🐐🐐🐐 We opened the wine and our Wealthsimple accounts

This post is not sponsored by Wealthsimple or goats.

This newsletter will have so many goats in it. This goat is dedicated to Anne. Photo by Nandhu Kumar on Unsplash

Hello everyone. It’s been a while. I wanted to wait for that shiny new year’s flush of good intentions to fade away before looking at financial plans for the rest of the year.

I know you’ve probably spent your January reading about how to deal with holiday spending, credit card debt and the usual new year, new wallet articles, so I won’t be covering that here. Instead, I’ll lay out what I’m hoping to do, how I’m saving for it and answering a question from a subscriber.

I also wanted to experience one month of my 2023 budget to understand what went up.

So far, here’s what’s gone or will go up:

• Mortgage rate. The prediction is another rate hike by the Bank of Canada this week.

• Groceries.

• Maintenance fees later this year.

• Property taxes.

• Subscriptions. I cancelled a few but I’m splitting a new subscription with two friends, which really seems to be the way to do it these days.

Things I’ll have to replace:

• My phone. It’s about five years old and starting to glitch.

• I suspect the tap in my bathroom sink. It is nearly thirty years old and looking rusty.

New phones bought off contract and plumbers are expensive so I’ll have to save for them outside of my emergency fund.

What I’d like to do:

• Take an actual proper, no calls or emails, vacation.

• Max out my TFSA contribution this year - the full $6,500.

• Continuing paying down my mortgage.

• Work smarter, not harder. Last October’s burnout was not fun.

What’s probably not going up by that much:

• My earnings. I could take on more clients but also, maybe I should try for some work-life balance. We’ll see.

I’ve done a lot of automation for these goals - so I have weekly and biweekly payments going to different accounts for the TFSA contribution, my phone, vacation, property taxes and emergency funds. I set them up weekly because it feels better to have smaller amounts come out of my main account instead of bigger lump sums on a monthly basis. It also helps with managing my cash flow.

I broke down each amount and divided it by 52 weeks. Then I set up several no-fee accounts and created pre-authorized deposits.

This way, I’m not actively managing it on a daily basis. (Since it’s automatic, it’s not really a resolution.)

I’m continuing to invest, doing dollar-cost averaging. I’ve been asked what I invest in. I won’t list that out because that feels a bit too close to offering investment advice. but I do not buy individual stocks. Look, if most qualified investors can’t predict the stock market I’m not going to do it. Plus, I don’t have time to monitor stocks.

I’m also upping my disability insurance coverage this year. That way, should anything happen, I’ll have a way to pay my bills.

I think that’s enough planning for January.

I like the idea of a Wealthsimple party. Let’s all just hang out and be financially open to figure shit out and get ideas. 😀 - Aliza

So about those 🐐🐐🐐🐐. My friends Anne and Ryan were in town. After we all tested, we met up and caught up. We ate, drank some wine, discussed Ryan’s hobby of building watches and then talked about money.

For context, they’re digital nomads and I do, well, this. *gestures at the newsletter*

It started off as a rehash of 2022 and then segued to what we were aiming for in 2023. Nothing too detailed, just a casual conversation. Then we started talking about home ownership and retirement, as you do. Ok, as I do.

That led to us opening up our Wealthsimple accounts. We chatted about what we were doing with our investments. The general consensus was we needed to chat with advisors.

I loved that moment because it was organic. We chatted, there was no judgment, we drank some more wine. Brilliant.

Why goats? One thing Ryan talked about is buying some land somewhere where they could have goats. Why not? Dream big or small. YMMV on the size of goat you want.

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I got a question from C, who asked, “Are there ways to be smarter about playing "catch up" on retirement savings as a divorced female who's starting later in life. I often feel like I will always be working as long as my health holds out to make up for the wage gap. Or come up with a side hustle which feels like I'm working all the time!”

I wrote: So you started saving for retirement in your 40s where I interviewed Melanna Giannakis, a financial services advisor. It is Canadian-focused but I am hoping to interview an American advisor soon to build out a robust response.

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This week’s readings:

By the numbers: Will more jobs mean higher interest rates? (TVO)

The empty threat of a white-collar recession (Vox)

Rent in Toronto soared in 2022. Here's what a new report found (Bloomberg)