I started this blog back in 2017, and it is hard to believe that I have been at it for seven years. This was my second year working at it “full-time”. I made clear progress in all domains of my revitalized mission to empower, inspire, connect, and collaborate. Thanks for being a part of that!
In this post, I’ll put some numbers to that. I will also highlight my most popular posts & some of my less viewed but very valuable ones (in my opinion). Plus, I’ll outline my plans for 2025.
The Blog Numbers
Blog Traffic

The year saw the most traffic ever – about 367K views from 127K individual IP addresses. That is good for a Canadian finance blog, and amazing for a niche one like The Loonie Doctor.
Most (95%) of my traffic came from Canada, and it was spread across the age spectrum from 18 to 65+. The gender distribution was 50:50, roughly the same as last year. I am not sure how the internet knows that. Creepy. Still, I hope that this is all a sign that I am writing material that appeals to a broad audience. We all have skin in the game when it comes to managing our money.

Engagement stayed high this year, with an average of 2.6 pages per visit and an average time on site of ~4 minutes per visit (an eternity in Internet Time).
About 2/3 of the traffic was organic via Google searches, and 1/4 came from Facebook. My guess is that the FB traffic came primarily from the private Physician Financial Independence (Canada) Group of ~$38K members. However, the Index Fund & ETF Investing for Canadians Facebook Group that I mentioned last year has also grown to 12K members. The moderators of these groups have done a great job of keeping it on-topic and fostered great discussions. I have been lurking there and pipe in now and then.
Empowering Investors
DIY Investor Hub
My DIY Investor Hub has proven popular and helpful for those seeking education, a step-by-step guide, and mentorship for making the move to DIY ETF investing. The screenshots and details use Qtrade Direct Investing, but should be generalizable to other platforms. If you use my affiliate link by clicking any of the Qtrade banners on the site, then I can better coach you if you get stuck. You also get Qtrade’s best promotional offers, and I get a small fee at no cost to you.
I am happy to say that this aspect of the site gained traction this year. I know that I have personally helped a few people per week with some of their financial dilemmas about investing. Occasionally, I provide some moral support. Helping those people has been so much easier with the investor hub educational material as a base. I can also see from the high-level “account uptake” that most people have been able to invest fully on their own using the material.
If taking control of your investing or even dipping your toes in the water of DIY investing is part of your New Year’s resolutions, please consider using the material and support here to help you make it a reality. It doesn’t cost you anything and is backed by the best evidence, plus my human mentorship as needed. It is probably the best return on investment available, even without considering the usual incentive offers.
Getting the most out of Advisors

I am a major advocate of DIY investing using an easy-to-execute ETF strategy. Many of the tasks can be simplified, and (surprising to many) simple is generally better when it comes to finance. Plus, you must acquire some basic knowledge to spot good advice whether you invest on your own or through an advisor.
Still, there are times when DIYers may want an advisor. This year, I explored several aspects of this in more detail. Hopefully, that will empower you to find the best match for your situation and get the most out of it.

The value and cost of an advisor are highly variable. Their value depends on how well their skills and service complement your deficits, and their cost depends on their compensation model. Understanding the specifics of your situation is vital, and the cost of complacency is high.
One tactic used to deter those who should switch to DIY or a better advisor is the fear of taxes. I modeled this in a personal account to show how quickly better results due to fee savings or better advisor value overpower capital gains taxes. I have not done an article on it yet, but for those using a corporation, it is even faster if you can pay out a capital dividend from the gain.
Inspiring Clients & Advisors
The Money Scope Podcast
At the end of last year, Ben Felix (Chief Investment at PWL Capital and Common Sense Investing YouTuber) and I launched The Money Scope Podcast. It is a multi-media financial curriculum resource that combines my perspective as a nerdy end-user with Ben’s as a well-researched financial industry expert.

The reception was fantastic. It stuck as the top investing podcast for several weeks and then bounced around in the top 10 for the first half of 2024 as we released episodes.
Our first four episodes were about “The Good Life.” We reviewed the research on money and happiness and described some practical applications, such as values-based goal-setting and decision rules. Many listeners were inspired to better build and use their financial power. Thank you for the kind words from those who reached out to us.
Later episodes detailed different aspects of investing and tax planning for Canadians. We also presented applications of the research we’d been doing on optimal compensation for incorporated business owners and CPP for business owners. We’ve heard from many advisors about how this and other aspects of The Money Scope have changed how they practice and advise their clients.
Collaboration & Connection

Another arm of my mission is collaboration & connection, and The Money Scope was a major collaborative effort. While Ben and I are the faces of the podcast and do the bulk of the writing, we’ve been supported by a team of people. PWL Capital’s production team has done a great job polishing up the episodes for release.
We have also drawn on a stable of really smart and engaged financial advisors and accountants who have proofread our episodes and taught us about aspects and wrinkles that we hadn’t considered. I had the pleasure of connecting with many of them in person at the Institute for Advanced Financial Planning 2024 Conference, and we recorded a live Star Wars themed Money Scope episode there.
I also connected with many of my physician colleagues and other business owners this past year. Sometimes via Zoom or Facebook. I was also quite busy delivering talks and financial curricula to larger physician groups, from residents to retirees. These have been great for broadening my impact but also refining how to address where the major knowledge gaps are. Ben and I also connected with part of our audience for a live Q&A Money Scope at the annual Canadian Physician Financial Wellness Conference.
Collaborative Sponsors
Last year, I carefully chose to work with a couple of sponsors who add value to my mission. This has really worked out well. In addition to providing financial support to improve and grow the resources here, we have directly collaborated to develop great content.
PWL Capital Inc.
I’ve already mentioned PWL Capital Inc. We are still working on The Money Scope. However, we have also collaborated in the background through developing tools. In preparing for our episode on optimal compensation, we cross-checked the tools that we’d built and improved them substantially. My online version is the Corp to Personal Salary & Dividend Optimizer. It was one of my most viewed pages this year and undoubtedly helped many incorporated business owners consider how they pay themselves and revisit the conversation with their accountants. PWL has a slick in-house version that they’ve been using to provide tailored advice. This is still something that the usual planning software doesn’t handle as well. So, it is a real value-add for their clients with meaningful tax savings over the long run.
BMO ETFs

I am a major fan of ETFs as a tool for investors, and BMO ETFs is the second largest ETF provider in Canada. They are the largest Canadian-focused provider. That focus and their efforts in producing Canadian educational content and promoting DIY investing here are what attracted me.
This year, I also had the pleasure of opening the Toronto Stock Exchange alongside other ETF investors at ETF Investor Day, sponsored by ETF Insights.
My collaborators at BMO ETFs have also contributed directly by writing some deep-dive articles on complex topics:
- True ETF Liquidity
- Discount Bonds: Bonds With Benefits for Managing Tax
- Low Volatility ETF Investing
- Foreign Currency Hedging: Easy Using ETFs, But Should You?
Most Popular Posts of 2024
#1 Capital Gains Tax Changes & Tax Planning Primer

Nothing grabs people’s attention for looking at their finances more than a tax increase, except perhaps piling on the political rhetoric on both sides of the policy. While I ultimately found the politics annoying, this turned out to be a great opportunity to take a deeper look at capital gains tax and tax planning.
Ironically, this policy has not yet been legislated, and the government seems incapable of getting anything done. So, we’ll have to see how this pans out. CRA has openly stated that it will apply the tax based on the assumption that it will become law. Will that be another embarrassment for them, like the bare trust debacle?
#2 DIY Investing Basics & Comparison of Canadian All-in-One Asset Allocation ETFs
My DIY Investing Hub was actually #2, but I’ve already mentioned it. Two pages in the “basic training” section have proven to be particularly popular.
What is DIY Investing? The Basics has been ranking in the top 10 for the “DIY investing” keyword in Canada and shows up on the first page of Google. I am pretty proud of that. However, I am more pleased with the number of people who have read it and gotten a step-by-step overview of how to invest. Not gimmicky stock-pumping or “trading systems”, but a rational, evidence-informed, practical approach.

My in-depth comparison of the major Canadian asset allocation ETFs has been another popular page. All-in-one ETFs are an effective way to invest, but you still have to pick one to use. They are all very similar, and you probably won’t go wrong with any one of the iShares, BMO ETFs, or Vanguard flavors. However, this article gives peace of mind that you’ve done your due diligence.
It also has embedded calculators to compare the fee and tax drag in personal or corporate accounts. I just updated them for 2025 and the recent major changes to HEQT and the other Global X (formerly Horizons) ETFs.
#3 Investing Through a Professional Corporation

I originally wrote this overview of tax-efficient corporate investing in 2018, did a major overhaul last year, and did some further tweaking this year. I am waiting to see if the capital gains legislation passes before doing another major update. It has been in the top 3 pretty much every year. A professional corporation can be a great investment vehicle. However, it has potential drawbacks. If you understand how it works, you can better integrate a corporation into your overall plan.
While not a “post,” my step-by-step instruction page (with screenshots) for opening a corporate investing account using Qtrade has been a popular related page. At most discount brokerages, the process can be intimidating and, frankly, very annoying. I have worked with the folks at Qtrade to streamline it. Having a Loonie Doctor-affiliated Qtrade account also makes it easier for me to mentor people or help them if they get stuck on something.
Most Under-Rated Posts
These posts weren’t my most viewed, but I think that they are important. Stories are very powerful. Unfortunately, we are often told some expensive ones. This past year, I told some of my own as a countermeasure.
Expensive Self-Talk For Investors

The biggest risk to our portfolio is usually in the mirror. We tell ourselves all sorts of stories that undermine our investment plan.
In this post, I pick apart five of the most common expensive stories that we tell ourselves.
I find myself reading one variation or another of these stories on social media or hearing it from a colleague on a daily basis.
Expensive Storytellers: The Narrator

The traditional media also uses stories to great effect.
Actually, they get paid just for telling them. Whether you make or lose money. They are professional storytellers and put together compelling narratives.
Unfortunately, the stories that tend to make them the most money are also the ones that will cost you the most if you listen to them.
In this post, I tell a couple of modern examples of classic narratives and present data about what happened in real life.
My Personal Wealth Journey

I started the past year by sharing parts of my own story. The first installment was about building our financial foundation. My wife and I learned key lessons about our relationship with each other and money. While it took years, we climbed from negative to positive net worth. We also built habits that gave us a solid financial foundation.
We then hit our financial wonder years, which were full of excitement and new experiences. During that period of rapid financial progress, we also developed some new problems.
Fortunately, I had an awakening and recalibration. Hopefully, telling my personal story will help you at different stages of your own story. I have more tales to tell this year.
Plans for 2025
Looking back on my plans for 2024, I followed through on most. I still haven’t completed my Core Financial Curriculum yet, but I made progress. I keep refining how I want to approach some of the blank spots. I collaborated and connected a lot, along with some live appearances, which was one of my goals. The capital gains tax fiasco also presented an unexpected opportunity to improve my corporate financial planning models and Excel coding skills.
For 2025, I plan to finish up and publish some more of my financial calculators and tools. There should also be some good research and practical applications to accompany that. Ben Felix and Braden Warwick at PWL have also been working feverishly in this area as it helps their advisors with clients and will underpin some of our upcoming Money Scope episodes. I know they have been a long time in the making, but we are getting into unchartered analysis territory and want to get it right. We plan to round out some big topics this year, like pensions and insurance.
Thanks for joining me on The Loonie Doctor this past year, and I hope you’ll learn and grow with me again in the year ahead.
I want to thank you so much again Mark for what you have offered Canadian physicians. The work you and Ben have done has been invaluable to me over the last 7-8 years. I probably need to go back to your new and improved older articles and re- read them.
When I went looking for advice specific to a Canadian physician with a Corp there really was nothing else out there online that I could find. In that time I’ve moved from being a newly divorced single parent physician paying spousal/child support and private school tuitions, wondering how any of this would ever get done, to a financially secure remarried person thinking about retirement. I’ve used your calculators many times, especially when rebalancing and deciding on my asset location. Don’t know how I would have figured it out otherwise.
I’m looking forward to information you produce for physicians on the other end winding down- contemplating switching to holding companies, optimizing decumulation plans etc.!
You truly are making a positive difference in peoples’ lives (in a different way from what we all do in our chosen profession of course). Thank you from the bottom of my heart! Best of 2025 to you and your family!
Thanks Sleepydoc. Your story is truly the type of thing that keeps me doing this.
I still have to go back and improve a lot of my older stuff still 😉 So much to do. I have actually been spending a fair bit of time contemplating and working on the tail-end stuff too as I approach that myself. It is quite interesting and more to follow.
Mark
Dr. Soth, Happy New Year and congrats on your continued growth and new high-water Mark, pun intended!
Your content is very engaging and the quality is excellent. It’s impactful, empowering and inspirational. I commonly find myself referencing The Loonie Doctor tidbits at the dinner table with friends and family. With your high-quality and well researched content coupled with your firsthand experience/authenticity, your readership/followers will continue to grow.
Congrats again!
Mike
Thanks Mike. That kind of discussion to help people think about and use their financial power is exactly my goal.
Mark
Happy New Year to you Mark and your family!!!
I am so grateful for your regular articles about financial matters for physicians.
I am retired physician now and have been following your posts since you started to publish them.
I was investing with the help of institution but because of you I got the courage and started doing myself.
I am so thankful that I did. I sensed from the beginning that your advises were 100% truthful without any bias and self interest besides your personal satisfaction. We are so lucky as physicians in Canada to have you !
I am looking forward to your articles on financial matters in 2025.
Jerzy
Thanks Jerzy,
That is great. I hope you are enjoying retirement! Good for you having the courage to take control and it is proof that it is never really too late to do that.
Thanks for sharing that and all the best.
Mark