My story
Am I
?
My story in point form
- I started investing over twenty years ago and made all the usual mistakes: high fee mutual funds, picking “hot stocks” that weren’t so hot, trying to time the market . . . Who said learning was easy?
- I was trained as a medical doctor and practiced emergency medicine for 14 years. That was long enough.
- In 2018 we achieved a level of financial independence that allowed me to quit my job and our family to backpack around the world for a year
- I love talking to people, but I don’t love crowds
- I love traveling, but my happy place is my workshop
- The best part of Canada is backcountry camping
- I’ll try almost anything once because experience is the best teacher. But some things shouldn’t be tried, even once.
- I’ve never gambled in a casino, but I have tried to time the market and pick hot stocks. (I guess some lessons need to be learned more than once)
The slightly longer version of my story
My name is Matt and I am a forty-something DIY investor. But there’s a lot more to life than investing.
I’m also a husband, a father of four, an avid woodworker, backcountry camper and fisher, lover of craft beer, and the question “Why?”. I went to university, then medical school, and practiced full time emergency medicine for fourteen years before wrapping up that chapter to start another one. We pulled the kids out of school, I quit my job and we traveled around the world for a year as a family. If you look up, that’s me in New Zealand.
How did we do it? Two words: financial independence.
Like most DIY investors I stepped in my fair share of dog sh*t on my path of financial education, but I scraped it off and kept walking. Eventually, I found a system that works: a simple, evidence-based strategy of buying and holding quality dividend-paying stocks.
As I continued to learn about personal finance and investing, I started writing about it too, first for the Canadian Moneysaver magazine, then on this blog. Along the way I started speaking about personal finance and dividend investing with a special emphasis on how money can be used as a tool that we can use to access the truly good stuff of life: fulfilling experiences, meaningful relationships, and an existence that’s in line with our values. Now I have a course, called moneySmartMD, that helps professionals improve their financial literacy. I love every minute of it.
Of course, there are lots of ways to invest, but I believe dividend investing has a lot to offer the DIY investor: excellent historical returns, extremely low fees, tax efficiency and inflation protection, to name a few. The problem is that many DIY investors don’t understand how dividend investing works or how to implement a sound dividend-based strategy.
Over the years I’ve realized that many people want to be effective self-directed investors but need one-on-one guidance. This is a role that I have been developing over the last few years. Providing unbiased comprehensive advice for DIY investors with the goal of increasing their independence and confidence is hugely rewarding. I am happy to join the small group of Canadian flat-fee advice-only financial planners as I work through the courses to eventually become a Certified Financial Planner.
I hope this website is useful in helping you understand what dividends are, why they are essential to achieving financial independence and finally, how to implement a simple and effective dividend-based investment plan that will accelerate your journey to financial independence.
I’d be happy to hear from you: contact@dividendstrategy.ca
