Financial Planning Simplified
I’m Robb — the guy behind Boomer & Echo. I’ve been a personal finance blogger since 2010 and an advice-only financial planner since 2015. I help regular Canadians with regular problems make smarter decisions about their money — without selling them a thing.
My philosophy is simple: Money shouldn’t be complicated.
You don’t need 17 bank accounts, 12 ETFs, or a side hustle to retire comfortably. You just need a good plan, grounded in what really matters to you.
By reading this website you're joining more than 250,000 people who stop by here every month to get tips on how to save money, invest well, and retire comfortably. And, if you choose to subscribe and receive new posts by email, you'll join a growing list of more than 12,000 email subscribers who are the first to get these tips sent straight to their inbox.
New Articles from Robb
Waiting for a Better Time to Invest
Robb Engen | March 27, 2026 |
Hannah reached out last week to say she inherited $350,000 almost a year ago and hasn’t invested a dollar of it. It’s been sitting in cash since last April. And to be fair, April didn’t exactly feel like a great time to invest. Liberation Day tariffs had just been announced, markets were sliding, and suddenly…
Weekend Reading: Your TFSA Contribution Room Edition
Robb Engen | March 21, 2026 |
If you contribute regularly to your TFSA you already know this, but it’s worth repeating. Your My CRA Account is not a live tracker of your TFSA contribution room. In fact, it can be frustratingly slow to update. The reason is straightforward. Financial institutions have until the end of February each year to report your…
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Weekend Reading: Investing Is Not Speculating Edition
Robb Engen | March 13, 2026 |
Every time markets get shaky I get some version of the same message. “Hey, are we getting nervous about VEQT? Anything we should be doing differently, or just let it ride?” It’s a fair question. Market declines and a barrage of bad news can certainly make some investors uncomfortable. But it also reveals something important….
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This Is a Retirement Plan (For a Single Woman in Her 50s)
Robb Engen | February 27, 2026 |
Cynthia is 56 years old, single, and lives in Winnipeg. She rents a two-bedroom apartment for $1,600 a month, likes her place, likes her landlord, and has never felt particularly drawn to homeownership just because it’s what people are supposed to do. She works in healthcare after switching careers later in life, earns about $118,000…
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Investors – Stop Living in the Past
Robb Engen | February 6, 2026 |
One of the most common investing mistakes has nothing to do with picking the wrong fund or missing the bottom of the market. It comes down to how we talk about investing decisions in the first place. We tend to describe past market moves as if they’re still happening. The market is falling, what should…
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Weekend Reading: The Retirement Consumption Puzzle Edition
Robb Engen | January 30, 2026 |
One of the strangest things about retirement is that it’s often not about whether you’ll have enough money to last a lifetime, but whether you’ll feel comfortable spending it. Economists call this the retirement consumption puzzle. In theory, retirees should draw down their savings over time and enjoy the money they spent decades accumulating. In…
