[Host]: Renee Sylvestre-Williams is a financial journalist and author of the Singles Tax no nonsense Financial Advice for Solo Earners, and Erin Kelly is the CEO of Advanced Symbolics, Inc. Kristine Beese is the founder and CEO of Untangle Money. Great to have all three of you on the program. How are you all doing?

[Guests]: Great. Great. Yeah. Great to have you.

[Host]: All right. We're going to start with you. Take us through some of the research AI pollster Polly found on affordability in this economy. People are struggling.

[Erin Kelly]: Yeah, exactly. So we did a research here and we looked at how many people said that they're having financial hardship. And when Polly divides it, she divides it up into major struggle, somewhat struggling, not really struggling or I'm fine. And I think what was most amazing first off is how much that percentage of people saying it's a major struggle has grown since 2021. So you see, in 2021, 8.7% of people said they were having a major struggle, and now it's over a quarter, 27%.

[Host]: And that was Covid when we're talking 2021, right?

[Erin Kelly]: So and I don't know, and you know, we'd have to go and look at it more. Did the Covid subsidies help people? Otherwise it would have been worse. I mean, obviously it would have been worse because we were having a pandemic. But you see how just it just really grows. And when more than a quarter of your population says every month it's a major struggle, that's a crisis. I mean, that is a crisis.

[Host]: All right. Well, Christine, with this research, does it align with what you're seeing with your clients these days when we're talking about major struggles?

[Kristine Beese]: 100%. You know, what we look at is on an after tax after deduction basis, and we make your budget square. And then we fill it up with the things that you spend your money on. And we do fixed costs or we call it committed money. And then we know from research that there's amount you need for variable costs. So food, clothes, gifts, all the things and everything else. And then what's left over is what you can put towards future money, retirement savings and things like that. And we see these costs just compressing your flex money or your variable spend and your ability to save for retirement. It's just it is very hard. And the square isn't keeping up with the demands for the costs and the spending. And one of the things that we talk about pretty that's really important to know and it's research backed, is that with your variable spending food, clothes, gifts, all the things and everything else, you need to get joy from this. As human beings in the middle income, if we do not get joy, we will do something called revenge spending. Okay, so we can do 3 to 5 years tight. So this is why I think it's interesting when we tell young people that they should live like they're a student for as long as possible. We really can't do it for more than 3 to 5 years. And then you will actually revenge spend and take away a lot of the hard work you've done. You might go into debt. It's really it is really hard for people.

[Host]: I'm marking the words joy on my paper triple underlined here. What does joy look like when we're talking about joy?

[Kristine Beese]: It moves the dial for you internally so it looks different for everyone. And it was interesting. It is. It is a very tight band. But what you. So maybe Renee really likes spending on food. Maybe Aaron really likes spending on clothes. But the percentage of spend that goes to all these things is very similar. It's just the categories inside that change, and it needs to feel like you're doing something that is important to you. Right. So, you know, to if we look at tropes, it could be the coffee, it could be the avocado toast, it could be the eyelashes and nails that women are constantly criticized for. But it really needs to move the dial for what's important to you, and it changes over time.

[Host]: All right, Renee, I'll get you to add on that.

[Renee Sylvestre-Williams]: I completely agree with everything because the thing is, like, there's always there's it's the conversation is changing. But for decades. And Christine, you let me know as well. The conversation has been like budget, budget, budget, budget, budget. Right. And that goes back to revenge spending. Somebody cannot live on a stringent budget for months or years at a time, because what happens is you get no joy, you're deeply unhappy, you spend a lot of time very conscious about your spending, and then next thing you know, you are revenge spending. Revenge spending became a very popular term in what, year two or year three of the pandemic, because people were just so tired of one being indoors a lot, especially in Ontario. There was a lot of financial stress about, you know, because some people weren't working, some, you know, there was Cerb and all of those things that people just started spending in order to feel something.

[Host]: All right, Renee, we're going to move from revenge spending. We're going to talk about sacrifices. So Aaron, what did poorly find in terms of what people are sacrificing to get by right now?

[Erin Kelly]: Well, some people are sacrificing very deeply. I mean, we're beyond we're beyond the fluff at this point. So if we look at families, families are sacrificing vacations. Number two is savings saving for retirement. Parents aren't saving. Now, what I found interesting in the right here, you'll see we have the single spending. The singles are continuing to save, and I think that's probably because they don't have that safety net. Maybe there's a false sense of security with couples, right. But so couples number two is savings is going out the door. And then you go down the list. Subscriptions and gifts both both groups giving up gifts for singles. That's number one. That's going out gifts and then subscriptions. And so yeah, I mean people are already giving up those joyful elements that Christine mentioned. And we're into basic things like television.

[Host]: Right. All right, Renee, help us interpret this with your research based on the cost of living for Canadians who are single. How do you how do you look at this?

[Renee Sylvestre-Williams]: Honestly, when I saw those slides, a lot of it wasn't a surprise to me. Right? But the fact that people are giving up savings, I would agree with you. I think possibly it might be a case of couples are like, especially if you've got younger children, like, okay, we're just going to do this hopefully short term sacrifice. And then longer term we're ideally we should be reaching our peak financial earnings years, be able to catch up. The fact that single people are still saving tells me a couple things. I think a lot of single people realize that they do have to save, no matter what the situation is, because there's those costs down the road, right? Retirement. You know what, if you're ill down the line and all of those things long term, care for yourself. And again, I would also add probably somewhere down the line as parents get older, as a single person, you may be the sole caregiver for them. So you have to have that cushion. So the fact that single people are still saving reassures me, but also kind of like the vacation thing that tells me, like a lot of people are not getting that ability to, you know, get some stress relief, walk away from work. And that work life balance concerns me a lot.

[Host]: Okay. Well, Christine, I want to get you in on there. What advice are you giving clients right now about spending versus cutting to get by?

[Kristine Beese]: Yeah. So we protect that flexible spending even though it may be harder to spend. We call it the do it all years that most, most couples with young families in Canada have. These do it all years. Sometimes it's with elder care as well. Where you're there just isn't. Actually, there's not enough money to do it all. And so what we look at is and it in some ways you can think it's depressing, but I think it's it's nice to have at least some options. We look at retiring later, having a part time job in retirement. We really focus on something that you might enjoy doing in part time and then potentially downsizing. Or the Golden Girls retirement, which isn't for everyone, but we. It is a trend we see in all countries other than the US. Increasing is people.

[Host]: People who aren't familiar. Yeah.

[Kristine Beese]: Golden girls retirement. It's mainly women who outlive their partners or are single to start with. You know, collecting their resources together and owning or renting a home with other women. And they say the, you know, maintenance goes down because you're not the only one cleaning. They say there's always somebody there and then there's a built in social life. So it's people who like it, really like it. Some people really don't like it. So depends on it, depends on the person.

[Host]: I got to ask how realistic is something like that?

[Renee Sylvestre-Williams]: Surprisingly realistic. The housing chapter in my book is the longest thing, and there's a whole section on sort of that communal community housing situation, and it's been done, okay, not abroad. So there was that whole meme that kind of went viral of seven women in China who bought a house. Yeah, right. And all of that stuff. But there's Clarence Commons in Toronto where they about 6 or 7 people pooled their resources, got a mortgage with the insurance and bought a place. And you can read it in the book. But they sat down and had a very transparent conversation about finances and how much they're willing to spend on renovations and repairs and all of that stuff. There is, I forget the radish in California, where they pooled their resources, bought a land, and there are multiple houses on it, right? Families, kids and all that. They're actually selling it right now as we're.

[Host]: Speaking compound.

[Renee Sylvestre-Williams]: It's a compound of sorts. And then there is an association called Single Women Living Together, which provides support for lower income women, mostly in Ontario. And what it is, it is a resource for women who are looking to partner up with other women and rent. So these are all options. And people love a Golden Girls scenario.

[Host]: Fair enough.

[Renee Sylvestre-Williams]: But you are right, it is complicated because when talking to all of these people, you have to be willing to be emotionally and financially transparent because as Pat, who founded Single Women Living Together, told me, it's not the big things that cause friction. It's the small things like politics, yes, but just things like somebody might want to run the dishwasher at like six in the morning. Somebody else might. Food smells.

[Host]: Who's taking the spoons and forks?

[Renee Sylvestre-Williams]: Yeah. Who's taking the spoons and forks? Fair enough. That kind of thing.

[Host]: Flashback to dorm living.

[Kristine Beese]: It is.

[Host]: Flashbacks, right? I want to get Erin involved in this. We hear the news and it's grim. We see the data, it's grim. But many of us are still living as usual. And I'm curious, is there perhaps a disconnect, or are people perhaps ignoring it and maybe leaning into debt a little bit?

[Erin Kelly]: Oh, people are definitely leaning into debt. There's there's no question about that. And some people aren't feeling it. I mean that we do have that small slice of the population there. They know that inflation has gone up and stuff, but they weren't they weren't so close to the edge that, you know, but people are definitely leaning into debt.

[Host]: All right Christine.

[Kristine Beese]: Yeah I would agree. And I actually when I saw the data, I was curious when people said they weren't cutting back on savings, was it because they they weren't saving to begin with. So a little bit deeper because when we when we work with people, we force the savings conversation issue. But sometimes it's not something that's happening right now. So that's something I'm worried about. I don't think enough Canadians understand how debt works and understand, you know, the difference between getting your money working for you versus getting your money working for someone else. Getting your money working for you means that the money that's invested is making money on itself. And so we actually break down what you contributed and what what money came that you did not contribute came from that return on investment. And if you start early enough, the return on investment is more than half what you contributed, which is how you can afford a life, a retirement. And so when you're when your money is working for someone else, you're doing that to the benefit of someone else. You're paying this instead of it going up, you're paying this going down. And so one of the things that really bothers me when the government talks about, oh, we've made mortgages longer, so housing is more affordable. I'm like, that's actually not more affordable. It's a misnomer. You're you're now asking people to pay much more in interest. And it's you're asking people to work much harder for banks.

[Host]: Okay.

[Erin Kelly]: And a lot of people I'd say don't understand. You're very right. They don't understand that a lot of these. So we did a study on people going bankrupt, which and when you go bankrupt, the financial advisor, all sorts of professionals come in, right, to help you pay back these debts, but they're not working for you, the bankrupt person. Right. They're working for the people that you owe. But a lot of people just trust this and don't get their own financial advice, or because they think those people are helping them. And so it's I think one of one of the things that came out loud and clear, which we didn't make a graph for, is that everybody, whether you're single, you're a household. Everybody feels our tax system is too complicated. It's actually not working well for anyone. Okay. And, you know, if you have to hire a professional just to pay the government your taxes because you feel otherwise, you're not getting all the little exceptions you could have gotten or, you know, if, heaven forbid, you're in a bankruptcy situation. You can't afford to help anyone, but you can't get through it on your own. So you're kind of at the mercy of the others who do have professionals. So because we've seen people who are slaving away to pay off the debts of everything they own, whereas it would have actually just been better if they kind of declared and walked away in a way, like.

[Host]: Very interesting.

[Kristine Beese]: I really wish consumer proposals and bankruptcy had less stigma because I think, you know, we give it to businesses all the time. And, and I think that getting we can get into trouble and it's it's compounding and it can just spiral out of control. And I wish people would take the reset and just, you know, I didn't realize that you had to get your own professionals. I don't know as much about the spaces I would like to, but it I really wish we didn't have the same stigma about it and more people took advantage.

[Renee Sylvestre-Williams]: There's a lot of shame and blame about money, like if you cannot manage your own finances personally for some reason, that just becomes that you are a failure as a human being. But if you think about it, like a lot of Canadians aren't really exposed to actual proper financial education, they kind of see how their parents or their family react to money, so they kind of build up their own money stories. But, you know, having a conversation about, you know, maybe when you get your first allowance or when you start working and all of those things doesn't happen with a lot of Canadians.

[Host]: All right. With that being said, in our last minute that we have, I do want to make sure that we get some advice from the experts here. So, Christina, I'll start with you. Despite high housing costs and food costs, people still might want to save and can perhaps see the concern there. Yes. What advice can we offer them?

[Kristine Beese]: Know that. That you're not able to do it all. You aren't. The math doesn't math. It doesn't work. It's about trade offs. Really. Focus on what's important to you and let the noise fall away. And so one thing I like we like to do is base your costs in hours for how many hours you work to pay for something. So I think it's a lot easier to decide if a coffee costs me one hour of my time. Is that worth it for me? Or if an item at a, you know, out of a vending machine is an hour of my time, is that worth it to me? And and if we stop, sort of, you know, frittering our money away and we spend it intentionally, we find that people have much better outcomes and they're able to get and the trade offs feel more manageable, and they're able to get to the things that bring them joy. But it's a different way of looking at it. So you're doing great where you are, it's going you're going to have to make trade offs, figure out what's important to you. Some people are happy to live with another person and they don't need to save as much money then.

[Host]: Exactly. You got the last one.

[Renee Sylvestre-Williams]: I would add on to that. You know your lifestyle works for you, right? Don't compare yourself to others. That is just the death of ego, but also on a bigger scale, you know, support policies that will help you, right? You know, is it, you know, again, is it a housing policy that works for you? Do you love the idea of co-op housing, which can be 30% under market and you still own something, then support those policies.

[Host]: All right. And can I.

[Erin Kelly]: Add to the policies? I do think we do need a government level policy change here, simplifying the tax system. And we can we have an opportunity if we can encourage people saving and investing in in Canadian business, in a way we can actually achieve a lot of things that the government is trying to overcome. But we really to do that need to overhaul the tax system.

[Host]: All right. We are going to have to leave it there. Renee. Christina, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. And Aaron, this is just the just the beginning for us. You are going to be back with some more data sets for some future interviews. So we look forward to that.