Shannon Lee Simmons on the one piece of financial advice Canadians need

For this week’s MVP, we’re chatting with Shannon Lee Simmons.

Toronto-based financial planner Shannon Lee Simmons is nothing like the usual advisor-in-a-suit: She’s creative and artistic, outgoing and gregarious, understanding of and sympathetic to the personal finance problems—like splurges on dumb purchases and budgeting with your significant other—that plague regular, moderately money-savvy folk. 

For them, Simmons started The New School of Finance, a financial planning firm dedicated to making everything from investing to retirement planning to entrepreneurism easy and accessible. In her downtime (yeah, right!), Simmons is a four-time book author and financial expert who pops up on CBC’s Metro Morning and On the Money, TVO Today and lots more. We chatted with the finance guru about how she made herself into a money superhero, one thing she hasn’t done yet that she’d like to, and how to spend smarter. 

Did you dream of being a financial planner the way other little girls dream of becoming movie stars?

No. But I was always the kid on the block trying to scale the lemonade stand and making life plans for my pals. Numbers and people have always made sense to my brain. For most of my youth, I translated my math and science skills and love of people into a plan to become a family doctor. But in university I fell in love with economics, and the idea of personal finance was introduced to me. I discovered that there was a job that could marry making people’s life plans with a spreadsheet—and I was hooked. I still am. 

Do you think your profession gets a bum rap? 

I think the financial world, in general, has a bad reputation sometimes—but often for good reason. I do believe it’s getting better. Twenty years ago, if someone knew I worked in finance they would definitely think I was a raging capitalist with no heart or bedside manner. Now, the industry is changing a lot, and I think people know what personal finance is. And fee-only financial planning has become part of the zeitgeist in a really good way. 

You’re an author, business owner and media money guru. What made you want to expand your reach beyond what most financial planners do? 

Fundamentally, I’m a really creative person. I love writing and performing. Writing books is a creative outlet for me, and speaking scratches my performer’s itch. It’s fun. I love writing books—but hate promoting them—and the fact that they help people is deeply meaningful to me as well. It keeps me highly motivated. There’s lots more I’d like to do. I’d love to start a podcast. That’s something I’d love to dabble in at some point. 

You’ve written four books. Is writing getting easier?

I love writing and always have. Writing gets easier because my brain thinks about things like a nonfiction table of contents, and I’m always inspired by new client experiences. The marketing and promo is getting harder for me, since I dislike social media so much. So much of the marketing is on the author these days, and at times I find that exhausting. But you take the good with the hard. 

What’s one piece of financial advice you want people to hear?

Things are tight and finances are stressful for many people, so I want people to consider spending less as a form of personal self-care. A financial hangover doesn’t feel good. If we can all spend a little less and not dig into that hole, we’d have more hope for all our other, bigger plans.

Consider the best advice I ever got: Have multiple income sources so that you can keep rolling if one of those sources is disrupted. And the worst advice you can take? The latest meme stock.