OZELO™ began when Bryan wanted to give his son Logan a head start on investing.
Logan, at 10, had $550 saved up in our family “bank.” He understood that whatever he put into the bank he couldn’t touch — and we made sure he always kept some money on hand for the things kids want to buy.
One day, Logan asked if we could put his money in a real bank. We had a good conversation about what banks actually do, and he came around to the idea that the better move was to invest his money with our family’s advisor.
My wife and I have three children, and like a lot of families, we weren’t maximizing our yearly RESP contributions. After talking with our advisor, he outlined a plan: Logan could contribute to his own RESP by investing the money he’d saved. His $550 went into one fund, our daughter Chloe’s $250 into another, and my wife and I continued our monthly contributions to a third fund.
Once I explained it, Logan was genuinely excited — to watch his investment grow, and to know exactly which companies he owned a piece of. In one of our TableTalks, we set a goal together: save up a bit more to invest, and give it a full year to really see the power of investing.
Our advisor sent over a PDF of the fund he’d set up. At first glance, I knew it would be information overload for a 10-year-old. And going through it, I noticed something telling: nowhere did it name the companies inside the ETF — but it had a detailed breakdown of sector allocation.
What Logan was most interested in was the one thing missing.
With my background in cybersecurity and project management, I built a software that turned the ETF report into something Logan could understand. Around the same time, I kept hearing the same thing from a few people — my wife among them — that schools just don’t teach children enough about money and financial planning.
So I created a seven-year progressive curriculum: the Smart Investor Program. Each month, an email goes to the parent, meant to be opened and discussed with their child. Every one carries an update on the child’s portfolio, milestone trackers, a TableTalk section, and a Beyond the Ledger section. In Years 1–3, a few of those are case studies — one-page stories that explain a piece of finance in a way a child can understand — and grow from — with more than a few lessons tucked in for the adults too. Years 4–7 are all case studies, but with mini challenges added for the kids — a few in Year 4, growing in scope and ambition each year that follows.
What started as a way to teach one child to invest the smart way became something much more valuable. Logan, at 10, now has his own advisor — and when he finishes the Smart Investor Program, that advisor will still be right there beside him. From his very first paycheck, an aggressive percentage will go straight to investing, because that’s exactly what the program teaches. We call it the Golden Window: the years a young person is earning a paycheck while still living at home, with almost nothing they have to pay for — the rare moment to invest aggressively. When adult responsibilities arrive, the per-paycheck investing keeps going, just at a more appropriate rate.
I want every child to inherit the same head start my children are getting. The software was built so every family can have this opportunity — and every advisor becomes a hero in the story.
