Carte blanche to Stéphane Dompierre | Get rich in one easy step

With their own sensitivity, artists present us with their vision of the world around us. This week, we give carte blanche to author and publisher Stéphane Dompierre.

I remember, when I was young, finding a Beatles record at the (defunct) Bonimart store where we saw the four musicians surrounded by meat and dolls with their heads torn off. I learned years later that this disc was quickly removed from the shelves to change the cover. This copy had been forgotten there. If I had bought it, I could sell it today for $125,000. I once owned a Star Wars action figure that would have made me $25,000 today if I hadn’t gotten rid of it. And a GI Joe who would be worth just as much. That I gave away when I got tired of playing with it.

So it’s not new that I’ve been making bad choices when it comes to ensuring my financial security. I was still a little suspicious of rummaging through the old boxes in the back of my parents’ cellar when they sold the house, looking for a rare toy, a collectible Bout d’chou doll. or a coveted, mint condition hockey card, it wasn’t a very strong financial goal.

My retirement plan, for the moment, is to be quibbled by Pierre-Yves McSween. Every morning he wakes me up by ringing my doorbell. I open it to him and he immediately yells at me: “Stéphane! But what the hell did you do? Frankly ! »

Now that I’m trying to put things right, I’m looking for sources of information to help me and I’m pretty disappointed. Columns that do case studies have examples that rarely interest me.

“I’m an acrobat and my girlfriend sells pottery. We have 3 million in RRSPs, a TFSA full to the brim and a paid-off house valued at 22 million. We wonder if we can afford to have a small chalet with our meager assets. »

I think so. You may have to shorten your trip around the world by a few weeks this year, but you will get through this difficult situation. Courage.

“I am a lonely man. My retirement plan is to live on a measly $100,000 a year, while I only earn a salary of $400,000 a year and only own 18 rental properties, a copper mine and a goose. Golden. Do you believe this is possible? »

Sir, even though I’m bad at math, I think you’ll get by.

I looked for advice in personal finance books. Their titles are all very enticing, but I would prefer if they told us the real deal, say in parentheses, after the title. There, we would know what we were buying!

Get rich thanks to the stock market (When you inherited at 20)

Investing in real estate (With the help of your real estate investor parents)

Rich dad, poor dad (I’m rich, you won’t be, blame your parents)

Retired at 30 (I now live in a tent deep in the woods, I steal food like Yogi the bear and I could use some warm clothes and briquettes for the barbecue, thanks)

The premise of many of these books, unfortunately, is not “what you should do”, but “what you should have done”.

If you’re 29 and finally starting to take an interest in your finances, the book might be Retired at 30 comes a little late in your life. It’s boring, but not all children have the idea of ​​asking Santa for RRSPs.

The recipe is so simple that I could write my own book on the subject. The problem is that it would be a little short. I therefore prefer to offer it to you here in its entirety:

The secret of wealth (My finance book that summarizes all the other damn finance books)

Step 1: Place $400 per week at 7% returns for your entire life from birth. If you put WiFi in there and can start before you’re born, that would be even better.

END

To really help me, I would need an advice book for those who haven’t followed the advice in the advice books. A book whose title would be something like Finally, you will live longer than you thought! Oops ! Little guide for when you wake up and your financial health is not poor, but you want to straighten it out so you don’t have to work until you’re 100.

I agree that it’s less catchy and less dreamy than a title like Retired baby, prepubescent and millionaire Or How to get your first million before your first buttonbut it would be much more useful to me.