Our FI Nest

All my life I've lived in a scarcity mindset. I've lived with a feast or famine mentality when I have a goal in mind. I've gotten better as I've become more financially secure, but I still remember. I remember times where I'd go hungry rather than buy a chocolate bar from a vending machine because that cost wasn't budgeted. I remember being so frustrated at life's unexpected events if they derailed our savings, even worse if it was Papa Bird incurring it.  In the last few years though, I've felt a shift happening. I've been moving more into an abundance mindset. I've been able to appreciate spending on little treats for us, not caring that my grocery budget has doubled as I've struggled living through a pandemic. Heck I've even stopped tracking our expenses in this last year. I still update our net worth monthly (hello date night for us!), but that helps move me further into abundance mindset. It's easy as we've now hit our LeanFI...

I've always been frugal and saving and delayed gratification has come naturally. My Dad always told me that if I saved 10% of my income and invested it I'd be a millionaire by the time I hit 40. Likely one of my biggest financial mistakes was just believing that blindly without doing the math. The reality is you need to save much more than 10 % or perhaps have the 10-15% interest rates of the 1980s when he told me that. So based on that, I set up automatic withdrawals to my RRSPs of roughly 10% and figured I was set. If I want to dwell on the missed opportunity part we could have easily saved more in various investment accounts and made massive returns during the 2008 downturn. I started working in 2003 and as long as I'd been able to stay steadfast and not panic, while focusing on investments we could potentially have been much farther ahead. Being debt adverse our main strategy was paying down the mortgage and a little bit of real estate. So definitely not terrible ov...

Recently it was my daughter's 5th birthday. As with most things in life I try to keep the costs in mind without scrimping on the overall experience. This year I've been trying to move towards more experience gifts rather than more stuff. We royally failed on that account at Christmas but her birthday gave us the chance to make up for it. We did discuss coming up to her birthday that we would give her less gifts but do a fun experience instead and she was excited about that. I did still want her to have a gift to open so we got her a new story book collection to expand bed time reading, which I picked up at Winners for $10. I also made her a dress that matches the Minnie mouse one I'd previously made her  using the free Love Notions   Doll dress . I'm really pleased with how it turned out, however she has yet to put on her and the doll's version. Hopefully that will come. The pattern is very cute and easy to sew together. I did change it a bit as I was usin...