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The Canadian Money Roadmap
The FIRE Movement with Sam Lichtman
In our conversation we discuss the concepts of the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) movement.
If you're wanting to pursue FIRE for yourself, we go over a few challenges you might run into and things to consider before committing your lifestyle to this goal.
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On today's podcast, I'm joined by Sam Littman. Sam is a certified financial planner and we're going to be talking about all things fire, that's financial independence, retire early it's a whole movement of people trying to save as much as they possibly cancel. They don't have to work so long. We talk about some challenges and some opportunities, and the conversation actually goes into some other things that you might want to consider If retiring early is part of your financial plans. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Sam Littman. All right, sam, thank you so much for joining me today on the Canadian Money Roadmap podcast.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for having me, Evan.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So today we're going to be talking about the fire movement, and fire is an acronym which stands for financial independence. Retire early. We're going to break down all of the uh, the different aspects here. Sam is a bit more of an expert on this than me, so I'm curious to learn from you and your experience as well. Um, but let's get started. High level what is fire?
Speaker 2:Fire is the idea that millennials can achieve a certain level of financial independence, whether that is retiring completely or whether that's retiring partially and working part time at an earlier age. And what it is is. It's basically a focused savings program where a group of like-minded people get together and decide that they want to save large percentages of their income. There's different types of fire movements there's the fat fire club, there's the barista fire club. The idea behind it is it's just new school language for thoughts that have existed for a very long time, like I'm going to go retire on a beach somewhere when I'm 45. Who doesn't want to do that? Right, that's what the fat fire club is. It's luxurious retirement early. And there's things like the barista fire club, which is just semi retirement. I kind of want to retire early, but I want to still work. The main premise of fire is that you have to get to a point where you can live off of 4% of your total investment portfolio. And that's driven from William Bengen's theory in 1994 of the 4% rule, which, for all my friends out there, we know it's not a rule, but what it is is this idea that, adjusted to inflation, 4% of a 50% stock and 50% bond portfolio can sustain retirement spending, and so their magic number is getting to 4%, which is look at my lifestyle, what does it cost, and then look at my portfolio and can it sustain that?
Speaker 1:Gotcha. So there's a variety of things that we can break down in there. So you described the idea of it being a movement where people you know that it's largely online that people get in encouragement or motivation from seeing other people succeed at this there's you might have seen websites like Mr Money Mustache. He's a really common one for people that are interested in this. But as far as pursuing financial independence, what does that really mean? There's got to be a few definitions there that we could take a peek at.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would agree with that. I think financial independence should be different for everyone, which is why I'm actually not a huge fan of the fire movement, because it has a very singular definition of financial independence. For some, financial independence means that they can afford to buy their own home and still actually save money. For some, financial independence means being debt free. For others, it means not having the need to work. So I think there's a lot of different definitions of financial independence, but with fire it mostly seems to mean when can I get to that money stage of I want to say FU money right, that's what we kind of call it right when we get to that stage where I don't have to be employed anymore in order to meet my financial lifestyle requirements? And I would say that's probably the broadly defined financial independence that the fire movement is looking at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I would totally agree with that, and I've been thinking about all the different types of fire. Like you mentioned before already, it's fat fire, lean fire, coast fire, breeze to fire all those different ones, and so each of those would probably come with their own definition of what independent is right. So like, if you're looking at the coast fire, that's the idea of having enough money currently invested so that the growth ends up taking care of itself up until your retirement date. I guess Would you kind of agree with that, Like the certain type that you're pursuing kind of defines what independence is. Yeah, I would agree with that.
Speaker 2:I think there's so many different areas and so many different segments. It's a very structured movement, but I do agree with that, I think, as broadly defined. If people aren't like very in depth with it, I think they'd more generally defined it as just not having to work. But when you get into those different types of fire movements, yeah, there's definitely and I don't know all of them but there's definitely different definitions of financial independence within that. For sure.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you talked about that 4% rule, which isn't a rule. I don't mind it as a target honestly, like if it just kind of gives a rule of thumb, like we're largely speaking to other millennials here and we've got a long time even ahead of an early retirement, let alone a typical retirement here. So having some sort of target in mind I don't think that's such a bad thing. But how else would one calculate their fired number?
Speaker 2:It's a good question, I think, if they look at a few things. Number one is what is their ideal retirement date, what is their ideal retirement age? And when we're looking at that retirement number we have to understand a few things. Number one is it pre-tax or post-tax money for everyone in Canada, because fire is largely US movement. Basically, is it RSPs or TFSAs or non-registered money. So after tax is how much do you actually need? Because a million dollars at 4% let's say your lifestyle is at 40,000, but you've got a million dollar RSP. You're not really going to have a million dollars there. Part of that's the government's money, part of that goes to pay taxes, so that can't sustain the same 4% withdrawal. Let's say a million dollar TFSA can sustain, but then it's your path to get there as well. So I think it's a bit of more of a complex discussion. I think what I would say generally is, if you're going to target the 4% rule, be a little bit more conservative and look at maybe a 3% rule of after tax money. So a TFSA being tax-free money we know that's going to come out tax-free and RSP being pre-tax money we know that that's going to come out as taxable. So if we want to apply a general tax rate. Let's say we have a million dollar RSP that we're talking about and say, okay, well, maybe let's estimate that 60% of that value can be calculated for my retirement number, 100% of my TFSA value and maybe closer to 80% of my non-registered account, considering the fact that the dividends I earn are taxable, the capital gains I'm going to have to liquidate are taxable, or any interest earned is going to be taxable as well. So I think that if we're talking general framework, that could work, but we're getting very general, because if someone has a large non-registered portfolio that they just bought an index fund and are just holding to retirement, there might be pretty large capital gains on there and they may have closer to that 20%. They're probably under good problems. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But it can be misleading, right? Because then that's where it's like oh, I've gotten enough to retire, but really do you? Because we have to consider the after tax value and it gets a little bit more complicated. I think the people who like sophisticated DIYers, they're very capable of discovering that number. I think the people who are generally just have a singular target in mind and they're not really sure how they're going to get there. They're not really sure what all this means. I might encourage them to seek out a little bit of financial advice before just arbitrarily targeting a 4% number.
Speaker 1:Right. So even getting to that 4% number, like on the RE side of things, the retire early right, knowing what date that is really matters, right Like, are we talking 40 here we're talking 60, right Like, that's a huge difference and a huge difference in the amount of saving that you need to do, and so you know, regardless of your income level, frugality has to be part of the picture here, right Like. It's not like, oh, let's cut out a few coffees and now we're going to retire early. It's like no, no, no, this is aggressive, right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I've heard of people who have six or seven roommates sharing an apartment that costs $2,000 a month right, and these are married couples, right In some cases who are just saying like we're going to commute everywhere, we're going to do rides sharing, we don't own cars, we don't own property, we rent, right, and just save every like. I was reading an article earlier today in preparation for this and there is a story in there where a couple was saving 70% of their income and I mean, like where is the lifestyle enjoyment in the journey at that point in time? That's what gets me, and everyone's different, and I'm not saying that people who target this aren't right in their own minds and what they might make them happy, but I think at the end of the day, isn't there some enjoyment that needs to be had in the process of getting the financial independence?
Speaker 1:For sure, Because from my perspective anyways I don't know you're preaching to the choir here a little bit and so we're. I wouldn't subscribe to that, mostly because, I don't know, that's just not something that I've always enjoyed doing, Like there's I know some people that get a real kick out of frugality, Like that's that in and of itself is a hobby that they enjoy. But you know, if your goal is to have a fulfilling retirement, full of travel and all these sorts of things, but you're not doing it now. You know, I think we're going to come back to this maybe, maybe later in the conversation, but it's like what does that? even mean for you today versus in retirement. Like your lifestyle, do you think it's actually going to get meaningfully better once you've retired? But you've lived your entire life saving every penny and whatnot. Flipping that switch is really difficult.
Speaker 2:Right, because we're creatures of habit and if we've built our last 20 years doing one thing and all of a sudden we have to flip a switch. It's not easy. I mean you look at the amount of retirees that struggle in their first few years of retirement, right, it's not as easy just to flip that switch. It doesn't matter if you're a career government worker or if you've owned a business. It's a really difficult thing to just transition from being employed or owning something to then all of a sudden having all of this free time on your hands, and so that's one of the other things. And look, I'm not. I don't want to be overly critical of the fire movement, because it does teach some really good principles like delay gratification, and I think that's an important principle to have and a habit to build. But I think that there's a reasonable level that we can achieve of that while still enjoying the life that we're able to create now. And I'm not too keen on retiring really, just personally, just something because I really enjoy what I'm doing. And I mean my grandpa worked till he was in his nineties. My dad is close to 70 and he's still working, not because they had to, but they enjoyed the work and it was fulfilling and meaningful. It's the same with me Now. Others may not find it that way and that's fine, but I and so I do think there are some important teaching principles within the 4% or the fire movement. I just personally wouldn't subscribe to all of them myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's something interesting that you bring up there of, like, why would someone want to do this? Like, are you pursuing or you, general listener, pursuing fire because you currently hate your job so much, so much it's like, maybe just get a different job and live a little now? Or you know what I mean Because would it be worthwhile to have a career, job that you really really enjoy, even if it pays less and you retire on a typical timeline, or all these different things? Right there's, I feel like there's always more to the story.
Speaker 2:I agree, and I think it's the trade off of sacrifice now and have happiness later. But if you don't learn how to have happiness in the day to day and in the grind, happiness isn't really a destination. It's such a cheesy, cliche thing, right, but it is a mindset, more so than anything else. And for me again, I'm talking very personally here, right, other people have different motivations, but for me personally, my desire is to have a fulfilling life. It's not necessarily to achieve this level of happiness, and I find fulfillment in a number of things, but one of them is work, and so that's why I'm not too keen on that. Now, other people, if they find you know again, they want to achieve financial independence and retire early because they want to be happy, because they don't have to work. Again, I question that, because if you're not happy in the day to day, you probably won't be happy when you don't have anything else to do. So I get it. I think it's a largely psychological thing as well. People really need to think about their motivations as to why they want to retire early and see if it's something worth pursuing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. But I'm going to flip this around again to make your earlier point of like. There's a lot of good that comes from this, because I don't know about you, but from my perspective, what I've seen the people that have the most challenge over you know, building financial independence, whatever you want to call it is their savings rate today, right. So you can't do both have fire and have a very low savings rate unless you win the lottery or something like that. It encourages good habits, but maybe to the extreme, I guess, which is kind of my hang up with it. But you know, the idea that you're going to be able to get financial success with anything other than a really high savings rate is might be a little bit misguided. Would you agree with that? I would agree. Maybe I'm oversimplifying it.
Speaker 2:No, I would agree that obviously it does take more than a savings rate. I actually did a video on this a couple of years ago around the idea that you know often people who are in the fire movement follow fire influencers right, who are posting these pictures of being on a beach at 30 or 35 and they're basically saying, like I got financially independent because I saved 50% of my income in my 20s, when they're not being completely transparent because you know, parents gave them money or they had an exit from a business or you know. And again it becomes this idea that we can achieve this thing too just with that savings rate. Sometimes it's possible, sometimes it's just flat out. The math just doesn't work right and you can't do this, and we've got to understand that. And so I think there's yeah, there's levels to it. We don't want to get too extreme on one thing in most areas of life, I would say, but especially in the savings rate. Again, it just goes back to what are you enjoying about life now, and can there be a balance?
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. Okay. So let's assume that someone out there is listening and they're saying, okay, well, I'm in that camp, I don't mind beans and rice, I don't mind having five roommates, I don't mind my job, I've got a high income, but I'd rather be doing other things. You know all these like fine enough motivations or personal choices that would lead someone down this path. What are some things for Canadian listeners specifically that they should be aware of, perhaps before handing in that resignation letter and getting out of the workforce entirely? I've got a few, if I can set you up, if you don't have too many off the top of your head, but what have you seen? There's some challenges, maybe common misconceptions, potential pitfalls.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the biggest one is the math behind the 4% rule. Again, like we said, we don't mind it as a benchmark, but if you're retiring early, understand that the 4% rule was meant to cover a 30 year time horizon. If you retire at 40. And have a life expectancy to 85, which is the average life expectancy for women now for men it's around 82, but that's today, right, when we're kind of hitting life expectancy, it might be higher. So we're looking at a 40 to 50 year time horizon where we need to sustain a spending rate adjusted to inflation, with really a theory that was only designed to cover 30 years. So I think that's number one. We have to be really cognizant of the fact that if this doesn't work, are you willing to re-enter the workforce, and that's number one from a math perspective. I think, generally speaking, it's a good idea to. I think everyone has this dream, people who hate their jobs. They have this dream that like, oh, I'm gonna like, basically like, just slam my resignation letter on my boss's desk and I'm gonna leave and say things on the way out. Right, everyone has this kind of dream, at least that from watching the office. Right, at least it portrays that everyone has that dream. I don't think that's a good idea. Number one because, like I said, math doesn't work out. You gotta find a place to work. You might wanna go back to that place if they value that relationship. But again, I just think that you're trying to live life in a fulfilling way. Make sure that you have something you're retiring to, whether it's volunteer work, a hobby, projects, some of their skill, like, if you wanna up skill yourself, go back to university, any of those things. I mean life doesn't end at 40 or 50, right, it's really those goals in years where, if you are healthy and you can't spend your time traveling, do it but also find meaning in that as well.
Speaker 1:What about for people who are taking a look at fire? They're reading the Reddit forums and they're saving like crazy and they're currently single. But being single isn't necessarily something they wanna plan for for the long term. I know not everybody has the choice of whether they get married or not, but, like, how do you end up doing this with a spouse? I imagine that would be a crazy challenge to be like, hey, I wanna do this and maybe your wife is completely on the other page, like that. I can see that being a huge challenge for someone that's just getting started who has this big idea.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think alignment with your spouse on money is one of the number one things you need to have. And it's so important, right? Because, as we've seen over the years of dealing with people, often our job turns into almost a counseling role between couples and money management. And so when and I mean I can turn that back to you, right Like if a couple isn't aligned on their money goals, I mean that's a, that's a. That's often an issue that lots of people can't get over that hump right. I don't know what you've seen in your practice, but I've definitely seen that a few times in mine.
Speaker 1:Totally it's. It was something that one of my four partners, who's now retired, he told me early on. It's like it's all good to know the math and the funds and watch the markets and all that kind of stuff, but more often than not you're you put on your psychologist hat a little bit right. You have to navigate relationships, and it's not always between you and the client, it's between clients themselves, and so I know most people listening aren't advisors like us. But we've got to see now how this goes when people are not aligned with their finances, and it's always. People are always going to be different a little bit, but it's this is a key philosophy that you want to make sure that you're on board with your spouse or future spouse or whatever, because it's an entire lifestyle, it's how you live today, it's how you live tomorrow, it's how you see generosity, it's how everything kind of works. So this one is pretty critical from a relationship standpoint.
Speaker 2:As well. I mean, you add kids into that picture as well of the frugality, that lifestyle as well, and again it completely changes the equation and lots of people do it. But I think being on the extreme side of it, that presents a lot of issues. Right, are you going to, how are you going to maintain, like, a low cost of housing when you have two or three kids, never wanting to own a vehicle or have debt payments or anything like that? Or you're gonna buy a house you're gonna be renting for your whole life? I mean, those are things that are critically important from a relationship standpoint to have those conversations leading up to your financial journey. And if you're already on the path to financial independence and you have a partner that you're bringing into the picture that doesn't share those same views, it's critically important to understand each other and where you're coming from so that, even if you don't share the same views on frugality or money, that you can at least live within the context of how each other views money and that it won't be an issue in the relationship. I think that's huge as well.
Speaker 1:So I was thinking of some other things, like really practical things that might be challenges that dev or Canadians pursuing fire might not think about or know the details of, and so I'm gonna put you on the line 20 years, at 45 instead of 65.
Speaker 2:You may not be eligible for the full CPP benefit. So, again, taking that into account, you may want to take CPP at 60 earlier to supplement your income as soon as you can. That could also affect how much you get. So there's a few things that's taking into consideration with CPP. I think it's just again, when you're doing your financial planning and you're looking at, I think most, and I would say this I don't know if you've experienced this, but I've probably met with over 200 millennials over the past year individually, not the same people over and over, but individually new people. And one common theme I hear from people who are part of the fire movement is they don't have a great deal of trust in the government's programs and so they're not necessarily counting that. Anyways, I would say I think that's misplaced. But at the end of the day, understanding that if you were counting on CPP, that you do have to contribute for a certain number of years and be at a certain income threshold called the yearly maximum pensionable earnings, in order for you to maximize those CPP contributions and then therefore maximize the pension that you're eligible for, yeah, I haven't actually heard that too much, just in general terms.
Speaker 1:It's like the government's going to take whatever, just the standard anti-government sentiment, which I get it. Whatever, I don't put a lot of weight behind that, necessarily for making long-term financial decisions. But if somebody is pursuing fire and they don't think CPP is going to be there and they adjust their savings rate accordingly, great, you're going to end up with too much money, I promise you. But I would file that under a good thing. I guess my fear would be that someone would probably overestimate how much they might get from CPP and so that might not be as factored in from that perspective.
Speaker 2:I think there's also an overestimation of what their portfolios are going to do.
Speaker 1:No, you've never seen that before.
Speaker 2:I've heard comments again and these are anecdotal, but I had this one video that I posted on TikTok about the 4% rule I think it hit close to 100,000 views and the amount of comments on there about the fact that they're just going to live off of the dividends of their portfolio and not ever touch the principal and that they're going to average 7% because they're going to live off of their dividends. That's a very flawed way of thinking about it because, as we know, when you get a dividend distribution, it lowers the share price or the fund price of what you own. Even though you're not taking or selling units of the fund or the shares, you're still having a lower portfolio value after that's drawn out. I think Dimensional just posted a study about how they surveyed a number of companies and the average share price drop was $1.15 for every dollar. I think it was $1.15 or $1.20 for every dollar of dividends paid out by the companies. That's really important to know. Again, we've seen that that came up a surprising number of times, people thinking that they're going to be a little off of more than 4%, so we're tiring with less money too. I think that's an issue as well.
Speaker 1:Would you see yield chasing as a potential pitfall for people who are perhaps DIY investors that are pursuing fire?
Speaker 2:I think so because anytime you're looking at higher yield investments number one taxation becomes like forced taxation, becomes an issue because you're taking taxable distributions when you don't necessarily have to, whereas instead, if you were to cash out units of your portfolio, it's only partially taxable, but a full distribution of dividends or interest is fully taxable. Number one you're chasing one segment of the market. If you're just obsessive about dividend yield, you're only chasing dividend companies. Well, historically, dividend companies in broad markets have been good. There's some investment studies done on the investment factor, which is one of the five factors in FamaFrench's five-factor portfolios. The dividend part of that isn't the only factor that we look at. Broadly speaking, I would say that there is some evidence that dividends do perform, or dividend companies and dividend funds do perform well over time, but you're missing out on entire other segments of the market. For instance, you could be overlooking large growth, small cap value, those other types of things which have proven to have really really good track records over time. Again, focusing on one specific investment signal like yield or risk factor or anything like that, I think is an inefficient way to target investments, especially for DIYers owning the total market. Focusing on total return is probably a much better way forward. At least empirically it has been.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would tend to agree there. It's just one of those things that I would be nervous about someone saying well, I'm going to follow this 4% rule once I got my big pile of money and I'm going to find all these quote unquote high yielding things that are higher than 4% and we'll just let it go. It's like well, yield isn't return either, right, and so there's potentially a lot of misconception there when managing your own portfolio. What about taxes? So this is something for people that are retiring early a big difference between what you read about in the States and what you read about in Canada, or perhaps no one talks about in Canada. It's income splitting between spouses. We don't have combined income reporting like they often do in the States. You hear of people it's like oh, I'm getting married for the tax benefits. We don't have that in the accumulation phase here. Anyways, between spouses after the age of 65, you can split certain types of income. But do you see this like taxes, as being or misunderstanding of how taxes work? When someone is quote unquote retired, like CRA doesn't get a notice that you're not working anymore. It's everything's based on your age.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's a. I think tax in itself is probably the most misunderstood area in Canada has an overly complex tax system as well, so they don't make it easy on the people who want to do it themselves. I've taken on this ridiculous challenge of trying to read the entire income tax act in one year. It is not friendly to people who don't have accountants and don't have any training or tax background. So I will say that, like taxes are, if you don't have an education or in specifically around taxes, you should talk to tax professionals, because there's going to be things that you're missing pension tax credit, right. The income splitting for seniors, things that you may not know that you're eligible for, that you may be eligible for, that you might overlook right, because these are all, for the most part, self declared and self applied for credits for a lot of the time. So, again, if you don't know the tax piece, consult a tax professional. I think, again when I talked about this earlier, understanding the nature of pre-tax and post-tax investments that you have. Understanding how RSP withdrawals can affect old age security. Understanding how the different types of taxable incomes interact with each other when you sell part of your portfolio to take an income as capital gains versus when you get a Canadian dividend versus when you get a foreign dividend from your portfolio. All of those things are taxed differently, so it's important to understand that too. So taxes play a big part, and I don't know if you're going this way as well, but I think understanding risk in your portfolio is really really important here too, because and it kind of does play with taxes because, as you de-risk, if you choose to de-risk your portfolio to go less in stocks and more in bonds fixed income cash equivalents like high interest savings or high interest ETFs then you're going to get a different type of taxable return as well, and so, depending on how large of the balance that's in there, that could again affect government benefits like old age security, things like that. So it's just important to understand and be mindful of the tax piece.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it gets complicated early and often when you start dealing with taxes. So if people are looking to retire early, building up their portfolio, like Sam mentioned before, I often use a line you want to start the way that you want to finish, or like build your portfolio now in such a way that you kind of understand the impact of what it's going to look like when you turn it into income later on, because your working paycheck is a whole lot less complicated than your retirement paycheck. Different sources, different, all sorts of different things but this is what we help people with all the time and doing financial plans and a small little plug here for us as planners is like sometimes there are concepts that are simple, but sometimes things like this start introducing enough complexity in multiple areas that's like it's tough to do this on your own. At least having a second set of eyes or a sober second thought here can really help make your decision one way or another.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I mean, how many times do we sit across the table from someone and they just ask should I be doing this with my money? Should I be targeting this sector, should I take money out of my RRSPs to buy a boat, these types of things? And ultimately, sometimes, yes, absolutely, you've got to be doing that. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes all our job is, or a large part of what our job is, is to be a sounding board for people to avoid making bad decisions. That's hard to quantify, but when you have someone that you can talk to to say, hey, I'm thinking about doing this, what's the risk, what's the upside, how does this affect my financial plan? Can I still retire early? If I do this, if I target this, am I targeting too much risk? All of those things it becomes Sometimes. Again, I think the common knowledge around DIY and doing it yourself is you have to have the time to do it, you have to have the knowledge level to do it and you have to have the emotional capacity to do it.
Speaker 1:And if you don't have all three of those things, If you, with the last word, any final thoughts or ideas from people you've seen, have success with pursuing fire. Any last words towards a wisdom, fire away.
Speaker 2:I would say that fire movement is something that is really really admirable to chase. My advice to people around this is defining the type of life you want does start today. It's not an end goal, and so if you want to live a fulfilling life, if you want to live a life that you can be proud of and work towards it and destination, that's fine. Just make sure that you're enjoying the journey on the way. Make sure that you're building the good habits that can lead to fulfillment today, make sure that you know the math behind what you're trying to do and have an awesome time doing it.
Speaker 1:Awesome, that's great. Cool. Sam, how can people find you and millenwealth advisors?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they can follow me on social media. I'm on social media on Twitter and TikTok as Millennial Money Canada and just type in my name on LinkedIn. You can find me there, and the website that I use for my business is mwadvisorsca Awesome.
Speaker 1:Sam, thank you so much for joining me today. This was one.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Thanks, evan, this has been great.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to this episode of the Canadian Money Roadmap Podcast. Any rates of return or investments discussed are historical or hypothetical and are intended to be used for educational purposes only. You should always consult with your financial, legal and tax advisors before making changes to your financial plan. Evan Neufeld is a certified financial planner and registered investment fund advisor. Mutual funds and ETFs are provided by Sterling Mutuals Inc.
