Jerry Millionaire

10/15/2026

Which amount would you rather pay annually for portfolio management? $5,000.00 or $0.00?

I was scrolling through FB, minding my own business, when an ad for an insurance company that manages retirement portfolios came up. If you have a portfolio of at least $500k and are nearing or entering retirement, they want to hear from you. They offer a free Retirement Income Blueprint.

Sounds pretty good, right?

Wanna know why they are targeting folks with $500k or more?
Because they get paid a percentage of assets under management, or AUM.
They want to show you how whiz-bang they are with your money so you'll shift your holdings over to them.

What do they get out of it? If they charge 1% AUM on $500k, that's a $5,000 annual fee. Right off the top, whether your portfolio goes up or down.
They're not charging you 1% on your gains, they're charging you 1% on everything they manage for you.

If your $500k portfolio gains 10%, they scoop off $5,500.
If your portfolio drops from $500k to $400k because the market took a dump, they still get $4k of your money.
That $12k top-up you put in this year? They get $120 of that, too.

Wouldn't you rather keep your money in your portfolio instead of in their pocket?
If you can understand grade 5 math, high school psychology, and can operate a web browser, you can keep the 1% AUM fee for yourself. Keep it working for you in your portfolio where it belongs instead of funding someone else's annual family vacation.

If you are completely confused by money and numbers give you anxiety, then by all means make use of a financial advisor or fiduciary. They will gladly manage your anxiety for you for 1% of your wealth every year.
If you wanna learn how to do it yourself, go here:
https://jerrymillionaire.myclickfunnels.com/free-retirement-mapmaker-kit-financial-independence-calculator

I don't want to manage your money. I'm not legally able to. I don't care if your portfolio is $500k or $500. If you have a DIY mindset, I can help you for free or nearly free. Need some help understanding numbers and developing your map out of the Rat Race? I can do that too. I have no desire to sell you mutual funds or insurance. I can't. I don't charge an annual percentage of AUM. I'm here to help clarify your path to a richer, faster retirement. Your exit from the Rat Race is not hard to find, and it's not locked.

10/08/2026

59% of working Canadians don't believe they will *ever* retire. Are you one of them? Wanna change that? Go here:
https://jerrymillionaire.myclickfunnels.com/free-retirement-mapmaker-kit-financial-independence-calculator

10/01/2026

"My greatest fear is buying into a deal and becoming someone else’s exit strategy."

That was a statement I heard this week from someone afraid to get into the market. He's interested in dividend stocks and rental properties, but is paralyzed at buying either one because of this fear.

The question, "Why are you selling?" isn't helpful. The seller is going to give a bu****it answer. A better question to ask is, "Based on what I know today, is this a good deal for me?". If it is, it doesn't matter why the seller is selling. If it isn't, it doesn't matter why the seller is selling.

What if later he finds out the deal was a terrible deal? Now he has a learning opportunity. What did he miss? What can he do now to solve the problem today? What can he do in future to ensure this problem never happens again? Those last two questions were taught to me by a former boss who used failure as a learning opportunity instead of a reason to punish. If you are afraid of making a mistake, you will be stuck in analysis paralysis and will never move forward. Our school system taught us that. Time to unlearn it.

09/24/2026

How is butter-making like personal finance?

My S.O. is a retired school teacher. We got to talking about science experiments, specifically kitchen science, and how to make butter.

Whipping cream, sealed jar, salt, and a few minutes of shaking and dancing to a 90's soundtrack. A 500ml carton of whipping cream makes 250 ml of butter.

It worked! She spread some on a piece of toast and tasted it. She said, "It tastes the way butter used to taste!".

Personal finance is similar. We've been collectively handing off the responsibility of managing our finances and retirement planning to others for so long we've forgotten how easy it is. The financial services industry has been encouraging that by adding fake complexity and making the process look harder than it has to be.

I made my own map. I started at 40. I researched every investment strategy I could find, spent a lot of money sorting the winners from the losers, and ended up retired at 56. I will never run out of money even if I live to be 200. What did it take me to get there? Grade 5 math, high-school psychology, the ability to run a web browser, and no desire to quit.

Making your own map to retirement isn't much tougher than making your own butter.

Wanna find out if you're on track to retire? Go here and request my free Retirement Mapmaker Kit for Canadians:
https://jerrymillionaire.myclickfunnels.com/free-retirement-mapmaker-kit-financial-independence-calculator

If you know your numbers you'll have an answer in an afternoon, or a weekend if you don't. From there I can steer you toward my free, nearly-free or paid 1-on-1 personal coaching depending on what works best for you.

You can be your own retirement planner. I can help you map your way out of the Rat Race. It isn't locked.

09/21/2026

Now *this* is how to sell an expensive commodity product. Dan Kennedy would be proud.
https://www.facebook.com/61576272808910/posts/122192811020875760/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v

09/17/2026

I get my first CPP payment in September.

Having never received CPP before, I was unsure of the process.
I signed up in January. My birthday is August 1st and I wanted the first payment as soon as possible. Canadians can sign up as far out as a year from their 60th birthday.

CPP rules state that if I request it to start as soon as I'm 60, the first payment comes the month after I turn 60. It's paid out over the last 3 days of each month, so I should have it by Sept 27 - 30.

CPP is not a necessary part of my retirement plan. My original plan was to fund my retirement myself and let any other givernment* income flow in as a bonus. I'll be using it to pay down debt on my rental properties.

Why did I start as soon as I turned 60? I could have had a greater amount if I had waited, right? Larger cheques are better, right? I've trained myself to wait for that marshmallow for 20 years, why am I breaking my own rule now?

Because of the compounding effect.

The baseline is 65. At 60, the income is 36% lower. If I wait until 70, it's 42% higher than it would be at 65. Every month I wait from age 60 to 65 increases my payout by 0.6%. Every month I wait from 65 to 70 increases my payout by 0.7%.
The average CPP payment for a new beneficiary starting at 65 is $877.01. At 60, that number is $561. At 70, that number is $1,245.
Average lifespan for a Canadian man according to Statistics Canada is 80 years. If I can make it to 65, StatsCan says I'll probably make it past 84.

So by taking the early payment from 60 to 80, I get a lifetime total of $134,640. By taking the late payment from 70 to 80, I get $149,400. That's $14,760 more if I wait. That's $61.50/month I'm not getting over the life of the comparison by taking CPP early.
I'm using the money to pay down debt at 5%. If I pay down $14,760 that's costing me 5%, I've saved that $61.50/month in interest. How long will it take me to do that? If I apply all of my CPP income, it'll take about 26 months.

Once the debt is repaid I'll put the cash into something boring like RY.TO. This has a dividend of 5.42%, and has increased its dividends by 10.37% annually over the past 5 years. At 70 I'll have $73,238 working for me, generating $5,982 per year, or $498/month. If I stop reinvesting the dividends and spend them as well as the CPP cheque, I'll have $1,059/month. If I keep going and wait until 75, I'll have $154,803 working for me, generating $13,572 per year, or $1,131/month. Add the CPP payment and start spending the dividends, now I've got $1,692/month, and the dividend portion goes up every year by over 10%. The CPP portion only goes up by the rate of inflation, about 2%.

By paying down debt and investing the lower amount sooner, I get more than the givernment* promises.

*Yes, the mis-spelling is intentional.

09/10/2026

As a child my father would ask me, "Boy, if you're so smart, why ain't you rich?"

He had a grade 8 education and was used to hard work. He was the youngest of 3 farm boys born to parents who emigrated from Turkey and ran their own 100 acre farm.

He went to trade school and learned mechanics. He spent his working life fixing cars and trucks, then worked in the maintenance department at a tire factory fixing forklifts. We lived a lower middle-class life. Vacations were car day-trips, never a hotel or motel. He did his own car repairs and house renovations. I held the flashlight and handed him tools.

He was a very resourceful man and I am grateful he taught me how to build or fix whatever needed building or fixing.

He would say this to me as a put-down, I think.

Being undiagnosed ASD-1, I didn't take it that way. I genuinely pursued the answer to this question.

It took me a long time to find the answer: Smart and rich are not directly linked.

Rich has links to discipline. Reviewing the financial repercussions of every decision. Turning discipline into habits because habits are way less thought-intensive.

Blogger MrMoneyMustache talks about considering the financial repercussions of a decision not in Now terms, not in annual terms, but in a 10-year time span.

As a child and a young man I spent my money as fast as I made it. My "I'VE HAD IT!" moment was when I realized at 40 I was in no position to retire, ever. Since the Silver Bullet Retirement Plan wasn't appealing to me, I started looking into wealth creation, growth, and management. I tried stuff on a small scale, made lots of mistakes, and scaled up what worked. I found that neither my family, government, my employer, or my bank were going to get me to a healthy retirement. Neither were the mutual fund or insurance salesmen who called on me to buy their products.

I went DIY. I learned as much as I could about every aspect of gaining and keeping wealth, and making money work for me instead of the other way around. Nobody has a greater interest in my retirement than me. I was able to exit the Rat Race on my own terms at 56.

I learned from people richer than me. Tony Robbins teaches that if I want to learn something, find someone who is way better at it than me and do what they do.

Robert Kiyosaki taught me how to compare and contrast the thinking of the rich with the thinking of the poor and middle class.

MrMoneyMustache taught me that Extreme F.I.R.E. is a thing and that it isn't that hard.

Dave Ramsey taught me that with grade 5 math and a little psychology I can DIY my own retirement plan.

Gail Vaz-Oxlade taught me that finding the money leaks and plugging them is an excellent way to increase my wealth without working harder.

Back to my father's question "Boy, if you're so smart, why ain't you rich?"

The answer: "Because you never taught me. I learned from broke people how to be broke. I learned from rich people how to be rich."

09/03/2026

Several years ago I had my credit card compromised.

Did it leave my sight during a transaction? Get skimmed at an ATM or dodgy retailer? RFID scanned while in my wallet? Sniffed over an insecure wifi connection?
Nope, nope, nope, and nope. That's all old-school. The new trick is to use scripting languages and computing power.

Thieves use an online CC # generator to find thousands of valid CC , then use a brute-force expiry date tester to come up with combos they can feed into an online retailer that doesn't ask for CVVs. A script tries a small transaction for each combo, saving the ones that work. When a combo hits, another script uses that combo to make larger purchases at multiple retailers.

The tools are free and easily available. I had them as part of my testing toolkit for work. Any high-school kid with a little time on his hands can set up the script to run all night and wake up to some new toys.

What was the tip-off? I read my credit card statement a couple of times a month, every month, and look for things out of the ordinary. The illegal purchases were made on Japanese nekkid lady sites.

The lesson? Even the most sophisticated brute force discovery of valid credit card and expiry combos can be stopped with a little regular "What the hell is this charge?" manual review.

08/27/2026

This week I was asked the classic question, "Should I pay down debt first, or invest first?".

Dave Ramsey has a good sequence for this:
1) Save a thousand dollars.
By saving a grand in a chequing account you demonstrate to yourself that you have a good enough handle on the basics of money management to not burn through all your cash before the next paycheque. It also ensures you don't incur nasty and unnecessary overdraft charges from your bank.

2) Set aside six months' living expenses as an emergency fund in a savings account.
This demonstrates that you can take the lessons in step #1 and expand them. It also demonstrates you can understand the difference between an emergency and a pseudo-emergency. An emergency is losing one's job or repairing your car so you can get back and forth to work. A pseudo-emergency is plane tickets to your friend's destination wedding, or the new racing slicks and tint job on your daily driver.

3) Pay down high-interest debt. Use either the Snowball or Avalanche method, whatever works for you. The Snowball method has a higher psychological chance of working, the Avalanche method saves you more money. If one method doesn't work, try the other.

4) Invest. Ramsey suggests 10% of your income. If you've been paying off debt, you've already been living on less than you earn and have gotten used to it. Take the money you were using to pay down debt and use it to invest. You'll never notice a difference in your lifestyle. If you can invest more, you can reach your retirement goals faster. MrMoneyMustache lived on a minuscule amount of his income and was able to save 75% of his take-home. He went from exiting University to retired in 9 years.

Where are you in your journey?

08/20/2026

How to Legally Hack the Canadian Tax Code

A recent Fraser Institute survey shows that Canadians are paying over 41% of their gross income to taxes. Income tax, sales tax, fuel tax, property tax, payroll and healthcare taxes, nickel-and-diming taxes, the whole lot.

In 1980, it was 40.8%. In 1961, it was about 33%. No wonder your parents were able build a retirement plan so easily!

So how do you get out from under the burden of the Canadian tax system?

Robert Kiyosaki says "Move from Employee to Business Owner.". This is how the rich think. This is how I did it:

I started a side gig. I picked something I'm good at, that people don't want to do themselves, and are willing to pay someone else to do.

I started as a Sole Proprietor. No need to register a business name if I use my own personal name. No need to set up an LLC in most cases either. I can register when I've made some money.

Do I need business insurance, business cards, a dedicated phone line, new clothes, new equipment, certifications?

Not at first. When I set up as a handyman I knew I couldn't do anything that required a certification or a permit. Instead I refer great contractors who can do the work better than I can. www.Duuo.com and www.PalCanada.com offer vendor insurance for pop-up markets at ridiculously cheap prices.

Staples has receipt books. I like the ones with the carbonless duplicates. Square.com offers credit and debit card processing at fees lower than any bank con offer.

I kept track of all my home expenses. Heat, hydro, water, sewer, maintenance, taxes, insurance, phone.

I set aside a room in my house as an office, and another as a workshop. I counted the number of rooms in my house, the number of rooms devoted to the side gig, and worked out what percentage of space is being used for business purposes.

That percentage is now a deduction. A percentage of all bills are no longer personal expenses, they are business deductions.

Same with my vehicle. I keep a mileage book, tracking which trips are for business and personal. At the end of the year I calculate what percentage of mileage is for business. That percentage of my vehicle loan interest, gas, oil, maintenance, parking fees and insurance are business deductions instead of personal expenses.

At tax time I get a copy of TurboTax Home and Small Business. I let the program lead me and fill in the numbers from all receipts, no need for an accountant. All those deductions are subtracted from my income before tax is calculated. As an added bonus, TurboTax itself is a business deduction.

The CRA allows you to lose money for your first 5 years, then they expect to see a profit. If no profit, they may audit you, thinking you're just doing it for the tax advantages.

How much money can I make before HST headaches kick in? The threshold is $30k gross.

Fun fact: You can claim expenses from Jan 1 in the year you start your business, not from the date you start your business. Bonus!

Welcome to Rich Thinking.

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