How to Beat 80% of Canadian Investors in Three Easy Steps

Feeling behind your friends on money? Scared of the market but also scared of missing out? Here’s the good news: getting ahead of most Canadians doesn’t take genius or luck. It takes three boring habits, done consistently. That’s one of my core principles in action, behavior beats math. Everyone knows this stuff. Almost nobody does it. Be the one who does.

Step 1: Start early, and don’t sell

Time is the single biggest advantage you have, and it’s the one thing you can never buy back later.

The average Canadian doesn’t start investing until 35. If you start before 30, you’re already ahead of the pack, because those early dollars get the most years to compound. RBC found that Canadians who started investing in their 20s had nearly three times the net worth of those who started in their 30s by their 60s. Same person, different start line.

The second half of this step is quieter but just as important: don’t sell. Roughly half of individual investors sell within a year of buying. They get scared, they cash out, they lock in the loss. The people who win just hold, through the boring years and the terrifying ones, for 20 years and more. Time in the market beats timing the market, every time.

Step 2: Buy low-cost index funds, not individual stocks

Picking individual stocks feels like the fast lane to wealth. Usually it’s the fast lane to losing money. It’s going to the casino: you might win big, you’ll probably lose.

A low-cost index fund is owning a piece of the casino instead. It tracks the whole market, spreads your risk across thousands of companies, and charges almost nothing. The house always wins over time, so own the house.

The data is brutal on stock-picking. One widely-cited DALBAR study found the average individual investor earned only a fraction of the market’s return over decades, roughly half, not because the market failed them, but because they kept buying high and selling low. An index fund quietly sidesteps all of that.

Step 3: Invest consistently and automatically

Don’t wait for a big lump sum. Contribute a fixed amount on a schedule, every paycheck, and automate it so it happens whether you remember or not. This is the “pay yourself first, then automate it” principle: the money moves before you can spend it, and willpower never enters the picture.

Automating also gives you dollar-cost averaging for free. Some paychecks buy high, some buy low, and over the years you get the market’s average without ever having to guess.

Here’s what that boring habit actually builds. To be in the top 10% of Canadians aged 65 to 69, you need over $900,000 saved. If you start at 30 with nothing and invest $250 every two weeks at a 7% return, you’d have around $980,000 by 65. That’s it. No stock picking, no timing, no genius. Just consistency.

And if you’re starting later, it’s not the end of the world. Start at 35 instead of 30 and you’d need about $370 every two weeks to land in the same place. You just contribute a bit more to make up for the lost time.

The takeaway

Start early, buy low-cost index funds, and automate your contributions. Get them in the right accounts and leave them alone. That’s the whole playbook to get ahead of 80% of Canadians.

None of it is clever. That’s the point. The information has been free this whole time. The gap between knowing and doing is where the wealth actually gets made, and now you’re on the right side of it.

See what your own version looks like with the Compound Interest Calculator and the Nomad Number Calculator.

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Want the system built for you instead of figuring it out alone? The 4-week coaching program sets up all three steps and hands you a plan you actually run. Or start free with the tools.