Jerry Millionaire

06/18/2026

Who is right, Kiyosaki or Ramsey?

Kiyosaki describes the difference between good debt and bad debt. Good debt puts money in your pocket, bad debt takes it out. One feeds you, the other eats you.
Borrowing money to buy a rental property that returns more than all expenses combined? Good debt. Borrowing money to buy a house to live in? Bad debt.

Ramsey says all debt is bad debt. He likes quoting biblical scripture: "The Borrower is slave to the Lender.". He advocates getting out of debt as fast as you can, starting by selling things you don't need, things whose value are depreciating faster than the debt can be paid, and debts that won't go away even if you declare bankruptcy.

I can see the reasoning for both men's arguments. With the Ramsey method, there is a certain mental freedom that comes with not owing any money. People will sometimes throw a Mortgage Burning party when they have made their last payment.
When buying rental properties with borrowed money, there is always the possibility that Something Stupid will happen. Mortgage rates might spike, tenant may stop paying, major catastrophe that isn't fully covered by insurance may come up, or the place may sit vacant for reasons beyond control. Kiyosaki remedies this with the Law of Averages. Buy 10 houses that have positive cashflow on each at 100% financing. If 1 property experiences Something Stupid, the other nine will carry the tenth. For a small-time landlord with one rental property the risk of going bust becomes greater; one tenant not paying is 100% of property income not coming in.

Buying stocks on borrowed money rides the same double-edged sword. As long as the interest payments are less than the dividend income, all is well. If the bank boosts the interest rate, or the stock stops paying dividends and the share price tanks, or the bank suddenly calls in the loan, there is a problem. If the stock stops paying dividends and the share price tanks, selling the stock to pay off the loan is not going to completely fill the hole. If the bank boosts the interest rate or calls in the loan, selling the stock and zeroing the loan brings the ride safely to a halt. Arbitrage works great, until it doesn't.

What's my take?
Borrowing money to buy stocks is a dangerous game. I've paid the equivalent of 4 university degrees to learn that. I now remember to do my due diligence every time when analyzing a stock or rental property and ask myself, "What's the worst that could happen?", because it probably will.

When I started buying properties the plan was to buy 1 a year for 10 years, then spend 10 years paying them off. Then the federal government started mucking with the lending rules and made it difficult for me to do that. I had a squatter not paying for a year before I could get him out, then had a $20,000 mess to clean up before it could be made habitable again. I didn't have 9 other properties to pick up the slack and it hurt. Bad.

Thoughts?

06/11/2026

"I've Had It!"
That was my exclamation back in 2007. I'd had it with mutual funds, company-sponsored retirement plans, and calls from junior stockbrokers in some bullpen selling whatever trash of the day was on their desk.

I started learning about different types of investments, and not from the people selling them.

Greg Habstritt's book, "The RRSP Secret" tells us that mutual fund managers get paid whether my money gains or loses. describes that. The buyer takes all the risk, puts in all of the money, and gets a taste of the reward.

Company-sponsored retirement plans are another trap. The "But it's FREE MONEY!" crowd doesn't know that long-term self-managed investments can make a better return than an employer co-funded plan because of the fees.

The random call from the junior broker? Robert Kiyosaki reminds us that the reason they are called "Brokers" is that they are "Broker than me". Do I really want to take stock buy and sell signals from someone who hasn't gotten rich from those signals themselves?

Tony Robbins taught me to find someone who had done what I wanted to do, and do whatever they did. His book "Unshakeable" talks about the frequency of market crashes and once I knew they were not only expected but regular, I could plan for them instead of panic-selling when they happened.

I wanted to build a retirement plan that made sense and had me out of the working world by 60. That gave me 20 years. I read Robert Kiyosaki's book "Rich Dad Poor Dad" and applied the lessons. His in-person weekend course was very helpful.
I found a realtor who understood the concepts taught in the book and worked with him. Other realtors who didn't understand Kiyosaki's concepts told me that what I was looking for didn't exist.

The Globe and Mail ran a stock picker series that sliced and diced the stock market a different way each day, showing which stocks made that day's list, and the performance of that group based in a 10 year back-test. After months of watching I noticed which companies kept popping up. When they ran a filter describing good paying dividend stocks, they were all there. Now I had my stock strategy.

After studying the benefits of investing in a TFSA, I bought dividend stocks in there. The strategy is to buy only good-paying dividend stocks, never spend the capital, only spend the dividends. Kevin O'Leary taught me that.

Blogger Pete Adeny at MrMoneyMustache showed me the total amount of cash I would need working for me in order to retire. It's grade 5 math. He retired 9 years out of university, so I'm certain he knows what he's talking about.

Now, I'm here to help you. It took me a long time to learn all this stuff. I can save you time and money in reaching your own retirement richer, faster. YOu don't need to step in the same gopher holes I did and pay for your education with hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses.

Want to find your own exit from the rat race? It's not locked. Let's talk.

06/08/2026

Money amplifies character. If you're a dumbarse with a little, you'll be a bigger dumbarse with a lot.

06/04/2026

What vice is inhibiting your early retirement?

I'll start.

I drank booze. A lot. Over the last 5 years of my drinking career I drank $25,000. At the time, the equivalent of a brand new small truck.
If I had instead invested that $25K in BMO.TO in a TFSA instead of drinking it all away, and contributed nothing more than the original $25k and reinvested the dividends, in 20 years I would have had $162,000 generating $41,000/year, tax free. That's equivalent to a pre-tax job income of $56,300 in Ontario.

05/28/2026

Doing it the way my parents did it didn't work.

When I got married I figured that my financial life would be handled the same way my parents handled theirs. Pop went to work, brought Ma his paycheque every two weeks, she gave him gas and beer money, and she took care of the rest.

Sounds pretty simple, right?
It worked for them so it should work for me, right?
Nope.

It seems my wife worked on the assumption that if there was money in the chequing account it meant she could spend it. I didn't realize she had this type of thinking until I started getting phone calls from creditors wondering when they could expect to be paid. This happened entirely by accident because one day I happened to be standing closer to the phone than she was when a creditor called.

I had no financial literacy at that point, but I knew that getting phone calls from creditors demanding payment was bad.

I asked my wife what else she was hiding. After uncovering the whole mess I took over the finances.

My plan? Work my arse off, make a payment plan with each creditor, put our spending on lockdown, return anything we had purchased that we didn't need and could get refunded. I held the purse strings, and she was the one getting gas and beer money.

I worked 60 hours a week. 1 full-time job, 2 part time. She worked full time. All minimum wage. I made arrangements with each creditor to ensure we had a payment plan we could stick to and that satisfied them. I ruled with an iron fist. Wife didn't like it and the marriage eventually ended because of it.

The key takeaways?

+ Married folks, monitor your accounts jointly. This will expose any issue quickly. The two of you need to be on the same page financially.

+ Have a conversation about your money styles before getting married. 68% of couples cite financial issues as a leading source of conflict, and about 25% of couples cite money problems as a primary factor in their divorce.

+ Neither your employer, nor your government, nor your family, nor your bank are going to get you to a comfortable retirement. That's on you. What worked for your parents may not work for you. Learn not only what they did, but why.

+ WYAO (Work Your Arse Off) and giving every dollar a job was the way out for me.

05/21/2026

05/14/2026

My S.O. came to visit me on the weekend and stayed until Wednesday. We hung out, went on a hardware store date, checked out the local Used Stuff Stores, went out for lunch, and had a great time together.
Tuesday we spent the day in bed, enjoying each other's company.
After supper we went to see Ian Thomas live in concert at the Sanderson Centre in Brantford. Great concert. Before the last tune of the night he mentioned how grateful he is for the life he has had, and for the people who still come to his shows. Clearly he's not doing it for the money.
59% of Canadians don't believe they will ever be able to do what I did this week. I do what I want, where I want, when I want, with whom I want, for as long as I want.
Are you part of the 59%?
Want to change that?
Let's have a conversation.

05/07/2026

Last week Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the Sovereign Wealth Fund. He intends to borrow $25 billion bucks to fund large projects, and generate profit on the funds loaned to those big projects.

First off, the name is Orwellian doublespeak; it's a sovereign debt fund. Countries that have sovereign wealth funds start with a surplus of cash generated from selling things like natural resources. They have no national debt. Mr. Carney is keeping our assets in the ground, so there is no wealth to create the fund. He is proposing arbitrage. Borrow money from Peter in the form of bonds, loan it to Big Corporate who builds something and then sells it, repaying the loan. This works great, until it doesn't. What if bond yields are higher than the expected return? What if Big Corporate sells the product at a loss (HWY 407), or builds something nobody wants (Toronto - Montreal high-speed rail), and declares bankruptcy? How does the loan get repaid?

What kind of projects are being considered? Infrastructure projects. Hey! One of his companies has that right in the name. Brookfield Infrastructure Partners.

Now maybe Mr. Carney knows something more about finance than I do. I'm sure he's playing the game at a much higher level than I am. I looked up Brookfield's companies on the TSX and checked them against my Good Paying Dividend Stock criteria. What did I find?

Brookfield Asset Management missed 2 payouts in 5 years and the payout ratio is 113%, way above my 80% threshold. Red flag.

Brookfield Infrastructure Corporation's share price has dropped over the past 5 years. Red flag.

Brookfield Infrastructure Partners payout ratio is 191%. If they are paying out almost double what they are taking in, where is the money coming from? Red flag.

Brookfield Office Properties has a ridiculously low average volume, making trading difficult. Red flag.

Brookfield Corporation has a dividend yield of 0.65%, well below my 4% minimum, and well below the rate of inflation. I can make better money in a savings account with Oaken Financial. Red flag.

Brookfield Renewable Partners payout ratio is a staggering 649%, paying almost 6.5 times in dividends what they are making. Where is the money coming from? Red flag.

Given the performance of the Brookfield suite of companies, I won't be investing in them. Nor will I be putting any of my "spare money" into Carney's mis-named Sovereign Wealth Fund. Sounds too much like a hot stock tip from my broke brother-in-law.

04/30/2026

Last week I talked about TFSAs and how ridiculously helpful they are to someone who wants to retire richer, faster. I covered a lot of the basics. Today I'm going to get into some more advanced stuff.

Q: How much can I put into a TFSA today?
A: The CRA adds a certain dollar amount each year in contribution room. Your contribution room starts either at the year you turn 18, or 2009, whichever is sooner. The easiest way to check is to visit the CRA My Account website:
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/e-services/cra-login-services.html
Click "Savings and Pension Plans", then "View TFSA Details".
If you were born in 1991 or earlier, your limit is $109,000 if you have never contributed before.

Q: What happens if I over-contribute?
A: The CRA sends you a nasty letter warning you to remove funds immediately. They only do this the first time. If you do it again or you ignore their warning, they charge you 1% per month on the excess amount until the over-contribution is withdrawn or new contribution room becomes available.

Q: What if my gains exceed the maximum contribution level?
A: Contribution level is just that, it only apples to contributions. Any profits or losses on the securities in the TFSA don't affect the contribution room. If your stocks go up, the money is yours to keep. If they go down, you don't get to claim a loss or regain the loss as extra contribution room. There is no Tax Loss Harvesting within a TFSA.

Q: Can I day trade in my TFSA and keep the rewards tax free?
A: If the CRA sees you using your TFSA for day-trading, they may claim you are using it as a business and revoke the tax-free status. There is no specific published limit to this behaviour, they will rule on it unilaterally if they think you are misusing the intent of the TFSA.

Q: How many TFSAs can I have?
A: As many as you want. It is your obligation to ensure that in total, they don't exceed your maximum contribution room. Also, don't rely on the CRA My Account data too heavily. It's only updated 1 - 2 times per year.

Q: What happens to my TFSA when I pass on?
A: Given no other instructions, it is emptied and added to your estate and distributed. If you will it to your spouse, it is emptied and they get the funds.
If you want your spouse to be able to continue to use your TFSA as-is, name your spouse as "Successor Holder". This allows your spouse to continue to use your TFSA as if you were still alive, and it retains the tax-free status and contribution room limits. If you and your spouse both have a TFSA, you name them as Successor Holder, and you pass on, they now hold 2 TFSAs each with the current maximum contribution room.

Q: Can I name my child as successor holder?
A: Nope, only your spouse or common-law partner. Your child can be a beneficiary, allowing the child to receive funds tax-free after your death, but they cannot take over the account itself.

04/23/2026

Canadians 40+ have been given one of the coolest retirement tools in the country and are barely using it. A friend of mine said to me recently, “I didn’t realize how powerful a TFSA was until you explained it.” So, let's explain it.

Q: So what is a TFSA?
A: It's a container like an RRSP. You can hold stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFS, any paper asset. An RRSP uses pre-tax money while a TFSA uses after-tax money. That means that when you pull money out of an RRSP, it gets taxed at the same rate as job income. A TFSA uses after-tax money and the growth and withdrawals are not taxed.

Q: Why is the TFSA so powerful?
A: Treated properly, a TFSA can fund your retirement and your children's retirement. This is the greatest gift the Canadian government has given the DIY retirement planner.

Q: What about contribution limits?
A: If you were born in 1991 or earlier and have never contributed, you can put in $1,000 per month for the next 20 years and still not hit your limit. The contribution limits go up each year by a prescribed amount. The total limit for 2026 is $109,000.

Q: What happens to the contribution room if I don't use it?
A: Unused contribution room isn't lost, it rolls over into next year's contribution room. When you withdraw money, that room comes back the following year.

Q: What should I actually put inside a TFSA?
A: Mutual funds are a terrible option. Bonds suck. Penny stocks? Horrible idea. That hot stock tip your broke brother-in-law gave you? Hard pass. IPOs? No way. If you fill it with good-paying Canadian dividend stocks you can retire on the dividends alone.

Take a stock like BMO. About a 3.5% dividend, increased by 11.51% annually over the past 5 years. Hasn't missed a dividend payment in 140 years. If you invested $1,000 per month into BMO inside your TFSA for 20 years, you'd contribute $240k. You end up with over $480k generating close to $36k per year in dividends tax-free and growing every year. That's equivalent to $43k in job income.

Q: Why aren’t more people doing this?!
A: Because no one explained it this way. Folks were told to save and burn their savings in retirement, not how to replace job income.

Q: What’s the takeaway?
A: The TFSA is not just a place to park cash to save for a vacation. Used properly, it becomes a tax-free income machine.
If I were to show you a machine that runs silently, by itself, and spits out 2 dollars annually for every dollar you put in until you decide to turn it off, how many dollars would you put in?
How much would you pay for the blueprints, the materials list and the exact assembly instructions for such a machine of your own?

Want to learn more? Contact me and we will continue the conversation.