After we got married and combined our money in spirit, we hit a practical problem: our money was scattered across a handful of institutions and account types. There was no single place to see the whole picture. So we built one. A spreadsheet. The Spreadsheet That Kept Changing The spreadsheet has gone through many iterations over the years. It started as a simple list of balances. We’d make a new tab every time we took a new snapshot of the balances. ...
We got married in 2017. But the financial conversation started months before the ceremony. By then we’d already closed on the condo, so money was no longer hypothetical. We had a mortgage, a shared address, and a shared future. The only question was how we’d run the money: together or apart. The Conversation Some couples keep everything separate and split shared costs down the middle. Others merge everything. There’s also many permutations in between. But the real issue isn’t the account structure — it’s whether two people agree on what the money is for. ...
We were planning a wedding for 2017 and also wanted to live closer to work. Living at home had been a financial cheat code, but it wasn’t permanent. We needed a place of our own. The question was: rent or buy? The Numbers I Ran In 2016–2017, condo prices in our area were steep. A decent one-bedroom plus den was $550k–$650k. We were able to buy thanks to a generous $100k gift for our down payment. ...
By 2017, the savings were growing. And sitting quietly inside my TFSA was a WFG mutual fund I’d opened back in my first year of work. I’d been feeding it $200 a month, on autopilot, since day one. It was the start of something — but it was about to get a lot better. The Hive Mind Somewhere in 2017, I started religiously reading r/PersonalFinanceCanada. Two learnings that stuck: diversify and minimize fees. At the time, low-cost all-in-one ETFs weren’t a thing yet. The recommended strategy was CanadianCouchPotato. There were a few options to get started: Tangerine, TD eSeries, and ETFs. ...
Filing my first tax return was easy. I used SimpleTax, answered the questions, filled out some numbers, and got a result in under an hour. Easy, yes. But easy is not the same as understanding. I decided to actually read the paper forms SimpleTax generated — line by line, worksheet by worksheet. It was one of the most insightful things I’ve done with my money. The Employer Only Guesses Here’s the mental model I had been missing: your employer doesn’t know your final tax bill. They just make a best guess at how much to deduct from each paycheque, using a standard formula based on what they pay you. ...
Debt was gone by month four. Now what? I had two goals — buy a condo and marry my then-girlfriend. A new car would come somewhere along the line. I had a vague sense that I could achieve all of it, but no real plan for how. The First Year on the Job My starting salary was $85k with $22k in RSUs vesting over four years. Living at home meant my expenses were almost nonexistent. No rent, no groceries. The company provided lunch, a company phone that I used as my personal one, and covered most of my transit costs. My only real expenses were car insurance, helping out with some utility bills and miscellaneous purchases and outings. ...
I graduated in 2015 with a computer engineering degree and a net worth of roughly -$18,000. The debt was OSAP — split between federal and provincial loans. I took as much as OSAP would give me. Four years of co-op had kept me afloat and even left me with some savings. The Starting Line My first job was a software developer role. Salary: $85,000 CAD, plus $22,000 in RSUs vesting over four years. ...
I started my career in 2015 with student debt and a negative net worth. Eleven years later, at 35, I’m sitting at roughly $5M CAD — a number I built together with my wife. This blog is about the next leg of the journey: from $5M to $10M. But I’m not here to pretend I had some master plan from day one. The truth is, I got here through a mix of discipline, luck, career growth, compounding, and a few goalpost moves along the way. ...