If you're like me, you have a few books in your life that
generally changed how you thought, how you felt,
and how you acted. One of them, for me is the wealthy barber.
It arrived in my life 36 years ago, and I think of it
as sort of this quiet little miracle. There's no charts, there's no
jargon, just a simple story set in a barbershop.
But a story that helped millions of Canadians, including myself, feel confident
with money for the first time. And I wasn't alone. This book
has sold millions of copies. I think is Canada's
best seller of all time. And not because it screamed at people,
because it spoke to them. Today, money feels heavier than it did back
then. The cost of living has squeezed young adults. Home
ownership feels out of reach for many, and this pressure to present a
perfect life online makes spending tacticians so hard
to ignore. So when David Chilton and Nasi was returning with a
fully updated version of his classic, people paid attention. I paid
attention. After all, the original helped an entire generation
find stability. I did feel the pressure. I mean, you were writing an
update to a book that had that kind of popularity. It's tough.
The book had to be better, and. The hope is a new
one could do the same at a time when stability feels scarce. The big
thing is you can't overwhelm them. You can't confuse them, and. But those are important
aspects of financial planning now, so they have to get in there. It's not enough
just to explain them. How do people prioritize? David spent
16 months rewriting, rethinking, and retesting every idea in the
book. What I love about what he's done is he preserved what
still makes sense, and he replaced what no longer does.
And through it all, he kept the same mission that drove him in 1989.
Take the intimidation out of personal finance. Give people a path to
follow that is simple, practical, and doable. It's the spoonful of
sugar to help the medicine go down. By using a little humor and using the
story, you're pulling people in. And again, you're taking that intimidation out. And I
think that's why it's worked. So I'm thrilled to have
him back on Chatter that matters. Not just because he wrote a classic.
Because he has lived a life defined by service, humility, and a
genuine desire to help Canadians make better choices. Today, we
talk about what has changed, what has, what is not, and how everyday
people can reclaim a sense of control in a financial world that
often feels stacked against them.
Hi. It's Tony Chapman. Thank you for listening to Chatter that Matters, presented
by rbc. If you can please subscribe to the podcast
and ratings reviews, well, they're always welcome and they're always
appreciated.
David, welcome back to Chatter that Matters. Tony, thank you so much for the
lovely introduction. And I must say, before we start, I came onto Chatter
that Matters, as you know, a few years ago. Of all the podcasts I've done,
that's the one I heard the most about, received the most feedback from. So
good for you. The podcast has been a big success. I enjoyed that interview
immensely and I'm truly happy to be back again. You know, David, there's so much
we can talk about, but first and foremost is your
motivation for doing this. I know you as a personal friend
and this isn't about money. This isn't about fame.
This isn't about another award or another record set. You truly
want to help everyday Canadians take the in out of
insecurity and the on out of uncertainty when it comes to their money? Yeah, no,
I honestly do. And thank you for saying that. And I think that I'm old,
you know, at 63 when I started writing 62, this second book, I
realized if I don't get at it soon, I may not get at it. But
I think, as you mentioned in the intro, there's so many more challenges now.
And my kids friends were asking so many questions. My friend's
kids were asking so many questions. I was reading about all of the tough times
out there, how much more difficult it is to save real estate prices,
obviously leading the challenge list. And I thought it's the perfect time to
bring back that approach. Take the intimidation out, wrap it in a story,
use some humor, but recognize that these challenges are very real.
There's no magical answers. Here are the best paths you can take. You
probably can't do all of these things, so here are the nuances you need to
understand so you can prioritize in the proper direction. And so
far, the book's gone over very well. And it really was a lot of fun
writing it, but challenging. I mean, there was many days I was almost in tears
because you're retesting it. You have to start over. Maybe it didn't resonate the
way you thought it would and you're back at the drawing board. Crazily enough, it
took me four months longer to write the rewrite than it did to write the
original. I have to believe, though, because of the success you
had, you never imagined the success you'd have with a wealthy Barber.
I sure didn't. The numbers you realize and continue to realize with this
book, no one could have predicted. So it must have been a lot of pressure
to say, if I'm going to put my name on version 2,
I can understand why it took longer to write, because if you've done Abbey Road,
you don't want to put something out that's going to pale in comparison. I did
feel the pressure. I mean, you were writing an update to a book that had
that kind of popularity. It's tough, and you really have to live up to
that. And so I started out, as corny as this sounds, with the goal
the book had to be better, making it even more inviting, covering
off more material, making sure the flow was as good, et cetera, et cetera. That
meant more and more testing. As you know, I use a very unusual writing approach
where I am constantly involving the target demographic, garnering your
feedback, doing the rewrites, et cetera. Did even more of that with the update than
I did with the original, but you've nailed it. I did feel the pressure. I
mean, even when the book launched, you're hitting the early feedback. It's coming
back to you. You're a little bit nervous about the whole thing. So I am
truly thrilled that it's going over the way it is. Society's so cynical
nowadays, and the obvious thing people would go to is, you
know, he's run out of ideas, so he's trying to put a new ribbon around
old ideas. But the reality is, it is new. What
did you preserve from 1989? What are some of the lessons you offered
us back then that are still the lessons in life that we should
be following when it comes to our money? Well, one of the big ones I
really tried to hit on in chapter three was, you can do this, that it's
not as complicated as people make it out to be. In fact, interestingly, in the
world of finance, it's the simple stuff that works. People have often said
to me, well, you're dealing with the masses, so you focus on the simple stuff.
And I say, no, I focus on the simple stuff because it's what works.
The complicated products, the fancy option strategies, all those
types of things, they work better for the person selling them and pitching them than
for the person investing in them. In fact, you know, there was a book that
came out recently in the States called Fixed by John Campbell, a Harvard
professor of economics, and he said the exact same thing. Good financial
planning is relatively straightforward. It's the simple things that work. So how can we
teach those most effectively? So chapter three, I really focused on that
eternal message of, you can do this. It's not that complicated. You don't have to
have wonderful math skills. You don't have to be a finance major. Most of this
is very understandable. You can learn along with the narrator, learn along
with the characters in the Barbershop. In fact, the fact that narrator speaks
out right away and says, I hate math, I hate finance, I think
invites people in to go, good. The narrator, it said, so do I. Let's go
along on the journey. So that part of it was definitely maintained. And then a
lot of the common big picture themes like pay yourself first, why you
have to save something. All of those things, of course, were maintained. The
challenge is now. The difference is now we have more ways to do that.
Instead of just RSPs, there's also TFSAs, there's
FHSAs. Instead of just mutual funds, there's index funds, and,
of course, ETFs. You have to explain all those to the reader.
The big thing is you can't overwhelm them. You can't confuse them. But those
are important aspects of financial planning now, so they have to get in there. And
I think the biggest challenge on the writing front, the biggest reason it took so
long, it's not enough just to explain them. How do people
prioritize? So which route do I take first? I can't save to the
desired level. I'm pinched because of homeownership costs. I'm pinched because of the cost of
living. I want to set aside something. Where's my best place to start if I
can do that, what's the next step, et cetera? So all of that took a
long time to weave in. It really was a blessing that this particular
format gives you a lot of characters in the Barbershop. And so
because of that, you can cover off a wide variety of scenarios. And that
really played to my advantage more in book two even than it did in book
one. Many people probably don't know this about you, and you
actually shared a clip when you were doing some standup comedy.
Humor is a big part of your vernacular, and humor
and money don't necessarily go together. Your storytelling
and your humor, it makes it so accessible. Is this just
something that you've always been blessed with? And I know you credit a lot of
your relationship with your dad, but is this just something where you go, I've always
been inspired by stories, therefore I'm going to use stories as the platform
to inspire others. Yeah, you Said that very well. I mean, I've always been drawn
into stories with the beginning, the middle, the end, the character, the
conflict, and, of course, the humor can spice it up. You mentioned my
father. Very good communicator, used humor. But honestly, my sister
probably played an even bigger role. Three years older. I grew up with her telling
stories and taking shots at me constantly and using a lot of humor.
She's very funny, and I think I picked up on a lot of it from
her. I fell into a very funny friend group, like, very funny. And so
all of that became a part of my life. But really, again, a lot of
this. And you said this when you and I first spoke about the wealthy barber
years ago. It's the spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. You were
the one who made that comparison. And I thought, that's bang on. By
using a little humor and using the story, you're pulling people in, and again, you're
taking that intimidation out, and I think that's why it's worked. You know, one of
the things that really roared through your book is when I grew up, you know,
they talked about trying to keep up with the Joneses. They got the second car.
I need the second car. But today, you're talking about. This is a constant
itch in social media that everybody's trying to put their best
life forward. They're the most interesting person, they're the one that has the most
cachet, that they're going to garner the most likes. And. And that's creating
such a temptation to spend beyond your means.
And you really come at that in terms of. In the short term,
that might give you immediate gratification, but it's not setting you up for the long
term. It isn't. And, you know, I'm glad you brought that up. I mean, I
don't normally say things like this, but I'm honestly very proud of
chapter nine of the book, Saving Savvy. You know, I put so much work into
that chapter. Tested well, almost right out of the gate. Kind of 30 years experience
watching people make mistakes. What they've done well, what they've done right. Weaving it
all into the advice of that chap. But a big part of it was, it's
tougher now. It's not just people showing off their highlight moments and drawing
you in with FOMO and everything else. It's the algorithms. The algorithms
are so advanced now and so able to hit us at our weak spots and
tempt us with things. And, of course, it's so easy to Buy now. It's one
click away. It's one tap away. It's tougher on this generation,
the younger people, kind of 45 and under now, than it was when you and
I were that age for sure. Anybody who denies that is out of touch.
It's a tough environment to try to shut off all that noise, rise above it,
and still do some successful saving. It's not easy. You know, I
talked about keeping up with the Joneses and the second car in the driveway,
and I was happy to say that you continue to use owning
a car as a consistent financial pitfall. And
it's amazing the percentage of Canadians who by any common
sense measure, spend too much on cars. The car industry has done a
remarkable job over the last decades convincing us that
we have to define ourselves to some extent by our car and we've all
bought in. What kills me about this is so often I will sit with somebody
and help them out and say, you know, you're spending quite a bit too much
on cars. And you know what they'll say? Yeah, we are. No, we know that.
It's common sense. We are a. Dave, we're going to change that. Then, of course,
they never do. And so even though the younger generation has legitimate
beef about real estate prices relative to income, cost of goods
relative to income, a lot of them make strange voluntary spending
decisions on the car front. I would love to see us get that under control.
You know, you talk about housing decisions, and I would say the anxiety,
the narrative coming from Ottawa provincial leaders,
municipal leaders, is the affordability of housing. And you talk
about housing anxiety, you talk about renting and buying both carry
risks and rewards. What advice can you offer people that forever
they thought part of the passage, the Canadian dream, was to put a key in
the lock and say, that's my home. And, you know, people still think that for
the most part. So when I was going out doing all the pre research, talking
to people in their 20s and 30s, most still want to own a. And they
want to own a home. Not even a townhome and not a condominium. They want
to own a home with the yard, et cetera. That's still the Canadian dream in
the vast majority of cases. So I have to realistically say to
them that may not be possible in all instances. Rent is not throwing your
money away. Here's the math and how it looks. Here's some of the combinations and
permutations of all of the thinking that gets involved here and try to make them
seem understand. It's still hopeful, but it is tough
and there are some levers you can pull to make it somewhat easier. One of
them is managing expectations that fairly or unfairly, the average income
can't buy the average price any house anymore. And therefore you're gonna have to start
out a little bit lower. I emphasize smaller. Not everybody can move to
less expensive districts. Maybe you go to 30 year amortization. We
came at the homeownership chapter from so many different directions,
trying to show people here's the way you can think. But all of that recognized
it's tough. In fact, one of the things Roy says in the book, for example,
is if you're single, there may not be a magical answer here unless you have
a very outsized income because it is tough to afford all these.
Now housing prices throughout most of the country, not everywhere, have been trending down
a little bit. So that will help on the affordability front, especially with rates right
now staying level and maybe even going to dip at some point in the next
six months to a year. This wasn't in your book, which means you're going to
have to write the third version. But Donald Trump coming out and
talking about 50 year amortization. And it's getting quite a bit
of blowback because basically it's saying you're just leasing your house and
you'll never own it. What are your thoughts in terms of making
sure that financial advice comes from people
like you and from financial institutions versus necessarily
the rhetoric of political leaders who might have more self
serving ambitions at stake? I'll tell you that specific idea.
The problem with it, if you go to 50 year AM, that'll get
capitalized back into the price of the house. So because it'll
lower your monthly payment, it'll just get shifted over and the housing
prices will go up and that'll take your monthly monthly payment back up more or
less to where it was. We've seen that in Canada with some of the initiatives
we've attempted. It's very difficult without increased supply. Increased
supply of what the consumer actually wants to really have a dampening effect
on real estate prices, etc. But your point is a well taken one.
Whom do you trust? And in fact I think it's interesting everybody felt that when
I was rewriting the wealthy barber, I would probably be hurt by the amount of
information out there, TikTok, YouTube, etc, etc. I think it's
actually played to my advantage strangely because it's overwhelming and
people are saying, is there one trusted source, somebody who's been out there for a
long time, who's not selling a product, who's going to look at this from a
lot of different angles and bring it across in a manner we can understand? So
I think all of that noise out there has probably, again, been a big plus
in terms of the way people have reacted to the book.
When we return, David and I sit through the world of
estates and wills. How does a wealthy
barber simplify what seems to be a very convoluted and emotional
task?
Every family has a moment when you look around and you know it's time.
It's time to get organized. It's time to protect what you've built.
Time to make sure that people you love are cared for, no matter what
tomorrow brings. November is make a will month
in Canada, and more than half of us still do not have a will. And
when someone dies without one, the law steps in. The law decides how
your state is divided, who manages it, children involved. A court may
even decide who becomes their guardian. Bank accounts will be
frozen, property can be delayed, and a family already coping with loss
can be pushed in even more stress, confusion, and unnecessary
cost. A will matters to everyone. A young couple welcoming their
first child, a blended family, aging parents who want to make things
easier for their kids. What a will does is it puts your intentions in
writing so your loved ones are not left to guess. At
RBC Wealth Management Canada, we help Canadians build
legacies that honour what matters most. And when you work with one of our
advisors, your estate plan and your financial plan are integrated.
And if I can offer you one more piece of advice, consider appointing a
professional executor with RBC Royal Trust. It removes pressure from
your family and helps ensure your affairs are managed with experience and care.
So this November, take the time to create your will. Take the time
to meet with an RBC wealth advisor and put your wishes to paper.
Protecting your state and legacy with the will and professional executor.
Well, that matters to me, to you, and to rbc.
It was a Thursday afternoon. I drove over. My father was just getting home, high
school principal. And I told him the idea. And this guy is brilliant, but he
has no business acumen at all. And he said, dave, I think that's
really quite a dumb idea. And I knew then I had a winner. That was.
That was what I thought, okay, I'm on to something. And then I started the
whole writing process and, you know, never envisioned it, obviously, becoming
what it did. Today, my very special guest is David Chilton.
36 years ago, I opened the covers through the book, the wealthy
Barber and it changed the way I thought about money
and I still think about it today.
David, I really appreciated these educational videos
and that you brought out last year through rbc,
talking about estates, wills, et cetera. What was your motivation
for doing that? They were truly educational in nature. You know, they
were all about the importance of having a will, the importance of powers of attorney.
How do you choose your executor, what to watch out for on all those
fronts? We were trying to kind of help Canadians to make better estate planning
decisions because it is the most ignored area in the personal
finance sphere. People are very careless there. In fact, 50ish
percent of Canadians don't even have a will. And powers of attorney are
often dramatically out of date. And it's amazing now, as we have this aging
demographic, how often we're seeing this come back and bite people
and how frequently now this is leading to family conflict and financial
challenges and everything else. So as you deal with your financial advisor,
it's not just about investment planning or even savings planning. Estate
planning has to be a bigger and bigger part of it, especially as I mentioned,
with the aging population. You also recorded the audio version of the
book and it just makes me smile because I love how your personality comes through
it. But what was it like to put David Shelton, who's
constantly on the move, almost like a caged
animal, in the studio having to read the words? It took so long for you
to write. You know me well, because I found that hard. Like, I mean, you've
been standing still for that long was tricky, but also keeping your energy up the
whole time. But the funny thing is I did book two. So I
read book two and it was a relatively straightforward book. It was like most
books, it wasn't a story format. Then I go into the studio to do book
three, the Wealthy Barber Updated, and I realized you're reading all the
characters and therefore there has to be proper intonation, proper
acting, et cetera. Well, that's a lot trickier. And so there's
more redos and everything else. Fortunately, we had fantastic production partners. It
took a long time, but really going over well. In fact, I'd say the
audiobook is drawing even better reviews to the textbook. So,
no, that's going over very, very well. We mentioned it earlier. I've seen what you're
like on stage. I have to believe you love the fact that your
acting chops were challenged. So as much as you like to consider it a bit
of a pain, I have a feeling that you quite enjoy that you do so
much of this pro bono. I mean, you got this great podcast. It seems to
have no ads. You know, you've decided to do an exclusive deal with
Indigo to start with. Are you at a point in your life and a stage
of your life? Have you followed enough of the advice of the wealthy barber that
your calling now is really just to give back so that
Canadians can have better peace of mind, sleep a little bit better
when it comes to their money? Yeah, it is. And I mean, thanks for mentioning
the podcast. We haven't taken ads in the podcast or done lead gen or
anything along those lines. I mean, if A and W ever reached out to me,
you know, I would take them as a sponsor. I love A and W, but
we don't take any financial companies, et cetera. And I think you are. You are
trying to get back. I've been very spoiled. I mean, let's be honest, fell into
this success at a very young age. Everywhere I've gone across the country with all
the speaking, I've been treated incredibly well. People literally
invited me into their homes for dinners, et cetera, et cetera, trusting me when they
asked me the questions. So it has been a good opportunity to give back and
I've enjoyed it. And then on the distribution front, we did make a rather
odd decision. This was even before the tariff war, by the way. I decided
to go with a Canadian only project. It was printed in Quebec. You've got
Canadian editors, obviously a Canadian writer, and then it's independent
bookstores and Indigo only. There's no cost, Amazon involved on
the distribution front. So I think some people look at me go, that's crazy. They
were some of your biggest accounts. But I love the fact that it's an all
Canadian project and let's hope it goes well. David, I always end
with my three takeaways. And the first one is hearing you today
just reminds me of your humility and your generosity, and I mean that
as a friend and whose book 36 years ago did change
my life. And I started paying myself first. So it's lovely to. To hear
that continue to come through. I think the second thing is your honesty and saying
how hard it was to write the second book because you. You had a
bestseller and now you have to improve upon it. I think you have,
and I really like the fact that you've preserved a lot from the
past. The storytelling comes back into fold, which
I really felt was missing in the second book. And the fact that you
got to act it out just makes me swell. And the third thing is I
see you as somebody in that barbershop. You know, the interesting thing is you write
in a way with such authenticity that I could feel like I could be
sitting, waiting to get my hair cut with all these characters and
really feel like those conversations are happening. And
that's tough to do when it comes to things as complex as finance. And you
once again, do that with such magic and make it
frictionless and effortless for us to take on. So I hope
there's people out there that are going to listen or read your book, and
it'll have the same impact on them as it did on me
many years ago. Young, just trying to save a few dollars.
You made it important. You made it matter. Well, thank you. And it's a
real compliment to hear that you can kind of see the barbershop and see the
characters. That's the ultimate dream of the writer. It's ironic, by the way, that I've
written a book set in a barbershop. I've had the exact same hairstyle since I
was in grade one. I'm in year 59 of this
hairstyle. I did grow it longer in high school, but I've never changed it. So,
yeah, I'm not exactly a hair specialist, that's for sure.
Once again, a special thanks to RBC for supporting chatter that matters.
It's Tony Chapman. Thanks for listening, and let's chat soon.