Welcome to the Maple Money show, the podcast that helps Canadians improve their personal finances to create lasting financial freedom.

Hi everyone, and welcome to the very first episode of the Maple Money Show. I want to take a few minutes this episode to just talk about what you can expect going forward; when we’ll be on, how often, what the show’s going to be like. First off, the goal of this podcast is pretty much the same as the website which is to improve the personal finance of Canadians and I think there are four cornerstones that really help us do that. We’re going to show you how to make money, how to save money, how to invest your money and how to spend your money wisely in a way that helps you create lasting financial freedom.

To break that down a little bit for you, when it comes to “make money” topics we might be looking at how to make money from home, how to improve your career or how to start a business. When it comes to saving money we might look at things like frugal living, paying off your debt, tax optimization and different banking services. Under investing money, that’s a little more straightforward. It’s where all your acronyms are, your RRSP, TSFA, RESP, whether you want to invest in stocks or ETFs or about robo-advisors. When it comes to spending money, this is when you have a handle on the first three already. That’s when you can look at things like credit card rewards, loyalty programs, different mortgage information or information about insurance or some travel tips.

My goal is to cover all of that but I want to bring on different experts on these topics and not just rely on my education or opinion. I want to bring on the experts. To do that we’re going to look at talking to a lot of Canadian bloggers, authors, journalists, specialty podcasters. We’ll go outside of Canada too for certain experts but it will always be topics that are focused on Canadian personal finance. Even when we have someone from somewhere else it’s still going to be a show that applies to you here in Canada.

A bit about me… My name is Tom Drake. Back in 2008 we got married. We had a baby on way and we were looking at buying a house. This all happened within a six-month span which caused me to really improve on how I handled my money. I started really thinking about personal finance, really eating up all the information out there. I read six different blogs at the time and I was reading every book possible from the library. All of this information came together in my head and I started take a little bit of this and a little bit of that, put it together and came out with my own ideas around personal finance. In 2009, I decided to start the Canadian Finance blog but since then we’ve re-branded to Maple Money.

Back in 2009 I was just starting to finish up a bit of debt payoff. Nothing major—I don’t have a big payoff story but I did have quite a spending issue. I’d make the money and spend the money. I wasn’t really saving or investing so it was good to get my finances in order. During that time as I was dealing with this is when I started the blog. And in that time, nearly a decade later, we’ve been able to help millions of Canadians with their personal finances. It’s been really nice and humbling to be able to help everyone while dealing with my own finances, and I’m still learning new things. There are always new items. I talked about robo-advisors and new ETFs—there’s always something new, like nuances in the tax code. There’s always something new to learn even though you’ve been doing personal finance for over a decade.

So, what’s the show going to look like? The goal is to go for a 30-minute episode, once a week. It’s going to publish on Wednesday and will cover one specific topic. That’s shorter than some other podcasts but the goal is to focus on one topic. You can listen to that topic, hear what the expert has to say, and if it applies to your personal finances you can act on it that week. It can be your goal for the week. You’re going to listen on Wednesday, focus on it and see if you can improve that section of your personal finances until the next episode comes out the following week.

To find the show every week you can catch us on iTunes, Stitcher, video version on YouTube or anywhere you’re used to listening to podcasts or watching video. We’re going to try to be everywhere. The easiest way to find us right now is at maplemoney.com/show. That will be the landing page for the podcast. You’ll find all the episodes there. You can listen to them on the site or you can go to your favorite app and subscribe. If I can ask a favor, what I’d love for you to do this week is to subscribe wherever you most prefer to hear the show. If you want to hear the show on iTunes, hit subscribe there. If you want to watch video, go over to YouTube and hit subscribe.

Finally, thanks for listening. I’ll catch you next week when we’ll get into our regular format of tackling a different personal finance topic to help you create that lasting financial freedom.