They did the math and realized that those expensive investment products would add years to their working life, because high management expense ratios (MERs) dramatically slowed the growth of their nest eggs.
From there, they turned to passive investing, a strategy that involves buying and holding index funds that follow the market, rather than actively picking, buying, and selling stocks in an effort to “beat the market”.
Since index funds don’t require active management, the management fees are significantly lower - about 10x lower than fees associated with actively managed investments like mutual funds.
While passive investing takes less time than active investing, the Brendans found there were still tedious aspects to managing your own investments...
For instance, whenever new contributions or dividends hit your account, you need to calculate which assets to buy, and how much of them you need to buy to bring your portfolio back to its target allocation. This meant spending hours on manual data entry and endless spreadsheet calculations.
So Brendan Wood decided to build a tool that freed them from monotonous tasks by automatically calculating the trades needed to keep a portfolio close to its target allocation. They then realized that other investors would benefit from this tool, and Passiv was born.
Since then, the Passiv team has grown (there’s even a third Brendan!) and thousands of Canadians are now managing their money with Passiv, saving on management fees and spending less time with Excel. Let Passiv do the same for you.
