How to make sure you’re on the right track for Financial Literacy Month

November is Financial Literacy Month. Hilary McMeekin with the Alberta Securities Commission joined CTV Morning Live’s Cory Edel for advice on protecting and growing your investments.

 

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

 

Cory Edel: November is Financial Literacy Month, which is a great time to reassess your financial plans and ensure you're on the right track. What should we do first when we’re choosing a financial advisor or a platform?

Hilary McMeekin: The most important thing is to work with a registered platform or a registered advisor. You may wonder, “How do I check that?” Well, we actually have a page on checkfirst.ca, which is a website where you can go and look up whoever it is that you’re talking to or look up whichever platform you’re considering, and you can see to make sure that they’re registered.

You want to work with one of these because they have a legal obligation to act in your best interest and they have to follow securities laws. If you’re talking to someone who says they don’t need to be registered, that’s a red flag. You want to run from that because registration is the single biggest thing that we can all verify and make sure.

Cory: Now, what sort of strategy would we need when it comes to investing?

Hilary: That's a great question because we all have different goals, right? And we all are interested in saving money or investing for different purposes. We might want to be doing it to buy a house one day, or for retirement. There are lots of different ways to consider how to invest, and you might not want to work with a financial advisor, and that's OK. There's lots of do-it-yourself investing platforms available today that are quite easy and good to work with. It's important, whether you're considering doing it on your own or working with an advisor, to think about things in short, medium and long-term scenarios.

It's really about, “What am I doing this for?” and “How much risk can I take on?” I'm throwing out a bunch of terms here, but whether you check out something simple or one of those platforms, or whether you reach out to an investment advisor, they can walk you through the best way to set this up.

Cory: What else can we do to strengthen our financial footing?

Hilary: This is about checking what's out there. This month is a great time because lots of platforms, lots of organizations, like the ASC (Alberta Securities Commission), are sharing more information because they want people to become more informed. What you’ll see on our website is a few different investment accounts and plans that you can consider. If you thought about buying your first home, there's actually a savings account that has some tax advantages if you put some money aside every month. So, checkfirst.ca is a great website with lots of unbiased information on these kinds of investment accounts and lots of other information. We also have a newsletter that you can sign up for that we share information on a monthly basis. There's lots of information available if you're interested in getting started and the best place to start is checkfirst.ca.

Cory: Perfect Hilary. Thank you so much for that information and those tips.