David Chilton was down on his luck.
In 1988, the aspiring author decided to cash in his RRSP and self-publish a book about a savvy barber who dispenses financial advice — like not to cash in your RRSP — to curious, wisecracking customers.
“The one time I was struggling — badly — in finance was when I was writing the original ‘Wealthy Barber,’” he said.
Surrounded by faded wood panelling, Chilton penned it by hand on a brown, lamplit card table in the basement of his home in Kitchener, Ont., carrying on despite “very mixed reviews” on the initial chapters from industry experts.
Guided instead by the feedback of a dozen “beer-swigging” softball teammates, he emerged from the cellar over a year later with a personal finance classic now on more than two million Canadians’ bookshelves.
Although much of the advice from “The Wealthy Barber” feels timeless, an alphabet soup of TFSAs, RESPs and FHSAs has since emerged as real estate prices soared ever higher, all amid a cacophony of online personal finance pundits and stock pickers. An update for modern eyes was due.
The investor, businessman and former “Dragon’s Den” star has now fully rewritten — on that same card table — a new edition of his 1989 hit that, like the original, unspools in folksy reminiscences and frank but humour-flecked conversations about personal wealth and investing.
Released last month, “The Wealthy Barber” addresses questions for a new financial world, tackling topics ranging from investment vehicles to home purchases to life insurance, with simplicity as a theme throughout.
Young Canadians today face a tougher financial landscape marked by sky-high housing prices and social media “finfluencers,” but it’s one also replete with opportunities that can make anyone from hairstylists to shift workers well off, Chilton said.
In an interview, he reiterated that his “golden rule” — to pay yourself first by squirrelling away 10 per cent of your gross salary — is more important than ever given how quickly that money can be spent on living costs that refuse to go down.
“It’s never been easy to save, but it’s harder now,” he said. “It’s not just real estate prices, it’s the cost of everything … You see it if you go to a restaurant, you see it when you pay your car insurance.”
Chilton’s book counsels younger Canadians to seize on newer financial tools such as index funds and tax-free savings accounts, avoid fee-heavy funds, accept money from the bank of mom and dad — if it’s offered — and beware the TikTok finfluencer.
His affable prose references Canada’s central bank in one sentence and Kitchener’s former Central Meat Market the next. It rattles off catchy truisms — “invest for success,” and “procrastination is compounding’s biggest enemy”; dark humour — “Let’s talk death!” says one character in a section on wills; and plenty of quips, including from the narrator’s fictional wife: “the other night she threatened to ground our unborn child for giving her so much heartburn.”