About The New School of Finance™
Our philosophy
We don’t sell financial products. Period. Full stop. So you know that the financial advice we give is genuinely best suited for your needs. Independent and unbiased financial advice is critical when making short-term or long-term financial plans. This is the beauty of the fee-for-service/advice-only planning model!
We are realistic about financial plans. It’s important for you to have a sustainable plan that makes sense given your unique situation. We want to push you to be your best financial self, but we are also aware that life happens, and things can change. Let us help! Together we can create a customized, realistic plan that will help you sleep at night knowing you’re on the right path.
The old school financial planning model is to produce a comprehensive (and expensive) retirement financial plan, as a 30+ page printed document with beautiful graphs. This document usually ends up sitting in a filing cabinet collecting dust. Plans for real life don’t get implemented like this! The reality is that financial situations change a lot over a lifetime, rendering this large and expensive document useless.
We believe that financial planning is all about the short-term action items. During our sessions, we do map out your long-term goals by following a systematic discovery process to assess your current financial situation, your goals, and constraints. However, we also use customizable tools (that you get to keep!) to create easy-to-implement action items that will move you towards those larger goals in the short run.
Think of your financial life as a road trip, from St. John’s, Newfoundland (where you are now) to Victoria, British Columbia (happily retired).
Maybe Ontario is where you buy a home (if you’re into that), and Saskatchewan is where you have babies (if you’re into that). The typical comprehensive plan will look at the entire map of Canada, and draw the most efficient route from Newfoundland to Victoria, but that’s it. What if you get a flat tire (aka lose your job) in New Brunswick? Or you decide to take a detour (aka start your own business) in Alberta?
Our advice-only financial planning model starts by looking at the big map to draw out the rough itinerary, but then it also maps out what to do in each province, and how many kilometres you should be averaging a day to ensure you get to BC by your desired time. Since our meetings are affordable, we can continue to check in with your progress at every major crossroads to map out the next section of your trip, and confirm that the overall route still makes sense — maybe you want to shift direction and head for Mexico! Regardless of what comes your way, we’ll help you get to where you want to go, and you’ll always know the action items to get you there.
Meet the team
Shannon Lee Simmons, CFP
Financial Planner
& Tax Preparer
Shannon is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® professional, Chartered Investment Manager (CIM), life coach, media personality, bestselling author, and founder of the award-winning New School of Finance™.
Shannon is widely recognized as a trailblazer in the Canadian financial planning industry. She is a regular contributor for the Globe and Mail, a personal finance columnist for CBC’s Metro Morning, and a financial expert on The Marilyn Denis Show.
Liz Schieck, CFP
Financial Planner
& Tax Preparer
Elisabeth (Liz) is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® professional, Ontario Certified Teacher (OCT), media personality and financial literacy advocate. As a public speaker she has travelled across Canada speaking about all kinds of financial issues — everything from freelancing to investing to retirement planning to basic budgeting. Liz specializes in retirement planning, household financial planning, investment education and small business planning. Liz’s past work as an educator informs how she approaches financial planning; she’s genuinely passionate about making finances more accessible for clients — and dare we say, even fun? She’s a nerd at heart who, simply put, loves helping people figure out all the messy money stuff to make their big goals happen.
Kathleen Daunt, CFP
Financial Planner
Kathleen is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® who loves working on the frontlines of financial planning and has been at The New School of Finance™ since 2018. Before that, she worked for several years at one of Canada’s major banks. She is passionate about providing unbiased advice and helping folks feel empowered and supported to help strengthen their relationship with money. Being both queer and having a child on the spectrum, she comes with a ton of experience and understanding and believes that personalized advice is key to reaching your goals.
Kathleen is like a financial doctor. She is passionate about helping people find financial wellness, and will set you up with a plan that brings you peace of mind. She will take care of you!
Colleen Auriemma
Director of Client Services
Colleen heads up our client service department. She was the first employee at The New School of Finance™ (no big deal!!!!). Not only did she drink the New School Kool-Aid, she helped make it. She is the glue that holds our New School team and operations together. We would be lost without her.
Colleen used to be a professional ballet dancer (her posture is outstanding) and is for sure sitting on a swiss ball, jumping up and down or marching on the spot while she is emailing you… she can’t sit still.
Linn Øyen Farley
Tax Preparer
Linn has made a career out of demystifying technical and intimidating things by explaining them in a clear and approachable way, especially to artsworkers and accidental entrepreneurs. She’s a self-employment enthusiast (she’s never had a “normal job”) who loves the admin and financial side of running a business almost as much as the day-to-day work.
Discovering The New School of Finance™ early on made a huge difference in her life, so she was thrilled to join the team in 2020 and make tax time a little less overwhelming for everyone she works with. And yes, she would always like to see pictures of your cats.