My Journey to Financial Freedom

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Brief Introduction

Hey !!! I decided to document my journey to financial freedom. This is more of a journal for myself but if you want to follow along that would be great. I am going to make every post as brief as possible because i’m sure my future self wouldn’t want to read several pages of me blabbing on.

Current Situation

Currently I am 27 and I don’t have a lot of money 😦 I even have student loans to pay (WACK). My current Net worth is roughly about $$. I recommend that we should all create a balance sheet with assets and liabilities to see where we stand. I graduated university in 2016, worked for about 3 years at a bank, (35k salary before taxes), started my MBA in fall 2019 and I will be graduating this December 2021. My salary has increased since I started my MBA. My first co-op job paid me about $$ bi-weekly, the second paid me roughly $$ bi-weekly and the current one pays me $$ bi-weekly. With the recent jobs, I have been able to save and invest money and that is basically why I currently have a positive net-worth. You may be wondering, what happened to all the money I made prior to my MBA. Well, in short let’s just say I had nothing saved up. I will make another post documenting how I got myself into debt, and the terrible financial decisions I have made so far.

P.S. I removed the specific amounts for privacy reasons.

Next Steps and Goals

• Short Term Goal – Save/ Invest > $10,000 this Co-op (May – August 2021)
• Save at least $1,000 every month
• Purchase a pre-construction property by the end of 2022
• Find a side hustle or part time job to generate income while in school
• Invest in Real Estate
• Continue with my Investments

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Thank you for reading and or listening 🙂 Have a great day !

Job Search Update

Hello Everyone ! Hope you are all doing amazing, and I hope the month has been going on well for each and every one of you. I am still in the process of my job search and it has been going relatively okay.

Honestly, the process has been a little exhausting. I have had 7 interviews since June 2023 and this does not include second round interviews or case study’s. It has never been this difficult or taken this long for me to achieve something or get what I want so on a personal level, I felt defeated earlier on in the process. On a positive note, my confidence has increased significantly as I don’t get nervous prior to interviews.

I am still optimistic about the whole process. At this time, I am very selective about jobs I apply to. I am also interviewing the team and asking myself if the environment is a place I can thrive.

RRSP

Hello Everyone, Happy New Year and hope you are doing well.

RRSP contribution deadline is fast approaching. February 29th is the last day to make RRSP contributions for the 2023 tax year. Remember that any investment income earned in an RRSP is tax-deferred, until withdrawn.

Job Update

I recently interviewed for a Job in Corporate Banking. Unfortunately I didn’t get the job. It really sucks as I was extremely interested in that industry group. I was disappointed on three fronts. 1) Not getting the job. 2) People who were in my current role for a period less than I was made it to the second round. 3) I really want to change my current job.

I am happy one of my coworkers got to the next round. I congratulated him while also expressing my sadness for not getting the job.

Next Steps

• Ask for feedback from the interviewers to know what I can do better
  • Incorporate the feedback.
• Network with more people
• Keep applying to jobs 🙂

Navigating a Career Change

Hello everyone and welcome to my new series called Navigating a Job/Career change. Honestly, I am not sure where this journey will lead me but I would like to document it. Currently I am working at a Finance Firm. I don’t want to go into details for security reasons. Lately, I have been feeling undervalued and out of sorts with my role. My manager and I don’t get along well and the team is going though a transition phase. The current job market is a little bleak with layoffs happening in some companies. For example, Linkedin recently laid off some of it employees. Aside from the negatives, I really love my coworkers and I get great benefits from work 😭. I am blessed to work at a nationally recognized company and in a role that people are interested in.

If you are feeling stuck in a role, have management that doesn’t seem to be on your side, dislike the work you do, feel burnt out etc, there are so many resources online that can help with navigating through situations like these. So my advice would be to take advantage of those free resources. Talk to friends and family and also reach out to your network.

Action Plan

• Apply to jobs externally
• Network with other groups within my company
• Find something positive I like doing at work and do more of it
• I will not let manager or the work get me down. This is just one phase of my life and it shouldn’t be this much of a bother.

Update

• I scheduled coffee chats with two internal employees in different departments.
• Redacted

I am thankful to God for these updates and I’m looking forward to how this all pans out.

Thanks for reading.

Goals Update as at December 2022

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Hello everyone, hope you are doing great ! Happy New Year and welcome to 2023 (I am late with this post :(). I wanted to provide a brief update on my 2022 goals and write some of my 2023 goals. I’m sure we all know how important it is to set and track goals (not necessarily at the beginning /end of the year). To be honest, I didn’t feel like I achieved much but looking at my 2022 achievements made me proud of myself. It might not seem like a lot compared to others but iIm happy I was able to achieve some of them.

Goals	Status
Short Term Goal – Save/ Invest > $00,000 this Co-op.	Achieved and more
Save at least $1,000 every month	Achieved
Purchase a pre-construction property by the end of 2022	Not Achieved
Find a side hustle or part time job to generate income while in school	Not Achieved – working Full time now
Continue with my Investments	Achieved

2022 Achievements not included in pre-set goals

• Did my devotions daily
• Paid off my LOC balance
• Worked out and ate a little healthier
• Started a new job in Capital markets
• Saved $$ towards my property purchase
• Travelled to two places 🙂 Looking forward to more vacations
• Grew my skincare page however, I was not consistent with posting
• Increased my TFSA investments by X% (The goal was to double it. The markets were down lol, thats my excuse)

2023 Goals and Plans

I have written a few of my 2023 goals in my notes app. I will mention the goals I am okay with sharing on the website.

Health and Fitness

• Meal Prep for weekdays
• Go to the Gym 4x a week

Hobbies

• Travel to two countries
• Post on my skincare page monthly
• Post on my blog at least every quater
• Actually make money through other means

Career

• Get Promoted at work
• Build important and deep connections with two people

Personal

• Be less critical and be patient
• Show love and be there for family and friends
• Do unto others what you would like done to you
• Be more confrontational and stand up for yourself

Savings

• Double my savings 🙂 lol maybe thats a stretch.

Thank you and I hope you all have a wonderful 2023 filled with lots of laughter and love.

April Update – Journey to Financial Freedom

Hello ! How are you doing ? Hope you are doing well. I wanted to provide an update on my debt and my journey to financial freedom. I received my tax refunds and I used a portion of that to pay off my line of credit. (I also closed that account). YAY! I feel free because that line of credit was the beginning of my debt while I was doing my MBA. I still have my OSAP loan pending but I’m not worried about that.  LOC Balance = $0

I am also trying to be more disciplined by following my budget strictly. Something about me, I love saving money but I also love spending money.

If you are interested, you can take a look at the previous posts detailing my journey by clicking the hyperlink. My Journey to Financial Freedom. You can also take a look at my budgeting post if you would like a budget template.

March Update – Journey to Financial Freedom

My last update was in August 2021 and since then a few things have changed. I graduated from my MBA program in December 2021 and I started a new job at the end of February 2022. I am a little bit proud of myself! In terms of debt, I slacked again. I have a problem managing money when I’m not working however when I am working, I plan and budget effectively. As at March 2022, my LOC has $5,000 owning and I also have my OSAP loan with an outstanding balance of about $12,000. If you are interested, you can take a look at the previous posts detailing my journey by clicking the hyperlink. My Journey to Financial Freedom.

Let’s Talk – Credit cards

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A credit card are payment cards issued by a bank or financial services company, that allows cardholders borrow funds with which to pay for goods and services with merchants that accept cards for payment. Retrieved from Investopedia

Important Credit Card terms

• Statement Date: this is the date your statement prints or is issued. In the statement sample below, its August 6th 2019 (top Right corner)
• Minimum payment: the smallest amount your credit card issuer will accept toward your credit card balance each month.
• Due Date: this is the date the minimum payment or full payment is due. In the sample below, it’s august 27th.
• Interest Charges: these are charges on balance if the full amount isn’t paid by the due date.
• Credit Limit: total credit amount
• Credit Available : total amount available that you can spend. It is the credit limit minus total amount spent
• For more in-depth understanding of how credit cards work in Canada, read here

Example: Let’s assume today is August 10th 2019. Your statement was created on August 6th 2019. The due date is August 27th 2019. In order to maintain your non default standing with the bank, you need to pay the minimum payment of $10 before August 27th 2019. If a payment is missed, your account is past due, and depending on the financial institution, missed payments may result in increased interest rates, late payments fees and/or a reduction in your credit score. For more information on what happen when you miss a payment, check here. To learn more about credit scores check here. Note, Interest will be charged on the balance if you only pay the minimum payment. The only way to prevent interest charges is to pay the full balance outstanding of $423.52 before August 27th 2019.

Sample credit card statement. Retrieved from here

Credit Card- Good or Bad ? It depends on how you use it.

Pros	Cons
Convenient and more secure alternative to using cash	Can result in overspending
Used to build and improve your credit (if utilized properly)	May result in increased debt load
Earn rewards like cash-back or travel points	Interest Charges

Tips

• Pay your credit card in full if possible to avoid interest charges. ( I don’t like giving my bank free money)
• Pay the minimum payment prior to the due date if making a full payment is not possible
• Stay below your credit limit. A higher balance increases your total utilization which affects your credit score
• Don’t treat your credit limit as your money
• If you have money management issues, please stay away from credit cards if you can
• Do not withdraw cash from your credit card. (If possible ). You will get charged cash advance fees and interest
• My personal advice is to get a credit limit you can always pay off in full at anytime. For example, If you know that monthly, you can put $1,500 towards your credit card without feeling stressed then you should get a $1,500 limit. Theres no point getting a $15,000 credit limit, maxing it out and having a hard time paying.

Disclaimer: I am not a personal financial planner, all thoughts are just based off my opinion. I also understand that people have various financial situations whereby reliance on credit is important to survive.

Thank you for reading 🙂

Lets talk – Budgeting

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Budgeting is basically planning out your revenue and costs and evaluating it on a periodic basis. It is important as it helps provide a visual understanding of where your money is going and based on that, you can plan for future expenses and save.

Budgeting helps you

• Manage debt
• Save money
• Re-allocate expenses from one category to another
• Plan for retirement
• Handle unexpected expenses
• Track financial goals

There are several online tools that can help with budgeting, check this list out: 12 Online Budget Tools. Excel templates can also be utilized. Personally, I use an excel file, the template can be downloaded below.

Budget-TemplateDownload

If a manual template seems time consuming, you can utilize various budgeting softwares/apps that connect directly to your bank account.

In a nutshell, if you are not budgeting, you should. It is very helpful especially when you are saving for a future expense or trying to pay down some debts.

Hailey’s Personal Experience. The first time I started actively budgeting, I mainly used it as a form of journal entry. I basically recorded my expenses without much regard to the budgeted amount. For example, If I allocated $200 to eating out and I spent $500 that was fine to me. After realizing how much I spent on Uber and Uber Eats, I realized I had to either adjust the budgeted amount by re-allocating funds or just simply cut down my costs. Prior to this, I knew I was spending a bit on Uber Eats but my budget truly opened my eyes. FYI I cut down on Uber eats and I cook more now 🙂

Thank you for reading and have a lovely day.

To follow my Journey to Financial Freedom check out my blogpost here

To follow more Let’s Talk conversations, check out my Let’s Talk page.

Concise Anime Recommendations

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• Hunter x Hunter
• Attack on Titan
• Naruto
• Ace of Diamond
• Death Note
• Haikyuu!!
• Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These
• That time I got reincarnated as a slime
• World Trigger
• Jujutsu Kaisen
• 86 – Eighty Six
• Fruits Basket
• Fate – Unlimited Blade works

• The disastrous life of Saiki K
• Dororo
• Bungo Stray Dogs
• Vinland Saga
• The Devil is a part timer
• The Idaten Deities know only peace
• 7 Deadly Sins*
• Black Clover
• Akatsuki no Yona
• Psycho- Pass
• ID Invaded
• FMA Brotherhood
• Fate stay night: Heavens Feel

• Classroom of the Elite
• Akame ga gill
• One punch Man
• Demon Slayer
• Mob Psycho
• My Hero Academia
• Tokyo Ghoul
• Assassination classroom
• The Promised Neverland**
• Erased
• Kakegurui

For a more in depth breakdown, check out my what anime should I watch blogpost.

Some shows other people loved but I didn’t necessarily love are listed below: Check them out and make your own opinion

• Fairy Tail
• Blue Exorcist
• Noragami
• Sirius the Jaeger
• The Misfit of Demon King Academy
• The irregular at Magic High School

I haven’t watched these yet but they have good ratings

*Animation quality deteriorated from season 3

• One Piece
• Hitman Reborn
• Code Geass

**I didn’t really enjoy season two. Season one was great.

Thank you for reading ! Have a great day 🙂