September 24, 2026 · 6 min read
Who are you picturing?
“Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else.”
Galatians 6:4
From Dan's Desk
This week I published a guide with a chart in it: the median net worth, income and retirement savings for every decade of a Canadian man's working life. Anyone who opens it looks for his own age first. So did I.
Here is my confession from that row. I trained in financial services and once held a mutual funds licence, and I have yet to pull my own CPP statement. I committed to doing it this week. By the time you read this I will either have the number or be out of excuses.
A chart like that will tell you where you are standing, and that is all it was built to do. Most of us ask it for more, and the driveway across the street is happy to answer.
From Wise and Faithful
Money Goals for Each Decade: 20s to 60s, With Real Canadian Numbers
Statistics Canada's real figures for net worth, income, RRSP balances and giving, from your twenties to your sixties, with the Steward's Map moves that belong to each decade. Read the medians, because a few very wealthy families drag the averages upward. The last section hands you two numbers to look up, and both take a few minutes.
The Comparison Trap: Why Your Neighbour's Driveway Is Ruining Your Budget
A new truck arrives across the street, you watch it from the kitchen window, and by the time you take the garbage out that night your own truck feels three years older. This essay is about that evening. Scripture's old word for it is coveting, which means wanting what belongs to someone else badly enough that it starts making your decisions, and the tenth commandment puts it on the same list as murder. It ends with a thirty-day practice that costs nothing.
Worth Your Time
[Tool] Statement of Contributions to the Canada Pension Plan
Government of Canada
Read
This is where I am sending myself, so I will send you too. Sign in to My Service Canada Account and you get your full record of CPP contributions and an estimate of your monthly pension. The government asks you to check it against your T4 slips, since a missing year of earnings can shrink what you receive later. Most of the effort is remembering your password.
[Article] "Love What Others Have": The False Gospel of Covetousness
Jon Bloom, Desiring God
Read
Bloom draws a line worth keeping. Covetousness wants what the other guy has, and envy is angry that he has it. Both of them can stand at a kitchen window. It is an older piece and it pairs well with this week's essay.
[Article] Your Dad Friends Aren't Optional
Kevin Maguire, ParentData, June 2026
Read
Maguire writes honestly about the loneliness that came with his own postpartum depression as a new father, and about building what he calls a dadvisory board. Comparison feeds on a man who has nobody to tell his real numbers to. One friend who knows your actual situation will do more for you than any benchmark.
The Week in One Number
28%
That is the share of employed Canadians living paycheque to paycheque, meaning they would struggle to meet their obligations if a single pay arrived one week late. It is up from 24% last year and the highest in five years, from the National Payroll Institute's 2026 survey of 2,196 working Canadians, released Tuesday. The same survey puts 44% of workers in its financially stressed group.
Hold that beside the driveway. More than one in four working people on your street could be a late paycheque from trouble, and none of it shows from the road.
Worth running: the Emergency Fund Calculator, to see how many weeks your own buffer would actually carry you.
Source: National Payroll Institute, 2026 Annual Survey of Working Canadians, via Benefits Canada.
Good News About the Good News
The Canadian Bible Society gave out 631,298 Bibles, Testaments and Scripture portions across Canada in 2024. That was up 20.1% on the year before, which was itself up 22.5% on the year before that.
The demand is coming from youth camps, prisons, long-term care homes, newcomer churches and Indigenous ministries, in more than 70 languages, among them Persian, Punjabi, Tagalog and Plautdietsch. In a country that is supposed to be finished with the Bible, the requests keep climbing. These are 2024 figures, older than most of what lands in this letter, and I was still glad to find them.
Source: Canadian Bible Society.
Coming Next Week
Next Thursday, Scripture for Your Wallet comes back: one passage, what it says in its own context, and one way to live it before the weekend.
The Close
Go back to the kitchen window for a second. The man across the street has a new truck, and that is all you know about him. His payment is a mystery to you, and so is whether he is one of the 28%. Your own numbers you know from the inside, down to the line of credit you would rather not think about.
Paul told the Galatians to test their own work and leave the comparing alone. He knew we would need telling.
So look up your own two numbers this week, the TFSA room and the CPP statement, and write them beside your decade. That is where you are standing, and a man can only walk from where he actually stands.
What you are worth was settled by Jesus, at a price no truck comes near, for the man at the top of the chart and the man at the bottom of it. Our wealth is in the cross, and oh, how great those riches are, far past anything we could measure.
Grace and peace,
Dan
P.S. If a friend has gone a little silent about money lately, forward this to him. He may be doing the same math from his own kitchen window.
Which move are you on? The Steward's Map lays out all eight, and this week's guide puts a decade beside each one. Just hit reply and tell me the number. I read every one.