Free Lunch

What would you do if a repair company told you it would take ten days to fix your internet? Colin knows exactly what he did, and that company never got him back. In this episode, Colin and Greg take a detour from markets to talk about the moment every relationship eventually faces: when something goes wrong. Why do small mistakes turn into big trust problems? And why does silence so often do more...

Ronald Reagan once stood beside a Canadian prime minister and said protectionism is out and trade expansion is in. Today, tariffs between Canada and the US are as high as 50 percent, and the two countries are further apart than they have been in decades. In this episode, Colin and Greg break down what a tariff actually is, who really pays for it, and why the answer is more complicated than politic...

Oil is flirting with $100 a barrel again, and Colin and Greg ask the obvious question: does that mean Calgary is heading back into a hiring boom? Not exactly. Greg walks through how capital discipline, automation, and shareholder demands have reshaped the energy sector, and why higher prices tend to reward company balance sheets before they reward payrolls. From there the conversation gets persona...

Colin and Greg dive straight into WTI climbing back above ninety dollars a barrel. For anyone working in Calgary's energy sector, they ask a question most people never consider: how much of your financial life, salary, bonus, employer stock, even your house, is already tied to one industry. They also revisit an old story about a client who refused to diversify because a dividend was covering his m...

Would losing your job tomorrow be financially catastrophic, or just painful? Colin digs into that question in episode two of his Energy Professionals Financial Playbook series. He breaks down why severance is a bridge, not a windfall, and why fear tends to be the most expensive part of any downturn. The families who come out ahead usually prepared quietly during the good years, not during the pani...

Would losing your job tomorrow be financially catastrophic, or just painful? Colin digs into that question in episode two of his Energy Professionals Financial Playbook series. He breaks down why severance is a bridge, not a windfall, and why fear tends to be the most expensive part of any downturn. The families who come out ahead usually prepared quietly during the good years, not during the pani...

What if you had to pay someone to take your oil off your hands? It actually happened, and Colin opens this episode with that story, along with the eerie Tuesday layoffs that became a running fear across Calgary's oil patch. This kicks off a new series, the Energy Professionals Financial Playbook, looking at why so many people unknowingly tie their salary, investments, home value, and employer stoc...

What happens when three siblings from different marriages all believe they're getting the family farm? Trish Tate has seen it firsthand, and it rarely ends simply. On this episode of The Free Lunch Podcast, Colin sits down with Trish, a fourth generation farmer and Canvas Wealth's newest advisor, fresh off a week at Ag in Motion in Saskatoon. They talk drones, giant seed carts, and how technology...

What's the best investment move you can make this summer? According to Colin, it's nothing. Or almost nothing. In this solo episode, Colin trades market talk for a summer reading list: seven books he believes can make you a better investor, and most of them aren't really about investing at all. From why doing well with money has more to do with behaviour than intelligence, to the concept of memory...

What if the biggest financial planning mistake has nothing to do with your investments? This week on The Free Lunch Podcast, Colin sits down with Lori Curtiss, a fee based financial planner with a master's in financial psychology, to dig into the money story playing in your head and how it quietly shapes every decision you make, from the grocery aisle to your retirement plan. Colin and Lori get in...

What does a $175,000 chuckwagon tarp have to do with your portfolio? More than you'd think. Fresh off Stampede season, Colin and Jacob take on one of Calgary's flashiest marketing traditions and ask the question nobody at the rodeo is asking: where does that money actually come from? Colin runs the math on what a six figure sponsorship might really require in revenue to support it, and the number...

Get rich quick and get skinny quick have a lot in common. Neither one works. This week on The Free Lunch Podcast, Colin and Greg welcome Phil McInnis, Chief Investment Strategist at Avantis Investors, who compares building wealth to building fitness. In his view, it's not the shortcuts that matter, it's the boring basics done consistently over decades. From goal setting to factor investing to why...

The World Cup isn't just great TV, it's one of the best crash courses in investing you'll ever get. In this solo episode, Colin breaks down what championship soccer teams can teach us about building a championship portfolio: why the best team doesn't always win on any given day, why bonds are the unsung goalkeeper of your portfolio, and why chasing last year's hottest stock is a lot like betting o...

Great companies do not always make great investments With AI stocks grabbing headlines lately, Colin and Greg ask the question a lot of investors skip: what are you actually paying for that future growth? In this episode of The Free Lunch Podcast, they talk through market concentration, the Magnificent Seven, and why a diversified portfolio usually beats chasing the next big theme, whether that's...

What if "higher for longer" just means normal? That's the question Colin and Jacob dig into on this week's episode of The Free Lunch Podcast, and it's one worth sitting with. For most of the last decade, ultra-low interest rates felt like the baseline. But historically? They were the anomaly. Colin and Jacob talk through what the new Fed chair's first meeting signals, why the bond market matters m...

Colin and Greg had one of their most honest conversations yet on The Free Lunch Podcast this week, talking through IPO mania, the current wave of AI and space company offerings, and why the strategies that sound disciplined on paper often fall apart in practice. Their take? If you want to put a small slice of your portfolio into something speculative because you find it interesting, that's very di...

The single biggest lesson from 30 years in the industry? Markets reward ownership, not prediction. In this episode of The Free Lunch Podcast, Greg sits down with Jacob for a mentorship-style conversation about what actually works in investing and what consistently fails. They dig into why so many investors hurt themselves trying to outsmart the market, and why staying invested and diversified tend...

Estate planning isn't just for the ultra-wealthy. It's for anyone who owns a home, has kids, or simply wants to make a hard time a little easier for the people they love. In this episode of The Free Lunch Podcast, Colin and Blair break down what estate planning actually looks like for everyday Canadian families, including the tax surprises most people don't see coming, why your beneficiary designa...

What is likely to work in investing? According to Colin, it's the advice nobody gets excited about. Stay diversified. Rebalance consistently. Cut your tax bill. Understand your own behavioural blind spots. None of it is glamorous, but the data generally backs it up. Colin and Greg get into all of it on this episode of The Free Lunch Podcast, including why "which stock should I buy" may be the wron...

Some private credit funds have recently faced redemption pressure, bringing renewed attention to liquidity risk in the asset class. Colin and Greg walk through what private credit is, why it grew rapidly after the 2008 financial crisis, and how the "illiquidity premium” works in practice on The Free Lunch Podcast. If you've been hearing a lot about private credit lately and weren't totally sure wh...

Colin and Greg brought in one of the sharpest minds in fixed income to answer that question. Tony Crescenzi from PIMCO discusses the bond market like a supermarket with 150 trillion dollars worth of aisles, and explains why knowing which shelf to shop from could matter as much as anything else in your portfolio. In this episode of The Free Lunch Podcast, they get into inflation thresholds, startin...

That 12% yield might sound incredible. Until you find out what it is based on. Structured notes are often marketed as the best of both worlds — income, protection, and upside. But Colin and Greg argue you can’t have it all, and that the tradeoffs matter. In this episode of The Free Lunch Podcast, they break down what structured notes are, how the payout is generated, and why keeping things simple...

Greg makes the case on The Free Lunch Podcast that the investors who struggle most aren't the ones lacking knowledge. They're the ones who can't ask themselves: "What if I'm wrong?" Colin and Greg unpack why decorum and diplomacy, the same things missing from today's geopolitical headlines, are actually core investing skills. Staying composed when markets test your patience isn't weakness, it’s a...

Does watching financial news actually make you a better investor? Colin and Greg dig into that question on this week's episode of The Free Lunch Podcast, breaking down how financial media is designed to create urgency, not returns, and what that can do to investor behaviour over time. If you've ever felt the urge to do something with your portfolio after watching the news, this one's worth a liste...

Investing well is supposed to be boring. Most people think great investing means staying on top of the markets, catching the right stocks, and making smart moves. Colin and Greg would say that's exactly the problem. In this episode of The Free Lunch Podcast, they use DIY home renovation as a surprisingly perfect analogy for what goes wrong when people manage their own money. The mistakes aren't us...