Eating Your Way to Wealth

It’s long been my belief that there is money to be made in the kitchen. Maybe you start a profitable food blog like Delish D’Lites, or maybe you bake cakes for weddings as a side hustle. For most of us, the money-saving magic of the kitchen comes from eating most meals at home and packing lunches/snacks for the office. I like to think of this as the eating your way to wealth option. You have to eat, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get wealthy while doing so.

When I got my first Grown-Up job twenty-odd years ago, I knew that one of the hallmarks was buying coffee and a muffin every morning before work. There was also a mid-morning coffee, eating lunch at a nearby restaurant or kiosk, and an afternoon coffee. It was a lot of money. Granted, back then I was only paying $1 or $1.50 for each coffee… yet I was earning less than a third of what I earn now. Everything’s relative, right?

After a few years of eating so much food away from home and learning about FIRE, I decided to eat breakfast in my own kitchen every morning. It took a few years, but now I rarely ever go to the coffee shop before starting my day. Once breakfast was under my belt, I started cooking more dinners at home so I’d have leftovers for lunch the next day. That switch took a much longer time to make, much to my surprise. However, I’m doing a lot better.

Back in 2014, I found a darling neoprene lunch bag in a souvenir shop and couldn’t stop myself from buying it. As silly-looking as mine is, I happily fill it with my mid-morning snack and something tasty for lunch then carry it with me to and from the office every day.

I’ll go to my grave believing that cooking my own food and taking it with me to the office has helped me get into the Double Comma Club. Now, I’m not trying to convince you that eating from my own kitchen was the most important part of my Make-Blue-Lobster-Wealthy Plan. It wasn’t, not by a long shot! Staying out of debt and turning my former mortgage payments into investment contributions for the past 15+ years were the main drivers underpinning the success of my plan. If I had to guess, I’d say that maybe 15% of my success came from eating my own food. The money that was spent at grocery store went a lot farther than it would have if I’d spent it in restaurants and fast-food places.

Being the First Born Daughter of My Mother means that I make up a lot of my own recipes. I call them head-recipes. I don’t really write them down, which is too bad. No matter how delicious one of my head-recipes is, I know that I’ll never taste it the same way again because I never write down how much I use of any particular ingredient. It’s different every time. Lasagna, brussel sprouts, hamburgers, and meat sauce immediately come to mind. Every time I make these, they taste slightly different than the last time. One of my favourite head recipes to mix leftover rice with golden raisins and walnuts, then heat it up the microwave for 60-90 seconds. Delicious!

It pains me to admit this but it took me years to learn how to make pancakes. One day, I was walking down the grocery aisle and saw box after box of frozen waffles and pancakes. I realized that if a pancake could be mass-produced and frozen, there was no reason why I couldn’t make them for myself. (For the record, my parents did make pancakes but only very occasionally. We were more of Cream of Wheat family when I was growing up.

However, there are other recipes that I never would have created in my wildest dreams. In case you’re curious about what I’ve been eating over the years, here’s a list of a few of the recipes I’ve found online and have made more than once. They’re my go-to’s when I’m doing meal prep on the weekends, or when I’ve offered to bring a dessert or appetizer to a potluck or a party.

Here are some of my favourite recipes that came from online sources:

Eating your way to wealth is one of the best ways to get there. If you can’t cook, start small. Toast and peanut butter is not hard. You don’t need to “know how to cook” to operate a toaster. Get up a few minutes earlier and have breakfast before you leave for work. Myself, I like instant coffee but my mother and best friend swear by their French press machines. Bottom line, drink your first cup of coffee of the day at home. The same applies to tea.

Lunch is the next logical meal to master in your kitchen. Sandwiches aren’t hard to make, nor are they cumbersome to transport. Get yourself a lunch bag and start filling it with food for the day. When you make dinner, ensure there’s enough prepared for leftovers. I enjoy a good lasagna every now and then. One lasagna leads to 10-12 meals, depending on the size of each portion. I don’t eat it for days on end. I have some for dinner and some for the next day’s lunch, but the rest is frozen and put in the freezer for another time. Most pastas in meat or tomato sauces will freeze beautifully and make for delicious meals.

You can eat extremely well in your own home. Take the time to learn how to feed yourself. It will taste so much better than most of what you can buy through the drive-thru. You deserve to eat your way to wealth, so start today!

Just Start Today

This is going to be a short post. I want you to start funding your dreams today.

Yes. Today. Start today. Don’t wait until tomorrow. If you’re reading this post on your computer or your phone or your tablet, then you’re capable of going to your bank and opening an account. Or you can go to a different bank and open an account. It truly doesn’t matter.

Open the new account. Set up an automatic transfer to fund the new account. Start with a $1 per day. That’s a weekly transfer of $7, or a bi-weekly transfer of $14. If $1/day seems ridiculous, then start with $5/day. Again, that would be $35 per week or $70 every two weeks. Again, the choice of how much to transfer every day is yours but you have to start today.

If you’ve been here for any length of time, you know that I like to preach that you should identify your priorities first. I’m starting to waver on that. Priorities are extremely important, but many people have a lot of trouble identifying what they hold most dear. If you’re a person who doesn’t know what they want, then you should still be saving and investing your money. It might take you 5 years to figure out what you really want, and that’s okay. Waiting 5 years to start saving and investing is not okay. That’s 5 years of time that you will never get back. It’s better that you’re saving and investing while also trying to figure out what you want.

Start today… even if you don’t know everything. You’ll learn along the way. Personal finance isn’t too hard for to you learn. You can learn as much as you want and at your own pace. Once the automatic transfer is in place, you’ll be setting aside money on a regular basis. As you learn more, you’ll make more informed choices for your money. You’ll grow confident in your ability to make wise decisions with your cash. Don’t wait until you feel that you’ve “learned it all” before you start saving and investing. Speaking from personal experience, I can assure you that you will never feel that you’ve learned everything there is to know.

The better route is to start today, never stop learning, and put what you learn into practice. As you know better, you’ll do better.

No one has ever regretted having a little money set aside. Life will throw challenges your way. Having money in the bank means that you can deal with the financial side of those challenges with a certain amount of ease. The time to build the ark is before it starts to rain. So just start today. Open the account – set up the transfer – keep learning about yourself and what you want your money to do for you. That’s it. Everything else is details.

Money – How to be Both Ruthless and Indulgent

First off, you should know that I’m a huge fan Ramit Sethi. He’s the author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich. One of the things he preaches is that everyone should be pursuing their rich life. According to Ramit, this involves being both ruthless and indulgent when it comes to your money. This means that you should be ruthless about cutting expenses that don’t mean anything to you. By the same token, you should indulge in those purchases that allow you to live your rich life.

I love this philosophy! It so very much aligns with my belief that you should prioritize your money in a way that brings your dreams to life. You work hard for your money. In turn, you should be spending your money in ways that satisfy your heart’s truest desires. You are the only person who knows what those desires are. Nobody else can accurately fill in the details of what you want with as much precision as you can. You should be answering the following questions every week, and taking the baby steps necessary to get to the end result that you want.

  • What brings you the most joy?
  • When were you the happiest in your life?
  • Are there things you want to see-do-explore-taste-experience during your limited time on this little blue ball we all call home?
  • How are you going to make those things a reality?
  • Do you need money to make your dreams come true? If yes, how much?

Spend Money Where It Matters Most

I’ll use myself as an example. Pre-pandemic, I loved to travel to new places. Each year, I would spend thousands on overseas trips and I did not hesitate to try new things/excursions. I had no idea if I would ever be in that part of the world again, so I indulged myself and said “Yes!” to whatever was on offer.

Saying yes to an indulgent whim was how I was able to be one of the very first visitors to a magnificent, family-owned olive farm when I was in Spain. Chocolate ice cream drizzled with extra virgin olive oil would never have touched my palate otherwise… and I am ever so glad that it did! While in Ireland, I indulged myself after casually strolling into the most wonderfully smelling leather good store in Galway and buying a beautiful wallet that I use to this day. And Italy…ah, Italia! A beautiful, glorious country where I left no carb undiscovered and drank atleast two glasses of wine each day. I said “Yes!” to everything while I was there.

How did I do that? I did it by saving money before heading to the airport. Flights, accommodation, food, and souvenirs were all paid for in advance. The spending money I took with me could be spent freely on whatever happened to catch my eye. Travel is one of those areas where I indulge with abandon because it’s important to me. A nice chunk of every paycheque goes into an account designated for travel. That way, I have money waiting for me when I get itchy feet. Travel is part of my rich life, as Ramit Sethi would say.

Stop Spending on Stuff That Doesn’t Increase Happiness

I’ll be very honest. It became a lot easier to save for my heart’s truest desires after I took a switchblade to my budget. I cut out spending on stuff that didn’t make me particularly happy. The first thing to go was cable TV.

I’m a cord-cutter of long-standing. Truth be told, I haven’t much missed channel-after-channel of nothing to watch. Nearly a decade ago, I realized that cable TV is terrible. The shows on streaming services aren’t much better, but they are definitely way cheaper. For the same quality, a whole lot less money, and slightly less variety, I could still watch TV in my spare time. I had to ask myself why I was paying so much every month for cable TV, something that I didn’t particularly enjoy? Since I’m not a huge sports fan, there was really no reason for me to pay for cable every month. So I stopped paying for it.

The second thing to go was breakfast from the coffee shop. Way back in the day, I would buy a coffee and a muffin on my way into the office. It was my breakfast, and it was only $6/day. That was $30 per week, which was $1500 per year. I planned to work for 25 years, so that’s $37,500… Wow!!! After doing the math, I realized that I didn’t want to spend that much of my life’s energy on coffee and muffins. Investing $1500 per year at 6% for 25 years yields $82,296.77. Hmmm….coffee or satisfying my deep and abiding desire to have a very comfortable retirement? Decisions, decisions!

It should come as no surprise that I choose to wake up a little bit earlier so that I could eat breakfast at home. Guess what? I’m perfectly capable of baking my own muffins and making my own coffee. Now that I’ve started doing more meal prep each week, I’ve even started making pancakes and eating a couple in the morning before I leave my house. If I can buy frozen, processed pancakes from the grocery store, there’s no reason why I can’t make and freeze my own. Who doesn’t like a warm breakfast in the morning?

Getting to my office is atleast 30 minutes in one direction. Parking that started out at $5/day years ago is now up to $25/day, depending on the location. Each year, the cost of parking goes by $1-$3. Was $5 or $6 per day really such a hardship? When I was younger, the answer was “No”… but I had to admit that spending $12/day – parking and breakfast – was $60 per week! On top of parking, I had to fill my tank more often and I had more wear & tear on my vehicle. It was very, very easy to switch over to taking transit. Believe me when I say that $108.50 for a monthly bus pass is much, much cheaper than $250 or more for monthly parking. My gas costs are much lower and traffic problems are someone else’s to manage.

In order to find the money for one of my deepest desires, I ruthlessly cut my spending in these three areas. I don’t regret my choice one little bit! Missing season after season of Survivor has not diminished my life in any way, shape, or form. (Honestly, how is that show still on the air?) As for sports, sometimes my local sports team wins and sometimes they lose. Either way, I hear all about it during the morning-after chitchat on the radio and at the water-cooler. And should my local sports team be so lucky as to make it to the final game, the one for all the marbles and a year’s worth of glory that comes with winning The Big Game, I usually watch that game at the home of a friend for the low, low price of bringing snacks and dessert.

Are You Willing To Be Ruthless And Indulgent?

You’re the only one who can honestly answer that question for yourself. Whatever you decide is up to you, since you’re the one who has to live with the answers. I’m not here to tell you how to amend your current spending. Rather, I’m suggesting that you consciously decide how to spend your money so that you can maximize its use to acquire as much of what you really, really want as possible.

If you’re already satisfied with your spending, bravo!

However, if you think your money is going to something that doesn’t get you any closer to living the life you want, then be ruthless. Cut out whatever spending that doesn’t make you happy. It’s worth experimenting with cutting such expenditure(s) from your life for a little while to see how it feels. After all, the purveyor of the whatever-it-is that you trimmed from your budget will always happily take you back as a customer. And if you find that you can live without the aforementioned whatever-it-is, then you can redirect that money towards indulging on the things that bring you the most joy.

Figure out what it is that you want most and start arranging your money so that you can get it. Being both ruthless and indulgent with your money is a very effective way to ensure that your heart’s desires become your lived reality.

I Need to Work on Getting Better at Budgeting!

Earlier this year, I decided to try my hand at budgeting. Some of the bloggers I follow online repeatedly state that having a budget is integral to managing your money. I’m always willing to learn and improve how I handle my own money. Since I work hard for it, I don’t want to waste a single nickel if I can avoid it. After hearing about OhhYouBudget, I watched a few of her videos on Instagram and TikTok before purchasing the budgeting dashboard. It’s been 3.5 months now, and I’ve learned a few things.

Budgeting is very definitely not the same as tracking your expenses. I’ve been tracking my expenses since 2016. That was the year I created 2 spreadsheets – one for my household/recurring expenses and another one for my day-to-day variable expenses. I would spend money, record my expenditures on the appropriate spreadsheet, and go on with my life. At the end of the year, I had a pretty good idea of how much I’d spent and what percentage of my annual spending was covered by my dividend income.

It’s a whole different ballgame with a budget. You see, the budget requires me to say in advance how much I’m going to spend in the categories of my choosing. Then I’m supposed to spend only that amount of money in each category. This where I face a serious challenge.

Never in my life have I limited myself to spending a certain amount in a given category. My #1 rule for spending my money was to never spend more than I earn. My #2 rule was to spend however I wanted after my automatic transfers sent funds to pre-determined destinations. You know – the emergency fund, the sinking funds, and the investment/retirement accounts. So long as I only spent whatever was leftover after the transfers went through, it didn’t matter to me under which category the money was spent. I honestly and truly believed that I was pretty good at managing my money.

Enter the budgeting dashboard to show me that I might need to change my perspective.

I suck at budgeting.

To say that it is not going well for me would be an understatement.

First off, I consistently overspend in the groceries category. I’m doing more meal prep, which means taking a list when I go grocery shopping. Not to brag too much, but I don’t waste food. I eat what I cook. I freeze various things for later use. Since I really hate cooking every day, I portion out my meals so that there’s always something tasty to take for lunch or eat for dinner. Yet somehow, I am always going over my budgeted amount for groceries.

Secondly, my MISC category is a wildcard. I allot a decent amount to this category. Some months, I spend nearly nothing. Yet the next month means that I’ve spent way more than planned. How does one predict MISC expenses? Am I not using that category properly? I have an emergency fund and multiple sinking funds for large, anticipated purchases so rest assured that my MISC fund is not being used for those kinds of expenditures.

Thirdly, I have to admit that I don’t say no to myself except when it comes to dining out. Planned meals with friends is one area where I don’t skimp. I have money allocated for that. Stopping at the drive-thru on the way home from work is verboten. I’ve stopped doing that because the reality is that I have food at home, and the stuff at home is healthier for me.

In order for this budget to work, I need to limit myself. I really, really dislike this aspect of budgeting.

Up until I started using this budget, I was very proud of myself. Automatic transfers funded my priorities from each and every paycheque. Whatever I had left over, I spent however I wished and my credit card bill was paid in full each month. I felt very good about how I handled money.

Then I decided to try and use a budget! Man, oh man! I’ve really been knocked down a peg or two. Every time I update that dashboard and see all the red, I feel badly about myself. This budget is telling me that I’m doing money wrong. I’ll admit that it’s a burr under my saddle. How is it possible that I’ve been doing money wrong all these years yet I’ve still managed to create a 5-figure dividend cashflow and to become a member of the Double Comma Club?

A Few Key Take-Aways

Even though I suck at budgeting, I’ve learned a few things about myself and how I handle money.

There is no perfect budget. Each month, I get to tweak my numbers as I see fit. The budgeting dashboard that I use comes with various graphs and charts, and I really do love them! They’re easy-to understand, visual representations of where I spend my money each month. I can tell you that a vast majority of my money goes to savings and investment accounts. And if I simply cut back on those contributions, I wouldn’t be going over-budget my other categories.

It only took two months of seeing lots and lots of red for me to ask myself the following: “Am I going to cut back on my monthly savings & investing?” And the answer I’ve arrived at is: “No, I’m not going to do that.”

While I might hate being in the red in multiple categories on my dashboard, the bottom line is that I am not going into debt every month. The credit card bill gets paid in full every single month, and that’s what matters most to me. Should there come a time when I have to choose between earning 5%-6% on my investments and paying 29.9% to my credit card company, then I’ll cut back on my monthly savings and investing to pay that debt. After all, it makes no sense to pay 30% to a credit card company if I’m only earning 6% on my investments!

Even though I spend too much in a few categories each month, there are some categories where I spend considerably less than I’d planned. Surely that signals that I’m getting pretty good at budgeting certain things.

Another thing to be noted is that my budge has nothing to do with my new worth. I’m only tracking my paycheque income on this budget, not my entire income. I also earn dividends and capital gains from my investments, but that money is separate from my salary income. My dividends accrue in another account, but I don’t use those to pay for my current expenses. They’re on a dividend re-investment plan (DRIP). If I absolutely had no other choice, I could use my dividends to supplement my paycheque. Even though I can’t get my budget to balance every month, I’m still earning passive income and my net worth is increasing over time.

I think that being good at budgeting is helpful to building wealth, but I don’t think it’s essential to doing so. Other factors are so much more important when it comes to increasing your net worth and benefitting from long-term investments. In my humble opinion, a budget is an excellent tool in forcing you to articulate where you want to spend your money. Reviewing your budget at the end of the month is equally important. Doing so forces you to admit to yourself where your weaknesses are and whether you have properly identified your priorities. Sometimes, people think they want one thing when they really want something else. That’s okay. There’s no harm in learning what you truly want and spending your money in a way that allows you to obtain it.

When You Have a Safety Net, You Have More Options

Think of yourself as the star trapeze artist in your own life. You swing from one day to the next, endlessly until your part of the show is over. And each day brings its own options, challenges, and choices. Some of these involve risk. Think of these risks as letting go of one bar so that you can catch the next one. It’s easier to take risks when you know that there’s a safety net down below to catch you if you fall.

In real life, a cushion of cash acts as a safety net. If you start a new business and it fails, money in the bank means you’ll be disappointed but not financially crushed. Perhaps there’s an unpaid internship that you want to take. Having a multi-unit revenue property that covers your expenses, or parents who are willing and able to foot your bills, means that you can work without renumeration in order to pad your resume. Perhaps you’re simply mentally exhausted from work so you decide to take a sabbatical while living off your dividends.

Dividends. Cash-flowing rental property. Parents. These are all forms of a safety net. If you have access to them, then you have a surer foundation from which to pursue various options. To go back to the trapeze analogy, you can let go of the trapeze bar knowing that missing the next one and falling down won’t break you.

Try to imagine taking time off work to protect your precious mental health without anyone or anything around to pay the bills. How long could you go before being evicted? What kind of impact would the financial stress have on your mental well-being?

Having a safety net gives you room to breathe, to make choices that bring you closer to your goals. You’re not stuck. Getting un-stuck from whatever bad situation is making you unhappy is rarely ever easy, but it’s always easier with money. Hate your job? Quit! No longer love where you live? Move! Need 9 months off to pursue your Bucket List travel itinerary? Go!

When you have the safety net that money can provide, you’re free to pursue those options.

I’ve talked about having a safety net for Future You and that you need to save for your retirement. While that’s very important, you still have to live in the present moment. There are probably some things you want to try before you get to your golden years. It’s very likely that whatever those things are, they’ve got a financial component to them. I want you to pursue your dreams, but I don’t want you to be impoverished if those pursuits aren’t successful.

For my own self, I knew that I wanted Future Blue Lobster to have access to a stream of dividends in retirement. I’m happy to report that my army of money soldiers is growing nicely. I’m not doing as well as Tawcan and his annual dividend projections, but I’m getting closer and closer to my own goals each month. In other words, I’ve created a safety net for myself. I don’t have wealthy parents who can pay my bills for me. Instead, I now have an annual stream of income that will allow me to live without employment should it become truly necessary. It would be Lean FIRE in the extreme, but I would survive without going into debt.

Money buys options. Having a solid safety net in place means that you can pursue those options without worrying that doing so will lead to complete financial ruin. You can hope that your plans work out while knowing that you have the resources to recover if they don’t. The safety net of money allows you to consider risks that you otherwise would have disregarded. Imagine if you had rental property that paid all your bills, what would you do with your time? If you love your job/career, maybe you’d keep working. But if you wanted to spend a few months in an artist colony, you could do so without worrying about going bankrupt.

If you don’t already have one, I suggest that you work on weaving your own safety net. The bigger and stronger it is, the less risk you will face in pursuing whatever option you think suits you best. You won’t ever regret having a safety net if the time comes that you need one.

Spending Time! Use the Money in the Sinking Fund!

Hooray!!! It’s spending time! Break out the debit or credit card because we are going to use the money in the sinking fund!

One of my sinking funds – and I have many! – is dedicated towards my flower garden. I’m an amateur gardener in every sense of the word. Each year, I devote a few hours to planning what I want to buy and where I want to put it. The tail end of winter in Alberta can get mighty dreary so planning my garden is a good way to remind myself that spring is on its way. Container gardening brings me much joy. My wonky knees don’t allow me to comfortably kneel and work the ground like I see others doing. Containers raise everything up off the ground. And there are so many different styles of containers that I find it a bit overwhelming to choose. They’re not exactly perfect since planting can still be a bit hard on my back, but one of my Christmas presents last year was a gardener’s stool. I can hardly wait to use it this spring!

But I digress. My sinking fund for gardening is supposed to cover all of the following over the next few weeks:

  • compost, fertilizers, potting soil, and worm castings
  • a wide variety of annuals (petunias, marigolds, geraniums, verbena, sweet potato vine, coleus, and whatever else catches my eye while at the greenhouse)
  • new containers for all my annuals
  • new gloves, tools and hoses (if necessary)
  • more perennials and bulbs (lamium, hellebores, hostas, daffodils, tulips, balloon flowers)

Perennials are fabulous! They usually come back bigger and they bring their babies too. Free plants are a good thing as far as I’m concerned! My balloon flowers were transplanted 2 years ago. Last year, they did just okay and I let them go to seed. This year, I’m anxiously awaiting to see if they seeded themselves. Since they’re one of the last things to emerge in the spring, I’ve got another 5-6 weeks before I’ll have an answer to my question.

Bottom line – I’m always happy to see the return of my perennials, and I do what I can to ensure that they continue to love their space. This year, I’m finally going to implement the wisdom I’ve learned from Garden Answer and will add a new layer of compost to all my in-ground plants and containers. It’s supposed to refresh the soil since I don’t change the soil in my containers every year.

I’m just as much a fan of annuals. They have a place in my heart because they offer continuous flowers throughout the spring, summer and early fall. I’m in zone 3. For me, annuals always start small – since I’m too cheap to buy bigger plants! I don’t mind since I love watching their progress in the first 3 weeks. I’m not super-gentle when planting them, so they need a week to recover from transplant shock. Once settled and well-watered, they start to perk up by week three. Within six weeks, they’ve doubled in size and start to fill in the containers nicely. I love watching my annuals blooms! Watering them brings me a sense of peace, and takes away the stress of the day.

In another few weeks, I’ll be able hitting the greenhouses with my friends. And I won’t worry about how I’m going to pay for what I want. My sinking fund will cover the costs.

You should set up sinking funds too, if you haven’t done so already. I talk a lot about having sinking funds for the non-sexy parts of life, like vehicle insurance and property taxes. Maybe I should’ve also encouraged sinking funds for the fun parts of life too! What are your hobbies? Do you want to travel? Are you going to be buying seasons tickets to the theatre or to sporting events? Is there a new crafting skill that you want to master?

Use your sinking fund to pay for the fun aspects of your life too! I know a lady who blissfully spends her money on concerts. She never hesitates to buy the best tickets for whomever she wants to see! She loves going to concerts so saving money to do so is a priority in her budget. I know another lady who goes to writing workshops. One lady I talks about flying to another city for the day just to visit a particular restaurant. Different strokes for different folks, right? The thing they all have in common is that they identified their priorities and they use sinking funds to pay for them.

Let’s face facts. Spending money so, so, so much better when there’s no worry that it will result in debt. There’s no credit card hangover when you rely a sinking fund to pay for your priorities. When spending time rolls around, you can spend with ease knowing that you have the money to get what you want. The purpose of money is make your life better. It’s meant to alleviate stress, not to create it. Use sinking funds to buy what you truly want and to bring your dreams to life. There’s truly no down side to doing so. Happy, happy, joy, joy all around!

When Will You Stop Grinding for More?

Personal finance is personal. Read that again. For most folks, it’s hard for them to believe that there isn’t one perfect path out there, and that they will get everything they want if they find and follow it.

Hear me now. The only universal, iron-clad rules that applies to everyone is that you must live below your means in order to have money to invest. This rule is an immutable as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. Everything else is details.

  • When to start saving?
  • How much to save and for how long?
  • Short term goals? Medium term goals? Long-term goals?
  • Pay down down debt or invest? One before the other, or both simultaneously?
  • Spend the dollar today or spend the dollar tomorrow?

Every other decision about your personal finance is a detail that you can adjust to fit your personal circumstances.

Your Priorities are Your Choice

You get to the identify your dreams and prioritize them as you see fit. Concert tickets before down payments? Charitable donations before travel? Clothes before adopting a pet? It’s your money, so you get to decide which expenditures are most important to you. Your dreams for how you want to live your life will guide how you spend your money as you move through the world. Read that last sentence again and continue doing so until you’ve embedded it into your subconscious. Once again, for the people at the back: You are the person who gets to decide which expenditures are most important to you.

The vast majority of us do not have enough money to buy everything we want as soon as we want it. Using credit to do so is unwise.

Why is credit bad, Blue Lobster?

Well, dear One, it is bad because credit isn’t free. When a credit card bill isn’t paid off in full when the balance is due, you pay interest. Interest payments to the bank do not benefit you…unless you hold shares in the bank. Still, even if you’re a shareholder in the bank, dividend yields are less than half the interest you pay on your outstanding balance. Moral of this little side-story: don’t pay interest and buy bank shares.

Back to Priorities & Choices

You get to set the timelines for your dreams. Some dreams can be made real sooner than others. These would be classified as short-term goals, and they can be achieved within 12 months or less. Long-term goals would cover the dreams that will take more than 5 years to achieve. Anything taking more than than a year but less than 5 would be a medium-term goal. Your dreams aren’t going to be the same as mine, so your timelines will also be different.

Next, you get to create the budget for your dream. This is where you put pen to paper and determine how you’re going to pay for it. Salary? Side-hustle money? Dividends and capital gains? Royalty payments? Inheritance? Insurance settlement? Lottery win? So many options! Admittedly, some are less dependable than others but I want you to consider all of your options.

You also get to determine how much research you’ll do to achieve your dreams. This might mean talking to others who’ve already done what you’ve done and asking lots of questions. It might mean taking a few courses, or watching some videos on line, or borrowing some books from the library. If your dream is important to you, then you’ll do what it takes to make it come true.

Never Forget – You’re the Dream-Weaver!

And as the dream-weaver in your life, you get to decide when you’ve fulfilled your dreams or when they’ve changed. Yes… sometimes, dreams change. When I was in high school, I was going to buy myself a Jaguar sedan for my 40th birthday. Let’s just say that this particular dream changed – and not because I didn’t have the money to do so by my 40th. As I matured and thought about what I really wanted for my life, the Jaguar XF would not have gotten me closer to what I really wanted. If what you want no longer accommodates yesterday’s dreams, then feel free to eliminate them from your priority list.

In short, you get to decide when you’ll stop grinding towards your dreams. Life isn’t about working 24/7 until you die, particularly if you’re doing so to fulfill dreams that you no longer hold dear. Only your money should be sent out to work that hard, so that you, the dream-weaver, can take the time to relax and to enjoy and to laugh and to just be…

So, Dream-Weaver, ask yourself when you will stop grinding for more?

The Grind

Go back to what I first said at the start of this post. Personal finance is personal. If you want to continue grinding for more, then there’s no reason for you to stop. Again, it’s your life, your time, your choice.

By the same token, if you want to stop, then do so.

However, if you feel like you can’t stop, then ask yourself why. There’s no one right answer for everyone but you owed it to yourself to understand your choice and your actions. There will come a point where your investment portfolio will support all of your dreams. (This assumes that you invest the difference between what you earned and what you spent, while you are living below your means.) At that point, you can ease off the gas pedal and enjoy the fruit of your efforts. This is a fancy way of saying that you can live out the dream-life that you so painstakingly built for yourself.

If at that point, you still want to grind as hard as you did when you first started, then you owed it to yourself to understand why. Knowledge is power; self-knowledge is no less so.

Attaining Your Money Milestones Feels Awesome!

I think it’s important for you to have money milestones, some kind of target that you want to achieve with your money. Maybe it’s getting the first $100 into your emergency fund. Maybe it’s paying off your debt or getting to positive net worth. Perhaps you want to ensure that your portfolio kicks off enough money to pay for your current standard of living. They can be things you want to accomplish in the next six weeks or they can be priorities that will take you years to fulfill. However long it takes you to attain your milestones should not dissuade you from pursuing them. Like they say, from the smallest little seed did the mighty oak grow. Start today.

Whatever your milestones are, it’s a good idea to pat yourself on the back once you’ve achieved them. After all, you worked hard to achieve a goal and attention should be paid. You should thank yourself for the effort and discipline it took for you to achieve your financial goals. If you hadn’t committed, then it’s pretty likely that you wouldn’t have met your money milestones.

Back when I was a kid, I bought myself a reference book about money called Personal Finance For Canadians by Kathleen H. Brown. This 552-page book was one of my very first personal finance books and it led me down the rabbit hole of financial planning. Next up – The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Getting Rich by Larry Waschka. This is one my very favourite money books. The latter had a section about the 5 levels of wealth. You attain Wealth Level Two when your portfolio’s returns matched your contributions. In other words, if you’re contributing $1000 to your portfolio every year, then WL2 starts when your portfolio generates an annual return of $1000.

As I was updating my spreadsheets*** this week, I realized that I’m now at Wealth Level Two. I’ve hit one of my money milestones. My portfolio’s return is more than my contribution. Hooray for me! It took me a blood long time to hit this stage, but I’m very proud of myself right now. To quote one of my favourite little people, “I did it!”

I’ve made money mistakes over the years – see here, here, and here. Due to my many money mistakes over the years, it’s taken me since 2011 to achieve this particular milestone. That’s 12 years! Had I been smarter or more insightful, I don’t think it would’ve taken me this long. I can’t bear to think about how much further along I would be if I’d started investing when I bought the book…last millennium! That said, I’m still pretty proud of myself. I took the initiative to get started and to commit to bi-weekly contributions to my non-registered investment account, no matter what. Whether the market was going up, going down, or going crazy, I stuck to investing a chunk of my paycheque every two weeks. As my salary went up, so did the investment amount. I continued to live below my means. Most importantly of all, I never pulled my money out of the market, even when we experience that gut-churning stock market plunge in 2020 and the more recent volatility of 2022.

Please do not think that I didn’t face temptations to spend my investment contributions on today’s wants instead of my long-term goals. I did, but I know myself. I knew that if I didn’t rely on automatic transfers, then I’d likely spend the money on stupidities. Instead, I put technology to work and lived on whatever was left. Automation is my friend. Once I had an automatic transfer is place, it would take a serious threat to my survival and/or livelihood to persuade me to halt the automatic contributions to my future. Concert tickets, travel, a newer vehicle – all of these could be paid for with whatever was leftover after my long-term goals were funded. The Fear of Missing Out and You Only Live Once philosophies did not guide my investing decisions.

When I first read those two reference books, I was a young adult who didn’t come from money. My parents worked hard, but they were not rich. They taught me how to save money in a savings account and how to buy Canada Savings Bonds. They invested in a few stocks so that I learned a little bit about the stock market and how to earn dividends. The rest of it mutual funds? Exchange-traded funds? Real estate investment trusts? Tax Free Savings Accounts? Canadian Deposit Insurance Corporation? Other investment vehicles? Real estate investing? My parents definitely lit the fuse when it came to investing for my future. However, it was up to me to learn about the other stuff on my own.

It took quite a long time, but so what? The time was going to pass anyway. Today, I’m seeing the results of my discipline. It’s paying off. I’m hitting my money milestones, and that makes me smile with happiness and joy. My life is good. I have everything I need and most of what I want. A few smart choices in my past has allowed me to create a good financial life for myself. I’m attaining my money milestones, and there’s a good chance that I’ll attain the rest of them too.

You can do this. First, identify your money milestones. Secondly, pick an amount of money to direct towards achieving them. Thirdly, set up an automatic transfer so that your money is whisked away before you get a chance to spend it on not-your-money-milestones. Fourth, never stop reading about money. Learn, learn, and learn some more. Fifth, congratulate yourself for starting your financial journal then do so again each time you attain your money milestones.

Will it be easy? Probably not. There’s an entire industry captained by the AdMan and his trusty sidekick, the Creditor, which exists solely to part you from your cash. Even without AdMan and Creditor, inflation is currently kicking everyone in the soft bits so income doesn’t go as far as it used to. Here’s a little tip from me to you. It’s never easy to save and invest. There’s always a reason to put it off.

Don’t let that stop you. If you can only start with $1, then start with $1. Work your way up from there. Get in the habit of saving and investing your money. Once it’s investing, leave it alone to compound. Save – invest – learn – repeat. Time will take care of the rest. Your first money milestone is to start.

*** By the by, I have to admit that I love spreadsheets. They’re rewarding, a visual reminder of how far I’ve come by investing consistently. One of my spreadsheets tracks all the dividend payments that I receive. As you know, I’m a big fan of dividend-paying exchange-traded funds. I’ve invested a good chunk of my portfolio in VDY and XDV. I have other dividend-payers as well, individual stocks mostly, but these two ETFs are the powerhouses of my portfolio.

Suddenly, they had no money.

When I watch movies, I like to think about the personal finances of the characters or the financial implications of the stories. Unlike sex and violence, movies aren’t explicit about most characters’ money situations. When bad guys beat up the good guys on instruction from someone else, haven’t you ever wondered how much the bad guys were paid to do so? Most bad guys in movies are killed or grievously injured. What kind of medical coverage do they have? Do they have life insurance for their dependents? Do they even have emergency funds to cover the bills while they’re unable to work?

Think about the characters who are dressed and coiffed impeccably from start to finish, without ever wearing the same outfit or accessory twice. Don’t you ever wonder how they can afford that while working in whatever job they have? The exception to this last question is Tony Stark. It’s clear right from the get-go that he’s a multi-billionaire. But what about the other Avengers? How do they afford their lives? Especially Bruce Banner! Does he own lots and lots of stock in clothing companies? What kind of premiums does he pay for liability insurance? Captain America was encased in ice back in 1945. Had he socked away some money before his time in the army? Did he live on its compound growth once he was thawed and back among the living?

Before I get too far off topic, let me get back to what I want to talk about in this post. The ending of Don’t Look Up has stuck with me for a very long time because it was about wealthy people, a group that evokes my latent desire to be an amateur sociologist. As I watched the elderly naked characters emerge from their spaceship, I was struck by the futility of their departure from Earth.

None of them were wealthy anymore. How could they be? They had no money… which struck me as deeply ironic since having more money than anyone else in the world had allowed them to be on the spaceship that took them to the new planet. By the same token, they didn’t exactly need money either. After all, they no longer had any bills or expenses to pay. However, people wealthy enough to book a seat on a spaceship generally aren’t concerned about which streaming service should be cut from their budget in order to make ends meet.

It was quite clear from the movie’s ending that only the very wealthiest of humans had gained passage on the spaceship, and only because they could afford to buy their way on board. On Earth, right up until hours before the comet destroyed the planet, they had been the people with more money than anyone else. They had such disproportionate access to wealth that they could pay to leave the planet when they felt it was time to go.

As those formerly-rich folks emerged from the spaceship and took their first steps on the new planet, I said to myself: “What was the point of leaving? It’s not like they went to a better place. How are they going to adapt to the fact that they no longer have money?” ***

My point with this post is that the movie made me ponder whether someone can be rich if there are no poor people around. If everyone is on an equal footing financially, then can anyone be considered wealthy?

At the end of the movie, all of those naked people were in the exact same financial position as everyone else around them. None of them enjoyed the benefits of intergenerational wealth, networking, or opportunity based on lineage. Every single one of those people had lost all of the privileges associated with being one of Earth’s Financial Elites.

The so-called survivors at the end of Don’t Look Up no longer had access to all of the status symbols associated with uber-wealth on Earth:

  • Servants? It was unlikely that any one of them would deign to serve someone else as they had been served in their former lives on Earth.
  • Multiple homes? Unlikely… they’d all just gotten off a spaceship and were walking around an utterly alien terrain.
  • Family businesses? Also very unlikely. Their families had been abandoned back on Earth and killed by the comet, just like the customers who had patronized those businesses, just like the employees who had worked in those businesses.
  • Stock portfolios? Art collections? Expensive jewelry? Nope – nope – nope. The new planet wasn’t tied into the banking system and the stock markets on Earth, so no one person had any ability to access whatever paper assets they had owned. Also, every bank and stock market on the planet had been destroyed by the comet. Every monetary system known to man had been annihilated.

Literally and figuratively, their wealth no longer existed. Would that itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny realization blow their minds later? The movie ended before I got an answer to my question. In my consideration of what went through their minds, I can only come to the conclusion that the level of cognitive dissonance that would have been experienced by those formerly-wealthy folks would have been breathtaking!

Now, I know that movie was about humanity’s refusal to face the inevitable until it was too late to make any changes. Whether it was a plea to stop our relentless destruction of the environment or a plea to pay attention to the asinine level of incompetence happening in government, the fact remains that the last few minutes of the movie were about those who had left Earth before the comet hit. I’ll never know if the director intended it or not, but my take-away from the end of Don’t Look Up was that the formerly-wealthy people’s departure from Earth had only delayed the final demise of humanity; it didn’t prevent it.

Think about it. Humanity was still going to be extinct for a variety of reasons. Firstly, none of those “survivors” were capable of reproducing themselves, so no new humans at all, ever. Secondly, I harbor great doubt that any of them could feed or shelter themselves for very long once they had exhausted their provisions, if any. Thirdly, the naked, elderly humans seemed utterly un-prepared to face the aggressive, people-munching wildlife on their new planet.

I know it was just a movie. However, that doesn’t stop me from imagining their shock at discovering that having all the money in the world wouldn’t prevent them from dying too. The so-called survivors landed on an unfamiliar planet without any information about it other than that they could breathe the air. For all intents and purposes, they were in nearly the same position as the first humans who had walked the Earth. And I say “nearly” because those early humans had the benefit of their fertility. Whatever lessons one generation learned while struggling to survive were passed down to children. In other words, early humans had a future! The survivors who emerged onto the new planet didn’t even have that. From what I could see in the movie, those survivors were all elderly and well-past their baby-producing years.

Can you imagine how their minds must have been blown?

Without the yardstick of money and without possibility of leaving a legacy, what had they really accomplished by leaving the planet? They got to ride in spaceship before dying on alien soil? Yet, with the destruction of Earth, there was really and truly no one left to mark this event. Whether or not dying off-planet was an accomplishment, their knowledge and record of doing so would die with them.

To my mind, they would have had to find a way to deal with the fact that they were no better off than the people who had died on Earth.

Also, I had to wonder if they had any useful survival skills. Astonishingly enough, their talent for creating wealth was of absolutely no use to them in their new location. Remember, they had been financial Titans on Earth. They had earned bucket and buckets and buckets of money in their former lives. On a new planet and without any kind of mentorship, would any of them have been able to survive the way the earliest humans had? How much food had been packed into the spaceship? Once it ran out, would any of them be to hunt or grow their own food? Would they have splintered off into even smaller groups or would they have found a way to work together? How would they have preserved their sanity in the face of no future???

The way I see it, money is a bit of a scorecard. In a capitalist society like ours, having more money means you’re winning. Money means access to food, shelter, healthcare, transportation, communication, education, and a good deal more stuff. However, there comes a point where a person no longer really has to worry that he or she won’t have enough. These are the people with net worths in the 9-figure range and above. These are the people who got off the spaceship at the end of Don’t Look Up. However, having the best financial scorecard on Earth is less-than-trivial if Earth is the only place that particular scorecard is recognized.

What happened to the so-called survivors’ perceived self-worth once they realized that they were no longer winning? That the game had been changed and their net worth was the exactly same as everyone else’s? That their previous privilege and status was literally meaningless on the new planet?

How did they handle the knowledge that, suddenly, they had no money?

*** And I’m not trying to engender sympathy for the uber-wealthy. That way lies pitchforks and angry mobs.

Do Your Parents Have a Pension?

Most of the time, I talk to you as though you’re the only person you have to support with your income. The reality is that many people support their parents to some degree. If your parents are still working, then you should find out if your parents have a pension. Will it be enough to support them through the final chapter of their lives? Or will they be looking at you to supplement or support them until the end?

I’m not an expert on family dynamics. All I know for sure is that every family is different, and each family has its own set of rules. My blog is about my views on personal finance. And one of my views is that you should ask yourself the following question: do your parents have a pension?

Whatever the answer, the next question to ask yourself is: Am I going to give them financial help once they stop working?

You need not share your answer with the class, but you should definitely keep it in mind as you do your own financial planning.

For my part, my father is deceased. My mom benefits from a spousal pension, her own pension, and various government supports. She’s been retired for over a decade now. Thankfully, she’s in her own home and she can pay her own bills. That said… I still watch for signs that she might be struggling on the financial end. I have to face the facts. Her pension payments are not keeping up with inflation. Even though inflation has been low until 2022, what few increases she’s had over the past 10+ years have been effectively wiped out by the roaring inflation we’ve seen in the past 12 months. Prices are not going to drop back to where they were a few years ago. This means that my mom’s fixed income is going to continue to buy her less and less as time goes on.

In my case, my remaining parent has a steady, reliable income that currently covers all of her expenses. And so far, I haven’t had to give her financial help during her retirement. During the time that she’s been retired, I’ve been saving and investing and building my non-employment cash flow. I really hope that I will be able to continue doing so until my own retirement, but… what if my mom needs financial help?

Like I said, she’s currently in her own home. That’s great! If she has to move into assisted care, her home can be sold to pay for it. That’s also great! If she lives long enough to exhaust the sale proceeds, then what? Am I going to move her into my home and hire caregivers? Where will the funds come from to pay for that kind of care? And how much money will be needed?

These are some of the things that I think about when planning for my own retirement.

Do your parents have a pension?

In my opinion, you should know the answer to this question. It should be factored in when you’re setting your own priorities. Whether you get along with your parents or not, you should have some idea of how much you’re willing to give to your parents if and when the time comes.

No One Talks About This!

It’s an unfortunate reality that this aspect of personal finance is rarely, if ever, discussed in the mainstream. Even in the personal finance sphere, I can only think of a few bloggers who ever discuss it openly. Journey to Launch and Rich&Regular are two who readily come to mind. The first time I heard the term “the Black Tax“, my curiosity was piqued. After learning more about it, I’m convinced that many families face this burden regardless of race. I also believe that the issue of pensionless parents is routinely ignored by the broader personal finance media.

There are countless stories about wealthy parents supplementing the salaries and down payments of adult children:

On the other side, there’s a dearth of reporting about adult children having to support their pensionless and/or low-income parents. There’s a deafening silence about how this type of financial obligation limits the opportunities for the next generation to build wealth and create financial security.

To be clear, I’m not telling anyone to abandon their parent(s) in order to be financially comfortable.

Unless the relationship is bad, (however you define that term), it’s assumed that children will do what what they can to alleviate a parent’s suffering. This is normal. It’s a sign of love. The other reality is that we live in a society where having money means having options and opportunities. If your money is spent today to care for your parents, then that money is not available for saving and investing. You may find yourself in the same situation as your parents in 20/30/40 years’ time because you chose not to invest for your own senior years.

My purpose with this blog post is to put these facts on the table for consideration. I’m simply urging you to consciously recognize that this is the choice that is being made. Ultimately, you’re the one who gets to make the choice, no matter how easy or difficult that choice may be. Do you want to spend the money today? Or do you want to invest it for tomorrow?

And if you want to do both, then what are your options for doing so?

  • You could go back to living with you parent(s). This isn’t feasible for everyone. However, it will work for some. Think about it.
  • You could get a second source of income and direct all of that income into your investments. Keep your expenses the same as they are now. Let that second income fund your future.
  • Help your parents downsize into a home that better fits their empty-nest status.

When it comes to making plans for your future, the first step is figuring out your priorities. For some of you, financially supporting your parents is or will be one of your highest priorities. Maybe you’re already helping your parents by sending them a few hundred or a few thousand dollars each month. If so, you should be planning on how to sustain those payments as you also try to save for your own future. It’s absolutely necessary that you understand how the decisions you make today will impact your ability to save for tomorrow.