A personal finance book written by an insolvency trustee can’t be interesting, right? Wrong. Straight Talk On Your Money by Doug Hoyes promises to cut through the biggest myths and mistakes about money and, boy, does it deliver! Full disclosure: I’ve known Doug for a while. I was a guest on his podcast when I […]

For most of us, buying and selling a house is likely the single largest financial transaction of our lifetime. Having what I like to call a “rock-star” real estate agent can mean all the difference between a smooth, stress-free experience and a nightmarish one. With over 40,000 real estate agents in Toronto, choosing an agent […]

Ontario is raising its minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2019. Minimum wage is going up from its current $11.40 per hour to $14 on January 1, 2018 and $15 on January 1, 2019. Ontario is following the lead of Alberta, where the NDP announced last year it would boost the minimum wage to […]

A promise I made to myself when I burned my mortgage was that I’d stop putting off travel and make it more of a priority. With my mortgage paid off, I no longer had a good excuse not to travel. As I mention in my book, the best part about achieving financial freedom is that […]

The housing market has seen a lot of changes over the past several months. It all started with the new stress test on insured mortgages last year. Then there was Ontario’s Fair Housing Plan in the spring. More recently we’ve seen higher mortgage rates. If that hasn’t been enough changes to get used to, OSFI […]

Last month I sent out a harmless Tweet… or so I thought. Instead it led to a heated discussion about Canada’s favourite dinner table topic – real estate. Real estate is a popular topic of discussion these days. Everyone and their brother seems to have an opinion on it. It’s not hard to see why. […]

I was recently interviewed on the Build Wealth Canada Show where we did a really deep dive on how I paid off my mortgage and became financially independent at 30.    We also decided to do a giveaway together where you can win one of the signed copies of my book.   You can download the full interview […]

Higher mortgage rates could be coming – and a lot sooner than many of us anticipated. Ever since the start of the year, the Canadian economy has been on a tear. GDP soared 3.7 percent in the first quarter, followed by 0.2 percent in April. With our economy not showing any signs of slowing down, […]

Last week I attended the first annual Ontario Housing Summit. The summit was created to address the increasing importance of housing on the political agenda. The event featured panel discussions on a number of real estate topics, including “Deconstructing Ontario’s Fair Housing Plan,” “The Future of Housing,” and a Fireside Chat on “Ontario’s Approach to […]

On Tuesday, June 13th, I have the privilege of speaking on the “Millennials and Home Ownership” panel at the 2017 Ontario Housing Summit. The affordability of real estate is surely a topic that will be heavily focused on. To address this, the Ontario Liberals recently introduced the Fair Housing Market Plan. Although it was a […]