Is Financial Literacy the Key to Long-Term Employee Loyalty? with Steve Bridge

On this show, we have talked a lot about how to engage and retain our top performers. We've looked at strategies around leadership best practices, organizational culture, and hiring the right people for the right jobs. We know that companies struggling with low employee engagement leads to decreased productivity, increased absenteeism, and higher turnover costs. And of course, lower overall profits. We know this. But here's the thing. Employees who experience financial stress often find it challenging to focus on their work. It leads to decreased job satisfaction and loyalty towards the organization. In fact, according to today's expert, a cash-strapped employee is 5.8 times more likely to miss deadlines and 4.9 times more likely to produce lower-quality work. So what can you do about it? Well, that's what we're talking about today on Experience Leadership.

Welcome to Experience Leadership, a podcast that challenges small business owners and entrepreneurs just like you to dare to be the exception. Join our host, customer experience expert Marc Haine, as he uncovers relevant and timely content to help you script and direct your business and teams to create jaw-dropping experiences your customers and staff deserve. Here is the host of Experience Leadership, author of Lights! Camera! Action!, customer experience expert Marc Haine.

Welcome to this episode. It is great having you here with me. My guest for this episode is advice-only Certified Financial Planner Steve We will uncover how equipping employees with financial education can alleviate financial stress, enhance engagement, and foster long-term loyalty. So stay tuned because today, we will be uncovering some incredible insights that has the potential to transform your workforce. If this is your first time with us, I invite you to check out the other episodes on this channel. Each one is chock-full of information and learnings that you can apply to your business today. Now, I'd like you to imagine a workplace where employees are not only committed but deeply loyal, going above and beyond to contribute to you and your organization's success. What if I told you there's a key that can unlock this level of dedication? That brings us to our Question of the Day. Besides issuing a regular paycheck, does your organization do anything to support the financial Well-being of its employees. I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. Why don't you go ahead and share this episode on your favorite social media platform? Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership and put your thoughts and ideas down. I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. As I mentioned, my guest today is Advice-Only Certified Financial Planner Steve Bridge. Steve is a highly experienced and dedicated financial professional with a passion for personal finance and financial literacy. With an impressive background and a wealth of knowledge in the field, he has been instrumental in helping numerous clients make informed decisions to secure their financial futures. Steve's commitment to financial education extends beyond his client base. He actively contributes to his community by conducting workshops, delivering insightful presentations, and writing informative articles. His expertise has been recognized and sought after by various media outlets, mostly in television, where he has been featured as a financial expert sharing his valuable insights to a wider audience. Steve, welcome to the show. It's great to have you.

Many thanks for having me, Marc. I'm excited to be on your show.

So before we get into today's topic, could you tell us a little bit about how you serve your clients?

Right. I'm an advice-only certified financial planner, which means I don't sell any products whatsoever. This is very much the minority of financial planners in this country. There's about 100,000 financial planners. Everyone knows a financial planner, but less than 0.5% of them don't sell products like investments or insurance and whatnot. I'm one of those approximately 150 to 180 people who provide comprehensive advice-only financial plans.

You don't get like the other financial planners, you don't get a spinoff business from whatever investments your clients will buy into.

That's correct. There's— I don't take any referral fees, commissions, or kickbacks, whatever you want to call them, from anybody whatsoever.

Sure. You know, typically, I think the big selling point for a lot of financial planners is the fact that it's not going to cost you a thing to work with me.

But it always costs something. It always costs something somewhere. There's no free lunch.

Exactly. So Steve, today we're talking about this idea of financial literacy within a workforce. Being able to leverage kind of financial programs, financial literacy to help employers build engagement and retention programs within their workforce. Why do you think that this is such an important topic in today's world?

Yeah, I think it's important because it impacts your business. It impacts your business in a few ways. It impacts your bottom line. You mentioned those stats in the opening sequence about lower productivity and more missed deadlines for people who are cash-strapped. And That's approximately half of Canadian workers these days are stressed about finances and report that it impacts their performance at work. So, you should care because it impacts your business. You can also care because you want to help your employees increase their financial literacy and decrease their stress and whatnot. But you can be doing it for your company as well.

Sure. Yeah. I once heard a manager tell me that As long as my employees need money, they'll keep coming to work. Now, obviously, that's a toxic kind of attitude. But are there any other myths that you think need to be busted about financial literacy in the workplace?

I think maybe not myths but just awareness that employees want it. There's lots of stats out there about the percentage of people who would like to see this from their employer. It's somewhere like 70% or 80%. Even if it's not said or verbalized. Because as you know, as we all know, money is one of the least talked about things in our society. It's one of the last taboos. It's not even on the list of— there's, what is it? Religion, sex, and politics. Money's not even on the list. It's so taboo, it doesn't even make that list. So it's not talked about. People want it. No one is going to go to their employer and say, Or very few people rather will go to their employer and say, I'm really stressed about money. Can you help me? But the employers should care because that impacts your business, has a direct impact on your business. Sure. Not only the productivity and whatnot, but the, as you mentioned, the retention, retention and turnover, morale, those kinds of things.

Yeah. Some business operators might be watching this and saying, hey, we match retirement savings. Is that enough when it comes down to this idea of creating financial literacy and financial programs within organizations to help the wellness of the employees?

It's brilliant if companies have RRSP matching. It's such a benefit. And I hope that the employees take advantage and appreciate that their employer is doing that for them. But having worked with people and their personal finances for almost 10 years, I can tell you that it's not. There's so much more that goes into personal finance and financial success and financial security, because we all just want to know that we're going to be okay. We all want to have as little stress as possible around our money. And providing financial literacy in the workplace, as I said, helps the employee and helps the business as well. So the things that really matter, like the RRSP matching is super fantastic, but it's the unfortunately boring things like cash flow and understanding why that matters. Like most people don't understand how important cash flow is and budgeting, but it is the number one thing when it comes to financial success, financial security, financial health. whatever you want to call it. It is number one. The problem is twofold. One, it's very boring. It is not great water cooler talk. Hey, how's your budget doing? The more interesting things are, hey, did you see Tesla stock or cryptocurrency or NFTs or whatever it might be? Those are the interesting things. And the second thing is that most people, when they go to their financial planner, they're getting investment advice that is how the financial planners are paid. So that's the number one thing that takes up the conversation. And the model in this country is investment financial planners, financial advisors, they're selling investments. They are paid a percentage of the investments that they sell. They're not paid to do cash flow planning or net worth or understanding taxes and whatnot. And I don't begrudge them. That's just the model that we have in this country.

Yeah. Now it's interesting because I've been privy to lots of different organizations that had the RRSP matching. And I was really surprised to see like less than 5% of the staff were actually taking advantage of it. What do you think is the big handicap when it comes to these kinds of programs?

It's a great question. And I have a client, I've worked with them for 4 years. And they had started a new job and they had RSP matching. And it took me a year and a half to convince him to start this. And this is someone who is very aware of all the things around personal finances and whatnot. So there is a real block. And I think his block was that he wasn't sure how long he'd be with the employer, so he didn't think it would be worth it. I would like to see those— so they're right now, they're optional to opt into RSP matching. I would like to see it mandatory opt-in, and you have to opt out. You have to click the button to opt out. And I think more people would take advantage of it. To answer your question further, I would say that not enough people understand how RRSPs work. And that's, I don't know, there's no one to blame. We weren't taught these things in school. Certainly you and I weren't. I think the kids now, they're starting to do some financial literacy in schools, but not understanding how our tax system works and how our RRSPs, which stands for Registered Retirement Savings Plans, how they work and the tax implications of now and for future you. I just don't think they're understood that well.

Yeah. And again, to your point, if the employers would talk a little bit about it, we could maybe shake that up a little bit. So, what I'd like to do is I'd like to uncover some keys to creating some better financial literacy with staff. And we'll get to that right after this. When the spotlight shines on your business, are customers applauding or yawning? In other words, how is your business performing? Make your business a star With a new book, Lights!

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today at your favorite online retailer or directly at marchaine.com. Welcome back! I am speaking with Steve Bridge, one of the few advice-only financial consultants here in Canada. Steve, What is the benefit, do you think, of hiring an advice-only consultant?

Well, when it comes to financial literacy in the workplace, I think it's the same benefit that clients get out of hiring me privately, and that is that they know they're going to get unbiased advice around finances. There's no sales pitch coming at the end. I think that's probably the biggest one, that it's straight talk on money, which is the reason I got into this line of work in the financial service industry. It's so I could tell people exactly what's best for them and there's no implication for me. Once a company has hired me to do a financial literacy presentation, I'm going to tell you exactly what's best for you and your employees. And there's not some— And buy this.

Hidden agenda or whatever. I got you.

Exactly. Yeah.

So, for the audience tuning in, I'd like to give them some kind of a quick start maybe guide for promoting financial empowerment among their staff. Do you have any keys that you think you could share with us to create some clarity over what it is that employers should be speaking with their staff about?

For sure. So, one easy one, we'll call it a lob ball, is looking at their employee assistance program. Sometimes, there are monies set aside for financial consultants. So, looking into your EAP, I would say, would be number one. Number 2, put on a financial literacy session for your staff, I think would be super beneficial. There's even from my work with people privately and doing presentations, even a little bit of knowledge goes a long way. And it might sound basic, but things like understanding your paycheck, there's a lot that goes into a paycheck, all those numbers and acronyms and Deductions and what does this all mean? And why does my paycheck go up at the end of the year and then go down in January? You know, I had someone at a presentation ask that question and they'd been too embarrassed to ask their human resource department. They were new and no one else talked about it, so didn't really say anything. But as many people will know, it's because Canada Pension Plan and employment insurance are maxed out at a certain time throughout the year depending on how much you make. So you might see your paychecks go up at the end of the year, for example, and go— and then when CPP and EI start up again, your paychecks go down in January.

So this idea of creating like financial literacy education programs, it could be something as simple as doing like a lunch and learn with your staff. What kind of things could an employer kind of expect if they were to bring somebody like you in to come and do a financial literacy program? education program with their employees?

Yeah, I think the important places to start are the things that we've never been taught, and that is the importance of cash flow, the importance of tracking your net worth. Your net worth being all of your assets subtracting all of your liabilities. That number is your net worth. I encourage people to do this exercise once, once a month on the same day. Set a calendar reminder on the 1st or the 15th, Whatever day works best for you and doing just a simple spreadsheet. All of our assets, all of our liabilities. How does it compare to last month? Is it going up? Is it going down? This is just small, simple, practical, but very beneficial to people to do this because obviously you want your net worth to be going up. And if it's not going up, why isn't it going up? Is it just because investments performed maybe poorly last month? Or is it a trend of spending more than what's coming in, for example?

So as you're going through, as people are becoming more financially aware of what they need to be doing to gauge all that, how important is the goal setting aspect to financial planning in kind of an employee-employer program?

I love that you mentioned goal setting because it is the first place I start with my clients. When I work with them privately, but also when I do financial literacy presentations. Start with what's most important to you. Is your money going towards what's most important to you? And from a place of knowledge, from a place of understanding where your money is going, then an employee is in a better place to make decisions. Is my money going towards what's most important to me? As you mentioned, setting those goals. So maybe it's financial independence by age 60 or saving up for a vacation next year, big family vacation or something like that, or buying a new car. Is my money going towards that? And examining needs versus wants. And that's that goal setting. I'm really glad you brought that up because it helps us guide our decisions and weigh options against each other. Is this the most important thing to me? Is my money going towards that? Or would I rather, instead of eating out 5 times a week, I would put the $100 a week towards a trip that we'd love to do next year?

Yeah.

For example.

It's so interesting. As you were saying that, I was flashing back to 2018 when we had the financial crisis in the oil sector and all these 20-somethings who have been making copious and copious amounts of money And all of a sudden they were without a job and they had, you know, the house that they were financing, the SUVs, the off-road vehicles, all the luxury, like stuff that they could afford because they were making really great money. And all of a sudden you had bankruptcies going through the roof because all of a sudden people couldn't sustain their, their quality of life. Yeah.

Really great example. And that's another thing that people should think about is an emergency fund.

Yeah.

Well, things happen, right? And having 3 months of your necessary monthly expenses, knowing what your necessary monthly expenses are is a great place to start. That's mortgage payments or rent, cell phones, internet, insurance, car payments if you have them, groceries. What are those costing you? And saving up an emergency fund is another, is another thing that That I talk about that, the benefits.

This is brilliant, Steve. Middle of the show, how can people get ahold of you if they, if this is resonating with them and they want to pick your brain and bring you in?

I'm on social media. I'm on LinkedIn's a great place or Twitter under Steve Money Coach, but people can also send me an email, which is pretty easy. It's steve@moneycoachescanada.ca. Money coaches, plural, canada.ca.

Love it.

Shoot me an email. I'm happy to chat with anyone who wants to learn a little bit more.

Yeah, I love it. You know, the one thing that you touched upon earlier, this idea that there's a stigma about talking about money. I can honestly say that aside from promoting RRSP matching contributions and that sort of thing, I think at one point I had not only did we have an RRSP, but at the same time, you know, back in the early '90s, we had Canada Savings Bonds and we were encouraging people to jump onto these. things to, again, to give them something to work towards and for us to feel like we're contributing to the better wholeness of the person. But that was as far as the communication went. We didn't really foster any real kind of open communication about finances, about where people are at and that sort of thing. In fact, I would even probably guess that if I was to go into an organization and try to instigate something like this and say, okay, let's talk a little bit about your finances, People would look at me and go, it's none of your business.

Great point. Great point. So, to expand on what an employer to do, what your listeners could do, organizations or business leaders, business owners, taking control of your own finances and having a chat about it casually at first if you like with your staff might be a good place to start. And depends on the organization and the size of the organization. your relationship with your people, but taking control of your own finances and water cooler talk around, oh, my wife and I went over our budget this weekend. Worst date night ever. Hahaha. But we did see some subscriptions that we weren't using and we've saved ourselves $50 a month, for example.

Hmm.

Or we recently renewed our mortgage and the rate that we got was 5% for a 3-year fixed rate. Oh, why did you choose a 3-year fixed rate? Oh, we think interest rates are going to come down. We'll renew in 3 years. Now, making it a more normalized conversation as opposed to a braggy conversation like, oh, we just got a new Tesla, or we got a new RV.

Do you know how much I'm making on Facebook? And again, you know, what's interesting about kind of the direction that we're going with this is this idea of being able to normalize conversations and If you have an employer who's into educating their workforce, you know, something like the recent kind of like whenever the Bank of Canada increased interest rates and all of a sudden mortgage rates now were being affected, you know, being able to do an education system around, hey, this is what you're going to, you know, some of the things that you're going to see. And here's, you know, somebody who knows what they're talking about, who can help if your mortgage is coming due within the next year or 2. Here's some things maybe you want to consider. I mean, what a great service that would be to your team.

Brilliant. And I was thinking if it's a smaller business and you can't afford to bring anyone to do training, you could start a little study group or meetup group or lunch group or whatever talking about these things. And there's no budget involved there. There's a ton of websites and articles and I've got resources that I'm happy to share with people. Here's an example of some chat session that people could have at work. There's a a website called Early Retirement Extreme. It's an older website now. The blog posts are around 10-ish years old, a lot of them. It's hosted by a retired— he retired at 30— Danish astrophysicist. And he lives on somewhere between $7,000 and $10,000 a year. You think, wow, oh my goodness, how does he do that? Well, opening up one of his blog posts and reading about what he spends money on and doesn't spend money on is a great conversation starter. Oh, I could never do that. Or, oh, that's interesting. Maybe I could eat out less when I come to work. Maybe I could pack my lunch more often and doing some math, for example, around that. So it doesn't have to be—

You said the M word. You have to do math.

Simple math is all that's required for any of this stuff.

Something else that popped into my head as we're talking about kind of what employees can do. We are looking at different ways to build engagement tools within organizations. A lot of it revolves around gamification where, you know, something happens and somebody gets something because of it. And I'm just thinking along the lines of, you know, in order to— if you have an environment where we can start talking about finances and we could start talking about it, we could start celebrating something like maybe instead of a one-on-one matching RRSP contribution, you have something that escalates. That, you know, maybe you start an RSP contribution at one level. But then, as soon as you reach to a different level, the RSP contributions might go up higher. So maybe instead of 1 to 1, it's 1.1 to 1 or 1.2 to 1 or something along those that would help motivate people to keep finances top of mind as they're making their decisions and moving forward within a company.

Brilliant because absolutely brilliant for so many reasons actually, because, and this is kind of a strange one, but having employees, first of all, they'll feel valued. Second of all, it keeps them motivated to save and invest, which keeps their retirement plans on track. And there might be some business owners out there or organizations where it's beneficial if your employee retires on time as opposed to Sticking around a little bit longer than was originally— than you originally had as the business plan. But also increasing these RSP matching is a great motivator for people and hopefully leads to looking at other aspects of their personal finances and taking a greater interest. And maybe they talk about it with their spouse more. Oh, wow. And maybe it helps with retention and attracting new talent.

Mm-hmm.

It's a real thing, these benefits. for attracting good talent, a financial literacy program, RSP matching. These are important to people.

It does force employers to take a more generous mindset, I think, when dealing with employees as opposed to like the scarcity mindset of, oh, well, you know, if I have a 3-year employee and I'm doing RSP matching at, you know, $25 every 2 weeks or whatever it is, it's going to cost me so much. And if they quit, I'm going to lose that. And it's unfortunate that we get into that scarcity mindset because it's like, hey, wait a minute, you've just invested that money for 3 years with an employee who gave you their best. You should be glad that they're taking something of you with them.

100%. And then that after employee, like after they leave, aftercare, we'll call it. That's a real thing. And people talk about it and people remember it as opposed to, oh, I worked for this cheapskate and they didn't have anything. They didn't care about us at all. And so I left. Yeah. Kind of thing.

Yeah.

And it's interesting that you talked about leaving a job. And when people are stressed about money, when they're not doing well with money, there's 3 things that they'll do. One is ask for a raise. And, well, that would be nice. As business owners, we all know that that's not always possible. We'd love to give everyone a raise all the time, but the laws of math and economy don't allow that all the time. The other thing is that they'll look, The other thing that they might do— ask for a raise is one. The other thing they might do is look for a higher-paying job elsewhere. And that doesn't help you at all because it means advertising, interviewing, hiring, retraining. Every business owner or HR person out there, not their most favorite thing, I'm sure. So, that's the second thing is they look for another job. Doesn't help the employee either. Doesn't help that person either because Let's say they're making $70,000. If someone can't manage $70,000, why will they be able to manage $80,000? No, if they go down the street for more money, they're in no better position.

Right.

Because if you can't manage $70,000, you won't be able to manage $80,000. The third thing that will happen is that if someone's struggling financially is that they'll go into debt. And that doesn't help your organization either because financially stressed employees are Less productive, lower quality work, missed deadlines, the whole deal like that.

Yeah. You know, I've been blessed that I've been in organizations where I get to work with a lot of people, like being in hospitality. I get to work— I'm working with basically minimum wage employees, tipped employees, and so on. And, you know, when something bad happens to them, it can be financially devastating. If their transmission goes in their car, I mean, that's a $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 repair job. And they're not prepared for it. And so how important is it, do you think, for employers to have kind of some sort of a debt relief program on their books? Is that helpful at all?

Well, that's an interesting one, and that's not actually something I've run into. What came to my mind as you were telling that story is the importance of an emergency fund and putting aside Whatever the number is, it's very specific and individual to that particular person. But your 3 months of necessary expenses. And when I work with people and when I do my financial literacy education sessions, I talk about a money management system where you are putting money into specific accounts that have specific purposes and specific names. You can actually open up— I've got, I think, 7 free savings accounts through my bank. You can open up Quite a few, minimum 5, and a lot of institutions, 10 free savings accounts, which you can then nickname. Like, there's my travel money and I'm putting $250 per month in my travel account because next year I want to take a $3,000 trip. Or to your example, my car repair account, car repairs on a used vehicle. Maybe it's a, you're putting in $100 per month type of thing. So you're doing regular maintenance every year, which costs $400, $500, $600, but then you're building up a slush fund for when that transmission goes.

Yeah.

Or other big repair.

It's interesting because, you know, I'm— as you were saying that again, I thought, you know, that is something— that's a service that an employer could do for their employee as well. You know, they could say, you know, here's your wage, we're gonna— but we're gonna set aside— we'll pay you your full wage each and every week, but we're gonna pay you, you know, 10% more that we're gonna be putting into a slush fund for you that you can have whenever you want it. But you can only cash it out at the end of the year, after 365 days, or when you leave.

Brilliant.

I do know that I— we had one program for one operation where we paid everybody their wage, and it was obviously above minimum wage because how else do you compete if you're— if you're paying minimum wage? You're not going to compete on any platform. But then what we did was we paid $1.25 per hour more that went into a holding fund That got paid out on the anniversary as a bonus. So as long as you stayed the year—

I love everything about it.

As long as you stayed the year, you got a little cash fall. But at the same token, we also did a calculation with them to find out, now if we give you this cash win at the end at $1.25 per hour over the course of the year, if we put it into an RRSP, here's what you can expect to see happen.

Wow, brilliant. I love everything about that, Marc. I love everything about it. And that is going above and beyond. But it's going beyond what most organizations do. And I just think about how grateful the people were to have— would have been to have that and how they would talk about their employer.

The interesting thing was if people were having a bad day, or a bad month, or they ran into a values-based conflict, where it was like, I don't know if I could keep working here. When they sat back and actually calculated what they had in the year and they would know that, oh, wait a second, I'm gonna lose this if I walk away. And so, I found what ended up happening, it gave us a buffer to be able to work on conflicts without somebody just shaking up their hand and saying, I'm leaving. It gave people extra motivation to wait it out until the end of the payout. Oh, that's nice. And so, it gave us an opportunity to fix And put right what was wrong, right? And for me, it was just like a no-brainer.

That is absolutely fantastic. Have you heard of any other employers doing that?

I haven't. I haven't. It's just like, it's only that one. But again, you know, because I'm dealing in hospitality, you know, the business operation is so driven by let's minimize expenses and so on that unfortunately, that when anything happens, it's like the first thing to get cut is all the benefits to the employees. We'll let hang them out to dry. So that we can make sure that we can pay our rent, pay for the food, pay for our taxes, and so on. And unfortunately, we need to get more in a mindset that our employees are part of us. They're part of this overall operation. It should be a non-negotiable. Yeah.

That's fantastic, Marc. And was that your initiative?

That was one of the initiatives I put together with our management team. The impetus was, how can we keep people longer? How can we get people to start thinking, debating with themselves whether or not they should quit a job? Right. And we thought this gamification aspect of it, of, you know, let's give them a little bit more. Let's, let's tease them with this stuff and let's keep them on the hook a little bit longer. But then again, you have to be willing that it's not a question of, oh, well, they're not gonna quit now. We can do anything we want with them. It's like, no, no, no.

Right.

The whole impetus was—

Still have—

Let's get rid of the emotional reactionary components of, you know, somebody across the street's gonna pay me 25 cents more per hour. Or, you know, whatever that we can— it would give us that buffer to be able to hang on and say, Steve, you don't look very happy with us. Is there something we need to be talking about? Can we go and sit down and chat it out? Right?

Well, I'm very happy with you, Marc.

Yeah. So, and again, you know, I think with people like you as well, you know, kind of you coming in and setting those seeds, I think is really an important aspect. What I'd like to do is I'd like to peel back the curtains on one particular aspect of the financial planning that is Probably the most scary, and that's investing. And we'll talk about that right after this.

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Welcome back! I am having a fabulous conversation with the great financial planner, Steve Bridge. As you can tell, Steve and I are passionate about serving business owners and managers just like you. If you are listening to this and you're thinking, good golly, Marc, I need to train my leaders and I need to have better programs, then feel free to reach out for a quick discovery call. Our contact information is in the show notes. Steve, we've been leaning heavily on talking about what leaders can do to kind of fan the flames of financial literacy. Now that we've had a few steps and a few examples of what leaders can do, how can leaders leverage what they are doing to build an attraction, retention, engagement program using financial literacy? Have you seen any kind of models that is packaged for organizations?

It's interesting. I don't see a lot for smaller businesses. And that actually sounds like a really good opportunity, Marc, of putting into place a financial literacy plan. There are a lot of good resources online. The Government of Canada had on their website, there's a link I can put in the show notes if you want, or your webpage or whatever works, whatever would work best for you. But as far as a formal package, it's Money isn't talked about. People have employee wellness plans for— but they talk about things like— not but, but— and they more talk about things like health and stress and diet and other things, I suppose. And money sometimes takes a back seat. So I actually haven't seen any packages besides— well, I have one that I send out to people who are interested to learn a little bit more.

Yeah. I imagine one of the scariest components that we've been talking about is this idea of investing. You alluded to it before and we kind of teased about it about, you know, if you have Tesla stocks and all that. Are there any keys one should follow when considering using investments as part of the employee benefit packages?

So, as far as investing goes, I kind of see it as number 4 or 5 in importance. So, When I'm talking with people about financial literacy and even in my client work, when I'm doing education sessions, I never start with investing. The other things have to come first— goals, cash flow, net worth, understanding taxes, RRSPs, insurance. And then investing is kind of like the last 5 pieces in a 400-piece jigsaw puzzle. Once everything else is in place, it's actually pretty easy. When it comes to employer-employee plans, Looking for things with low fees is important. Fees have a massive impact on the long-term performance of your investments. I recommend keeping investment fees to 1% or less. It's sometimes expressed as a management expense ratio or MER. Should be available on any investment statement or any website that you're looking— where you're looking into their investments. So keeping fees low, I'm a very big fan of index funds. So index funds are funds that buy an index. So an example of an index is the Toronto Stock Exchange or the Standard Poor's 500. The S&P 500 is the largest, or the largest 500 publicly traded companies in the United States. So I'm a fan of buying index funds and keeping fees low and When I talk about investing, it's stay away. People can often be their worst enemies. When things are going up, we tend to want to buy them, and that's because dopamine is released in our brains and we think that sounds great. Think Bitcoin or weed stocks or whatever the flavor of the month happens to be. And we are wired biologically to sell when our investments go down. So exactly the opposite of buy low, sell high. You've heard we should buy low and sell high, but our brains are actually wired to buy high and sell low. So separating yourself from those decisions can be very beneficial as well. Yeah.

I got into a point where when it came down to investing, I figured I would put $2,000 aside and I said, okay, what can I do? So I'm willing to lose $2,000. So then I would go and I would invest it, but then I wouldn't watch it. I just left it for years and, right. And, and so I did this with a number of things, Facebook actually being one of them when they first went to IPO. And then, you know, I did watch it because I thought it's gonna hit the roof and it took like 3 years before it started going up. But it's one of those things is like, I just, I just thought, you know, I have $1,000 or I have $2,000. It used to be that you needed quite a substantial amount to get started, but now with like direct investing accounts through banks and that sort of thing, it's pretty easy. It's pretty easy to say, I'm just going to take something. It's not the end of the world if I lose it. You know, talk to me about Aurora Cannabis, right?

And I, I don't mind that idea of some play money on the side, Marc. I think that when it comes to investing, I think that's totally fine and great if the core amount of your investments are in your pension plan or a diversified portfolio that you don't touch, and then you've got $1,000 or $2,000 that you play with, and that's totally fine. And you're buying individual stocks because you think it's going to take off or something.

Or just for the fun of it.

Or just for the fun of it. Yeah, 100%. Just for the fun of it. Like, a couple of things you said. One, setting it and forgetting it, leaving it is actually one of the best things you can do. I remember listening to an interview with the former CEO of Fidelity Investments, one of the biggest companies in the US, and he said some of their best investors were people who had forgotten they had accounts with them. And it would come back 10 or 15 years later because they didn't touch them. So that's really good if you can just— and like you said, your Facebook stock took 3 years to even do anything. That's a real thing. But usually we're a little more impatient and we want something to happen more quickly. So doing our own individual investing can be a challenge for many reasons. I've written an article on it.

But not day trading. I don't know how anybody could go through day trading. To me, that would be the most stressful I agree.

I agree. And you're up against tens of thousands of professionals worldwide betting on the same thing or betting against that trade. Yeah, that's a whole other thing.

Do you have any last thoughts about what we're talking about today?

Well, I can summarize some of the real benefits for employers just to bring those back home. And those are higher productivity, lower absenteeism, Attracting and keeping your talent and improved morale around the office, sense of community, a sense of trust. But I don't know if I mentioned earlier, but I had someone come up to me after a session and say how much she appreciated that her employer was taking the time to put on a financial education session. It showed that her employer cared about her and she learned a lot to improve her own situation, which has a knock-on effect for her performance at work.

Yep. And again, especially for companies that are struggling with attracting new talent, when you have a bunch of your ambassadors leaving work every day and telling people what a great place your place is to work, people are going to be lining up. I'm absolutely sure where you have those kinds of conditions, those people are not struggling for employees.

100% bang on, Marc. That's really, really well put.

Steve, I want to thank you so much for sharing your passion and expertise with us today. Could you remind everybody one more time how they can get ahold of you?

Yeah, shoot me an email to steve@moneycoachescanada.ca. I'm also on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Steve, again, thank you so much for doing this with us. As I mentioned, this is one of the few episodes we've ever done on anything around financial. And so this has just been brilliant. I think super high value. I hope the audience I know our audience feels the same way. Thank you again for doing this with us.

Absolutely my pleasure. Thank you for having me, Marc.

Why don't you let me know if this was of value to you? As always, my offer stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your business, feel free to book yourself on my online calendar. The link is down below in the show notes. It's the one marked meetwith.marchaine.com. It would be my Absolute honor to be of service to you. And if you enjoyed today's episode, why don't you go ahead and subscribe to this channel? If you can subscribe to the channel, leave a review, then I know we're on the right track. Also, if you have any ideas of what you would like to see on the channel, a particular problem that you're having that you'd like a solution to, why don't you reach out? Let me know and I'll find an expert to come and answer and discuss it with us. That's what the channel is all about. It's all about sharing information with you to help make you a better leader, let you shine with operational excellence so you can be the brand of choice. It has been really great being here with you. My name is Marc Haine. I hope that you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.

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