Disclosures
Last updated 19 August 2026
How we are paid, what we are not registered to do, and the arithmetic behind every number on this site.
How we are paid
By subscribers, and by nobody else. When subscriptions open the price will be $39.95 a month. Today we are paid nothing, because subscriptions are not open.
We receive no commissions, no trailing commissions, no percentage of anyone's assets, no referral fees, no payment for placement or mention, no advertising revenue, and no money from selling data. The full accounting, updated weekly, is on the open book.
Registration
Honest Advice Inc. is not registered with any securities regulator in Canada, and is not seeking registration.
That is a deliberate choice, not an oversight, and it shapes what this service is. We provide general educational information and tools that operate on figures you supply. We do not provide advice about your particular circumstances, we do not manage money, and we do not recommend securities. A registered adviser can do things we cannot, and if you need those things you should engage one.
About the founder
Jesse L. Kaufman spent twenty five years in the Canadian investment industry as an investment advisor, portfolio manager, chief investment analyst, industry consultant and auditor. Those describe roles previously held. They do not describe any current registration, and no current registration should be inferred from them. He holds the CAIA, CIM, AIFP and FCSI designations. He was recognized for alternative investment expertise at the Wealth Professional Awards in 2016 and 2017.
How our figures are calculated
Every fee illustration on this site uses the same two lines of arithmetic:
- Value without the fee equals the amount multiplied by (1 plus the return), raised to the number of years.
- Value after the fee equals the amount multiplied by (1 plus the return minus the fee), raised to the number of years.
Our default illustration uses $250,000, a 6% yearly return before fees, a 1.9% yearly fee, and twenty years. That produces $801,784 without the fee, $558,412 after it, and a difference of $243,372. The risk figure on the front page is the worst calendar year for a 60% stock and 40% bond mix, 1928 to 2025, from Vanguard's published historical index series, a fall of 26.9%. The method matches the approach used by the British Columbia Securities Commission's InvestRight investment fee calculator, so you can reproduce our figures against a regulator's own tool.
These are illustrations, not projections. They assume a steady return, which no real investment delivers, and a fee charged every year on the balance.
Conflicts of interest
We have one, and it is worth naming. We want you to subscribe, and the arithmetic on this site makes a case that subscribing is worthwhile. We manage that by publishing the method behind every number so you can check it, by never claiming a result we cannot show you the working for, and by saying plainly that if the numbers do not make the case for you, staying exactly where you are is a perfectly good answer.
Corrections
When we get something wrong we correct it and we record it, dated, on the open book. That page also lists everything we have described and not yet built.
Questions about any of this go to hello@honestadvice.ca.