35 Money Lessons I've Learned as a Financial Planner at Age 35

With my 35th birthday just around the corner, I've been reflecting on the milestones and life experiences that shape our understanding of money. My career has given me a front-row seat to the intricacies of real-world money management, blending professional training with personal insights. I feel incredibly grateful for the opportunity to guide my clients through their financial milestones, learning alongside them every step of the way. I've gathered a decade’s worth of observations, each lesson serving as a stepping stone toward greater financial empowerment for both my clients and their families.

Here they are in no particular order:

1. Your income is the most important part of your financial picture. Many people waste time trying to cut things from their budget or get an additional 2% return on their investments, but putting all your energy into getting a raise will get you richer faster. Your career is your most important financial asset.

2. There has never been a crash that the stock market did not recover from and go on to reach all new heights. There is no reason to fear the market is going down. There is no reason to think it will “never go back” when it does. This has quite literally never, ever been true - and if it ever is, we’ll have far bigger concerns than our portfolios being down.

3. Almost all financial news is designed to get clicks for ad revenue, not to inform or empower retail investors. You should ignore virtually all of it. If you do check in on the financial news, you should consider it the equivalent of a man on street corner yelling about the end times. It’s not worth adjusting your day for, let alone your portfolio.

4. Money is only useful unless you spend it, otherwise it is simply numbers on a screen. Many people strive towards a certain account balance, but the only reward for having money is being able to say you have it. Unless you convert it into life experiences by spending it on travel, experiences, or material goods, you will quite literally reap absolutely no benefit from your “wealth.”

5. Your objectives should be wealth preservation first, and growth second. It’s tempting to take big risks for big wins, but these too often result in big losses. One wrong move in the stock market because you became greedy can erase years of savings in an instant. You should build your financial plan around stable consistent gains rather than chasing exceptional returns. You can afford to be an exceptional investor, but you can’t afford to be bad one.

6. Most people will tell you how to get wealthy the wrong way, because most people are not wealthy. Do not take financial advice from anyone who is not where you want to be. We can learn something from every person we meet – what to do, and what not to do.

7. Equities are simply the best assets to become wealthy. I may be a tad* biased here, but after seeing hundreds of Canadian’s finances over the years, owning equities (stocks) has created more wealth than any other asset class.

8. Do not procrastinate all your life experiences until retirement. Many people imagine retirement as a financial utopia where they finally get to enjoy the spoils of their labor. In reality, if you retire at age 65 you will have approximately 10 good years before your health begins to  decline, and then you have approximately 10-15 more years of that before you die. Make sure you take some life experiences now, even if they have to be at a slightly lower level of luxury. It is better to stay at a 3-star hotel for 7 days in your 40s than a 5-star hotel for 10 days in your 70s.

9. I will never be a landlord again. It wasn’t that I personally had a bad experience as a landlord, but the landscape has changed in Ontario significantly. For the amount of risk and capital needed, the returns just simply don’t make sense compared to owning a globally diversified portfolio with proven returns.

10. If you manage to achieve some level of financial security or wealth, be exceptionally generous with money. Most people are struggling and will appreciate when you pick up the tab for dinner, give them a thoughtful gift, or get them out of a financial bind with no strings attached.

11. No one cares more about your possession than you. Your car, your watch, your home, expensive bottles of wine. No one will care more about these than you. If you were to live on a remote island, where no one would see your car or house, what would you drive? What house would you live in?

12. Do not invest your Emergency Fund. Do not worry about your Emergency Fund “just sitting there, earning no return.” The purpose of an Emergency Fund is not to earn a return. It’s to protect you in the event of an emergency. If it’s doing that, it’s working.

13. The middle class has been lulled into complacency by cheap credit. The reality of what we can afford is what you can buy when you don’t use lines of credit, credit cards, car loans, or HELOCs. You’ll realize right away you’re much worse off than you think. If you cannot afford the live you want without debt, you need to earn more money or adjust your expectations.

14. Don’t choose a partner who is bad with money. It doesn’t matter how much you love someone, if they are not on board with your financial goals, then you are fundamentally incompatible as a couple. Joining your money with a partner’s will supercharge your wealth accumulation if you can work as a team, it will decimate your financial security if you can’t. Second only to choosing your career, who you marry is the most important financial decision you will ever make.

15. Stop complaining about inflation, house prices, wage inequality, or any other economic grievances. It is good to acknowledge and understand these exist so you can work around them, it is ridiculous to make them the singular excuse as to why you can’t get where you want to go. No one gets to opt out of the world we live in. Complaining about it doesn’t make it better.

16. Investing in friendships is a form of true wealth. Becoming wealthy without friends to enjoy it with seems awfully hollow. A call, text message or lunch to catch up is an investment in a relationship and its so easy (and easy not to) do. Text someone today you haven’t reached out to in a few months.  

17. If you’ve made a financial mistake, accept it, fix it as quickly as you can, and then move on. There is no use ruminating over “if I had never done X then I would have Y.” Staying upset at something in the past that you cannot change will take emotional and mental energy away from planning a richer future.

18. If a stock you own has tumbled more than 40% and you’re “waiting for it go back up”, sell it. Your brain has mistakenly anchored your purchase price, or the highest price the stock reached, as its rightful one. But the stock market doesn’t work that way. Just because a stock was once a certain price doesn’t mean it will go “back” there, especially if its current trajectory is down. There is a huge opportunity cost to holding an underperforming investment, and doing so is making an investment mistake on top of another one.

19. The best way to spend your money is on experiences, but not all experiences are travel. You can be more creative in your spending than using it to simply physically be in a different place.

20. Money is correlated with higher life satisfaction, but only if you spend it on the right things. Statistically the data indicates the things that make us happiest are strong social ties, meaningful work, and hobbies. You can work on these three things regardless of what your financial situation currently is, and you should prioritize them and make them central to your life as you pursue your financial goals.

21. The less you can control something, the less mental energy it should take up in your financial planning. You have no influence over the Trump presidency, there is no reason to agonize over how you should adjust your spending or investment allocation to prepare for it. The things you can control are your income, savings rate, and spending. This should occupy 90% of your focus.

22. Don’t mistake correlation for causation in finance. Many people mistakenly believe that owning a home makes you wealthy, because homeowners are disproportionately wealthier than renters. But the reality is rich people behave a certain way because they’re rich, not because that that is what made them rich in the first place. The answer is as boring as rich people tend to buy houses because they are the ones that can afford them.

23. Your net worth is the most important financial metric to assess how you’re doing financially, and it’s a lagging indicator of how well you’re managing your money. Good financial decisions will take months and years to show up in your net worth calculations, but as long as you’re taking care of your money you will see progress over time.

24. Try to buy things that last. This is becoming more difficult in our age of fast fashion and planned obsolesce, but the frequency at which we are purchasing items is much more detrimental to our financial security than their price. You can do more with less if you buy things that last.

25. Ethical investing is largely made up. We live in a corrupt system built on the exploitation of people and the planet for profit. There is no way to participate in the stock market ethically. Unfortunately, there is no way to build wealth and financial security without participating in the stock market. Yes, this is by design.

26. Debt is not a moral failing, it is an expense. If you feel guilty or ashamed of the purchases you made that resulted in debt, remind yourself that you made the best decision you could with the information you had at the time. Paying off debt is an act of healing and self-care. You should take it as seriously as any other process of growth and development.

27. Celebrate small wins and accomplishments along your financial journey. After a big accomplishment, stop and recalibrate. You will not derail your entire financial future by taking a one month break every few years. In fact, doing so might reinvigorate you to tackle the next goal.

28. No one cares about your money as much as you do. Most people will not care how much you have, and it will not change your relationship. Many people worry that an unexpected inheritance will alter the dynamics of a friendship, especially if they result in a jump in socioeconomic class. But the truth is most people will not think about how much money you have, let alone care. You shouldn’t either.

29. Sometimes "good" money behaviours are really just unhealed money trauma. This can look like obsessive budgeting, the reluctance to spend money, or worrying incessantly about having enough in retirement. Anything that makes you anxious about money is probably an emotional issue and not a financial one. Financial issues are really easy to solve, the emotional healing will take longer.

30. Most wealth is made at the end. Warren Buffet accumulated 99% of his net worth after the age of 60. Your story probably won’t be so dramatic, but approximately 40% of your portfolio will be accumulated in your last 5 to 10 years before retirement. Remember this if it feels like things are moving slowly.

31. Money will solve a lot of problems in your life but not all of them. Even when you achieve financial security you will still need to do your laundry and heal your childhood trauma and make dentist appointments. Do not spend too much time fantasizing about the life you’ll live once your finances are handled. When you will inevitably get there, you will be disappointed to see the day-to-day is actually not that much different from the life leading up to it.

32. There will inevitably be leakage in your budget and your financial journey. You will occasionally overspend on internet service or winter tires. Something you thought would be a great use of money will turn out not to be. You will sometimes not be able to return that thing you bought that you thought would be useless. It’s not worth it to get upset or hold resentment over the times we let money go that we know we shouldn’t have. Life costs money. Not all of that money will be as useful as we want it to. There’s nothing to do but accept this and move on.

33. Try to Die With Zero. Do your best. Life is not a game of trying to get the highest number in our bank accounts, though we all treat it as such, but dying with a high net worth benefits no one except the tax man. The money in your bank account at your death represents missed dinners out with friends, vacations never taken, hobbies never pursued, and experiences never enjoyed.

34. Health matters, a lot.

35. The real richness is life is having a future to look forward to. Most people obsess about money because the alternative to that is accepting our own mortality, and it’s easier to worry about dollars than death. But if you got to wake up today and enjoy a cup of coffee, if you have plans for the weekend and Christmas and are thinking of taking a trip next year, you’re already very wealthy. There are people with money who don’t have that.

I once saw a Reddit post that said, “Imagine someone offered you $10 million dollars. But the catch was once you accept, you won’t wake up tomorrow. Would you take it? Of course not. Is there any sum you would accept if it meant you couldn’t wake up the next day? Probably not. In fact, the more money you’re offered, the more useless it becomes if you simply die the next day. This means every day of your life is more valuable than any amount of money on earth.”

As of today I’ve had 12,775 days on this planet. I probably have another ~18,000 to look forward to. That’s the richest I’ve ever been.