CPFC15 – A First Timer’s Review

 

The weekend of Oct 17^th-Oct 18^th was a weekend where I finally accomplished a personal finance goal that had been on my list for several years- I attended the 2015 Canadian Personal Finance Conference.

It was quite the fun-filled, informative, jam-packed, inspiring weekend. Both days included listening to many well-known names in the personal finance industry such as Ellen Roseman of the Toronto Star and Rob Carrick of the Globe and Mail. The attendees of the conference consisted of people who were either personal finance bloggers, working for a fintech startup/company, personal finance authors/journalists, in marketing or other types of professionals in the finance industry.

Breakfast and lunch were included for both days, which on top of the scheduled networking breaks, also made great opportunities for additional networking time.  There were also booths set up by several of the sponsors of the conference such as CapitalOne and Questrade– yet another way to network and learn more about the various financial products and services available to the public.

While all of the talks were awesome and provided a wealth of information (haha), I personally enjoyed the talk on mobile payments by Daniel Bader- editor in chief of Mobile Syrup.  While the use of physical cash is becoming a rare thing, the use of physical cards may be next. There is the Ugo wallet– a digital wallet app that eliminates the need of having to carry all those loyalty cards and enables you to pay with your phone.

He talked about how there are companies that are trying to disrupt the whole interact e-transfer process. While it’s the only fee I pay with my PC Financial Chequing account, it’s certainly one less fee that would be nice to get rid of. Even if it is only $1.50 each time.

This may have to do with my recent career switch into the tech industry, but I also enjoyed  the fintech demos from companies such as Wealthsimple and nTrust. Technology is a wonderful and powerful thing. It can become even more wonderful and self-empowering when it can help people to manage their finances better.

As a personal finance blogger, it was such a treat to hear fellow personal finance bloggers speak about their experiences- from their own personal blogging journey to selling products on your blog to podcasting. Everyone’s got their own story to tell. And each of them are worth listening to.

David Chilton gave the keynote address at the end of Day 1. It was my mom who actually introduced me to his book, the Wealthy Barber. All CPFC15 attendees received a copy of the Wealthy Barber Returns in their EQ Bank Swag Bag. It was a long keynote address but the guy is such an incredible speaker, everyone wanted him to continue talking about his experiences and of course a bit about being on Dragon’s Den. I lost count of how many times I laughed out loud at his stories. I should have asked him to do a keynote at my wedding reception.

I left the conference exhausted, but that happy/satisfied exhausted feeling. All this time I felt I needed to hide behind the words on my blog, that only online interaction was best suited for shy people like myself.  With blogging, like any other business, you need to network both online AND offline.

My blogging to-do list has grown even longer than it was before,

But the ideas and inspiration are even bigger than ever before.