42 - Ian Clarke

Ian Clarke was the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE) for 26.5 years and as of 2017 is the current CFO of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA).

As a CFO, he manages the finances of corporations, but is corporate finance really that different from personal finance?

As it turns out, they are pretty much the same except for the human emotions that are involved in personal finance.

Emotional spending and emotional investing can lead a rational person to spend money they don’t have or gamble money they can’t afford to lose.

But often the way out of a bad financial situation is to put the emotions aside and treat our personal finances like a business.

In a business, you are accountable for your financial actions, as you should be in your personal life.

But what happens instead is that you might decide you want to buy something, before you calculate whether you can afford it. It is this kind of behaviour, encouraged and promoted by the credit card companies, that leads people into real financial trouble.

So have a listen to Ian’s personal finance story, and his experience as a CFO, and hopefully you will see the value in his rational approach to money management, and life in general.

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43 - Leanna Haakons