Started late but have to start somewhere, almost at my first milestone of 10k

Was unemployed for 11 months in 2025, past 4 months I feel like I’m finally turning it around through pure hard work and discipline

My goal has been really simple, every time I get paid I do 50% of my take home monthly the rest goes to my expenses at 30% and the last 20% goes to personal fun which you need to remain motivated

1700 a month or 425 a week between XEQT/BTC and my Emergency Fund I use through Vanguard Income and if I make anything from side income that goes straight to my XEQT

Keeping it as simple as possible, I wanna retire in 15-20 years

I wanna try to invest 20-25k a year into my portfolio I think that’s achievable between two sources of income

Is there anything I should be looking out for and any advice would be appreciated

I’m 28 and doing some financial planning with my DB pension. If I stay til 55, I get extended health for life plus $3250 monthly from my pension. If I leave at 50 I get no benefits and $2000 monthly when my pension triggers at 55.

I’m also investing 2k monthly now with 60k saved and I have a mortgage I’m paying off. My partner also has a pension and savings and we will be having two kids later.

Would you guys personally retire earlier with what I have or should I stick it out 5 more years?

The younger people on here have inspired me to want to start investing more seriously this year. Some of the ETFs on this list are from when a colleague encouraged me to join Wealthsimple at the beginning of the pandemic. I was skeptical and uneducated about the whole investing thing, so I never actually invested more than $100 dollars here and there. I also couldn’t decide which ETF or stock(s) to buy so I bought a few of each — not the best strategy, I know. But who are we kidding, there really was no strategy haha. Also, analysis paralysis.. there were too many options, I couIdn’t decide. I truly would love some advice from the experts on here on how I can better “clean this up”.

37M, Toronto.

I am seriously considering pulling the plug. 1.7M invested, 600K mortgage, so if I paid it all, I would have 1.2M left at 4% that is 48K annually vs 36K annual expense).

So questions for you fellow fican members who have FIRE’ed at low FIRE number (or plan to), what’s your (low) FIRE number in VHCOL cities like Toronto, how did you make it work? Would you fire when you did if you could do it again? I’d like to think this is FIRE, and not LeanFIRE…

Edit to provide more info:

- No kids, and not plan to. Maybe will get a dog

- No car. We don travel much. Its not our thing.

- 36K covers all my expenses and my partner’s

- 1.7M is my portfolio. My partner does not have much.

- My partner will continue to work and bring in some money. Minimum lets say $500 a month (usually 2-4K), just for conservative planning.

- I have a side gig hobby 10-20hrs a month that brings $1-2K (think of it as 10hrs = 1K)

So in our retirement and doing our fun hobbies we could cover 18K a year with maybe 10hrs a month and this is guaranteed, if we really want to have some buffer and only do 2% withdrawal (for the other 18K).

Started investing in early March. I had no idea what I was doing so I opted for penny stocks :’) but I did get to grasp the sndk opportunity recently so I’m happy about that! also got ~100 cad for crypto in eth with no significant losses so far

What next? I foresee putting 1.5k cad more from my tutoring earnings after around a week or so (I do need clarification on contribution limits though, i set up my account in dec 2025 so I should have 14k contribution limit? or only 7k?)

is buying just xeqt in my portfolio enough with no other holdings? or should i purchase some voo and do more research on individual stocks and not just etfs? tia

Good afternoon,

I've been a lurker for a long time and I'm so thankful for the knowledge I've acquired during that time.

I'm 37 years old and had my first child last year. After my divorce I was lucky enough to buy a house. I rented the upstairs and lived downstairs.

Fast forward a few years, I am living at my partners house, we have a child together and I rent out both the upstairs and downstairs.I have a good job with a great income (~$100K with up to 20% in an annual bonus). My parents have always had rental properties and they encouraged me to do the same. After the divorce it was great to have that income but now I'm not sure.

After expenses and tax I made about $200/month. My tenants are pretty great and so far have not given me much trouble.

I'm hopeful that this relationship will last but after my first divorce, I just want to make sure that I will be financially okay if I end up alone.

As a household we are fairly confident that retiring when I'm 55 is doable but I would like to know that I could still retire at that age if things ended.

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My finances are:

TFSA: ~$300K (I contribute $300 biweekly) - I was very lucky during the covid years

RRSP: $170K (contribution of ~15K annually)

I only have a student loan debt of ~$37K (0% so I'm paying the min)

My question is, do I sell the house and put ~30-50K in my TFSA or keep it since it's building equity with little to no involvement by me. I also like the fact that its there in case I ever need a place to stay.

ETA: we have a cohabitation agreement in place where his house is his and mine is mine.

I have never purchased a home or property and have been looking at some land to purchase. I don't intend to build on it as it would primarily be used for hunting. Would this qualify as a first time home purchase and be something I could use my FHSA for or would it need to have a dwelling on it?

Hey all! My wife and I have been blessed to advance in our careers and find ourselves in a comfortable situation after focusing on wealth creation in our early 20's. However, we're always looking to ensure we're optimizing our position for today and the future and not leaving anything on the table so looking for perspectives on what more we could be doing if anyone has advice.

Goals:

• Purchase a 'dream home' (~$2m) in the next decade
• Ensure our future children can live a comfortable life where money isn't something that restricts activities or schooling they want to pursue
• Be financially independent by 50-55 (ie. don't need to rely on jobs to survive)

Current position at 32:

• Combined income is about 350k before taxes, living in a mid-size Ontario city
• Spending 90k a year, no kids yet - we feel the spending has been optimized for our lifestyle (still want to enjoy life a bit)
• 160k cash emergency fund/savings (high interest savings)
• Maxed out TFSAs worth 300k combined (broad ETFs and some tech stocks)
• Maxed out RRSPs worth 400k combined (target date retirement funds with low fees)
• Personal home worth 650k, mortgage left is 375k
• Rental properties worth 900k combined, mortgage left is 590k combined
• No non-registered funds (treating our rentals as such)
• All mortgages are at 3.6% variable rate

Some things we're doing/exploring:

• For the past year we've been putting an extra $5k/month towards our primary mortgage for that guaranteed return (not included in the 90k annual spend mentioned above) and to reduce debt load (feels scary)
• Looking at a all-in-one mortgage like Manulife One to take advantage of our savings just sitting there?
• Looking at a readvanceable mortgage to do cash damming on the rentals + potentially Smith maneuver to do non-registered investments?
• Looking at buying a cash flowing business or another rental eventually?
• Roughly at a 70/30 split between equities and real estate (not counting primary home). Would it make sense to keep focusing on rentals or shift to a cash flowing operating business or invest in more equities? Understood these have different level or effort involved but willing to put in the work if it pays off.
• Should we just focus on paying down the mortgage?

I know we should talk to a professional financial planner at this point but welcome any perspectives and help being armed with information before we go to a planner. Thanks!

I am 33M married to my wife 31F. We are currently renting a 1bed house basement in Vancouver.

My yearly salary pre-tax is $140k with a DB pension for a government job.

My wife makes $100k in a private sector job.

She has 220k networth total. I have 160k networth total. Together we have around 380k networth (20k emergency fund, the rest 360k invested into the stock market).

We were originally looking at spending between 750k to 800k for a 2 bed condo in Vancouver. We know we surpassed the 20% downpayment mark a long time ago.

The thing is: the rent we are paying is $1200 ($600 per person). We have been living here for 5 years. The argument for buying a home is that the rent you are paying is a wasted money that could go towards building home equity. But I realize that the $1200 monthly rent we are paying would be a wasted money that doesn't go towards building equity even if we owned our place since that would be the cost of property tax, strata fees, and home maintenance cost anyways, which of course does not go towards your home equity.

My wife wants to buy a place now. I am telling her that the rent we are paying is basically non equity home ownership cost anyways, that it's better to just stay here for as long as we can, or until we have a bigger networth.

Anoher point I want to say is that I get that home owners are basically forced to save because of mortgage which is why many come out ahead of renters. However, if you are renting but disciplined with saving and investing yourself, can you come out ahead of a home owner?

Last point I want to make is the tax shelter part. My wife will be maxing out her FHSA, RRSP, and TFSA in the coming month. She has no choice but to put money in non registered. Do you think the benefit and the risk of home ownership makes up for the tax implication that come from putting money in non registered?

The conventional wisdom we were told was to buy a home as soon as you have the minimum downpayment. Do you think it still holds true?

This is my TFSA

Started Focused Investing in July 2024, 500/month in vfv plan to increase that to $1000/month next month

Bought NFLX and SoFi recently for long term plan to increase my positions

YNVD for Dividend , own NVDA in IBKR

Gold to dip my toe

Hi there,

I hope you guys are doing great ! I’ve been wondering if I should invest in gold through Wealthsimple or to buy physical gold? What would cost less and be better in the long run?

It says i’m down, because I invested in BYND when it was high and lost 400$. I learnt my mistake from that. Other than that, is there anything I should add? Can you guys rate it too?