when I was getting into the business. It just you just didn't have a lot of great options like robo advisors, they didn't exist yet, anything like that. So, yeah, so that's kind of been a little bit of a change on that side of things and where we as Cedar Point Wealth have really tried to focus to provide the most value to a specific group of people as possible. And so, some those are some of the biggest things that I've changed my mind about or kind of leaned into or focused on or observed over my first 10 years of my career. I've kind of moved away from relying on active managers entirely to, you know, building a philosophy first and have the the products that we use kind of match the philosophy as opposed to trying to backwards re-engineer them on the back end there. I've leaned more into financial planning as the foundation of investment decisions, being a bit more selective with insurance, either buying more of a different product or less of other ones, and just being open to the reality that not everybody needs to hire an investment manager. And now that so many good alternative options are available. So none of these changes, I don't think, have come from wanting to be different for the sake of being different. They just kind of came from my experience of what I've observed and some challenges that I kept seeing over and over again, meeting with real clients and helping them make real decisions with their money. I've tried to learn more about what the evidence supports, from recognizing some potential conflicts of interest and just being honest about what kind of advice I would want if I were sitting on the other side of the table, especially given the things that I've learned over time. So, of course, I'm very grateful for the people who helped me get started in this profession. Uh, I'm grateful for the mentors who gave me the opportunity, taught me how to speak with clients, taught me the responsibility that comes with looking after someone's financial future, and gave me the foundation I needed to develop my own point of view. I'm equally grateful that this profession of financial planning and investment management gives me opportunities to learn, improve, and change. It's what makes it so much fun. It's not the same thing over and over again. And so, because of that, I don't expect that this is necessarily the final version of how I think about money, investing, retirement advice, anything like that. I hope not, anyways, because the goal isn't to stay exactly the same. The goal is to keep getting better so that we can hopefully provide better advice to help people make better decisions with their money. So, with that, we have reached the end of episode 200 of the Canadian Money Roadmap. You might be seeing this on YouTube, you might be watching the video. This is something that we're gonna hopefully try to lean into a little bit more as well, having more of a video component. Uh, I tried this a little while back and just wasn't the time or didn't have as much capacity to be able to do that. It is a bit more of a heavy lift than just doing the pure audio podcast, of course. And so let me know what you think, anyways, if the video is interesting or valuable to you, or if you just discovered this podcast for the first time, you can go back and you find me on the audio podcast platform of your choice. But whether you found the podcast this past week or you've been listening since the early days, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for trusting me with a small or maybe not so small piece of your time over the years. Thanks for sending in questions, sharing episodes, leaving reviews, watching the videos here on YouTube or wherever, completing scorecards, reaching out to work with us, and and for allowing this podcast to become part of your actual life. So, of course, when I started recording these episodes, I didn't know where it would lead. Approaching 700,000 downloads, that was way more than I would have expected. Podcasts are really tough to actually get into people's hands, phones, ears, however you want to say it. And so this has to kind of come naturally a little bit. And so I'm I'm glad that that has been the case, that people have found the show to be valuable, and uh it's it's really helped clarify some of the things that I believe, right? Because this was kind of intended to be a bit of a professional exercise at first, and it's kind of developed into some of this a little bit more over time. So thank you so much for being part of the first 200 episodes. There's lots more to talk about, learn about, you know, and a lot of ways that we can hopefully help you feel more confident about your money down the road. So thanks again for listening, and I will see you next week on another episode of the Canadian Money Roadmap Podcast. Take care. The contents of this podcast do not constitute an offer or solicitation for residents in the United States or any other jurisdiction where Evan Newfeld, Cedar Point Wealth, or Sterling Mutuals is not registered or permitted to conduct business. Mutual funds are provided through Sterling Mutuals Inc. Commissions, trailing commissions, management fees, and expenses all may be associated with mutual fund investments. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing. Mutual funds are not guaranteed, their values fluctuate frequently, and past performance may not be repeated. Financial planning services are provided by Evan Newfeld through Cedar Point Wealth and are not the business of or monitored by Sterling Mutuals Peak.