It’s Financial Literacy Month, and I’m not sure what money is anymore

I still believe that. But since then, the world has changed, and so much has gotten more expensive that a lot of Canadians are struggling to keep up with the cost of everyday life.

I woke up this morning and, as I usually do, started catching up on the news. The US midterm results are in, and everyone is debating what they mean on both sides of the border. The conflict in the Middle East continues, with the implications extending well beyond the region. There are tariffs, trade tensions, and ongoing conversations about Canada’s economic relationship with the US. There’s also the growing debate about artificial intelligence and its place in our economy, including the financial services industry.

Then I looked at my own money over the last six months and thought about everything that has affected it, both positively and negatively.

Against all of that, November is Financial Literacy Month, and we’re all being encouraged to talk about money. The first thing I want to say is: what the hell is going on?

Money was supposed to be the safe part

Money was fundamentally a source of security. You went out, you earned it, and having it meant something. It paid for a roof over your head, your kids’ education, your day-to-day and, eventually, your retirement. It was a marker of control.

People have always had money troubles, and economic cycles have always hit people hard. The 2008 financial crisis wiped people out. But there were always parts of your financial life you could control: how you spent, what you saved, the habits you built. Getting those under control took time, but you could change a habit and eventually see it pay off.

Now you don’t get that time. You cut back, you adjust, you start to see progress, and then something else changes and derails it all. The thing that was meant to make us feel secure has become a reflection of how insecure we are. We don’t have enough, and what counts as enough changes from one day to the next.

Do you ask for a raise when your employer is feeling the same squeeze? Do you take the job that pays more and give up the security you have, knowing the ground could shift again before you’ve settled in? Or do you stay in the one that doesn’t pay enough while the cost of living keeps running ahead of you?

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When the world shows up at the pump

In January 2026, I was filling up my car at around $1.28 a litre. By May, the average price in the Greater Toronto Area had climbed to almost $1.87, according to Statistics Canada. It eased over the summer, then climbed again, and in early October, prices across the GTA were expected to hit an average of about $1.93 a litre.

Much of that has been tied to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important routes for oil. When energy prices stay that high for that long, they start showing up in the price of other goods and services.

That’s why the Bank of Canada raised its key rate to 2.5% at the end of October: to keep high energy prices from spilling over into broader inflation. So the same forces pushing up the price of gas are now pushing up the cost of borrowing, for anyone with a variable-rate mortgage or a line of credit.

When the variables keep moving

Should you buy a home now or wait? If your mortgage is up for renewal, do you lock in a fixed rate for the next few years, or go with a variable rate that rises and falls with the Bank of Canada’s decisions? Homeowners have always had to make that call, and it has always involved a guess about where rates are heading. But the variables behind that guess didn’t shift this fast and unpredictably.

If you renovate, should you be calculating the return on investment, even on the changes that matter to you and probably won’t matter to the next buyer?

Should you be moving money into safer assets? Are safe assets even safe anymore? Should you be thinking about gold? But wait, even safe havens haven’t been behaving the way you’d expect in times of uncertainty. When oil prices spiked earlier this year, gold rallied at first and then pulled back.

Should you stop eating out? Should you still buy fruit? Fruit is expensive. Should you spend your Saturday driving to five different grocery stores to save a few dollars? At what point does trying to save money become an unreasonable amount of effort?

Every one of these is a real decision someone is making this week, usually while working, parenting and paying bills. And every one of them rests on assumptions that might not survive the next six months, maybe even the next few weeks.

Budget for what, exactly?

Which brings me back to Financial Literacy Month. This year’s campaign from the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada is built around the theme “Talk Money,” and it encourages Canadians to have more open conversations about money. I’m all for it, and I say that as someone who works closely with people who teach financial literacy every day.

Budgeting, in particular, sits at the center of almost all financial advice. Whether you use a spreadsheet or keep a running tally in your head, the idea is the same: know what’s coming in, know what’s going out and plan around it.

But budgeting works best when the numbers hold still long enough to plan around them. Right now, they don’t. Do you build a 30% buffer into every expense for price increases you can’t predict? Where is the buffer coming from? When the budget directs you to spend less – spend less on what? Driving, when you need the car to get to work? Heating the house, heading into a Canadian winter? Food, when you have the same number of mouths to feed, but prices are out of control?

Being financially sensible has become an exercise in constantly recalculating what it costs to get through the month.

Our spending says one thing. Our investments may say another.

Money is also a form of self-expression, a way of asserting what we believe in. Since the trade dispute with the US began, many Canadians have been buying Canadian goods wherever and whenever they can. People are cancelling subscriptions, deleting social media accounts and walking away from companies whose values or founders they can’t stand. Every one of those is a small financial decision made on principle.

But how many of us have looked at where our savings are invested? If your RRSP, TFSA or your child’s RESP is in a broad market index fund, there’s a good chance it owns some of the very companies you’ve stopped supporting with your daily spending. Most of us never check. We’re doing what we were told: diversify and invest for the long term.

So which one reflects what we believe, the way we spend or the way we save and invest? And if our money can’t give us security and can’t reflect our values, what exactly is it doing for us?

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Are the experts as bewildered as we are?

I’d love to sit down with a financial advisor, a mortgage broker, a real estate agent and an economist, all at once, and ask them the same thing.

Are you looking at the same universe of variables the rest of us are? Grocery bills, trading partners, global conflict, AI, interest rates, all of it? Or are you working from models built for a world that doesn’t exist anymore?

I can’t make sense of it. Does your framework make sense of it? And if it does, how?

Because I’d like to know whether they’re as bewildered as the rest of us.

When money stops making sense

It isn’t just prices that are changing. The whole construct of money is being challenged, from what it’s for and what it protects to how much of it is enough.

I don’t think the question is whether Canadians should be saving, investing or holding on to cash right now. It’s that money has stopped making sense, because it’s no longer tied to anything that makes sense to the everyday, hardworking Canadian.

When I asked what money was for back in June, I took for granted that we at least understood what money was. I’m not so sure anymore. If it isn’t security, if it isn’t certainty and if it isn’t control, then what is it? You can work hard, save diligently and do all the right things, and still feel like you’re one headline away from watching it all come undone.

Money was never supposed to feel like this, which is why I’m no longer asking what money is for, but what it is.

Read more about financial literacy:

• Should self-acceptance be a financial strategy?
• Taking the financial reins when you turn 18 can build confidence for the future
• Personal finance pros reveal one thing they wish they knew when they were younger
• Learning to disagree is a financial skill

About Vickram Agarwal

Vickram Agarwal is a multiple-time founder and award-winning entrepreneur. He leads S1:E2, a business strategy consulting firm, and contributes to The Globe and Mail, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Inc.

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