Show Notes
Over the last four years, legalized sports betting has become a massive industry in Canada. In Ontario alone, people placed bets worth a total of around $11-billion in 2024. It’s simple to do: Open an app, bet a few bucks and watch the scoreboard. At the same time, trading apps have made investing quicker and easier, and the process feels very similar. We’re not saying gambling and investing are the same, but the lines are blurring thanks to app design and the sheer amount of time we spend on our phones.
Roma speaks with Shannon Lee Simmons, a certified financial planner and author based in Toronto, about how she’s seeing a gambling mentality bleed into investing, particularly among young people. Then, The Globe’s personal economics reporter Erica Alini speaks with Perry Wright and Hans Frech, behavioural researchers at the Common Cents Lab at Duke University, about the behavioural similarities between gambling and speculative investing, what tactics these apps are enforcing and how to set up guardrails to protect your finances when using these apps.
More from Stress Test
As more Canadians buy homes later in life, homeownership is increasingly competing with another major financial goal: saving for retirement.
Tensions between Canada and the U.S. are at an all-time high, and some young Canadians are questioning whether they still want to invest so much of their money south of the border. We hear from a millennial investor who dramatically reduced his U.S. holdings. Then Rob Carrick and financial planner Aravind Sithamparapillai discuss the risks and potential benefits of scaling back U.S. investments, and what investors should weigh before making a change to their portfolios.
When are you ready to buy a home? To have a kid? To quit your day job and become your own boss? In 2026, financial milestones look different than they used to.
Retirement can feel overwhelming when headlines insist you need millions before you can stop working. But is that actually true? In this episode, we hear from young Canadians with very different visions of life after work. Then retirement reporter Meera Raman sits down with financial planner Moira Rose Váně to challenge some of the biggest assumptions about retirement. Together, they explore why so many younger Canadians feel behind before they’ve even begun, and what a more realistic path to retirement can look like.
More than half of young Canadians say they’d want a prenup if they got married or entered a common-law relationship. But only a small share have actually signed one. So what’s stopping them? In this episode, we look at the gap between interest and action and why prenups may still be harder, pricer and more emotionally charged than many expect. We hear from a Toronto woman who says getting a prenup with her husband became the most difficult part of wedding planning. Then, Aimee Schalles, lawyer and co-founder of Jointly.ca, breaks down what happens if you don’t have a prenup, why more young Canadians want them, and why so few actually sign.