Canadian FIRE

Friend of the blog Court [ modernfimily.com ] published an article a few months back detailing a bunch of books she's read (it's the link above). I found this list helpful since she’s my soulmate. Okay, not really! But we both operate on the same wavelength, of that much I am sure. Figuring out what to read next can seem as daunting as scrolling for a new show on Netflix. And since both catalogs are virtually endless it kinda spins your head in a circle as long as you let it. I try to go with book recommendations, especially if there is somebody to chat it over with once I’m done the read. That's why I've linked Court's list and created my own below. Nothing worse than turning to online critiques, it just feels so impersonal. With that said, here’s the list of books I’ve read in 2020 . Keep in mind I haven’t spent any money on these books, they were all rented through apps like Libby and Hoopla. I just plug in my library card and away I go. Atomic Habits - James Cle

Hello all, update time! Back in July of 2020 I decided to pull the plug on this blog. Not too long before that I had also decided to step away from my partnership on the Explore FI Canada podcast. Both of these moves weren’t knee-jerk decisions, more like eventualities. EFIC was (and still is) heading in a creative direction that I can’t wrap my head around. As for the blog, the writing was being used to justify criticism and my perceived expectations of what I thought others wanted from me. The intention from the very get-go was to create a “blogcast” - that is content that is available in both written and audio form. You get to pick your preference and away you go. Another original intention was to keep this blog as a financial diary for me (and to be transparent to you) while also poking fun of Consumerism in society as I see it. Additional content includes product reviews, shitting on the FIRE movement and beating myself up. Classic CanadianFIRE. Money Side of Things To date, I’ve

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash There's something about always learning, always getting better and always trying your hardest that creates a background hum in your mind of inadequacy of the self and resentment of others far away. Today I'm bringing you a blog post on this dead website for two reasons. The first, because I need to get this out of my system for the sake of my mental health and second because creativity is a reflection of self and there is nothing more sacred to the human soul (that just means I want to do this for the sake of expressing myself). At some point in my journey to FIRE I've realised the entire point is to live long and happily. Therefore, FIRE is incredibly similar with the projected values of individuals and society as a whole but of course what people project is much different from what they actually do. Society may want to live long and happily but the individual actions of people taken every day are quite contrary to this. As a societ

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

Card art from Yu-Gi-Oh! by Konami 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 pers

Photo by  Ashraf Ali  on  Unsplash 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 employer Save 50% of that income  Pay/anticipate all upcoming f

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