…and Benoit and I were blown away!
After a long day at work, Benoit came along with me to see David Chilton speak…otherwise known as the Wealthy Barber (or the Healthy Barber as Vero likes to call him!). We grabbed a seat right before it started and it was two hours of non-stop hilarity for me. Mr. Chilton is quite hilarious. I was cracking up all the time.
I was also impressed by how he spoke, and how he spoke non-stop for two hours without breaking a sweat. Incredible.
His talk involved three separate parts:
1) Looneyspoons – The story of how Greta and Janet Podleski contacted him for help in self-publishing their own book. (think abouit that for a minute!). They ended up being the creators of the Looneyspoons cookbook!
2) Financial information involving annuities, reverse mortgages, TFSAs, RRSPs and index funds. I really enjoyed how he presented index funds by splitting up the room and making us realize that if one group chose an index fund of 8%, that the rest of the room can collectively get 8%…but that means one group may get 5% and the other group gets 3%. Interesting.
3) A motivational story about Canada’s favourite past time…complaining! I am a fairly positive person generally…so much so that a few of my friends get annoyed at that when they want to complain about something. In the end, we have it pretty darn good compared to a lot of the rest of the world, so why bother complaining? Case in point…Mr. Chilton was at a charity golf tournament and at the 15th hole the event got rained out. Then as everyone was sitting there eating steak and enjoying some wine, all they could do was complain about it. Think about THAT for a second.
He also talked about a boy who had muscular distrophy (I could be wrong on that front) who was there with his mother and was having the time of his life. He got up on stage and raved about how lucky he was to be invited to this charity golf tourney and how he has met many of his heroes today. Imagine how the people complaining about missing three holes of golf felt after that! Later on in the night, Mr. Chilton ended up winning the door prize of a trip for two anywhere in the world and he gave it to this boy and his mother. Incredible!
Months later Mr. Chilton read an article about how a mother who was dying of cancer wanted to bring her child to DisneyWorld and applied for the Make a Wish foundation but was denied because their mandate only helps kids who are sick. This boy with the ‘trip anywhere in the world’ tickets decided to give them to this mother! Incredible again…quite inspiring. What’s even better is we find out later that American Airlines contacted the boy and got him another set of tickets so he could go on that trip with his mother as originally planned.
As I walked out I received a copy of The Wealthy Barber Returns and it’s next on my reading list. I read a few chapters already and I remember the original book being a little more geared towards the finances whereas this one (so far) deals more with outlooks on life. I shall give a full review when it’s done!