What Happens When People Feel Confident About Money

In the age of Trump, tariffs and TikTok, it’s an understatement to say that Canadians have money on their minds. Nearly two-thirds of us are more worried about our personal finances than we were a year ago. Some 43 per cent say they need help getting out of debt. More than 80 per cent find the financial world confusing, and fewer than half describe themselves as knowledgeable about money matters.

Many people are trying to demystify the situation, from #FinTok influencers trumpeting buzzy trends like “loud budgeting” and "cash stuffing", to fintech entrepreneurs launching and scaling fresh ways to empower people with financial tools and knowledge.

Smith Commerce alum Eva Wong, BCom’00, is in the latter camp. Wong is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Borrowell, a Toronto-based fintech firm that offers products and resources meant to help people get a better handle on their finances. The idea of democratizing money was a big part of why she decided to start the company alongside CEO Andrew Graham back in 2014. Wong never planned to be an entrepreneur, but as the business gained traction, it became hard for her to imagine doing anything else.

It helps that Borrowell has been an unquestionable success. What began with a single product—an online platform for unsecured consumer loans—has become a one-stop shop for Canadians to better understand and improve their experiences borrowing money, building credit and recalibrating their financial futures. Eleven years in, the company is one of the fastest-growing in the country, with more than 100 employees and upwards of three million users. “It’s amazing how rewarding it’s been,” she says. “I am just so proud of the team and what we’ve been able to build.”

Running a hit fintech has given Wong a unique perspective on the money issues keeping Canadians up at night, and a deep understanding of the difference that good information can make. Wong spoke with Smith Business Insight contributor Deborah Aarts about what happens when people up their financial know-how—and why it matters.

What drew you to the fintech space?

I always had an interest in personal finance. I remember reading The Wealthy Barber by David Chilton when I was in high school. I don’t know where I would have discovered it, to be honest, but I remember finding it approachable and captivating. I liked that it made personal finance very simple.

As I got older, I was that person who had friends over to do taxes together. It was always a side interest. It was never anything that I thought I would do professionally.

When Andrew started talking about pursuing a startup in fintech, I thought it sounded really exciting. But more than that, to me, it offered the ability to do something that was good for the world. There is a real social element to what we do, and the prospect of building a big business around it seemed like an interesting combination.

Tell me more about that social element. What is the problem you’re working to solve?

When we were starting out, we often talked about how ironic it was that the people who had a lot of money or assets were the ones who were able to get financial advice, because they could pay for it. The people who really needed it didn’t have the money. It felt like an injustice in the world.

That’s been one of the very cool things about technology and how readily available information is today. Making knowledge more available just makes things a bit more fair.

The flipside of having so much information at our fingertips is that it can all feel very overwhelming. People can struggle to know what to believe or what to trust. What’s involved in making that more manageable for people? 

You’re right, there’s so much information out there. And so much of it is not personalized to the audience, which is a big part of the problem. The technology now exists to be able to really personalize information. We’ve been doing it over time, and new capabilities will allow us to do it much better, and at scale.

For instance, sometimes people don’t even know what they want, when it comes to their financial goals or what is most important to them. They need to chat it out a little bit. With Gen AI, you can create a chat interface that can help give people information that’s relevant to their financial situation now, and what they want to achieve in the future. You can provide real personalization, and you can do it at scale.

That strikes me as valuable, when you’re dealing with a subject as sensitive as money.

Yes. But trust in the brand is hugely important too. That’s something I underestimated in the beginning.

When it comes to opening up about finances, people—especially Canadians—are cautious. It makes sense: They want to know their personal information is safe and that the information they get is accurate.

I now understand how hard it is to build that trust, and also how easy it is to lose it. You can’t just fly by the seat of your pants. You have to work constantly to build it.

How do you do that? 

We’re very conscious of the language that we use. Here’s an example: Our mission is to help Canadians feel confident about money. The use of the word “feel” was very deliberate, because we know this is an emotional matter. What we do is not just about living debt free or tracking financial metrics. It’s about how we make people feel. 

Also, we never want what we say to be paternalistic, or to play on emotions of shame or fear. We try to be very positive: To point out the things that people are doing well. We like to give people credit for things they don’t generally get credit for, like keeping their credit utilization down, or paying all their bills on time. It’s about providing people with positive dopamine hits for doing things in the short term that will help them in the long term. This can all create positive feedback loops.

Why such a focus on feelings? Isn’t money mostly about dollars and cents?

One of the biggest things I’ve learned from being in this space is just how emotional money can be. People have all these feelings around it, often stemming from how they grew up. A lot of people associate money with shame. Or they feel embarrassed about where they are. It can be very complicated, and it can create stress.

About once a quarter, we have one of our members come and join our weekly all-hands meeting to share a little bit about their story. During one of these meetings, one woman told us that her earliest memory is of her mother sitting at the kitchen table stressing out about paying bills. Imagine what that does to your outlook about money. And so many people have a version of that story. 

Can negative feelings about money keep people from taking control of their finances?

It’s a bit like an ostrich putting its head in the sand. If you feel shame, you often just want to push it down a bit deeper so you don’t have to deal with it. It can feel too big, too much, or too emotional to start digging into. And I think that can be a barrier.

Social media is now stacked with people talking about their money issues—warts and all. Does this help?

I think so. There is a lot being done right now to destigmatize knowledge gaps related to money, especially on social media, with the popularity of #FinTok. There are a pros and cons to the trend. The advice of people posting may not always be correct, but I do think it’s good that people are talking about their finances. They’re normalizing it as a thing that can be talked about openly. Many are very vulnerable in sharing where they’re at, which I think can be helpful in letting others know they’re not alone. So, I think that’s a helpful trend. 

How else can better access to financial knowledge change people’s lives? 

We hear some really positive stories. We recently heard from someone who once had a credit score of 400, which, if you’re familiar with credit scores, is pretty low. They started using a Borrowell credit builder product. That led them to start reading our blog posts, listening to our advice and tracking their score. Their score is now 700 and they just got approved for a credit card, which they can now use to continue to build their credit. They really turned it around.