As I am myself the child of British immigrants, I am naturally sympathetic to those brave or desperate enough to leave their homes to find opportunities in North America. Which is one reason that over the past year, I’ve been corresponding with an interesting blogger and former financial advisor, Alain Guillot. He occasionally republishes his blog posts on my site Findependence Hub. His own blog is called simply AlainGuillot.com.
Earning, saving and spending in Canada: A guide for new immigrants
The wealth paradox: why saving $100,000 is hard
Guillot writes at least one blog post a week and has 600 subscribers on his YouTube channel. He recently wrote a short e-book entitled The Wealth Paradox: Navigating Money, Free will, and Success (self-published, 2024). Its subtitle explains more: “How unconventional thinking influences your financial and personal life.”
Guillot first got my attention when I learned that he emigrated to Canada from Colombia, a place I once visited. He felt he had little choice but to become an entrepreneur here, although chapter five of his e-book is titled “Entrepreneurs are mentally unstable people.” He wrote that the intention of the director of the movie Wall Street was to show the greed and ills of capitalism. However, it “had the opposite effect: more people were drawn towards investment banking. In my chapter about entrepreneurs being mentally unstable people, I had a bit of the same reverse-psychology intentions. I trash-talked the mental state of entrepreneurs as a backhand compliment and admiration for what they do.”
If that’s not unconventional enough for you, know that he is a big believer in self-insurance (putting money away for rainy days), as opposed to owning speculative assets like gold and crypto, and makes the case that the first $100,000 of wealth is the hardest to accumulate.
From side hustles to financial punditry
Initially Guillot tried various side hustles in Canada. He was a salsa and tango instructor, a photographer and a professional wedding witness. Actually, he still dabbles in each of those. He wanted to become a financial advisor in Canada, but he felt he could only do justice to clients by being a fee-for-service planner, and he learned it was hard to make a business case out of that model. Next he positioned himself as a personal finance coach, but ultimately stopped because he discovered “no one wants to listen.”
Still, he’s personally obsessed with money, so he’s trying to make a go out of blogging about personal finance and releasing video podcasts about it.
In an extended email interview, Guillot says he left Colombia because he wanted to have more opportunities. If you’re fortunate enough to be born in Canada or the United States, he says to count your blessings: “I was greatly influenced by movies, where I often saw regular families owning a house, having a car and enjoying their disposable income. They could go to restaurants, have a few drinks in a cool bar and go on vacation at least once a year. For me, in Colombia, that was a fictional world. In my environment, people were always struggling with scarcity and poverty.”
Intent on finding a wealthier country, he considered Spain, England, Australia, the U.S. and Canada. He preferred North America, since it’s in the same time zone as Colombia, making communication with his family easier. “In the end, I chose Canada over the U.S. because I believed immigration to Canada would be easier. I settled on Quebec, because I was curious about learning French as well as English.”
