Why hello!
We are Emily and Daniel and we like to hang out here after we put put our kids to bed. How nice of you to join us.
We started this party a few years ago with the intent on tracking our progress through the mysterious world of personal finance. In a nutshell, we met in school, bonding over a mutual love for skipping class and obscure indie bands. Daniel left school with over $30K in student loans and Emily graciously assumed a negative net worth when we got hitched a couple years later.
We had a decent handle on our finances: the student loan was cleared in 2 years and we paid for our wedding in cash. The rest of our savings went into a down payment for our castle in the sky- a condo in the city. We hit the road, saw some sights and then decided it was time to settle down and start a family. Not long after came the pitter patter of little feet.
The Early Days
We started from scratch with a full audit of our financial situation and reviewed how we manage our money. Nothing was sacred and no rock was left unturned. We started by comparing chequing accounts; we couldn’t justify maintaining a minimum balance for free services and picked a bank with no fees. We hacked away at the monthly budget and set limits on our allowances to control spending. We reviewed the details of our registered savings accounts: the RRSP, TFSA, and RESP. Along the way, Emily decided to avoid sales and buy retail instead and Daniel learned a lesson about being content with our slow progress. We think we’ve laid the groundwork and developed the right habits for a financial stable future.
On the Road to Investing
We tackled the best way to invest our savings. The popular mutual fund approach involving a litany of complicated fees and expenses that eat away at investments really wasn’t what we were looking for. After some research, we settled on investing with low cost index funds. Investing with low fees maximizes our investment returns and allows us to focus on our daily lives knowing that our money is working for us instead of sitting under a mattress.
Back to the Future
We started out with the daunting challenge of setting our financial house in order. There is still plenty we need to figure out, and likely more we don’t know that we don’t know. Learn with us, avoid our mistakes and let us know if there are better ways to do what we’re trying to accomplish. We’re here to make money management easy. Feel free to ask us questions and we’ll try our best to point you in the right direction. Again, we appreciate you stopping by; we should do this again sometime. See you around.