Skip to main content

Posts

The Fallout of my FIRE & The End (revised)

Step back, this blog is about to be blown up!

Okay, not just yet but you should be a safe distance when it does. If you've liked what I've written here so far, I regret to inform you that this will be my last post. More on that halfway down.
Like my Vortex of FIRE post, I'm revisiting a past article and rewriting it from scratch to remove my previous podcaster bias. Since it's my last article, I'm intrigued to see what I come up with.
The 3rd and final ending to the Requirements of FIRE:
Before we get onto the main entrée that is this blog keeling over and dying, let's first examine one last bit of misconception in the FIRE movement. This little paragraph or two was inspired by friend of the now-deceased blog. Her name is Maria over at Handful of Thoughts, and she owns 3 cars and wants you to know that while it might not be very "FI"of her, she essentially says you can fuck right off. I enjoyed the aggression in the article and wanted to add a point that …
8 comments
Read more
Recent posts

The Vortex of FIRE Information (here we go again)

A while back I posted an article by the same name as this one highlighting several of my favourite bloggers and podcasters in the FIRE scene. I have since taken it down and rebuilding the thought from scratch. 
The original intention was to highlight the vast see of garbage "FIRE" content plaguing the movement and turn the readers focus away from the onslaught of blogs and instead read only a select few that I recommended. I failed the readers with this attempt of an article because I wanted to include the up and coming blogs and podcasts that I thought had merit (or were closely affiliated with - shameful), thereby instead of thinning the herd as I intended, I created a fat list of bland FIRE content that served nobody. 
Whoops. This was made more apparent as the blogs and podcasts I recommended went inactive (or barely active) and the content creators that hung around stopped actually making FIRE content and instead served up bland-ass personal finance with some FI not RE ma…
4 comments
Read more

The Anti-Budget is on FIRE!

While budgets aren't evil per se, there's something soul-sucking about numbers on a spreadsheet or cash divided into many jars/envelopes that you're supposed to follow without fail. Because when you do eventually fail, the whole system comes crashing down because, ironically, you didn't budget for budget failures. Now you need to take money from elsewhere, you end up with a deficit, your mind starts to race, sweat is dripping down your chin and before you know it you've blown your remaining $2 coffee budget on a $4 Iced Capp from Tim's because fuck it, the budget was fucking doomed anyways.
Introducing: the Anti-Budget for FIREwalkers
Instead of separating purchases into categories (such as housing or dining out), then allocating cash limits to each category and then never screwing that up, pool all available cash into one account. It goes like this: Get paid from employerSave 50% of that income Pay/anticipate all upcoming fixed expensesWhat's left is now my A…
2 comments
Read more

The Best Savings Account in Canada

We the FIRE community have embraced EQ Bank as one of the best financial institutions aligned with our movement. Financial optimization is one of the cornerstone values of a FIREwalker and today I'd like to sell you on EQ Bank and why everybody around you is choosing them too.
** I've included an affiliate link with this review just above and at the bottom. If you sign up with my link, you'll score us both $20. That'll help my blog and my mission, so thank you :) **
They have no fees - Like all good bank accounts in Canada (few as they are), no fees for an efficient Canadian is imperative. No minimums, no account fees, free bill payments, unlimited transfers, free to open/close, all that good stuff. If you bounce a payment or need to convert CAD to USD or whatever, you can expect the regular fees but FIREwalkers are efficient in those places too.Yes, you can have a Joint Account - It's no problem to sign up for an account now and add your spouse later if you so choos…
2 comments
Read more

Not Much Will Change After Covid-19

If you're party to the collective stupidity that is "We'll all be so different after Covid-19! Just look at how much life has transformed now!" then you're probably falling for the headlines touting a extreme silliness that This Time is Different, a tried and true click bait title that sucks in readers like a lamp to a fly.
This time is not different. Certain things will fall the way of the dinosaurs (such as handshaking or packed elevators) and its likely more employees will be offered or negotiate their way to work-from-home packages with their employers but modern consumer culture has not been set back even a step. The cash-dripping leveraged consumer donkey has been spending loads of cash on home renovations and brand new cooking disasters (and subsequently Uber Eats when their own cooking fails them). Spending has not gone down, just certain categories have fallen off but others have more than happily taken its place.
Before we bag on consumer culture further,…
2 comments
Read more

Entitlement, Privilege & FIRE

I do my best when writing this blog to stay away from the topics of sex, politics and religion. Why? Not only are they entirely useless subjects to the FIRE movement but also because I think knowing about my opinion of such topics is bound to change your perception of the content I create. It's kind of like enjoying the music of Kanye West and then finding out his personal life is super embarrassing. Can you still like his music? Sure.. but you'll hear it differently and appreciate it more or less depending on who you are.
** So, a warning: I might be hitting a bit close to politics on today's read. If that bothers you, skip this one. Also, please keep in mind this was written before the murder for George Floyd and the justifiable outrage across the globe. This article didn't touch on police brutality before and it won't know because it's not the blog to cover this. **
It seems that I've stumbled upon a section of the FIRE haters who don't discredit the F…
2 comments
Read more

My Blog and My Mission

I guess this could've been one of my very first posts... or at least should've been.
Most popular bloggers out there have some sort of statement embedded into their articles or at least a page linking to a statement about how they will be honest about making money, not sell your email and all that crap.
That sounds like a good idea because I do have things to sell you on this blog. In fact, every article that comes out is attempting to sell you something, whether it's my philosophy or my product reviews (and sometimes those have referral codes). I'm not going to apologize for that, I think by spreading my truth about FIRE I get to better learn about myself and potentially make a profit from it as a result for my readers following along. Those are selfish goals but hey, what else is the point of blogging?
So here goes, whenever I say "You'll be supporting my blog and my mission" what I mean is this: You're going to further my goal of achieving FIRE by indi…
2 comments
Read more

Disappearing Comments!?

Hey everyone, quick blog update for some of you affected by this glitch.
A few of you have messaged/emailed me being unable to comment on this site. You'd type in all the information needed, your thoughtful comment, hit submit and then... poof, it's gone.
So what the hell, right?
As it turns out, my cheap hosting is to blame. More specifically, Blogger (which is owned by Google) is the platform to blame. Maybe back when blogs were emerging as useful websites Blogger was a quality candidate but that's not really the case anymore.
Besides being an outdated platform with several deficiencies built in, it also comes with an awkward side effect that nobody using iOS devicescan comment!
So that's the biggest problem yet I've had with Blogger. I'm very sorry about people spending time and effort into communicating with me only to find that block of text disappear. Sorry everybody :(
At this point I will tell you that Blogger is perhaps the cheapest hosting out there, becaus…
Post a comment
Read more

Why I'm Switching to Wealthsimple Trade

Wealthsimple Trade Promo Shot
Being the savvy FIREwalker that I am means having my ear to the wall of any new fee structure the Canadian financial institutions of all sizes decide to ruin my day with. Whether its minimum annual spending increases on credit cards (looking at you Rogers Mastercard) or multi-product rebates becoming increasingly complicated (cut the crap RBC), it's quite annoying that the Canadian banking system makes regular and consistent increases to fees and commitments needed by us, their customers.
One overriding truth remains however - regardless of the bank, the higher the cost of the financial account, typically the better service you're going to get. As an example, since 2012 I've had almost all my financial products with RBC, save for a PC Mastercard. The ecosystem RBC provides is moderately expensive, mostly issue-free, and damn did they offer fantastic customer service. PC Mastercard on the other hand offers plenty of fraud on their credit cards* a…
4 comments
Read more

American FIRE vs Canadian FIRE

Images by Ali Tawfiq (top) & Frank McKenna (bottom) on Unsplash
If your FIRE-podcast listening experience has been anything like mine, you've probably learned far too much about how great America is to live for next to nothing, invest with low MERs and buy real estate in. And yet you've probably also heard that they have over a billion different account types making retirement options very complex and of course the elephant in the room: healthcare. Today, we're going to compare these two countries FIRE and see who has an edge on one another. It will of course be a completely biased article since I'm Canadian and I want my country to win :P Okay let's see how we do. Cost of Living (COL)In the US, COL ends up being cheaper for a number of consumer staples, food and gasoline being the two prime examples. Simply put, goods just cost a lot less in the US and us Canadians see the difference everytime we travel south of the border. Even though everything from iPads to c…
Post a comment
Read more

My Phone Bit the Dust - Another 2-Year Contract??

When Canadians drop their phones in a public toilet and race home to try the rice-trick (and it fails because why would something everybody says works ever work for you!?) they get this compulsive urge to replace the newly coronavirus-ridden device with a brand-spanking new financed phone with a 2-year contract. 
That contract provided a $0 brand new phone... what's not to love?*
It's never zero dollars. You've made a terrible decision.
To give you an idea of how lucrative this cell phone + plan bundling business is, I went ahead and looked at my local mall to see how many stores sell phones and plans. It's a Cadillac Fairview mall so it's quite big with 120 stores (for comparison the Eaton Centre in Toronto is 235 stores and the West Edmonton Mall is 800+). It may (or may not) surprise you that of the 120 locations to be leased, 18 of these locations are betting they can sell you a cell phone + plan, or a whopping 15% of the mall. That's crazy! With retail stores…
4 comments
Read more