Younger investors don’t want to lock down their assets

Name:

Greg Andrews

Occupation:

Co-owners, since January 2017, of Tony’s Best Pizza & Wings with his wife, Constance Andrews

Location:

Lindsay, Ont.

Age:

34

Has an advisor?

“We’ve been talking to one for the past six months, but haven’t decided on him yet. He’s in the same age group as us, and so we hope he’ll be able to relate to our situation and our outlook,” he says.

financial goals:

Becoming debt-free, “with the exception of a small mortgage, within five years,” he says. “We’d like to buy a second home and have an investment property. Longer term, it’s the normal stuff: a nest egg for retirement, [and] to help our kids with their education.”

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We don’t have the normal story, where we work at the same job our entire lives. We’re more fluid—when I had a job, my outlook was, “This is good for me right now. It might be good for five years or 25 years, but I’m not locked into it.” We feel the same way about the restaurant. It could be 20 years, or it could be five years.

We took a real leap of faith when we bought our business. I moved from a stable, secure job with benefits to buy the restaurant. But I was getting a little frustrated with the general corporate culture of my workplace—I’d been there nine years, had seen two clean sweeps of management, and was feeling disenfranchised with big business, as well as the long hours and commutes. So it seemed appealing to work for ourselves.

I want a financial planner who can reflect that attitude; who is as creative as we are in terms of options. I want to have the confidence that our financial advisor can adapt our investments as our situation changes. I don’t like the idea of just throwing money into an RRSP every month and locking it in. We need to know about other options like real estate, TFSAs, cryptocurrencies.

What assets do you own?

Most of our assets are in the restaurant, which we bought for $160,000. Our home is worth about $200,000, and we have about $40,000 in equity in it—we took out a second mortgage on it to help finance the business, as well as cashing in about $10,000 of our children’s RESPs; we’re looking at that as a loan from the kids, and an investment in their future. I have about $35,000 in a group RRSP and a registered pension plan with my previous employer. We each have $250,000 of term life insurance, which we took out right after our first child was born.

Conversely, we have about $30,000 in debt: car loans, [my wife] Constance’s student loans, home repairs and credit card debt.