I pretend to be a farmer. I only own a quarter section of land northwest of Red Deer and my brother does the real farming, makes the tough decisions, takes the big risks, repairs the equipment, makes sure the work gets done when it needs to be done. I do drive truck during harvest and sometimes swath a couple of fields plus other occasional jobs. And, it’s great. It keeps me plugged into a great industry. An industry that will power Alberta forward for as long as we remember how important our dirt is!

More reasons for the Greedy Farmer Investing name:

• The robo-advisor types have already taken the svelte names! This is not an elegant activity anyway, so I’m fine with that. There is a lot of haphazard decision making and lots of errors so a blunt, unsophisticated name fits.

My outlook on investing may be different than your financial advisors’. Perhaps that is a result of working as a farmer, a mechanic, and later career experiences with people who are part of the practical world of building roads, harvesting timber, building the sewers and streets of our communities. My perspective on personal finance is an outsider’s view. Yet as much as I believe in getting my hands dirty, academic understanding must play a prominent role in all decisions. Most importantly, I assume everyone has scraped their savings together by laying in the mud and occasionally skinning your knuckles. All these perspectives inform my approach.