Built by investors, for investors

I grew up in an immigrant family where personal finance was never part of the conversation. Not at home, not in high school, not in university. Nobody ever sat us down and explained how money actually works.

For a long time, investing felt like something rich people did. Something you figured out after you "made it," not the thing that actually helps you get there. When I moved out on my own, rent always felt too high, but honestly, I didn't even know what a reasonable number looked like. I just had no frame of reference for any of it. I deposited every paycheque into chequing for years. Didn't even know there were better options.

One day a bank teller I'd never met stopped and asked why I kept everything in chequing. My answer: "Where else would I put it?" The teller said: "Anything else. High interest savings, GICs, mutual funds, whatever." That one conversation changed everything.

That led to months of reading, researching, and slowly figuring things out. Moving money into low-cost mutual funds. Then seeing a balance of $5,520 in an account where I'd deposited $5,000. That $520 of "free money" was a turning point. It was the first time money had worked for me instead of just sitting there.

Over time, friends and family started asking for help with their finances. Some offered to pay management fees that were way too high, which is exactly the problem: too many people have no frame of reference for what's fair. A 2024 IFIC/Pollara survey found that a third of Canadian investors don't feel confident they understand the fees they pay. Is 1% good? Is 3% bad? Nobody teaches you this stuff.

I build Greenline with my co-founder Luis. He grew up in an immigrant family too, figured out personal finance entirely on his own, and had the same turning point I did: realizing how much changes once you understand where your money is going and what it's doing. We came at it from different directions, but landed in the same place.

Personal finance changed both our lives. It's what gave us the freedom to take time off to recover from burnout, to leave jobs that had run their course, and to support causes that matter to us. It's the reason we're able to build Greenline in the first place.

We weren't business students. We didn't work on Bay Street. We just figured this stuff out the hard way, and thought others shouldn't have to.

For years, we tracked everything in Mint. It was simple and it worked. Then we found out that using Mint (and most tools like it) was actually voiding our banking guarantees. The FCAC confirms it: sharing your credentials with third-party apps can break your bank's account agreement.

So we went back to spreadsheets. Formulas on top of formulas. Constant maintenance. It works, but it's exhausting. And the moment you try to expand your analysis, you risk breaking everything.

We kept thinking: there has to be a better way.

So we built one.