New Wealthy Barber Book Review

All of the new Wealthy Barber (2025) reviews out this past week have been glowing. 

Roy Miller the all-knowing barber is back, as the 1989 Canadian classic got one heck of a modern upgrade. 

The Wealthy Barber reviews have been universally excellent partly because it’s a really great book. 

It’s also because David Chilton (the author) is just a ridiculously nice and self-deprecating person.

I have to admit upfront that I have the same pro-Chilton bias. Once upon a time, I was a 23-year-old trying to publish a personal finance book for Canadian senior school and post-secondary students. I knew that I was in over my head and needed some sage advice. I reached out to everyone I could find in the financial book world, and tried extra-hard to get in touch with Canadian authors. 

Two people responded: David Chilton and Rob Carrick.

Rob Carrick is a Canadian personal finance legend as a columnist for the Globe and Mail. He semi-retired a few months ago, and he deserved all the plaudits that he received. Rob put out helpful columns at a prodigious rate for decades. He was also incredibly generous over the years with his time and platform when it came to helping out new Canadian financial voices. Thanks Rob!

David Chilton responded to my initial email by asking for my phone number. I was pretty stunned to be honest. 

Not 10 minutes after I hurriedly responded to Dave’s “typed on a BlackBerry” email, did he proceed to call me. He was taking a break on the set of Dragon’s Den and wanted to explain to me how the Canadian book business worked, and what he thought of my idea.

Here’s a guy who has sold millions of books, who was on the set of one of Canada’s biggest TV shows – and he takes the time to talk to some young guy in Manitoba who he has never met or even heard of? 

Like… Who does that?!

The experience was so notable to me, that I often referred to it as an uplifting example when teaching high school students. I eventually found out that Dave had done this for many Canadians over the years – and here I thought I was special! 

As I have talked to more and more folks in the Canadian financial space over the years, I realized that nearly all of us had a fun David Chilton story to share. So, if we’re being honest here, it was a foregone conclusion that we were all going to write nice things about the new Wealthy Barber. 

But all of that said, Dave didn’t mail this one in.

He didn’t just bank on his reputation and marketing prowess to get one last pay day… then copy-paste his original uber-successful effort. 

The new Wealthy Barber is going to sell a ton of copies and help a ton of people. In my opinion, it improved substantially on the older version (which was already great). Dave’s ability to empathize with the financial difficulties presented to young Canadians, while at the same time giving firm, constructive advice – all in an easy-to-understand conversational manner – is very unique.

I’m an even bigger of Dave’s after reading the book than I was before picking it up.

Problems With The Wealthy Barber

I’ll get to some of my favourite highlights of the book in a second, but in order to differentiate my Wealthy Barber review from some of the others out there, I thought I’d actually start with all the problems the book has:

Problem #1: David Chilton reveals that he hates the Blue Jays.

End of problems.

(Dave’s avatar – Roy the barber – is a big Detroit Tigers fan. We can read between the lines Dave.)

In all seriousness, if you’re the type that reads financial articles for fun, then you’re probably not the target demographic for the Wealthy Barber. You’re a sales target in that you’ll want to buy the book to give to those young people around you who could use a little advice. But you need to understand that the barber’s advice is for young-ish Canadians (say 45 or under), and he isn’t handing out detailed manuals comparing Canadian ETFs. 

He’s having a helpful conversation about money with everyday Canadians. 

Because Dave is so good at this stuff, he makes it look easy. 

It’s not.

When you write financial advice, it’s always walking a tightrope…

If you are too generalized and don’t provide enough detail, then money nerds like me will criticize you and say it isn’t practical enough to be useful.

If you give specific details, the majority of peoples’ eyes glaze over, the book gets too long, and no one buys it in the first place. 

There’s a reason that no book has come close to achieving the success of the original Wealthy Barber: Because it’s really really hard to succinctly explain financial topics in a way that keeps people turning the page!

In order for you to take me seriously when I talk about all the great parts of the book, I will say that I was a little disappointed that Roy the barber didn’t give more specific directions on how to open a Canadian online brokerage account. When I’ve been asked to stand in as a Wealthy Barber-substitute for family and friends, that hurdle to getting invested is much larger than one might think. Spending some time describing what a brokerage is, and how to buy an ETF, would have been quite useful when it came to actionable steps.

As you know if you’ve read my article on the best wealth management companies in Canada, I’m a huge fan of fee-only, advice-only financial planners. In a perfect world, I’d have loved for Roy to have spent one haircut-worth of time on explaining the opaque world of Canadian financial planners. That being said, Dave has basically had all of my favourite financial planners on his Wealthy Barber podcast (which will soon be added to the list of best Canadian financial podcasts).

My only other non-fan-boy note was that Dave doesn’t go into deaccumulation at all. On a personal level, that’s great news – since the last thing my DIY retirement course needs is David Chilton as a competitor! Dave has mentioned on his podcast that deaccumulation is just a much trickier proposition that requires more personalized planning. So don’t buy the book thinking it’s going to shed any new light on annuities, or when to take CPP given specific variables, etc.

What’s New for The Wealthy Barber?

Mr. Chilton released “The Wealthy Barber Returns” back in 2011. That book was more of a series of short columns or thoughts that Dave had in regards to the modern personal finance scene. It didn’t follow the same story-telling narrative as his original.

The new Wealthy Barber goes back to the secret sauce that made Roy the barber so effective back in 1989. We’re keeping the gentle advice, the “chill vibes” setting of a barbershop, and a cast of characters meant to represent differing financial situations. We’ve got new young adults, but we’ve kept the sage stalwart characters that like to hang out at Roy’s.

Our main character (originally named Dave) has been replaced by a teacher named Matt. The cast is fleshed out by Matt’s wife Maddie, his entrepreneurial sister Jess, and his idiot-savant buddy named Kyle (no relation to this writer… but possibly inspired by). 

My favourite addition to the cast is a 22-year-old immigrant named Sourov. Through Sourov’s eyes we really see Chilton’s connection to today’s young Canadian. A lot of Canadian financial writers out there should literally take some pages from Chilton’s book when it comes to this character and accurately portraying the struggles that 22-year-olds face. 

Chilton remains master of the dad joke. (Example: Heck, even Clyde here fully grasped Roy’s lessons. Clyde. The guy who asked me the other day, “If it’s only 2-per-cent milk, what’s the other 96 per cent?”) Roy has even got the new lingo down as he makes fun of Tik Tok and ChatGPT. Perhaps my favourite one: 

“What happens if AI takes away most of our jobs and the economic system collapses? Then what position would you take?” 

“Fetal.”

We’re still saving 10% and paying ourselves first. We’re still soaking up the advice one haircut-worth of lessons at a time. Almost everything else has been updated or changed completely!

Roy’s New Investment Advice

In his 2011 book, Dave revealed that he had changed his mind on the mutual fund recommendations he had made in the original Wealthy Barber. So it wasn’t a big surprise that Roy briefly addresses this learning journey, and then explains why index fund ETFs are the best thing going.

When it comes to deciding on asset allocation, Roy keeps it admirably simple saying that folks should, “Be an owner, not a loaner.”

In other words, don’t keep your hard-earned cash in a simple savings account or in a high bond allocation. Human beings (as a large group) are really innovative, and you want to own a broadly-distributed piece of that innovation!

Roy sums it up by saying that folks should, “Own the thing that owns the thing!”

Since this book is mostly aimed at young folks with super-long investment horizons, I think the simplicity is worth the nuance trade off there.

I really liked how Roy showcased his knowledge of a lot of brilliant writers who have advocated for index investing over the last few decades, and uses that wisdom to heavily criticize the lack of value added by traditional mutual funds and advisors that sell them.

New Rules of Real Estate

My favourite part of the book was Chilton’s take on the modern real estate environment in Canada. We see this revealed through Sourov’s struggle to purchase his first home, as well as a look at real estate investing 

Chilton takes many of the same stances that I advocate for in my article on buying a house in Canada. Namely, that you might be better off renting than buying, and that being a landlord in today’s major urban markets just isn’t a viable path to riches. 

As I mentioned before, I was very impressed with Chilton’s ability to channel the dilemma presented to today’s “average 22-year-old Canadian.” Sourov is desperate to find a viable path to home ownership. Roy is able to empathize with this struggle, admit that the home-ownership mountain is substantially taller than it was in past decades – and then give firm advice in regards to tradeoffs involved if one is to buy a home as a young person in today’s market.

I also found it interesting how Chilton was able to point out that while young Canadians think of housing as a crisis, many Canadians (maybe most) quietly think of the escalated house prices as a good thing.

Roy is then able to detail exactly what makes the FHSA so great, and how to leverage the combined strength of the FHSA, the RRSP, and finally the TFSA in order to save up a downpayment.

I also liked how Chilton’s barber-sage made a good case for taking a 30-year mortgage (instead of a 25-year), and for using a government-backed mortgage. I haven’t seen these arguments made in many places before.

14 Quick Barbershop Highlights

I don’t want to rewrite Roy’s entire curriculum here, so I’ll just randomly list some other fun or notable parts of the book:

1) Roy owns a small amount of speculative Bitcoin, but remains very skeptical about cryptocurrency in general. He hates meme stocks and NFTs.

2) “Cars are savings killers.” Couldn’t agree more Roy. This is one of the most underutilized pieces of personal finance wisdom for middle-class Canadians in 2025.

3) “A dollar saved is two dollars earned.” This basic bit of math (which asks the reader to take taxes paid on earnings into consideration) should be kept at the forefront of our lizard brains!

4) “Everyone wants you to spend.” Some of the smartest people our society produces are now employed trying to make you click on things and then buy them. Come up with a plan to counter this attack on all fronts!

5) Everyone is into side gigs these days – even Roy the barber! I really liked Chilton’s recommendation of Chris Guillebeau when it comes to generating ideas for side income. While we’re at it, Dave had lots of love to spread around as he mentions books like the Millionaire Teacher and Wealthing Like Rabbits – two excellent books written by Andrew Hallam and Robert Brown.

6) Roy: “Ahh, a Dragons’ Den reference. I love that show!” Well played, Dave. Well played.

7) The Wealthy Barber has some excellent RESP tips, with perhaps the best one being not to get involved with pooled group plans. Dave also has an interesting theory on how to get grandparents to invest a grandchild’s RESP!

8) Get the easy wins before you worry about an emergency fund. Don’t worry about saving months’ worth living expenses if you have credit card debt or still need to contribute to your “RRSP match” at work. The size of your personal emergency fund should be based on your individual circumstances and job security (and can possibly be managed with a line of credit).

9) Permanent and universal life insurance gets shot down pretty hard by Roy and his barbershop students. I cannot express strongly enough how much I hate the ideas around “infinite banking” being peddled by charlatans these days. Great to see Chilton take this head on.

10) On the other hand, Chilton advocates for an interesting term life insurance strategy. I’ve heard him talk about it on his podcast before as well, and it’s referred to as “layering” life insurance. The idea is that you need the most protection earlier in life (especially if you have young children) and that the need gets less as you age. Consequently you can purchase say a $500,000 5-year term life insurance policy, a $500K 10-year policy, a $500k 15-year policy, and a $500k 20-year policy. Thus approximating a good replacement for the income your family would have lost if you went to the great tax haven in the sky too early.

11) Preet Banerjee’s book will always be the gold standard to me when it comes to describing how to “disaster proof your life.” Chilton similarly believes that disability and critical illness coverage are vital, and not given nearly enough attention by most Canadians. After all, 1-in-4 Canadians will be disabled at some point in their life!

12) Roy gives the RDSP a lot more emphasis these days. While I’ve thankfully never needed to make use of the RDSP, it is an incredibly important program if it pertains to you.

13) Chilton continues to provide a lot of insight in regards to getting your will and power of attorney done. Obviously these topics aren’t as sexy as how to become a millionaire or get into your first house – but they’re ignored at your peril. Perhaps the most unique advice is to really think hard before agreeing to be an executor – as it’s a huge amount of work!

14) Finally, I love the fact that Roy makes a renewed case for the power of the RRSP. While it has become fashionable to promote the TFSA, many Canadian upper-middle-class folks would be further ahead with their investments in the RRSP, as you get a deduction at a relatively high marginal tax rate, and then withdraw those investments at (what is usually) a very low blended tax rate in retirement. This is especially true if your delay your CPP by the way!

Buying The Wealthy Barber: The Fully Updated All-Time Canadian Classic

Kudos to David Chilton!

He didn’t have to go through the considerable effort to rewrite and market an entirely new book. I’m pretty sure the Wealthy Author/Dragon isn’t exactly hurting for carrying around money these days. 

Clearly he decided to write a new book for a new generation because he genuinely wants to help people. 

And because he needs an audience for his dad jokes.

In super-classy fashion, Dave decided to keep the distribution of this thing all-Canadian. So don’t go looking for it on Amazon. You can buy the physical book here on Indigo or at independent bookstores across the country. The audiobook and ebook are available here.

If you want to see what makes Dave such a compelling personality, you can look below to check out the recent interview that we did with him at the 2025 Canadian Financial Summit!