PORTFOLIO PROFILE: JESSICA HOLMES
Planning for future is no laughing matter
Comedian Jessica Holmes, of CBC’s Air Farce Live, has two financial goals: a comfortable retirement, and the ability to help others
BY MARLENE HABIB
On any given Friday, Canadian comedy diva Jessica Holmes serves up her unique sense of humour on Air Farce Live, the long-running CBC Television show that spins everyday news facts and faces into 30 minutes of laughter. And one recent episode of the spoof-happy program showed that no topic, no matter how potentially sensitive, is off-limits.
“Hi, and welcome to Air Farce Live,” Ms. Holmes bellowed to viewers of the Feb. 1 episode. “Tonight’s show is brought to you by the Toronto Stock Exchange Wild Ride. Up and down so quick, you’re bound to lose your lunch and your savings.”
Volatile investments and roller-coaster markets may provide fodder for laughs, but don’t let Ms. Holmes’s infectious humour – including characterizations of such ditzy dames as Liza Minnelli and Paris Hilton – fool you.
Fun and frivolity may dominate her television and standup sketches, but this 34-year-old entertainer and writer gets serious when it comes to her family’s financial and personal growth.
Foremost on the list of financial must-dos for this Ottawa native and her husband, Scott Yaphe, a Montreal-born actor and voiceover artist she met at Toronto’s Ryerson University, is to contribute regularly to registered retirement savings plans while also donating to various charities.
“Debt can be demoralizing and tricky to get out of, so after I paid off my student loan, we vowed, other than our mortgage, never to lose a dime on interest,” Ms. Holmes said in an interview during a break from Air Farce Live rehearsals at a studio in the CBC’s Toronto building.
By the numbers
$102,628
Average value of RRSPs of Canadians 55 years and older. $900,000
Average amount Canadians think they will need to live comfortably in retirement. $1-million+
Amount men think they will need to retire comfortably.
$675,000
Amount women cite for comfortable retirement living. Source: Royal Bank of Canada 18th annual RRSP Poll
Ms. Holmes’s mother is a social worker and her father works as a computer programmer for the National Research Council in Ottawa, where her three older brothers also live. After she moved to Toronto, the up-and-coming young performer took the RRSP plunge.
“I bought my first RRSP at age 25 – when I saw a bank ad in the subway showing how much less you have to invest for retirement [in later life] if you start in your 20s,” she recalls.
“At the time, I wasn’t working, so I started small. But even that little bit made me feel rich and more financially in control ...
“My biggest financial lesson was when I realized how empowering it feels to save money by living below your means.”
In recent years, her pursuit of financial security has become a team effort with her husband, with whom she has a daughter, Alexa Lola, now just over a year old.
Ms. Holmes says she and her husband “max out our RRSPs each year, automatically through our union [the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists]. And a few times a year, we send everything we’ve saved to our financial adviser to invest separately, knowing that we might draw on that money if there was an emergency or slow period.”
Although she prefers not to detail how much she and her husband have saved or specify the types of assets they hold, Ms. Holmes says about 40 per cent of her RRSPs are in bonds, “bought back when interest rates were higher,” and 60 per cent are in equities.
Her separate investments with their financial adviser, Melanie Segal of BMO Nesbitt Burns, are all equities. “Bonds are taxed at a higher rate, so the bonds are sheltered in the RRSP,” the financially astute entertainer notes.
She adds that her investment choices are also guided by her conscience: “I don’t buy tobacco stocks on principle, even though they’ve done well.”
Ms. Holmes says she approached Ms. Segal (who was initially her husband’s adviser) to become her investment guru once she started working steadily. “I said, ‘Invest it in whatever you’d invest in for yourself, and I’ll see you when I’m 65.’ But she made me go through a series of questions to find out how nervous an investor I am, what my financial goals are, etcetera,” Ms. Holmes says.
“In the end, we realized I was quite conservative – I wanted to guarantee money would be there when I retire, so I can avoid my recurring fear of having to live on cat food when I retire.
“My husband is more of a risk taker, so he sees higher highs with the odd pitfall,” she adds. “But I’ve been steadily climbing for a few years, and now I sleep at night. No cat-food nightmares.”
She also draws comfort from her devotion to helping others. Long before she became a comedian, actor, screenwriter and a keynote speaker (on the power of laughter), a 21-year-old Holmes embarked on a year and a half of missionary work in Venezuela for the Mormon church (of which she is no longer a member).
She says she and her fellow missionaries had a fixed budget, with “no perks,” allowing for only bulk food and transportation, an experience that set the groundwork for her waste-not, want-not attitude today.
“It made me very disciplined when I went hungry one month after running out of money,” she recalls. “When I got back to Canada, I was shocked at how much we have. We don’t have a clue how rich we are, simply because there’s a roof over our head that isn’t made from car hoods, and spare food in the cupboard. It made me not want to waste anything.”
She says she became more financially liberated “as I enjoyed the perks of extra income.”
After university, she began performing standup and comedic monologues at local clubs, landed appearances at the Just for Laughs International Comedy Festival in Montreal in 1999, and then joined Toronto’s legendary Second City theatre as both a writer and performer.
In her next project, a one-woman Comedy Now! special titled Holmes Alone, she played a range of characters; the show earned her a Gemini Award nomination and led to her popular sketch series The Holmes Show in 2002.
After working on the pilot for a 2004 sitcom called XPM, Air Farce’s producers snatched her up as a regular in December, 2003, when she became the first new cast member since the show began 11 years earlier.
“Jessica is a tremendous fit with Air Farce,” one of the show’s producers, Don Ferguson, said at the time. “She is a wonderfully skilled and versatile comic who invents characters and impersonates the famous with ease.”
Recently, Ms. Holmes got a reality check that was no laughing matter. “A recent trip to Honduras reminded me of our indulgences,” she says. “Now I think I have a good balance of buying what I need, enjoying myself and donating money in place of extravagant gifts.
“When my husband and I have special occasions, when we would normally buy something extravagant for each other, we calculate what those things might have cost, and send the money to charity. Last year, we fed 56 families in Africa for a week, through World Vision, instead of buying anniversary bling.”
Her latest work projects include gathering stories from Canadians, including through her website (www.jessicaholmes.net), on how laughter has enriched their lives or helped them through tough times.
On the home front, she says she and her husband hope to have more children, and that their smart spending and charitable side rub will rub off on Alexa. “We’re also hoping she’ll pick up on our example of living well below your means – that’s the secret to feeling rich, even if you’re not.”
As for retirement, Ms. Holmes and Mr. Yaphe don’t plan to cash in those RRSPs any time soon.
“We always count our blessings – we feel really lucky to make a living at what we love…,” Ms. Holmes says, adding: “Acting is such a fun job. Scott and I would only consider partial retirement.”
Special to the Globe and Mail
© Copyright 2009 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
“Hi, and welcome to Air Farce Live,” Ms. Holmes bellowed to viewers of the Feb. 1 episode. “Tonight’s show is brought to you by the Toronto Stock Exchange Wild Ride. Up and down so quick, you’re bound to lose your lunch and your savings.”