About Boomer & Echo

Robb Engen

Robb created Boomer & Echo to help Canadians make smarter money decisions and navigate their financial lives with less stress and more confidence.

What started as a personal finance blog in 2010 has turned into a full-time advice-only financial planning practice built on trust, clarity, and practical advice.

Today, he spends his time building personalized plans, answering client questions, and yes — still writing. If there’s a personal finance book or podcast out there, Robb has read or listened to it. He eats, sleeps, and breathes money topics so you don’t have to.

Fun Fact: Robb’s personal finance bookshelf is rivalled only by his travel wish list. Also: go Browns.

Lindsay Engen

Lindsay keeps Boomer & Echo running smoothly as your first point of contact in the financial planning processs. With experience in both medical and veterinary clinic operations, she’s more than equipped to handle the financial planning world — and Robb.

Now she makes sure client meetings are scheduled, plans are delivered on time, questions are answered, and nothing falls through the cracks. She’s quietly powerful, highly organized, and the reason clients often say, “Everything just felt easy.”

Fun Fact: Lindsay never skips leg day, can quote Star Wars better than most superfans, bakes incredible bread, and feels at home in the Scottish Highlands.

Robb Engen and Lindsay Engen with dog sitting on couch at home

Consumer Advocate

Robb is a die-hard advocate for investors and consumers, and so a lot of his writing focuses on some of the traps that everyday people fall into when dealing with a bank, financial advisor, insurance broker, or retailer. Check out Robb's appearance on CBC Marketplace where he helps Air Miles customers fight back against the company's outrageous expiry policy.

Robb is also on the board of directors at FAIR Canada - Canada's investor rights advocate.

Qualified Associate Financial Planner

QAFP™ certified professional

I'm a self-taught money expert, but have also obtained the QAFP™ certification. I'm a fee-only advisor (also called an advice-only planner), helping Canadians at different ages and stages get their finances on track and prepare for retirement. "Fee-only" or "advice-only" means that I work with you to build an actionable financial plan at an agreed-upon price, but I don't actually manage your money.

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In the media

I'm also regularly quoted or featured in financial media such as the Globe & Mail, MoneySense, the Financial Post, CBC, and Global News.

My writing can also be found in the Toronto Star where I had a bi-weekly column for many years, and currently freelance write for MoneySense.

Watch Robb's segment on Global News's Money123: Saving for your future and retirement

Investing History & Experience

I've been interested in personal finance and investing for as long as I can remember. I started investing in mutual funds at age 19, before exchange-traded funds were all the rage and the TFSA had been invented. I spent several years investing in high MER mutual funds through an employer matching plan at work. When I left that job, I transferred my money to a discount brokerage and learned how to invest on my own. I wish I had some help getting started because I would’ve avoided many mistakes along the way.

Through my online brokerage account I followed a dividend growth investing strategy, selecting Canadian blue-chip stocks with a long history of paying and growing their dividends.

I tracked my returns diligently for six years and my investments performed really well - reaching $100,000 by the time I turned 35. But later that year I had an epiphany. I was finding it harder and harder to pick the right stocks, and some of my selections were flat-out terrible. When oil prices tanked my energy stocks suffered as well. I found myself spending more and more time checking the news and watching my portfolio.

Surely there had to be a better way.

I knew the research on passive investing was compelling. A low cost, broadly diversified portfolio of index mutual funds or ETFs that passively track broad-based market indexes would outperform any actively managed investment strategies over the long-term. I didn't truly believe this applied to me and my "expert" stock-picking, but over time I began to realize that I, too, could benefit from an indexing investment approach.

So I sold off my portfolio of dividend stocks - all 24 of them worth $100,000 - and bought two ETFs: Vanguard's VCN (Canadian equities) and VXC (the rest of the world). It's such a simple strategy. I called it the four-minute portfolio because of the small amount of time I spend adding new money and monitoring the funds each year.

Simple, yet effective.

More recently, when Vanguard introduced its asset allocation ETF, I switched my portfolio to a one-fund solution called VEQT. One globally diversified fund, automatically rebalanced, for an ultra-low fee of 0.24% MER.

Take Control of Your Money

This blog has long served as my guidepost to hold me accountable to my own financial goals. While you read about my journey you'll also learn how to take control of your own finances.

I guarantee there will be something here for you; from debt reduction strategies, budgeting basics, short-term savings goals, how to start investing, how to stay invested, preparing for retirement, and life in retirement, you'll find something useful on the subject. In fact, you'll find nearly 1,500 articles in the archives!