Episode 45:

How to Start Saving and Investing

with Ryan Jacobs and Matthew McGee

Marcelo: Welcome to The Empowered Investor podcast. My name is Marcelo Taboada, and I’m joined by my co-host, Lawrence Greenberg. Lawrence, how are you, man?

Lawrence: I’m doing very well, thanks. Super happy to be back on the show and with you guys. It’s going to be a great episode.

Marcelo: Absolutely. Any plans for the holidays? Any good restaurants you’ve tried? I know you’re a foodie, so tell me about that.

Lawrence: Oh, I definitely am a foodie. I definitely love going out for dinners and all that. For the holidays, I definitely plan to take some time off and see family and friends and spend time with them. Hope to get some skiing in around Christmas time and hopefully there’s more snow. So we’ll wait and see. And in terms of restaurants, it’s actually my birthday next week, and we’re going out with my family to Ichigo Ichi. It’s a Japanese tapas restaurant on the plateau. Very excited for that.

Marcelo: Very good. What about you? I recently went to a restaurant called Elena. It’s a Portuguese restaurant on McGill Street. Highly recommended. I’ll tell you, we have fantastic food in Latin America, specifically seafood. But I tell you, man, the Portuguese, they really know how to cook their fish. So it was a great experience. I had the tasting menu, and I highly recommend it. If you can swing by, highly recommend it.

Lawrence: Nice. Noted. So this episode, I had a lot of fun with it. I think it’s a great episode to listen to whether you’re a young or more seasoned investor. But specifically our audience, people who are more seasoned in their careers and are in different stages of their life. This is a podcast that you can share with your grandkids, you can share with your kids, daughter, son. You can share it with somebody who’s starting out in life that doesn’t have any idea about how to start investing. So I’ll turn it to you. Tell me more about these two young impressive guys we interviewed. One is 20, the other one’s 17, but you’ll tell me more about them and also tell me what we talked about in the episode.

Lawrence: Yeah, so this is a great interview with two young investors, and we spent some time on how they’re investing, how they learned about investing. It was very refreshing to hear the challenges that age group faces in terms of coming into the marketplace. It’s a very different landscape than it was a couple of years ago, a couple of decades ago. So very refreshing perspective. Their approach regarding savings as well as investing was very interesting to hear about. So to tell you a little more about our interviewees, Ryan Jacobs is 20 years old. He’s studying finance and computer science at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. And Matthew McGee is 17 years old and he’s studying at Collège Sainte-Anne here in Montreal. He’s on the basketball team. He plays point guard for the school, and he has got his first win last week. So he’s very excited about that.

Marcelo: I tell you, I consider myself a young guy, but I did learn a lot into how they’re looking at things, how they’re learning about investing, the type of advice they would give somebody their age to start saving. I was super impressed by their strategies. And one of the things, Lawrence, I do regret is that when I was younger, I wasn’t that committed to my finances. So the fact that they’re that young and already ahead of the game is super impressive.

Lawrence: Oh, they’re not the norm for that age group. Absolutely. They’re very mature in terms of their mindset towards saving and investing. And I think a lot of people from all different age groups can learn from their experiences so far.

Marcelo: A hundred percent. So enjoy the episode, and we’ll see you soon.

Lawrence: Enjoy.

Marcelo: Matthew, Ryan, welcome to The Empowered Investor. I gotta tell you, for the first time, I’m not the youngest guy on the podcast. So I’m pretty excited about that. Ryan, you’re 20 years old. Matthew, you’re 17. It’s going to be a good show. Let’s get rolling, guys. Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourselves? Let’s start with Ryan.

Ryan: All right. I’m Ryan. I’m 20 years old. I live down in the States in North Carolina. I go to the University of North Carolina Wilmington, majoring in finance and minoring in computer science.

Marcelo: Very cool. And what do you like doing in your free time? What are your passions?

Ryan: I like going to the beach, but it’s gotten a bit colder lately. I don’t have a job, but I did work the past year and a half before I moved down here. I like hockey. You don’t get as much down here, but we do have a pretty good hockey team that I enjoy watching.

Marcelo: You’re wearing a Montreal Canadiens hat. Big props for that. I like that.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marcelo: What about you, Matthew? Tell me about yourself. What are you studying? What are your passions?

Matthew: My name is Matthew. I just turned 17. I go to Collège Sainte-Anne, which is a French school, and I’m in grade 11. So just the basic classes like physics, chemistry, math, all that. I play basketball for the school team. We just had our first game yesterday. We won by 30 points.

Marcelo: Very cool. What position do you play?

Matthew: I play point guard.

Marcelo: Okay, yeah, so you’re running the team pretty much.

Matthew: Exactly.

Marcelo: Okay, very cool. Lawrence, I’ll turn it up to you.

Lawrence: Yeah, thanks for sharing, guys. It’s really refreshing to have someone in your age group here. I think you’ll bring a very fresh perspective onto our next topic here. We’re going to change gears a bit and go into investing. And investing beyond people is not the same as it was during the older generation. So I’ll start off with you, Matthew. What was the first time you had a trigger moment that you just started investing?

Matthew: So basically, after working this summer, I had my first summer job as a camp monitor. And I just saw like a bunch of money in my account. And I slowly saw it running out because I was buying food, clothes, whatever. I’m like, okay, I gotta do something. I gotta put this money to work. So I actually had found out about investing through TikTok. So I found out about that and I talked with my parents about it, and we set up a TFSA through Wealthsimple. And ever since then, I’ve been investing.

Lawrence: Very cool. I really appreciate that because for some people it takes a lot longer to get to that point where you know what, my cash should be doing something for me. It should be something that grows, and you got there early, and that’s really great to hear. I’ll turn over to you, Ryan. What’s your experience like in terms of the first moment you thought, hey, I should be investing?

Ryan: Yeah, so mine was a bit earlier than TikTok. I had a few summer jobs throughout high school, and I always burned through the cash quickly buying food and stuff. So I had worked over the summer, and a few of my friends and I were going down to the beach, and Robinhood had just come out and was getting some popularity. So one of my friends said that his parents bought 50 or something in Boeing. And I thought, oh, I like airplanes or something. And so I just put a few bucks in and actually I may have even bought a full share when it was around 180. And I still have that today, and it’s up to 220. So I made 40 bucks just off.

Lawrence: Oh, that’s great. Thanks for sharing that. It’s shocking to hear that through social media. I use a TikTok. Matthew, it’s just so refreshing to hear that these platforms are actually contributing towards educating people because there’s a lot out there. There’s a lot of information. There’s a lot of noise. There’s a lot of stuff that’s not so great on TikTok, but there’s obviously some stuff that’s quality and people are sharing their ideas, and that’s really great.

Matthew: Yeah. The TikTok was about compound interest actually, and it was talking about how if somebody had invested $10 a day in the S&P 500 since such and such a date, it could have made like, I don’t know, I think it was in 30 years they could have made $2 million somewhat dollars. I’m like, yeah, oh, this is really cool. I should probably start doing this, and I was making money. So I thought it was like the perfect opportunity.

Lawrence: Love that. Love that. Compound interest is absolutely magical. It is great. And the fact that you guys are getting it early and you have that time for it to really see the power over the decades. That’s awesome. So I will pivot. Now that we’re talking about portfolios here, I’ll start with you, Ryan. I want to hear what platform you’re using and how you’re currently investing.

Ryan: I use Vanguard right now. My parents recommended it, and Keith recommended it to my parents. So I have about eight grand in Vanguard S&P 500. I have some in Coinbase, some cryptocurrency, and then just that one stock in Robinhood, that Boeing stock.

Lawrence: So within Vanguard, you’re investing in ETFs, I presume?

Ryan: Yes.

Lawrence: Okay, great. So you say crypto, and I will have to follow up on that. What allocation of your portfolio is in cryptocurrency?

Ryan: So I have about two grand in Bitcoin and Ethereum. That was just some that I had left over after working a year and a half. And I decided that was a good investment. I don’t think I’ll put any more in. I’ve heard the future in crypto. There could be good things. I allocated some of my money towards that.

Marcelo: How did you decide on those specifically? I’m curious to know.

Ryan: I know Bitcoin just because of the big boom around it, Elon Musk and everything. And Ethereum, I’m not actually quite sure. It may actually have been TikTok, but it has been doing well lately.

Lawrence: Okay, interesting. What about you, Matthew? What platform do you use to invest and what does the composition of your portfolio look like?

Matthew: Basically right now, since I’m still under 18, I have a shared account with my mom on Wealthsimple. I’m investing in the Vanguard All-Equity ETF called VEQT. All my money is in that right now. Very good. And I’ve been investing 300 bucks a month into that. And then I also have money in crypto on crypto.com, which is also I share with my mom. And the main kind of things I’m investing in are layer one protocols. So it’s like transferring money, sending money back and forth, and it follows Ethereum.

Marcelo: Okay.

Matthew: How’d you settle on that one? I know a lot about crypto because I have a lot of friends who invest in it. And I just did a lot of research, and Ethereum is going up like crazy right now. It’s the main crypto. A lot of people are talking about it, but the only thing about Ethereum is it’s very slow. So I did a lot of research about faster cryptos that do the same thing, are just cheaper, quicker, more efficient. And that’s basically what I’m invested in.

Marcelo: So obviously we don’t do, just full disclosure, we don’t recommend cryptocurrencies for our clients. We think there’s a lot of risk and speculation in the area. Obviously things change. So personally, if you tell me maybe in a few years it’ll become part of an asset class or we’ll treat it as a commodity, I think that’s a possibility. But at the moment, we don’t do it. But one of the questions that keeps coming up, and I’ve done a lot of research about this, I think Lawrence as well, and even within the company, we’re always talking about what’s the proper way to value cryptocurrencies because they don’t have any tangible assets. They don’t have any current cash flow. So I don’t want to spend too much on this one, but you guys personally, you have some investments in those. How do you go about evaluating cryptocurrencies if you have?

Ryan: I have not, so I can’t speak much, but yeah.

Matthew: For me personally, there’s a lot of transactions going through crypto and Ethereum right now. I don’t know if you guys heard about NFTs, but there’s transactions going through those using Ethereum and the gas fees are extremely high. So that’s why I’m invested in those smaller altcoins that follow Ethereum because they’re more efficient, they’re quicker. So basically my hope is that they’ll not take Ethereum’s place but follow it and just do it in a more efficient way. And that’s how I’m investing in it right now. I don’t have as much money in crypto than I do stocks, but I still have quite a bit.

Marcelo: But you’d say your core investments are in the safe stuff, the…

Ryan: I have 90% of mine in Vanguard ETFs and long term. So this was just a personal investment that I don’t recommend. I don’t not recommend. It’s just the way that I…

Lawrence: Yeah, I think that’s the important thing is that your core holdings are invested in passive, globally diversified, lower-cost ETFs. And there is a portion, a smaller portion, I won’t say play money, but it’s a more speculative investment. And obviously you guys are quite young, so you could take on a bit more risk than the average investor, and you want to be exposed to this new technology, and it could absolutely go up a sizable amount, but there’s also a wide range of outcomes. And you guys accept that risk that it could also go to zero at any time. So there’s a wide range of outcomes, but it’s important that you have your plan and that you have your core holdings that do make up the majority of your assets and you’re invested responsibly.

Marcelo: So moving a bit, but I want to stay on the investing subject here. You told us about your location, how you invest, the vehicles you use. I’m wondering because FOMO, the fear of missing out, is a real thing, right? How do you compare to your peers? How do you deal with…because TikTok obviously has some good stuff, but there’s a lot of stuff in there that makes you want to pull the trigger into the wrong stuff as well. So how do you guys manage that?

Ryan: Yeah, so I know I see a lot of stuff on TikTok recently. It’s been about NFTs, and I haven’t done my research into that, so I’m not going anywhere near that. But earlier I said I found Ethereum on TikTok, but I did quite an extensive amount of research before that. So all this stuff on TikTok, I would recommend if you see it, at least do some basic research after that. Dive right in. And so that’s my recommendation. At least do a quick Google search and read a few articles.

Matthew: Yeah, and for me, just FOMO is everywhere. There’s always people pumping coins, telling you to buy this stock, that crypto, but you just really gotta do your own research. And if you see something that looks promising, trust me, do as much research as possible because anybody could make something look really good. In most cases, it’s not. There’s plenty of coins out there that are horrible. There are stocks that won’t do well. So you just gotta do your own research and also have a risk management. It depends how much you’re willing to lose. And let’s say you’re willing to lose a lot, then maybe try to take on something that’s higher risk. But if you’re not willing to lose that much, then lower-risk things might be better for you. That’s how I see it.

Marcelo: That’s a very powerful concept to know at your age.

Lawrence: Risk tolerance. It’s super important. You have to know yourself, and you have to be able to live with your investments. So if you’re going to delve into a world in which you’re not familiar, you may get burned. And I will also add on to what you’re saying, Matthew, with social media and social media. On Instagram and TikTok, there’s a lot of people who will pitch stocks, who have their stock picks or their crypto picks. They’re selling courses on trading, and they make it seem like it’s a slam dunk and they have all the answers. So there’s lots of things out there like that to be wary of. People have their agendas, and it’s very important to take the things you’re seeing out there with a grain of salt and to do your own research, as you said. Absolutely. All right, guys, where did you learn about investing and saving?

Ryan: So after that beach trip, I decided to look a bit more into it. And so I went to my parents. They follow Keith. They’re in close contact with him. So they gave me his book, The Empowered Investor. I read through that, and I also found the podcast around that time too. That’s when it was just starting out. That’s how I started to learn. And then I picked it up a bit more and read a few more books. I have The Wealthy Barber here that my parents recommended. Now I’m in college taking finance classes. And so that’s how I began and where I’m at now.

Lawrence: Very cool. Beautiful. And we do appreciate the plug for the book. So for those of you who don’t know, on The Empowered Investor podcast website and on the firm website, you can actually download a version of the book for free that has been written by Keith Matthews. And it’s a very good, very readable book for people who do want to learn more about investing. So now we’ll ask the same question to you, Matthew. Where’d you learn about it? And where are you still learning about investing?

Matthew: Yeah, so I’m still definitely learning about it. I’m still very new. I only started about three months ago, but after I liked that TikTok about compound interest, I just kept on seeing more and more on my For You page talking about investing. And so I really got interested in it. I found out about Vanguard, the S&P 500. So ever since then, I’ve been researching about it, finding the best stocks I can invest in. And then I eventually talked with Keith, and he had told me about the VEQT All-Equity ETF. And so I decided to bite the bullet and invest my money in that one because I did some research after he told me about it, and I thought it was the perfect thing for me because I’m still young and I have school, and I don’t really want to have to diversify my own wallet. And I feel like this index fund does it perfectly for me.

Marcelo: Very cool. That’s great. Do you guys keep up with the market? Like how do you do that? Do you read any blogs? You mentioned some books, Ryan, but do you keep up with any blogs? Obviously social media.

Ryan: Yeah, so lately not as much. Once I’ve moved down here to Wilmington, I have not because I’ve been in courses that have been teaching me. But before that, I was keeping up with some blogs, some Yahoo Finance and whatnot.

Matthew: For me personally, I’m right now currently a lot more focused on crypto. I’ve been doing a lot of research about that, and I’m subscribed to a few newsletters and all that. But I find that learning about the crypto market also helps me with the stock market and learn how to deal with volatility and how to risk manage and all that. So I find that just always looking at the markets, seeing how it’s going up and down, it just gives me a better understanding of everything. So just constantly looking at it, learning more about it helps me a lot.

Ryan: Yeah, start recognizing trends and whatnot.

Matthew: Yeah, for sure.

Lawrence: So that’s really interesting what you said. Since cryptos have more volatility, and for those of you who aren’t clear on that term, it has a lot more movement. It could go up a lot and down a lot on a given day or week or month. And that’s dulled you to what stocks do because while stocks can correct, there can be crashes in terms of crypto. It’s more reoccurring. There’s a lot more fluctuations, and it does make you a little more used to it, a little more dulled to those bumps. And that’s actually a positive thing on staying in your seat for all your investments. And while risk has a bad connotation to it, when you take on more risk, there is a higher expected return, which at the end of the day for a young person is a good thing.

Matthew: Definitely. I feel like crypto has helped me take my emotions out of investing when it comes to my stock portfolio because you have so much emotion going through your system when you’re looking at the crypto volatility. But then when you look over at stocks, you see it go down a tiny little bit, then it goes back up most of the time. So it’s definitely helped me take the emotion out of it.

Marcelo: Oh, that’s interesting. That’s great stuff on investing, by the way. I’m super impressed, guys. So we’re going to talk about savings now. I think that’s the big aspect because at the end of the day, we can know all this stuff about investing, but if we don’t have the money to invest, it defeats the purpose, right? So how do you approach personal spending versus saving? How do you guys manage to save this money to invest, and how do you keep doing it now?

Ryan: So for me, while I had a job, I would get paid every two weeks, and every time I got paid, I would get $200 into a spending account in my bank account. So for those two weeks, I had $200 to spend, and the rest would go into my savings account. And from that savings account, I could take that money out and put it into Vanguard. But that $200, you could increase that, decrease that, depending on when you get paid, how much, what you think your budget is. Just for me, it was $200, and that worked well. And even now, even after I don’t have a job, that’s kept up just because of the amount I’ve saved throughout working.

Lawrence: Very nice. Very cool.

Matthew: For me, I find the best thing that helped me save the most money is, let’s say I want something that costs $200. Usually what I’ll do is, the day I see it, I really want it. But three or four days later, I’m like, do I really need this? So now, whenever I see something that I really like, I’m like, okay, let me just sit with this for three or four days. And then most of the time, after those days, I don’t really want it anymore. So it helps me save money. And also, I hate spending money. I feel so bad when I buy Uber Eats, and it’s 30 bucks for a hamburger or something. I hate that feeling so much. So that definitely helps me save my money.

Lawrence: I absolutely love that. When you think of compounding, it goes both ways. So you do think about the way you spend money now, and every dollar you spend now does not have the opportunity to be invested and to grow over the long term, and you’re factoring that into the way you make decisions. It’s very real. And that concept is even more important over the course of your life because your expenses will get bigger and bigger as you get older. Your spending will ramp up: family, kids, house, whatever. And that habit, that mindset will be even more important over the long term. So that’s great that you have that very clear perspective on the impact of spending now hindering your investments over the long term.

Marcelo: Very cool. Tell me why more young people are not thinking like this. Where do you think are the pitfalls?

Ryan: That’s the question I ask myself all the time. I think it’s just the time in researching. It’s your money. So of course, nine times out of ten, you’re going to want to go to McDonald’s and get a hamburger instead of putting that $5 into your savings account, and that $5 will add up, and eventually, you can put that money in, and it’ll be worth something, even just from saving that $5. So I’ve been trying to inform my roommates a bit more. I think it’s just the lack of education.

Matthew: Yeah, I definitely agree with Ryan on that one. Even my friends who don’t really know about investing, I could see them go spend any amount of money on pretty much anything they want. Whereas my friends who actually know about investing and have done their own research, they’re just like me. They feel bad when they spend money on food, or they feel bad when they spend on something they don’t really need because you see the potential that it could have.

Ryan: Yeah, exactly. After doing your research.

Matthew: Also, a lot of my friends are getting their first jobs, and they’re finally getting money of their own. So I feel like they’re really tempted to go buy something because most of the time they would have to ask their parents, but now they can just buy it themselves. So obviously, they’re going to want to go and, I don’t know, buy a new phone, buy new clothes.

Marcelo: Obviously, as you grow up, you start thinking more on your own and things like this. But were you always interested in money when you were kids, when you were younger, or even optimizing things? It doesn’t have to be money, but…

Ryan: When I worked throughout high school, I would always spend through my money just as fast as I got it. So no, I did not think about savings back then. I just spent it as I pleased.

Matthew: Yeah, me too. I feel like anytime I would get money, I would buy something, especially like birthday money. I would spend that all in a month. But I feel like I’ve always been interested in money because my dad’s an architect, so he designs custom homes for pretty wealthy people. And so I was always interested in what they did to get that money and how much they were making. So I feel like I’ve always been interested in ways to make money and how people build their success.

Marcelo: Yeah, and I tell you, it’s super interesting because a lot of the things that we see in our clients who are obviously older and they’re successful and they’ve done well in their careers, what I like about what you guys are saying is that you are putting in place behaviors and systems. No matter what you do in life, whether you become a professional athlete or you become an architect like your dad, Matthew, all these behaviors and mental models, those are winning formulas for life and finances overall. So the fact that you started so early, I completely relate to what you were saying, Ryan. I started taking care of my finances when I started working at the bank. Before that, as a university student, I would just blow all my money, right?

Ryan: Yeah, I didn’t think any differently. None of my friends are into finances or anything like that. I just one day happened to ask my parents, and it led me down a whole rabbit hole. So I’m very grateful.

Marcelo: So we’re going to move to the last section. Too bad this conversation is short, but I had a lot of fun. So, Lawrence?

Lawrence: Yeah, no. So a big thing I did want to ask you guys: Have you made any financial mistakes that you’ve learned from through your experience so far?

Ryan: I can say yes, I’ve made one. Yeah, I would say mistake, misstep. So going back to cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, that actually shot up in April. I bought about 40 of it back in June of 2019 and sold it a few months later for a $10 profit. And I looked back and found out that if I’d saved that 40, it would have been $14,000. But that’s the missteps. I don’t put any more money into crypto because I know stuff like that can happen, and I’ve learned from that. Obviously, that’s a one-in-a-lifetime mistake that I’m not going to make again.

Lawrence: I will add that the opposite can be true as well. If you got into a coin or a stock at the wrong time…

Ryan: Exactly.

Lawrence: The opposite could have happened as well. So while you were on the winning side of that opportunity, for the most part, these speculative investments could go either way. So not too bad in the end.

Ryan: Yeah, exactly.

Lawrence: What about you, Matthew?

Matthew: Yeah, for me, it’s actually just recently. I had deposited $1,000 into a crypto account. So it’s not under my name, right? So I can’t send it money. I can’t receive money from it. So I mistakenly sent my money to that account, but it didn’t get accepted because I wanted to invest in this coin that I had researched about. And so for a week, I couldn’t even access my money. And I was just slowly watching that coin go up. So of course, I missed out on a pretty good opportunity. I can’t really let that get to me. So I’m still waiting for the money. It’s getting sent back, though.

Marcelo: Yeah, annoying.

Lawrence: It’ll happen. I want you both to give me one tangible piece of advice for a young person.

Ryan: Regarding saving, I would say make separate accounts in your bank account. If you’re able to, one with your debit card that you spend on and then a different one that you actually get your money deposited in. Because learning from experience, if you just have your debit card that has all of your money on it, you will want to go to that McDonald’s or want to go to the store and buy those clothes. So that’s my recommendation on that.

Marcelo: I love that. That’s the pay-yourself-first approach. That’s very smart. What about you, Matthew?

Matthew: I completely agree with Ryan on that one. I do the same thing. But also, I feel like if your parents, friends, talking about saving, investing is a great way just to get into it, get your mindset about investing and everything. So I feel like definitely talking about it, doing your own research, just having it at the back of your mind is important because once you know about investing and what money can do for you, then you’re less tempted to spend that money. So for sure, I think definitely talking about it, because I see myself talking with my friends about investing a lot more, especially in the past few months. And I feel like that’s completely changed the way I see money and how powerful investing is.

Lawrence: Well put. And I’ll ask a similar question: If you could give one piece of advice to other young people on investing.

Ryan: I would just say do your research. Look into it. There are a lot of ways that you can invest. There’s a lot of, I wouldn’t say good ways versus bad ways, just different ways. Save your money for the long term. There’s a lot of volatility out there. So I would just say do your research and make sure you’re positive in what you’re putting your money into.

Matthew: Yeah, same here. I think doing your research is super important, but also it doesn’t really need to be research in books. Like any person could just go search up S&P 500 on TikTok’s search bar, and you can see hundreds of videos about it. So I think definitely if you’re on TikTok and you think about it, then just search it up and watch a few videos about it. Or if you’re on YouTube and you think about it, you go search it, and it will take you five seconds, and you’ll find hundreds of thousands of videos about it. So definitely doing your own research, talking about it with your parents, friends is definitely important.

Marcelo: I’m glad you mentioned that because just off the air, we were talking with Keith, myself, and Lawrence, and he was saying how he spent his whole career teaching people about indexing and how this way of investing is the winning approach, right? And the fact that you’re 17 and you learned with TikTok, it’s remarkable, and it’s just a sign of the times. And I think what you have going for you, both of you, is that you have this whole avenue of investment vehicles that weren’t available 20 years ago. So 20 years ago, you could have learned about it, but if you didn’t have access to a financial advisor, you were pretty much doomed. Now you have Robinhood, you have the ability to open an account with Wealthsimple and invest in indexing. So I’m excited for the new generation for that reason.

Matthew: Yeah, I don’t know where I would be without TikTok and YouTube because that’s basically where I’ve learned everything about it. For more in-depth research, I’d probably use YouTube. But if ever I’m stumbling across something that sounds interesting about investment, it’s usually through TikTok. Because I feel like a lot of teenagers my age are always spending time on TikTok, probably like two hours a day. That’s even not a lot of time considering people are always on their phones. So I feel like definitely with YouTube and all social media, honestly, it’s so much easier to find information about this kind of stuff.

Ryan: There’s a lot of threads on Reddit as well talking about stuff like this.

Marcelo: Absolutely. All right. Lawrence, I think we’ve got a good conversation here. Ryan, Matthew, thank you so much for the time.

Lawrence: That was an absolute pleasure.

Marcelo: Thank you.

Matthew: Sweet. Thank you so much.

Ryan: Yeah, thank you guys.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to The Empowered Investor podcast hosted by Keith Matthews. Please visit TMA-invest.com to subscribe to this podcast, learn more about how his firm helps Canadian investors, or to request a complimentary copy of The Empowered Investor. Investments and investing strategies should be evaluated based on your own objectives. Listeners of this podcast should use their best judgment and consult a financial expert prior to making any investment decisions based on the information found in this podcast.