A financial planner (and retired teacher) who believes families can manage their finances in less than 20 hours a year.
I know this is possible because I manage my household finances and investment portfolio in under an hour a month. And I teach my clients how to do the same.
But my money hasn’t always been this easy to manage.
I’ve always been a saver often without any end goal. Okay, maybe saver isn’t the right word, I was a hoarder of money, to the point where I would make myself uncomfortable if it meant saving money.
And while from a young age I understood money could buy freedom I didn’t know how to implement that. I would just save money Scrooge McDuck style.
Then I met my husband who was a bit of a spender. He never second-guessed buying a coffee, eating out, or spending money on hobbies.
Together we navigated commingling our finances and eventually decided to buy our first home. Around that time we also realized that saving wasn’t going to help us achieve financial independence (neither of us wanted to work forever), we needed to learn how to invest.
So we did 2 things that would change the course of our financial future, we met with a financial advisor and registered for an online stock market course.
Turns out the financial advisor had her best interest (ie – commission) in mind over our best interest and financial goals. And the stock market course made investing in the stock market seem extremely confusing.
This lead to us buying rental properties instead of investing in the market. And while we eventually broke up with our financial advisor, that was well after we invested in high fee funds and the wrong type of life insurance.
But we did manage to prioritize paying off our mortgage because both of us were extremely debt averse.
In hindsight, we would have been further financially ahead not paying off our mortgage as quickly as we did, but our choice was more of a psychological one that let us sleep better at night.
And while we made a lot of financial mistakes in the past, we never stopped learning.
We now have 2 kids, 8 rental properties, and an investment portfolio invested in low-cost ETFs that we self-manage. My investing philosophy has become one of keeping it simple because as a parent, I don’t have time for complicated finances.
I also went back to school to become a Qualified Associate Financial Planner. I’ve always wanted to help people with their finances and wanted to ensure that I was helping them with their best interest in mind and not just with my opinion was.
So at the age of 40, after 17 years working in a high school as both a certified athletic therapist and sports medicine teacher, I retired from teaching and now am focused on working with young families as a financial planner to help them make the decisions today that will set then up for flexibility and financial freedom later.
All of my mistakes and wrong choices help me assist others in avoiding them. I’ve set out to be the type of financial planner I wish I had met with years ago. My practice is all about keeping the client’s best interest in mind throughout the process and I help to simplify investing – not over complicate it.
As a parent, I know that there more important things to do in your day then stress about financial spreadsheets and market returns.
I’m no longer Scrooge McDuck, yes I still like to save, but now we have a plan for our money and how we want to spend it.
That plan includes annual travel and retiring my husband from his job before he turns 46 (he wants to retire at 45). It also includes planned spending that aligns with our values, something that in the past made me extremely uncomfortable.
And none of that would be possible without the financial decisions we made early in our relationship.
Our money behaviour has evolved over the years and will continue to evolve and we learn and grow.
Another large part of my financial future includes helping other young couples and families set themselves up for financial success. I want to share what I’ve learned with others because a rising tide lifts all boats.
I believe that anyone can manage their money if they want to, and it doesn’t have to be complicated. So I’m on a mission to help as many Canadian families and couples as I can by providing cost-effective advice-only financial planning with implementation support. Because we could all use a little help sometimes.
