It’s been awhile since I hit the keyboard.  Not going to lie, I am 100% over blogging.  It was a fun ride while we were on the journey to reaching our FI number.  But now that we are here on the other side of the pasture, there’s really not much to write about in regards to personal finances.

It’s not that things are doom and gloom or that early retirement = depressed Court.  It’s really the opposite.  I used to type these posts up in the middle of a night shift at work at 2am to kill time.  Now that I’m no longer working, I don’t want to be in front of a computer.  It’s as simple as that.  I want to be out living life.  Spending time with my family.  Hanging out with friends.  Trying out new foods.  Exploring new places.  Building relationships.  And when it’s time to relax, I want to actually relax and not be typing.  Life has been good – really good – and I highly encourage everyone reading to pursue financial independence.

For those who think you will be bored, you need to figure out your WHY.  Is it to travel?  Spend time with your kids?  Take care of your aging parents?  Give back in ways you can’t while stuck in a day job?  Whatever it is, you gotta figure that out. And if it means incorporating some sort of side gig, great.  You do you.  You have the flexibility to design your days how it best suits you and that’s what matters most.

The whole entire concept of FI is quite simple when you boil it down: spend less than you earn, invest the difference in a low fee diversified ETF/index, and wait (while enjoying life along the way).  It’s really the mindset shift that’s required to make this possible as that spend less than you earn piece is hard to do.  Once you’ve figured out that we don’t need to spend spend spend in the consumeristic culture we live in, your spending on things you value becomes pretty streamlined that you can guesstimate what you’re overall spending for the year will look like.  Of course there will be one-off hiccups to account for but in general most things are in check. That’s the beauty to it.  It’s quite a stress free way to live.

Stop worrying about hyper optimizing your portfolio, chasing the latest high interest savings rate promo, or uber focusing on a tax strategy that has minimal output.  The biggest thing to focus on is your savings rate.  Then select a low fee index and max out your registered accounts.  Then go after your non-reg.  Chug chug chug along. Calm down and go live your life.

Ok ok back to an update. Our portfolio continues to plough up and to the right.  We are now multi millionaires which is sweet but honestly all we did was give each other high-fives once we realized our net worth now starts with a 2 in the front.  We’re still spending ~2% of our portfolio not because we are worried but because this seems to be our baseline happiness number.  Sure we could spend more on some discretionary spending categories, and we are, but it’s really not swinging the needle much.  I’m sure as the kiddos get older, our yearning for travel will continue to grow, but for now as much time at the cabin in the summer + 1-3 week trips sprinkled throughout the year is working out well for us.

We are loving being present parents.  It’s extremely exhausting but worth it.  I’m volunteering a lot at Kindergarten and Girl Guides and taking some art classes, Nic has joined a soccer team, Finn is starting to confidently read (hallelujah!), and Parker is definitely turning into a little man with his personality starting to shine through.

I like to say I’m not really retired.  Instead, we’ve taken on the following rolls:

• conflict resolution specialist
• alarm clock
• correctional officer
• hair dresser
• librarian
• house keeper
• chef
• waitress
• chauffeur
• referee
• snuggler
• teacher
• manners expert
• tooth brushing instructor
• keeper of top secrets
• birthday party planner
• playground medic
• meltdown negotiator
• search & rescue: small plastic pieces unit
• art critic
• playdate secretary

All while obtaining our Master’s & PhD in Patience while still remaining CEO of the Department of Make Believe.

All jokes aside, we are extremely privileged to be living this life and we don’t take that lightly.  We try to help out other families around town as we are always saying to each other “can you imagine if one of us was still working?!” (recognizing having a 2 parent household is a luxury and then having one of those parents be a stay a home parent is an even greater luxury).  We are wiped when one of us heads out for a few hours and we’re left to solo parent.  We are extremely extremely grateful for our set up.

We all get to go skating together on Monday mornings, go to a play class Tuesday mornings, head to a STEAM class at the library Wednesday afternoons (when most parents are normally still working), head to a kids class out of town Thursday mornings, go swimming together Friday mornings.  Gah typing all this up is giving me anxiety for next year when grade 1 is 8am-2pm.

That’s another thing.  Kindergarten in Alberta is half days (2.5 hours) and I LOVE this set up.  I SO wish all of school through grade 12 was like this.  But of course, what other family wishes this?!  Most families struggle with an 8am-2pm type set up and need to find after school care. Yet here we are complaining about not getting to see our kids for 6 hours a day.

What it’s ultimately come down to is that we are officially unrelateable (thank you Ryan for this concept).

We are in this enviable position to most people.  But we can’t relate to most of society and how it’s set up.  It’s a bit of a Catch22.  Our ultimate goal is time freedom but it’s hard to talk about it to others as they simply cannot comprehend how we got to where we are.  It’s hard to talk about our day/week/month to others when they are in the grind mentality.  It’s not a bad thing per se, it’s just hard to have small talk with some people when our lives are literally a complete 180 to theirs.  We never would want to come off as “braggy” to others, so it’s a fine line of trying to help motivate others while keeping our lips zipped up too.

That’s why I love the community of like minded FI folks we have in town and I like this little pocket of the internet where those reading do get it.  So, I don’t think I’ll be giving up this ole blog tomorrow but don’t expect much from me in the future. I might pop in every once in awhile, but no promises.

Hope you all are living life on your own terms and enjoying it along the way.  I’ll end this post with one of my favourite quotes that I have tattooed: “Let Life Take You”.  I’m curious to see how our life continues to evolve over the years.

The post I’m Still Here… Kinda appeared first on Modern FImily.

A Look Inside My 2013 Brain

Guys, the only thing on this list that actually went according to “plan” was to have a baby. Literally nothing else here happened according to plan.  Ah to be young again (oh 2013 Court, you’re so cute to be thinking like this). Although I am so damn proud of my organized self for writing this all out in my late 20s.. I know, I’m super weird now and was back then too.

What Changed?

Of course, I’m glad my 20 something self was thinking ahead like this but this just showcases how much of a Type-A over-planner I’ve always been. Over the years I’ve learned to loosen up (I think?) and realized that there’s no sense in planning for anything more than a year or two out.  So what actually happened instead?

• We rented out our Florida townhouse for way more than $1,300/mo (2 people at $650/mo). Back in 2015, we rented out our ~2,000 sq ft townhouse to a family for $2,100/mo.  This was MUCH more than I thought we’d be able to rent it for.
• Nic paid off her student loans prior to 2017. So I suppose this point is correct, but we were aiming for 2017 but it happened in 2015 instead.
• We did save and purchase a Canadian townhouse but it was in 2016 not 2017, for $315,000 CAD not $300,000, 20% down ($63,000) not $80,000, 30 year loan with a 5 year fixed rate, with an interest rate of 2.59% for those first 5 years not 4.5%. Close but no cigar!
• We have not spent $15,000 on a car every 8 year.  Prior to leaving Florida in 2015, I sold my 2001 Toyota Rav4 for $4,000 and Nic sold her 2003 Honda Accord for $1,500. Our car setup has been all over the place since we moved up to Canada.
  • Court
    • With that $4,000 USD I purchased Nic’s grandma’s 2009 Pontiac Vibe with 40,000 kms for $5,000 CAD (the exchange rate at the time was 1.2 so this equated to the same amount).  A year later I was in a major car accident thanks to a guy not stopping at a stop sign and insurance paid me a little over $7,000 CAD for the car value as it was totalled.  I purchased a lemon 2011 Nissan Rogue AWD (no offense to the Rouge, I did not end up with a good one though) with 130,000 kms for $9,000 CAD. Within a year I sold this car at a small loss and bought Carol, my 2009 Toyota Corolla with 70,000 km for $7,000 CAD.  After a few years, we eventually decided to downsize to a one-car household and I sold Carol for $6,500 CAD.
  • Nic
    • Nic sold her super old yet super reliable Honda Accord in FL and used that $1,500 USD/$1,800 CAD to help fund her $4,000 CAD Honda Civic that she purchased from her brother.  She ended up over paying and sold it for $2,000 CAD as we were over the cramped 2 door style (not our savviest/proudest purchase).  She bought a $8,000 AWD Subaru Imprezza which we also sold as it was manual as the intention was for me to learn stick but that never happened (I freaked out trying to learn!) so that got sold for a profit (washing out the loss from the Civic) and she then bought a 2011 Chevy Equinox with 88,000 kms for $8,700 CAD.  We sold this beast for $7,500 CAD as it was too big for us and bought a 2013 AWD Subaru Legacy with 170,000 kms that we bought for $6,000 CAD.  While we loved this car, we decided to downsize to a single car and sold this Subie for $10,000 (this is when the used car market started to really not make sense) along with Court’s Corolla for a Subaru Outback for $12,000 CAD.
    • As you can see, we were alllllll over the place with vehicles – yeesh! I really can’t stand the car buying/selling process so hopefully we have our current vehicle for awhile now!  Writing all of that out made me dizzy, I can’t believe all of that happened over a 6 year time frame.
• Estimated baby costs of $20,000/year.  What crack was I on?!  This is the damn marketing hitting me. When we were getting ready to call it quits, we estimated to spend $208/mo on RESP investments (accurate), $175/mo on food, and $400/mo on everything else for each kiddo.  This comes out to closer to $9,396/year/kid which looking back, is still too high.
• We thought for a hot second to have my mom rent out our townhouse.  That never happened.  We ended up selling our Florida townhouse in 2017 instead as we learned we did not enjoy being cross continental land lords (even with excellent tenants).
• My fiscally conservative ways shining through…. accounting for CPI but no pay raises…
• Hopefully retire by 60.  HA!!!! Here’s where that age 60 comes from.  Check this out haha oh Court, I crack myself up. Conservative Clancy at her finest.

We were estimating $900,000 in savings would be our freedom.  Look at the damn timeline.  I just cannot.  We reached $900,000 in passive income, wayyyyy earlier than what my 2013 self estimated.  Back in 2013 I guessed it would happen in 2039.  26 years later.  26!!!! I would have been in my 50s at that point but here we are in our 30s not working.

The power of FI is over time you realize how to live an intentional life that you value and inherently you increase your savings rate and drastically propel your timeline. You figure out how to be more dialled in and optimized.  You find ways to reduce costs.  You find ways to make extra income.  It’s all part of the process but hard to think about when you’re just starting off.

Note that this was created in 2013 and I had first heard of Mr Money Mustache and FIRE a year prior.  At that point I had just paid off my $60,000 USD student loans and had saved up for a downpayment on our first townhouse and was very new to this investing/FIRE concept.  I was guessing we would save around $25,000/year.  We ended up saving WAY more than that.

This is why I try to tell people in the FI doldrums phase to just chill. You very likely will reach your number a lot sooner than you think. Compound interest is amazing.  A portfolio earning 7% returns looks very different when the size of that portfolio is $10,000 vs $1,000,000.  Simply being motived to reach your FI number will somehow get you there faster.  You’ll find some sort of side hustle.  You’ll realize you over estimated some sort of spending category as you found a way to reduce/eliminate that cost.  Yada yada.

Hope you enjoyed getting a look into my brain from 10 years back. Also hope it provided some relief knowing that plans do in fact change, likely for the better.

Did you ever come up with a game plan in your earlier years that were smashed out of the park?  Do you ever think reaching FI is SO far away?  If so, you may be thinking like 2013 Court and be a lot closer than you think.  Hopefully you got a chuckle from my thoughts from 7 years ago like I did looking back on this now.

Support This Blog

If you liked this article and want more content like this, please support this blog by sharing it.  Not only does it help spread the FIRE, but it lets me know what content you find beneficial.  Writing is NOT my strong suit and it honestly takes me hours to write each post so the more encouragement the better!  Engaging in the comments below keeps me motivated.  You can also support this blog by subscribing to receive emails anytime a new post is published.  Thank you FImily!

We believe in stacking up life hacks to keep your enjoyment levels to the max without depleting your bank account.  Here are some ways to further educate yourself and save thousands of dollars over your lifetime by making some simple adjustments:

• Investing Newbies: Check out our free Investing 101 Series
• How much are you paying for your phone plan?  Canadians, learn more about Public Mobile and see how we are paying $3 / mo for our cell phone plan.
• How much are you paying for internet?  Canadians, learn more about the various Independent Service Providers out there to see who services your area so you can lower your monthly bills.
• How much are you paying for home insurance?  We were able to reduce our rates by 25% by switching over to Square One Insurance.  If you live in BC, AB, SK, MB, and ON, check out Square One for your home insurance, landlord insurance, and / or tenant insurance.

The post A Look Into My 2013 FIRE Notes appeared first on Modern FImily.

This is a FREE summit with 35+ of the leading financial gurus across Canada.  It is now Canada’s largest personal finance and investing conference.

Line Up

Rob Engen of Boomer & Echo?

Yep, he’s there.

Ed Rempel, one of the advisors I’d actually consider using if I didn’t have US accounts?

Bingo.

Dr Preet Banerjee – behavioural finance expert?

There.

Rob Carrick from the Globe & Mail?

Yup.

Karsten Jeske aka Big ERN from Early Retirement Now who created the super detailed safe withdrawal rate series?

Present.

You get the point. The list goes on and on.

At the top of the home page you can select the “Agenda” tab to see the line up of speakers for each day along with some info on their session (or scroll down to the bottom of the main page).

Some more info about the talks:

• It’s 100% online so you can stream all the talks right from your device. You don’t need to go anywhere or buy anything
• The summit starts on October 18th with a webinar and then the speakers are lined up for October 19-21
• There are 12-13 speakers lined up each day and each presentation is ~30 minutes long

So what’s the catch?

There literally is no catch.  That’s why I love this summit so much!

This is an amazing lineup and its FREE. You literally will not find this high caliber of guests in one weekend anywhere else. I don’t know how they managed to get just about every well known Canadian personal finance speaker to present at this conference but they did it.

Please feel free to send this post to any friends, family, and co-workers that may be interested so that they can get their free tickets too.

After you sign up, you’ll get an email each day of the summit with a link to that day’s sessions.  You can view the summit on any phone, tablet, or computer while in your jammies. Or maybe you decide to dress up for the occasion and put on some sweats.  You do you.

You have a full 48 hours from each airing to tune in for free. If you’re unable to make it during those 48 hours, you can then purchase an All-Access Pass to watch whenever it’s convenient for you (which I’d highly recommend if you can’t get to all the videos). So mark your calendars!  Curl up on the couch with a cup of tea, grab a notebook, and get your learn on!

If you are not able to stream the videos within the first 48 hours, you also have the option to purchase an All-Access Pass (which is normally $197 but currently on sale for $89 at the time of this writing) which will give you access to view anytime at your own pace (for life).

What’s included in the All-Access Pass?

• 4 Q&A sessions where people can ask their own personalized questions to the experts
• 6 bonus sessions plus
• Additional guides and ebooks that are only available to those with the All-Access Pass
• For those who prefer podcast format, you can stream via podcast with the All-Access Pass

The price of the All-Access Pass will jump up to the full $197 after the summit airs so if this is something you’re considering I’d jump in at this discounted price as I can pretty much guarantee there is $89 of valuable content in there and you likely will end up making way more than your money back somehow. If you’re not satisfied with the summit there is a 100% money back guarantee, no questions asked.

Honestly, there is so much great content in this summit that if you think you can only catch a few sessions during the free period, I’d strongly consider getting the All-Access Pass so you can view all the sessions over time.

What About Us Non-Canadians?!

While the speakers are all Canadian, this summit is not only for Canadians of course.  There is a ton of great info/topics for non-Canadians as well such as planning a stress free retirement, how flexible can you be with the 4% rule, managing cash flow, the 5 most common mistakes women make with money, setting up and managing a side hustle, and on and on.

We’ll Be There!

I still can’t believe I’m typing this out but I’ll be a part of the summit for the third year in a row speaking about lessons learned after interviewing over 25 members of the FIRE community who have either reached financial independence or as well on their way!  Our session will be aired on Friday, October 20th! Here’s our little blip:

Of course, there will be a LOT of other topics covered, so please check out the link below to view all the speakers and talks that will take place.

That’s it folks. Head on over to the Canadian Financial Summit, sign up for free, and get ready to take some notes 

Even though this is my third year taking part in the summit, I’m honestly still in awe that I will be a part of such a high caliber event.  Can you tell I’m excited for it haha.  Never did I think I’d be cramming in all the talks in the past to now actually being a speaker in the event.

That’s it for now and truly hope you’re all able to tune in to some, if not all, of the awesome content coming your way from this year’s summit.

Would love to hear your feedback after tuning in!  Cheers!

Support This Blog

If you liked this article and want more content like this, please support this blog by sharing it.  Not only does it help spread the FIRE, but it lets me know what content you find beneficial.  Writing is NOT my strong suit and it honestly takes me hours to write each post so the more encouragement the better!  Engaging in the comments below keeps me motivated.  You can also support this blog by subscribing to receive emails anytime a new post is published.  Thank you FImily!

We believe in stacking up life hacks to keep your enjoyment levels to the max without depleting your bank account.  Here are some ways to further educate yourself and save thousands of dollars over your lifetime by making some simple adjustments:

• Investing Newbies: Check out our free Investing 101 Series.
• How much are you paying for your phone plan?  Canadians, learn more about Public Mobile, and see how we are paying $3/mo for our cell phone plan.
• How much are you paying for internet?  Canadians, learn more about the various Independent Service Providers out there to see who services your area so you can lower your monthly bills.
• How much are you paying for home insurance?  We were able to reduce our rates by 25% by switching over to Square One Insurance.  If you live in BC, AB, SK, MB, and ON, check out Square One for your home insurance, landlord insurance, and/or tenant insurance.  Use this link to receive an extra $15 off your quote.  (Note that you must use this link to start the process to get the $15 off even if you prefer to pay over the phone.)

The post Register Now for the FREE Canadian Financial Summit: October 18-21, 2023 appeared first on Modern FImily.

Now that it’s been one full lap around the sun with no j-o-b let’s dig into a look back of the previous year!

Overall Thoughts Of Our First Year Being Retired

Honestly, it’s been amazing.  I cannot imagine going back to work and having a boss anytime in the near future. Gah. I am my own boss dammit. Maybeee someday I would consider a part time gig but the conditions would have to be ideal.  And I’m talking 5+ years from now if ever.

It has been so incredible to have two full time parents in the house.  I don’t even think I can put into words how much I love it.  We get to witness so many firsts right in front of our eyes.  I absolutely love this age range that our kiddos are in and love goofing around with them (and should have been a kindergarten teacher in my previous life).  Finn is reading and Parker is putting words together.  The best.

I came across this quote the other day from Dave at Strong Money Australia’s newsletter and it’s so incredibly true:

“To those with young children: If you live simply, invest, and create more freedom, your kids get their parents back.  That’s the best possible gift you can give them.”

We are trying our best to be present parents.  Holy, parenting is HARD! It’s the hardest job I’ve ever had, and I’m ready to quit every evening when it’s time to brush teeth, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’m making it a goal this year to start reading again and to focus on parenting books.

Not having to go to work means we can design our days however we want.  Our calendar always has things on it and it’s up to us to decide if we want to go or not. It’s a little silly how “celebrity like” our kiddos are at our library haha.

Since we both were shift workers during our careers, we’ve become accustomed to the ‘Tuesday morning errands to avoid crowds and hibernate over weekends’ type of lifestyle. But it doesn’t get old. It’s nice to have local FI focused friends.  It’s so nice to run into friends and just hang with them until they have to get going.  It’s nice to randomly have friends pop over and they end up staying for hours.  It’s nice to run into your neighbour and it turns into a 30 minute chat about what’s been going on in their life.  It’s nice to not be rushed.  Creating this community has been so wonderful.

This year has definitely reminded us to prioritize friendships, relationships, and community.

Financially, we really have been feeling very zen with the decision to leave work.  Not once have we had any sort of “oh shit what have we done” moment.  2022 was a pretty crap year for the markets and for the months leading to the final decision not to return to work, our portfolio kept going down and it still felt right to pull the plug then even though it was hard to bat away the “hmmm is this going to be a repeat of the 1970s when it was the worst time to retire…” thoughts.

Throughout the year, I couldn’t turn the tracker brain off but very little of our time is spent looking at numbers.  We will continue to be mindful to stay below our 4% number for the next few years as we battle through sequence of returns risk and eventually implement retirement guard rails.

Our overall goal has been to simplify things.  It may not be the *most* optimized strategy, but that’s ok.  Everything is pretty much on autopilot at this point so there’s really isn’t too much time spent analyzing our finances.

Not once have we felt like we were “missing out” for the year. Looking back, I’m so glad we did not succumb to “one more year syndrome”. Time freedom is priceless.

10/10 would FIRE again.

Spending

Ok enough fluff, let’s dig into some numbers!

Overall, we spent a total of $45,145 this year.  This is more than our typical spend but we’ve also never travelled for 2 months before either.  If we split up our spending into fixed/discretionary, we spent $26,427 on fixed costs and $18,705 was on discretionary spending (58.6% / 41.4% split). It’s nice knowing that 41% of this $45k spend was on fluff that could get reduced if need be.

Here’s a further breakdown by category:

Fixed Expenses:

Discretionary Spending:

Back in Q2 2022 our liquid portfolio was sitting at $1,146,309 which would lead to a spend of $45,825 during this first year using the 4% rule so we were actually right on track.

According to StatCan, the 2022 Average Annual CPI increase was 6.8% for the year in Canada.  The 4% “rule” states one should be able to increase their retirement spending by inflation each year which would lead to a green light to spend $48,941 for this next year.

Side note: In our quarterly net worth update posts, we state how much our annual spend could be if we had retired right then and there instead of Q2 2022 (based off our current net worth and the “4% Rule”) .  We don’t actually use this figure when it comes to our spend goal for the year though.  It’s just something we like to track and it helps to determine if our current portfolio can support our spend goals for the year.

Income

Ok, here’s the fun part.  So we spent right around 4% of our portfolio but was that the same amount of money being drained from our accounts?  No!

I don’t even know how this happened, but somehow we made $30,377 this year. This figure does not include any dividends paid out from our taxable/non-registered accounts! That means 2/3 of our spending for the year was covered by income and we only dipped into our portfolio by $14,768.  Wild hey!?

This comes from a wide variety of sources including (from highest to lowest):

• Canada Child Benefit: $7,481
• Renting out our house while traveling: $5,669
• Coaching: $3,250
• Last remaining 2.5 months of EI: $3,213
• Affiliates: $2,116
• Company RSUs paid out: $2,040
• Tax refund: $1,808
• Alberta Affordability Plan: $1,200
• Gifts: $1,140
• Canada Climate Action Incentive: $1,077
• Selling random crap online: $1,022
• Home Ins and Car Ins Refund for adjustment to policy while abroad: $360

I’m going to guess this upcoming year will see an income figure that’s less than half of what’s listed above as quite a few of these are one-off type income streams that we do not expect to be repeating. Our CCB will be slightly less this year as 2022 was a high bonus year for me, no plans for a longer trip where we’d rent out our house, easing up on coaching, no more EI, no more RSU, AB Affordability Plan was likely a one time thing, etc.  I’m thinking $15,000 is likely a stretch for this upcoming year.  But the following year it will go up quite a bit once CCB ramps up.

Overall Withdrawal Rate

Putting it all together…

Overall we spent $45,145 but we earned $30,377 for a net out of pocket spend of $14,768.

Our portfolio started off with $1,146,309 which means we withdrew 1.28% during our first year of early retirement.  Holy, that’s low.  If we did include our dividends from our taxable/non-registered account that we are no longer DRIPing we’d be sitting at a withdrawal rate well under 1%.  We need to figure out how to spend more or earn less… I suppose that’s a good problem to have?  It’s nice knowing if we have a major car/house repair pop up we can fix the issue and not have to bat an eye.  I’m sure there will be future purchases in the next few years that we will start to feel “justified” to be able to spend on (i.e. a pop-up tent trailer) when we feel to urge to splurge.  But for now, with young kids in tow, we’re very content with the way we’re designing our days.

And at the end of our first year, our liquid portfolio is now at $1,305,646 for an overall net gain of $159,337.  This is more than any salary either one of us have ever had… and we were draining from the portfolio for the year.  Compound interest truly is amazing.  This is a year-over-year improvement of 13.9%.  Pretty wild…!

Are we banking on gains like this again for next year? Absolutely not. Are we going to ramp up our spending? Nope. We will continue to base next year’s spend off our original starting portfolio + inflation.

That’s it for today!  Any questions for us as we reflect back on our first “official” year of early retirement? We’ll check back in a year to see how we compare to this years current spend goal of $48,941.

Support This Blog

If you liked this article and want more content like this, please support this blog by sharing it.  Not only does it help spread the FIRE, but it lets me know what content you find beneficial.  Writing is NOT my strong suit and it honestly takes me hours to write each post so the more encouragement the better!  Engaging in the comments below keeps me motivated.  You can also support this blog by subscribing to receive emails anytime a new post is published.  Thank you FImily!

We believe in stacking up life hacks to keep your enjoyment levels to the max without depleting your bank account.  Here are some ways to further educate yourself and save thousands of dollars over your lifetime by making some simple adjustments:

• Investing Newbies: Check out our free Investing 101 Series.
• How much are you paying for your phone plan?  Canadians, learn more about Public Mobile, and see how we are paying $3/mo for our cell phone plan.
• How much are you paying for internet?  Canadians, learn more about the various Independent Service Providers out there to see who services your area so you can lower your monthly bills.
• How much are you paying for home insurance?  We were able to reduce our rates by 25% by switching over to Square One Insurance.  If you live in BC, AB, SK, MB, and ON, check out Square One for your home insurance, landlord insurance, and/or tenant insurance.  Use this link to receive an extra $15 off your quote.  (Note that you must use this link to start the process to get the $15 off even if you prefer to pay over the phone.)

The post Our First Year of Early Retirement: Reflections & Numbers Breakdown appeared first on Modern FImily.

Our town offers free passes to the Telus Spark Science Centre.  There’s no catch, they are completely free passes.  You just shoot over an email with the date and number of tickets you need and poof, free access to an awesome science centre that normally costs $26/adult and $19/child or you can purchase an annual pass for $76/adult and $55/child.  Parker is still considered an infant and free so this comes out to an annual savings of $207 for our house.

Most people in our town are too busy working to access the free Family Resource Network (FRN) facility and all the free weekly programming they have and thus they are out of the loop on this offering.

But that’s not what this post is all about.  There’s an addendum.

Finn wants to be a scientist when she grows up so as you can imagine, we visit the science centre quite often.  Because we have so much free time and request this pass frequently, Finn has become the FRN’s “science gal” whenever chatter about Spark passes comes up in their office.  The staff there need to submit applications to get the free tickets each year and they use our family as an example of how important STEAM activities are to young kids, especially young girls.

While we were at one of the free weekly classes, one of the facilitators mentioned to us how they received one free week long summer camp position at Spark this year and they asked us if Finn would like to have the free pass.

Yaaa!

Summer camps aren’t typically on our radar as we are fine having the kiddos at home with us – that’s our life not just over the summer…  I didn’t even realize they offered summer camps, but after speaking with the FRN staff we went to the Spark’s website to see the camp offerings to select which topic and date works best from our end.

Holy cow!

Guess how much a week of summer camp costs??

$340!

That’s bonkers, but hey, we’ll take it!

So now not only are we saving over $200 for the year with access to the science centre for our family, but Finn now gets to attend a sweet week of science summer camp! All thanks to having the time to access these awesome resources available to our community.

That’s it for today.  A short and sweet story illustrating the power of FI.

Have you ever noticed that when you have more time, free or low cost activities come your way too?  If so, please let us know in the comments below!

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If you liked this article and want more content like this, please support this blog by sharing it.  Not only does it help spread the FIRE, but it lets me know what content you find beneficial.  Writing is NOT my strong suit and it honestly takes me hours to write each post so the more encouragement the better!  Engaging in the comments below keeps me motivated.  You can also support this blog by subscribing to receive emails anytime a new post is published.  Thank you FImily!

We believe in stacking up life hacks to keep your enjoyment levels to the max without depleting your bank account.  Here are some ways to further educate yourself and save thousands of dollars over your lifetime by making some simple adjustments:

• Investing Newbies: Check out our free Investing 101 Series.
• How much are you paying for your phone plan?  Canadians, learn more about Public Mobile, and see how we are paying $3/mo for our cell phone plan.
• How much are you paying for internet?  Canadians, learn more about the various Independent Service Providers out there to see who services your area so you can lower your monthly bills.
• How much are you paying for home insurance?  We were able to reduce our rates by 25% by switching over to Square One Insurance.  If you live in BC, AB, SK, MB, and ON, check out Square One for your home insurance, landlord insurance, and/or tenant insurance.  Use this link to receive an extra $15 off your quote.  (Note that you must use this link to start the process to get the $15 off even if you prefer to pay over the phone.)

The post The Power of FI: An Example appeared first on Modern FImily.

For anyone new here, this interview series will cover people within the FIRE community who are on their way to becoming financially independent, have already reached financial independence, or who have retired early. If you are reading this and you are financially independent, retired early, or close to reaching these major financial milestones, please reach out to us! You can check out the previous FIRE Community Guest Interviews here.

Today, we have the pleasure of having a former CEO turned early retiree on to share their journey to FI. What I love most about this interview is that it showcases that even though you may make a high income, there’s more to early retirement than just bringing in a big paycheck.  The mental piece to it all is so important and understanding the mindset required is half the battle.  It’s always nice to have fellow early retirees on to share their insight as to how they got to where they are today. I love seeing the words “flexible” and “flexibility” throughout the interview as that really is the key to a successful early retirement.

I hope you appreciate these responses as much as I do and hope you can relate to these guest interviews in some sense to see that there is no cookie-cutter way to FI. If you have any follow up questions or would like to get in touch with Accidentally Retired, please check out their website Accidentally Retired, reach out via their contact form, or leave a comment below!

Without further ado, take it away AR!

1. Can you give us a little background of who you are, what you do, and how you became interested in personal finance? How did you discover the idea of financial independence?

I am an entrepreneur and former CEO, who has been Accidentally Retired for a year and a half now. 

The long and short of it was that after running my company for 10 years and working for a public company for 5 of those years, I was ready for a new challenge in life. And even more, I felt like I wasn’t really living the life I really wanted.

I have always wanted to retire early. In fact, it was something that I was thinking about even in my adolescence. Why work when you can play right? 

So I decided early on that the path to early retirement was going to be via entrepreneurship. I knew that if I could build a big enough business, I would likely make enough money to call it quits whenever I wanted. 

So the idea of early retirement had always been with me, but it took me a long time to put two and two together to really figure out the nuts and bolts of how it all worked. I had just figured, if you make enough money you’re set. 

But I was wrong. After we sold our business, we still weren’t set. I had to put my head down and continue to work to grow the business from within a large public company. And it was probably a few years after that when I really started to take things more seriously and follow more personal finance blogs. 

2. When in your journey did you realize financial independence was actually possible?  Was that the original goal at the beginning?

While retiring early was always my big goal, I didn’t have a real concrete plan for it. 

It wasn’t until I was a CEO, that I was starting to seriously think about my exit plan. I wanted to make sure the business was in good shape and in good hands before I left. 

But on the flipside of that, I started to read personal finance blogs, and then eventually I began to run retirement scenarios on a self-made spreadsheet. 

It became clear that even after selling my company and working as a CEO, I would need a few more years for early retirement to become doable. 

But then fate stepped in. Our brand was divested from the public company we were working for to a private startup. Contract negotiations weren’t going well and I just had this gut feeling that it was time to leave. So I negotiated my exit, and decided to take a mini-retirement to figure out what to do next.

3. To help put things into context, if you are comfortable sharing some numbers, what was your savings rate, FIRE number, net worth, salary, how many hours a week did you work, etc?  How long have you been working towards financial independence and where are you today? How were you able to become a CEO at such a young age?  

My wife and I have decided not to share our personal financial information online, but I have shared our early retirement withdrawal strategy. 

As discussed above, I didn’t make as much money as you would think from the sale of my business. I was a minority partner and we had likely sold about 5 years too soon. 

Yet even despite that potential error, I made the most of what we did make, saving every bonus, distribution, escrow payment, as well as maxing my 401(k). 

Our combined savings rate was roughly about 15% for the first 5 years after college working in more entry level positions, but then as I started to make more money in the later years, it ballooned up to 55%. 

I’ve always believed in having a strong work/life balance. That is why I typically never worked more than 40 hours a week, even as part of a small 3-person team, all the way up until my CEO days. 

My path to becoming a CEO was pretty straightforward. By starting my own businesses and then joining two co-founders as a third partner, it made it a pretty easy path to becoming CEO. I am sure there are many other ways to do it, but starting a business is the easiest way to become CEO. 

Don’t get me wrong, there is a big difference between being a CEO of a small business making $100K a year to a $15M company, but the path is simple. Grow with your company, and build your leadership skill set as your company grows. 

Honestly, the title is just that – a title. People respect those who lead, empower others, and who can get things done. Ultimately, that is what I tried to do whether I had the title or not. 

4. As someone who reached financial independence (at an early age to boot!), how has life changed since you stopped working?  What does a typical day/week look like for you? How long has it been and are you bored yet?

Initially, I started off by taking a mini-retirement. I wanted to take six months off to travel, golf, and spend time with my wife and kids. 

It was during that time that I started to really dig into personal finance even further. I read The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John Bogle, and I realized that I was closer to my early retirement than I had thought. I just had to get a little creative. 

In some ways life hasn’t changed much at all. I think this is likely due to having two small kids. You still have to be a parent and my life still revolves around my kids and their schedules. 

We typically drop them off at school, then we workout either by going on a long walk or doing some sort of YouTube workout. Then I either run errands or sit down at the computer and write on AR or manage the other website I invested in.

I’ll be honest though, these days, I have ended up back to working quite a bit for an average of 3-4 hours per weekday between AR and my other website.

But the great part is that I can take vacation whenever I want, I can stop working whenever I want, I can support my wife if she is having a bad day, etc. 

In other words, I have flexibility that I did not have while working full-time.

My wife and I pick up the kids from school together and I’ll typically take them on a bike ride or to the park or something like that. 

That is a typical day, and in general, I really can’t get enough of it. 

5. Do you feel deprived?  Do you feel like you are sacrificing and missing out on life?  How would you say your mindset has shifted throughout your FI journey?

No. I can’t claim to feel deprived in any way. I reached FI through entrepreneurship and doing things that I was passionate about. Now, I get to focus on family and continuing to explore my passions. 

But there definitely has been a mind shift. I’ve taken my finances a lot more seriously. While I previously had an investment advisor, I now manage my own portfolio. 

Previously, I thought that investing in the stock market was too complicated for the average joe, even a CEO. Boy was I wrong! 

Once you educate yourself on a few things, and create a plan, investing in Index Funds really couldn’t be easier. 

6. Do you use a budget?  Do you track your expenses? Do you track your net worth? If so, how often do you update these?

We’ve never really had a budget. My wife and I always stuck to the philosophy of making sure to save as much as we could for the future. No matter what we focused on just saving for the sake of saving.

In the early years that was 15% when we were both out of college and not making too much. But as our income grew quite significantly, we still made sure to spend wisely. I maxed out my 401(k), and we lived off only whatever was left over, with bonuses and other distributions all flowing into investments. 

Now, in early retirement, we have more of a budget, but we still aren’t sticklers for it. We save money where we can and we spend where we have to. It helps that we’ve sort of always lived this way. 

All of this gets monitored monthly in Personal Capital, and tracked in my net worth tracker spreadsheet.

7. What are some of the more unique/uncommon ways you’ve cut down costs? 

I wouldn’t say any of this is unique, but here is how I cut costs:

• I am my own handyman
• I am my own landscaper
• I do my own pest control
• I am now my own financial advisor
• I was my own security install technician

If there is something that I can do, and I have the time, I do it. 

My wife and I also both sell used items that we don’t want/need anymore on ebay, Amazon and Poshmark. 

Lastly, we like to prepay on anything that gives you a discount, so things like online storage, car insurance, security, anything that offers a 10% discount or more, we just prepay it to save the money.

8. What is your investment strategy? Do you invest in index funds, dividend stocks, real estate, other businesses, etc.?  Has your investment strategy changed over the years?

My investment strategy has certainly changed over the years. 

At first, it was to rely entirely on the advice of my financial advisor. But after my mini-retirement that all changed. 

So now, I’ve spent the last two years converting all of our investments from expensive mutual funds and a portfolio of 80+ individual stocks, to a three-fund portfolio. I really want to keep it simple and not overly complicate things. 

In my mind, there is no reason to gamble on individual stocks when you’ll beat the market and the average investor with Index Funds.

My one unique investment strategy has been to go out and acquire a small web business. After running various calculations and looking at real-estate versus websites, I came to the conclusion that websites were a better investment than real estate for me. So I spent much of 2021 looking for a website and I eventually purchased one in October 2021.

Of course owning a website is not very passive, and so I’ve been working a few days a week on the project to get it to where I want to be revenue wise. Once there, I’ll shift to outsourcing a majority of the work and operating it a bit more passively.   

9. Did you take advantage of tax advantaged accounts offered to you? Can you please share your withdrawal strategy in your post-FI world?

Yes! Thankfully one of my business partners was pretty chatty and he was talking about maxing his 401(k) pretty early on after we sold our business. So I did the same, and after 5 years of maxing, I should be on track to have about $1.4M in that account by the time that I can withdraw. 

The reason why I purchased a website rather than real estate, was entirely to help fortify my withdrawal strategy. We largely lived off cash reserves for the first 1.5 years of retirement, but I didn’t feel like that was sustainable or safe to do. 

So we purchased the website with the hopes of bringing in more steady cash flow to offset sequence of return risk and allow us to build up our investment portfolio without needing to draw down on it. 

10. Speaking of withdrawals, what is the withdrawal rate you use when you withdraw from your portfolio?  Are you a fan of the “4% rule” or something else?  Why?

I love the simplicity of the 4% rule, but let’s face it…it doesn’t work on a long-term horizon. I love the work that Karsten at Early Retirement Now has done to help early retirees manage sequence of return risk. 

So my strategy is to stick to a maximum of 3.25% withdrawal rate now (hopefully less as the web business generates income), and we’ll also be using an equity glidepath to further mitigate risk and allow for higher withdrawal rates in the future if all goes well. 

But most of all, we simply want to remain flexible. If I have to go back to work and get a full-time job, I will do it. If we needed to more aggressively cut back on our expenses for some reason, we could do that as well.

11. How do you handle health insurance now that you are no longer working?  

For the first 18 months, we stayed on my former company’s healthcare plan using COBRA. We could have even stayed on it for another year thanks to New York state law, but we decided that we’d rather take the risk and switch to a marketplace plan.

So we are now on a High-Deductible Silver Plan with an HSA. As soon as we started the plan, I immediately maxed out our HSA for the year. In an ideal world, we’ll continue to do that for as long as possible and pay any healthcare costs out of pocket and use the HSA as an investment/tax savings vehicle. 

12. If you could go back in time and change things, what would you have done differently?

Honestly, I am not sure. First, it would have been nice to hold onto our first primary home and have rented it out. This would have gotten us started with a little bit of cash flow, but perhaps added stress and headache as things were starting to wear down and need constant repairs. 

Secondly, I regret not maxing out my wife’s 401(k) more than we did. At the time, we were young and worried about not having a big enough emergency fund. But in retrospect, we could have really supercharged things for her had we been more aggressive. 

My advice to anyone in their 20s. Max out your 401(k). You can always back off it later and pivot to a taxable brokerage, but with built in tax savings and company match it is a really easy way to supercharge your wealth if you start early and allow decades for compounding to do it’s thing. 

13. Has discovering financial independence changed how you view life overall? 

FI has brought me back to a more conscious state of living. I always wanted to FIRE, but didn’t plan it out well. By the end of my CEO days, I was just biding time, but not really sure for what. Now, I have time to be more introspective. I read more, I think about my life more, I am less reactive, and more in charge of my life. 

14. Have you come out of the FIRE closet yet? Meaning, do your friends, family, co-workers etc. know that you’ve reached financial independence?  If so, how did you bring it up and what were their reactions?  If not, why not?  Why do you struggle with this conversation and why do you feel that money is such a taboo topic?  

Haha no. I think my friends and family have a general idea that we are doing well and I possibly don’t NEED to work, but we try to downplay it for various reasons. This was also part of the strategy for investing in a web business. We can talk about that with friends and family, and use it as a bit of a shield.

The main reason we aren’t open is because we are fans of The Millionaire Next Door mentality. We’d rather not flaunt where we are at, and it’s not that I feel finances are too taboo, but I do think that other people’s feelings and attitudes towards us will change. So on one hand I don’t want to be shady about things, but on the other, I have seen some legitimate changes in attitudes from people once they know the behind the scenes.

15. What pieces of advice would you suggest to someone who is just starting out or someone who is working toward reaching financial independence? 

Create a better plan than I did. I believe that had I planned better, I could have reached FI sooner. I put all of my eggs in the entrepreneurship/startup basket. While it did work out, it was risky. 

Start investing early in your 20s. Make a plan. Write it down. Stick to it. 

But also, don’t get too stuck in the weeds. You have to live your life too. So find the right balance between saving for later and living in the now. 

16. What does the word ‘success’ mean to you?

I believe that success is simply the ability to be consistent over a long period of time. 

Whatever it is that you are doing, the path to success is pretty simple. Just keep going. Keep doing great work in your niche, in your industry, year after year. 

It took 10 years for my former business to really become successful on paper (even after we sold it). Success takes more time than you think. But anyone can achieve it. 

And another thing – my success does not limit your success. It never has and it never will.

We can all be successful. 

Let’s lift each other up, instead of tearing each other down.

17. Are there any books, blogs, or podcasts that you would recommend for our readers to check out?

I try to recommend as many blogs and books as possible over at AR. I also try to review many that I read, though admittedly I am backlogged! 

If you are reading this you’ve probably read may of the finance books, so I’ll recommend a few non-financial:

• • Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
  • Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
  • The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Deethmer, Diana Chapman and Kaley Klemp 

18. How can people get in contact with you?

You can head over to my blog, Accidentally Retired and fill out my contact form. 

You can also hop onto Twitter where I hang out from time to time. 

Lastly, if you want to subscribe to my email newsletter, you’ll get my content delivered to you typically twice a week. 

Cheers!

• I appreciate how Accidentally Retired strived for a work-life balance over the years.  I can only imagine as an entrepreneur and starting up your own business, it’s probably very easy to let work become an all encompassing thing.  Being able to separate work from play is a very important skill.
• Boy can I relate to the fact that life hasn’t really changed because of the kids.  I like to joke that I went from a sweet part time shift work gig 2-on 8-off to now working non-stop shift work 365 days a year as a full time parent.
• It’s interesting hearing that Accidentally Retired works for a few hours a day while the kids are at school.  I can see something like this happening to us down the road once both kiddos are in school.  Right now I “work” around 10 hours a week between coaching and the blog.  I can see Nic picking up a ~12 hour/week snow shoveling side-gig over the winters and I’d go work at a bakery, coffee shop, library, etc. As Accidentally Retired words it so well, the key is maintaining flexibility to ensure maximum happiness.
• I think one of the things some people miss is that while you’re busy working toward reaching your FI number, stressed with work deadlines, etc it’s easy to outsource things when problems arise.  But when you’re retired, you now have the time to research how to fix things yourself, shop around for sales, reduce costs by doing things yourself, etc that you likely end up sending less money in retirement for these one-off problems that arise.  Similarly, you now have the time to post pictures of items to sell and make a little money vs donating a huge trunk of things (absolutely nothing wrong with that!) because you didn’t have the time or energy to post things separately.  These are all ways to help lower your withdrawal amount.
• Interesting to see how Accidentally Retired ended up buying a website to maintain as part of their cash flow in early retirement!  I personally do not see any monetary benefit to running a website lol but I also do not focus on SEO, increasing page views, adding subscribers, etc.  To me, this would be way more than a full time job, but to those who understand how to monetize websites it could be a cool side hustle to take on.  Relatively passive once it’s been set up, flexible hours, can do it anywhere, etc.
• We share similar thoughts on withdrawal rates and plan to average 3.25% or less to start things off and also take part in an equity glide path t get back to 90+% equities over time.
• Agree that anyone reading from the States should try to focus on maximizing your annual tax-preferred accounts (401k, IRA, HSA).  Thankfully in Canada it’s not a “use it or lose it” type system like it is in the States, but still important to try to max them (RRSP, TFSA, FHSA, RESP) out if you can.
• I was talking to a FIRE friend the other day about how FIRE allows you to have the time to think (hi Chelsey!).  Simply think.  What do you want to be, what sort of legacy do you want to leave, how do you want to live your life, etc.  These really are hard questions to answer and it’s strange that so many people simply do not have the *time* to self reflect about such important topics.

Thanks for tuning in and check back next month for the next interview.

We love highlighting other members of the FI community. Please contact us if you’d like to be a part of the FIRE Community Guest Interview series and we’ll see if we’re a good fit!

And in case you wanted to read the previous interviews that make up our FIRE Community Guest Interview Series, here you go!

• FIRE Community Guest Interview # 1 – Empowerment Through FIRE
• FIRE Community Guest Interview # 2 – We Quit Our Jobs To Retire Early & Travel The World
• FIRE Community Guest Interview # 3 – Dividend Investor Reached FI By Living An Intentional Life
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #4 – Pursuing FIRE With Multiple Passive Income Streams in Australia
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #5 – Driving to FIRE Through RV Living
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #6 – From High School Drop Out to Retired at 35
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #7 – Medical Professional Family With 3 Kiddos In The Pursuit of FIRE 
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #8 – Calculated Engineer Family Utilizing Geo-Arbitrage to Reach FI
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #9 – Lessons from a Fimigrant – Let Experience Be Your Teacher
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #10 – From Entrepreneur Making $36,000 to Multi-Millionaire In His 30s
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #11 – Hybrid Dividend and Index Investor Who’s Mastering the FI Mindset
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #12 – Proving Financial Independence Is Possible With Kids In A High Cost of Living Area
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #13 – Making An Impact On The Way To FI
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #14 – Badass Momma Knows Her Worth And Became A Millionaire At 36
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #15 – PhD Couple Reached FI at 40
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #16 – Mindful Minimalist Family
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #17 – FIWOOT: Financial Independence Work On Own Terms
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #18 – French Expats Growing Their Real Estate Empire in the US and France
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #19: Money Savvy Teacher With 9 Properties
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #20: Canadian Expat Supercharging His Family’s Path to FI In the Middle East
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #21: Young Retired Couple Have Mastered The FIRE Lifestyle
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #22: Building Multiple Income Streams To Design Their Dream Lifestyle
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #23: A Single Mom’s Journey to FI
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #24: Software Engineer Immigrant Balancing Her Journey To FI
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #25: Late To The FIRE Party – Part 1
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #25: Late To The FIRE Party – Part 2

The post FIRE Community Guest Interview #26 – A CEO’s Accidental Journey to Early Retirement appeared first on Modern FImily.

I reached out not sure where it would lead to, but lo and behold, here we are.

As any long term reader knows, I do not make money from this blog.  I do not have ads up to bring in revenue.  I don’t make money from any podcasts and publications we are featured in.  The small bits I do make from affiliate payments from summits I take part in (Canadian Financial Summit, Women Can Money, etc) go towards the expenses to keep this blog up and running.  If I were to give myself a salary for this blog, it would be well under 5 cents an hour.  I could go work at McDonalds instead for an instant 300% raise.  I do this purely to connect with like minded folks.  It’s truly these connections that I’ve made over the years since starting this blog that have been priceless and keep me going over here.

So the idea of a paid part-time gig to write about what I’m already writing about over here sounded quite good.  I figured this is finally a way to be getting paid via my blog in a sense.  This blog has brought support and community – people like Robert – who put me in touch with this opportunity.

Now what I love about this blog is that people who are interested in this financial freedom sort of stuff have to come find this material themselves.  People who are truly interested have to seek out this blog (and of course other blogs/podcasts/books too) which focuses on personal finance content geared towards financial independence. My audience is like-minded folks, which is amazing.  We hardly ever get the negative comments saying we are going to run out of money in 10 years, we are depriving ourselves, what we are doing is not possible, etc.  Why?  Because again, you all get it.

Enter the new gig.

This new audience for this new gig is kinda the opposite.  I’m writing for a large platform who reaches over 6 million readers every week.  Yes, you read that right.  And we all know the FIRE community is MUCH smaller than this. Many of these readers likely have never heard of the concept of FIRE.  But that’s part of the beauty of this.  If I can get 1% of the readers on board with this new-to-them concept, it’s a win for me.  I know I’m about to enter the world of so many negative comments and the retirement police are ready to come after me with their pitch forks but I don’t care.  I’m focused on that 1%.

Ok Court, get to the point.  What’s the new gig?!

Drum roll…..

I’m now a freelance contributor for The Globe & Mail!

For those unaware, The Globe is Canada’s most widely read newspaper.  For any Americans reading, it’s essentially the equivalent of writing for the Wall Street Journal.

My focus is to write content on FIRE and parenting.

And my first article is out! For those with access to the Globe, check it out!

My First Globe Piece: The Evolution of FIRE

I’ve committed to one post a month for 6 months and we shall then see how it all is going.  Is the Globe finding value in what I send over?  Am I enjoying the behind the scenes work of editing, deadlines, etc?

My goal is to ensure this all stays enjoyable, hence why I’ve only committed to once a month.  Anything more at this points sounds like too much of a j-o-b which is not something I’m looking for at this point.

Now while this income is definitely a nice welcomed bonus, it is nowhere close to our annual spend for a year.  It won’t cover how much we spend on groceries each month.  We simply are viewing this as our “extra spending fund” to help force frugal ole Court to actually spend more money on little things like new restaurants in town, new camping supplies, tickets for a play, a new laptop, etc. Thanks MMM for this perfectly timed post which lines up with exactly how we are thinking about this extra income.

The hardest part for sure is going to be the word count.  Each file has to be 600, max 700, words.  It is going to be incredibly hard for me to keep articles this concise.

I’m hopeful that I can reel in 1% of the readers to shift their mindset.  As that is really what FIRE is all about.  Come to the dark side of spending less, earning more, understanding investing, and escaping the work-spend rat race that so many Canadians feel trapped in.

Any specific topics you think I should focus on?

And of course, anyone reading because they found me from The Globe, welcome to the FImily!

Freelance Update

Soooooo I wrote all of that out a few weeks ago in anticipation of this first file coming out.  And things have changed!

I’m now a freelance contributor for The Globe & Mail!

For those unaware, The Globe is Canada’s most widely read newspaper.  For any Americans reading, it’s essentially the equivalent of writing for the Wall Street Journal.

My focus is to write content on FIRE and parenting. 

And my first article is out! For those with access to the Globe, check it out!

My First Globe Piece: The Evolution of FIRE

I’ve committed to one post a month for 6 months and we shall then see how it all is going.  Is the Globe finding value in what I send over?  Am I enjoying the behind the scenes work of editing, deadlines, etc?

I already quit!

Wait what?

Court, you’re announcing a new gig but before even publishing about it on your blog, you quit?

Yep. Sure did.

What Happened?

Welp, I really was excited for this opportunity.  I wanted to reach that 1% who could conceptualize this “secret society” of personal finance freaks who are looking to escape the rat race and live life on their own turns.

So I wrote the first piece, sent it over, and waited to hear back.

Now I knew upfront that there would be edits, but man I did not realize the extent of these edits!  It’s as if I provided some insight and then it got twisted, poked, and tweaked from every angle. There were 3 weeks of back and forth edits and the “first round” of edits still weren’t done yet.  If I knew how much additional time would be involved I would have asked for an hourly rate vs a fixed price per file!

By the time I decided to end it, it was becoming quite clear that my FIRE narrative was not matching theirs and I was no longer enjoying it. The best way to describe it is if I go back into my old working days – hopefully this analogy is relatable to some readers – they were looking for a subject matter expert (SME) but then constantly questioned their input.  What’s the point if finding an SME then??

I feel like that last bit is quite strong and I do not want to bad mouth the experience.  It was definitely worthwhile to see the behind the scenes look of how articles get created for a major publication but I quickly learned it is not for me.  It was way more disorganized than I was expecting and I simply could not see myself moving forward with it.

The Beauty of FI

But this is a prime example of the power of FI and FU money. While I really did wish I could capture 1% of their audience,  I quickly realized this isn’t the gig for me.  And that’s ok.  I was able to leave when I wanted.  The beauty of being FI is that we’re not in it for the money.  We don’t need it.  If something is no longer enjoyable, it’s getting the chopping block. Simple as that.

While I was chatting with Robert about this whole experience he provided this comment that I had to share with everyone reading (with his permission to steal it for the blog):

“It would be hilarious to me if they self-edited the rest of this article, with something at the end saying “and to demonstrate how much freedom FI people have, our leading contributor to this story was perfectly happy to walk away from this gig when our editing team made the task too laborious.  By achieving FIRE, you too can tell your boss to shove it”.”

Ha! Boom. Mic drop.

So yea, I “started” a gig and ended it shortly thereafter.  Net income earned: $0.

I definitely find myself enjoying the 1-on-1 aspect to the coaching gig I do and even though I don’t earn as much coaching as I would have with each writing file, it’s more enjoyable for me and thus the route I’ll continue to go down for now.

It also certainly helped seeing our Q1 2023 net worth up and seeing that what we “earned” from the market during the past 3 months would take more than 10 years of this gig to produce similar results… yet with 0 hours of effort required and no emails to respond to.

Am I crazy?  Would you have stuck it out a bit longer to see if it started to flow better over time?

Support This Blog

If you liked this article and want more content like this, please support this blog by sharing it.  Not only does it help spread the FIRE, but it lets me know what content you find beneficial.  Writing is NOT my strong suit and it honestly takes me hours to write each post so the more encouragement the better!  Engaging in the comments below keeps me motivated.  You can also support this blog by subscribing to receive emails anytime a new post is published.  Thank you FImily!

We believe in stacking up life hacks to keep your enjoyment levels to the max without depleting your bank account.  Here are some ways to further educate yourself and save thousands of dollars over your lifetime by making some simple adjustments:

• Investing Newbies: Check out our free Investing 101 Series.
• How much are you paying for your phone plan?  Canadians, learn more about Public Mobile, and see how we are paying $3/mo for our cell phone plan.
• How much are you paying for internet?  Canadians, learn more about the various Independent Service Providers out there to see who services your area so you can lower your monthly bills.
• How much are you paying for home insurance?  We were able to reduce our rates by 25% by switching over to Square One Insurance.  If you live in BC, AB, SK, MB, and ON, check out Square One for your home insurance, landlord insurance, and/or tenant insurance.  Use this link to receive an extra $15 off your quote.  (Note that you must use this link to start the process to get the $15 off even if you prefer to pay over the phone.)

The post Eek! I Started A New Gig! appeared first on Modern FImily.

Personal finance for Canadian women, by Canadian women.

This year’s summit focus is all about investing!

Studies show that women investors outperform their male counterparts.

So, why don’t more women feel confident investing?

Because they are told that they are bad with money

Because some advisors only talk to men

Because of the male dominated content

Because…

What if there was a way for you to learn about investing from other Canadian women in a safe and supportive environment? And what if you could do it from the comfort of your home? For free?

Summit Details

• Registration opens April 26, 2023 (that’s now!)
• The Summit runs May 10 – 12, 2023 (in just a few weeks!)
• There is a free version and an all-access-pass VIP option available
  • All videos are for free to view within the first 48 hours of being launched
  • The VIP All Access Pass provides:
    • lifetime access to presentation
    • premium upgrades from the speakers
    • a private podcast so you can listen on the go
    • quarterly workshops
    • monthly check-ins
• Sign up for your free ticket here

Let’s Feel Confident With Our Investments

Join 15 experts over 3 days (May 10 – 12) to learn tips and tricks for optimizing your investment portfolio, maximizing gains, and understanding your portfolio.  Whether you feel like a beginner, have some investment experience, or are looking to fine tune your investments, there are sessions for you during this free event. 

Some presentations will cover:

• Know Exactly How Much You Can Comfortably Invest
• Maximizing Returns and Minimizing Risk: Rebalancing Your Portfolio & the Art of Asset Allocation
• Be the Master of Your Mortgage
• 5 Ways to Invest in Real Estate
• Option Selling for the Savvy Investor: Tips and Tricks for Maximizing Gains
• Vote With Your Dollars – How to Find and Invest In Companies That Fit Your Values
• Financial Advisor vs Robo Advisor – How Do You Choose?
• Investing and the Trauma of Money
• Plus, I’m talking on Thursday, May 11th about Why Fees Matter When It Comes To Your Investments 

Some pretty big names are featured, including:

• Michelle Hung (The Sassy Investor)
• Tracy Ma (Financial Nirvana Mama)
• Eduek Brooks (Two Sides of a Dime)
• Michelle Robertson (Ms Money and Math) 
• My fellow Alberta friends Jolie Viguers (Well Beach Coaching) and Wendy Verwey (FIRE Yourself First podcast) and of course Maria herself (Handful of Thoughts)
• And a whole lot more!

And all of the presentations are totally free as long as you’re registered.

Get all the info right here (plus register for your FREE ticket).

And yes, of course males are more than welcome to join the party too! But don’t forget.  Who run the world? GIRLS.

See ya over there!

Full disclosure – these summits run via an affiliate system.  Hopefully you all are able to access the material within the first 48 hours of it airing to watch it for free.  If you decide instead to buy the paid version, I will receive an affiliate payout for it.  These funds help pay for the backend costs to run this blog as I have chosen not have ads up trying to sell you shit as you gain financial wisdom.

Support This Blog

If you liked this article and want more content like this, please support this blog by sharing it.  Not only does it help spread the FIRE, but it lets me know what content you find beneficial.  Writing is NOT my strong suit and it honestly takes me hours to write each post so the more encouragement the better!  Engaging in the comments below keeps me motivated.  You can also support this blog by subscribing to receive emails anytime a new post is published.  Thank you FImily!

We believe in stacking up life hacks to keep your enjoyment levels to the max without depleting your bank account.  Here are some ways to further educate yourself and save thousands of dollars over your lifetime by making some simple adjustments:

• Investing Newbies: Check out our free Investing 101 Series.
• How much are you paying for your phone plan?  Canadians, learn more about Public Mobile, and see how we are paying $3/mo for our cell phone plan.
• How much are you paying for internet?  Canadians, learn more about the various Independent Service Providers out there to see who services your area so you can lower your monthly bills.
• How much are you paying for home insurance?  We were able to reduce our rates by 25% by switching over to Square One Insurance.  If you live in BC, AB, SK, MB, and ON, check out Square One for your home insurance, landlord insurance, and/or tenant insurance.  Use this link to receive an extra $15 off your quote.  (Note that you must use this link to start the process to get the $15 off even if you prefer to pay over the phone.)

The post Women Can Money Summit appeared first on Modern FImily.

Before we dig in, I want to ask you readers to come up with a guess cost before reading this post and sharing your initial guess in the comments below. A family of 4 spending 2 months in Portugal – How much would a non-FIRE-optimizer spend on travelling 2 months abroad?  And then, how much are we, ModernFImily, spending out of pocket?

Ok ready…. think about it….. write it down…. ok keep reading.

So we are in Portugal for exactly 2 months from the end of January to the end of March.  This is not their peak season so if you’re looking to go over the summer, expect to pay much more.

This is actually one of the nice perks to living in Canada.  I do love all seasons but I don’t need winter to be as long as it is.  So whenever we’re looking to travel, it’s always going to be over our winters.  And for most destinations, that means off/shoulder season.  Which means lower prices.   And fewer people.  Two major wins in our books. (Whereas in our former Florida lives, we’d be looking to travel over the crazy hot and humid summers aka peak season for most places.)

Flights

Typically, we would travel hack and pay for our flights with points and only pay the international taxes.  (The points and travel game is always changing but typically a flight from North America to Europe costs ~60,000 points + international taxes ~$200 for a round trip ticket.) However, when I saw a flight sale pop up for $575 round trip direct flights including taxes from Calgary to Amsterdam, I jumped on it (via emails I get from YYC Deals – they have other Canadian airports you can sign up for too).

Originally, we were not even planning to go to Europe but after seeing this we switched gears.  (At the time, we were trying to decide between Mexico and Colombia.)

We also were thinking we’d go early-February to early-April but the last flight option for this pricing was to return at the end of March so we shifted the dates around.

(Notice how *flexibility* is the key here – thanks FIRE!)

For any Canadian reading, getting to skip a layover at the Toronto airport bumps the flight up to next level status.  So getting to Europe without the hassle of a stop is amazing in itself.  And then, as flight prices only seem to be soaring, this pricing comes up??  It’s cheaper for us to fly to Amsterdam then to Denver, CO?! Yes please!

We did decide to pay upfront for seats together and for a checked bag each way (mostly as an insurance with the hopes that we could carry everything on but if not, pay a reduced fee now).

Then once we were in Europe we booked two intra-Europe flights. Although we do love Amsterdam, it’s cold there too and we were seeking something warm.  We were trying to decide between Turkey, the Balkans, and Portugal.  I *really* want to go the Balkans but we thought Portugal would be best with young kids. So we booked round trip flights from AMS-LIS (we’re staying in Amsterdam one night on either end).  And then we are heading over to Madeira Island so booked round trip flights LIS-FNC for that.

Note that Parker is under 2 so we only had to pay for 3 passengers for this trip.  However, in Europe there is a fee for an infant on lap (they seem to range between 15-25 Euros which is a bit wild as some adult flight tickets cost less than that!).

Flight Costs (for our family in CAD):

• YYC-LIS roundtrip: $1,988
• AMS-LIS roundtrip: $529
• LIS-FNC roundtrip: $245

Total Cost for Flights: $2,832

P.S. – Nic still thinks it’s ridiculous we paid for flights when we have over 2,000,000 airline points.

Accommodations

Originally, we were planning to stay a month in one Airbnb location (Setubal, just south of Lisbon) and then 2 weeks on either end in 2 other towns (somewhere down in the Algarve and Aviero in the north) and just use public transit / walk everywhere.  Our logic was that with Airbnb we should get a better rate when we stay somewhere for 28+ days.  While this is true, we realized we didn’t need that fancy of a place. For the same cost, we could be in 4 different locations – still in 2 bedroom places but just not as fru-fru as the month long stay. Everywhere that we booked, we ensured the reservations were 100% refundable up until a day before check-in in case we wanted to make any adjustments.

Nic was the mastermind behind finding all our Airbnb stays.  One of the tips is to look early.  And again, travel during the off-season.  Be flexible with your location and explore places outside large tourist destinations.  Nic also really understands the filters within the Airbnb platform which made narrowing down options quite easy.  READ THE REVIEWS!  Sometimes a new place will be at a lower-than-normal pricing to try to get people in.  For some people, they jump on this and it all works out great.  However, we avoided all of these as we highly respect reviews that prior guests leave.  You also can always message the host to see if they will offer a discount.  (We opted not to as we thought everything was already reasonably priced.)

In addition to the Airbnb’s, we decided to use some IHG hotel points for our stays in Lisbon.  IHG offers a 4th free night promo to certain credit card holders.  So we decided to split Lisbon up into three separate 4 night stays. Meaning we are staying in Lisbon for a total of 12 nights and paying in points for 9 of those nights and the other 3 are free.

For whatever reason, IHG’s system was not registering that we should receive the 4th night free. This ended up being much more of a pain than it should have.  I should have logged how many hours and phone calls I had to make to get this all sorted out.  Easily 20 hours.  Man oh man, IHG, get it together!

It felt like we were changing our itinerary daily for the first few weeks but we finally settled on the itinerary we shared in our last post.  Here’s the costs for our stays (in CAD):

• Madeira: $578 for 12 nights, $48/night
• Lagos: $947 for 14 nights, $68/night
• Peniche: $371/8 nights, $46/night
• Arcozelo: $786/10 nights, $77/night
• Average cost per night: $61 CAD/night (42 Euros/night)

Hotels:

• Amsterdam: $0, 24,500 points. We used free anniversary nights that we both get for our IHG cards for our two nights here.  We also splurged and reserved two hotel rooms each night here as the cost is low (12,000 and 12,500 points per night) and we want to try to get a good nights sleep on either end of a big flight.
• Lisbon: $70 (48€) + a total of 166,000 points for 12 nights (52,000, 60,000, and 54,000 points for each reservation).  Comes down to 13,833 IHG points/night. Lisbon tourist city tax of 2€/person/night.
• We *still* have close to 400,000 IHG points after blowing close to 200,000 on this trip.
• We purposely booked hotels when staying in larger cities as the Airbnbs are quite a bit higher here vs in smaller towns.

Total cost for accommodations (in CAD): $2,752 

This comes out to $1,376 CAD per month.  Considering all utilities are included, this seems like a pretty reasonable rate to us (but not “crazy affordable” like most people shout Portugal is).

Of course, our monthly average would be higher if we were not using points for the 12 nights in Lisbon.

Here’s a bit of a crazy comp.  If we wanted to stay at our hotel in Lisbon exclusively and pay in cash, this same $2,752 CAD ($1,897 Euros) would get us 17 nights there (it averages $110 Euros/night while we are there – then $200 Euros over the summer so even fewer then).  Instead, we’re in Europe for 58 nights.  Wild hey!

Transit

One of the pros to deciding on Europe is because of it’s extensive public transit system and thus eliminating the need of a rental car and lugging along our car seats for the kids.

However as we were digging in, we learned that public transit isn’t as widely used outside Lisbon and Porto.  We also learned that car rentals are quite affordable in Portugal  The key is that your reservation should be under ~3 weeks.  If you make it for a longer duration, the price shoots up big time. This knowledge influenced our itinerary a bit in that we wanted to ensure we would be in Lisbon at multiple points for car rental timeline purposes.

Our ah-ha moment was when we realized that the cost of a roundtrip train for the 4 of us to get from Lisbon to the Algarve area in the south would be the same cost as having a car rental down there for 2 weeks!  For those curious, we used Discover Cars (search engine type website) to book our car rentals.  So, car rentals it is…!

We have 3 car rental reservations:

• 12 days while on Madeira island
  • $337, $28/day
• 14 days while exploring the south before heading back to Lisbon
  • $148, $11/day
• 18 days while we are in the north before again making our way back to Lisbon
  • $191, $11/day

Our credit cards provide rental car insurance so no need for us to purchase that.  We will be using public transit while in Amsterdam and Lisbon so there will be some added transit costs in addition to car rentals.  I’d guess we will spend another ~$100 Euros ($145 CAD) on public transit.  And of course, gas too.  But we figure we’d be paying for gas either in Portugal or Canada during this time frame.

As for carseats, we have the 4-in-1 car seats that are super heavy and not travel friendly. 24 pounds per car seat.  No thanks!!  Thankfully, we found a 9 lb travel car seat that expires at the end of March on our Buy Nothing Group and Nic’s sister has a 8 lb lightweight car seat she no longer uses that she’s letting us borrow.  Phew! Thank goodness!

So yep, we are now travelling with a double stroller and 2 car seats. Triple ugh. Wish us luck!

Total cost for car rentals + public transit (in CAD): $821

Additional Costs

• RentFaster: $80
  • We posted our home on RentFaster.ca a bit early and had to renew before securing our renters so we paid the $40 fee twice. We also posted on FB (Marketplace and our local Rental Properties page).  We definitely got the most traction on Rent Faster (and that is who we secured our renters through).
• Waterproof Mattress Pad: $30
  • We already have one of these on Finn’s bed and wanted to get one on our king size mattress as well.  I’d much rather pay $30 to know our mattresses are protected from any sort of spill vs having to replace a mattress outright.
• Travel Medical Insurance: $185
  • Our credit card that we booked our flights with cover the first 21 days of medical travel insurance as well as all the trip cancelation/delay issues that could arise.  So we needed travel medical insurance for the back end of our trip that was not covered. When we first started looking, prices were in the $400-$800 range for a family of 4 which we thought was a bit insane.  Thankfully our local FIRE friends who also travel for a few months a year pointed us in the direction of Insure My Trip – a travel insurance comparison search engine (thanks Travis and Amanda!). From there, we ended up purchasing with TuGo for $5,000,000 of coverage per person with a $300 deductible for a total cost of $184 CAD.  We were able to select an “excluding USA” plan which helped reduce our costs.
• Switching Our Home Insurance to Landlord Coverage: $74
  • We notified our home insurance provider that we needed help figuring out how to switch our home insurance from us living in our primary residence to renting it out for a short term.  A few emails later we were all set up.  I even asked for a breakdown on the change in price and they were quick to get that over.  We also already have it all set up to go back to our regular premium once we return. Thanks Square One, you da best! You truly made this a very easy process.
• Switching our Car Insurance to Parking Status: -$275
  • Since our car will be sitting parked outside our home with just the occasional start from our neighbour to run the engine (thanks Kat!), we contacted our car insurance broker and asked to switch the status to parking while we are gone which significantly lowers the cost to insure it while we are abroad.

Total One-Off Costs (in CAD): $94

• $369 in costs plus the $275 savings on the car insurance

Rental Income

And now, of course, to help offset all the above costs, we decided to rent our house out while we are gone.  We found a family who is moving from Vancouver to Cochrane (surprise, surprise, isn’t everyone these days?!) to rent our house out for 2 months while they look for a home in our town.  (The majority of people who contacted us about a short term rental were people from out of town looking to move to our town.)

We are renting our house out for $2,700/month with $500 of utilities included (should cover all utilities as long as our renters are mindful of their usage). So let’s wipe off $500/month to go towards utilities (although in reality if we didn’t rent it out we’d still have ~$300 in fixed utility costs per month just to have the house sit idle but we will ignore that for this exercise).

Total Rental Income – Utilities (in CAD): $4,400

Grand Finale

Ok, so what does all this mean when we put it together?

• Airfare: $2,832
• Accommodations: $2,752
• Transit: $821
• One-Offs: $94

Total Costs: $6,499

Then throwing in the rental income of $4,400 into the mix, we get a total out of pocket costs of:

$2,099

Boom!  2 months in Portugal for just over $2,000.

When we were calculating our FIRE number, we used $5,000 as our annual travel related costs (we figured some years would be higher, some lower, but $5,000 on average).  To most people this sounds super low for a family of 4.  Now you see how it can totally be possible to explore the world without breaking the bank.

Of course, there will be other travel related costs.  Bakeries, eating out, groceries, exploring things off the beaten path, entrance fees, etc.  But we also aren’t hermits at home and have various costs for our every day sending.  So we will be shifting over some of our “everyday living expenses” to “travel expenses”.  For example, we canceled our sports centre membership while travelling which frees up $200 over the course of 2 months to shift to a “travel entertainment bucket”. Then of course, we will be eating/driving for 2 months whether we are in Canada or Portugal. Yes, we expect these two categories to be higher while in Portugal while trying out new meals and exploring new areas but overall we’re not looking at nothing vs something. I’d guess we spend an extra $600 CAD over the course of 2 months for these two categories.

This is the power of FIRE. We can be flexible with our travel locations and dates.  We can utilize our home to offset travel costs.  We can avoid peak seasons and holiday vacations.  We don’t fee like we need to cram cram cram everything in a 10 day trip.  We can take things slow without breaking the bank.

What was your initial guess for how much our trip would end up costing us? Was it anywhere close to where we ended up? Any take-aways from todays post?  Cheers!

Support This Blog

If you liked this article and want more content like this, please support this blog by sharing it.  Not only does it help spread the FIRE, but it lets me know what content you find beneficial.  Writing is NOT my strong suit and it honestly takes me hours to write each post so the more encouragement the better!  Engaging in the comments below keeps me motivated.  You can also support this blog by subscribing to receive emails anytime a new post is published.  Thank you FImily!

We believe in stacking up life hacks to keep your enjoyment levels to the max without depleting your bank account.  Here are some ways to further educate yourself and save thousands of dollars over your lifetime by making some simple adjustments:

• Investing Newbies: Check out our free Investing 101 Series.
• How much are you paying for your phone plan?  Canadians, learn more about Public Mobile, and see how we are paying $3/mo for our cell phone plan.
• How much are you paying for internet?  Canadians, learn more about the various Independent Service Providers out there to see who services your area so you can lower your monthly bills.
• How much are you paying for home insurance?  We were able to reduce our rates by 25% by switching over to Square One Insurance.  If you live in BC, AB, SK, MB, and ON, check out Square One for your home insurance, landlord insurance, and/or tenant insurance.  Use this link to receive an extra $15 off your quote.  (Note that you must use this link to start the process to get the $15 off even if you prefer to pay over the phone.)

The post Our Cost Breakdown: Two Months in Portugal appeared first on Modern FImily.

How Things Started

At first, we were thinking of heading down south to either Mexico or Colombia. Figured with the 2 hour time change, warm weather, and low cost of living it would be a good starting spot to travelling with kids.

Then as we were doing some research, an email came through with $575 CAD round trip direct flights from Calgary to Amsterdam.  We jumped on it.

Ok, that was a bit rash.

Our thoughts were:

• We both love Europe.  This will be my 9th trip over there and I could easily live there someday.
• Starting things off in Europe is *likely* going to go smoother with two kids in tow.

We know while the costs to get there are low (given flights these days) we will likely be spending more overall as the cost of living is higher in Europe.

But where to go?

I’ve been to Amsterdam and while it is lovely it’s not where we want to be for a few months over the winter as it’s cold there too.  So then we had to figure out where to go from Amsterdam.

We narrowed it down to the following locations:

• Portugal
• Turkey
• The Balkans

I’ve been to Turkey and also loved it there and felt like there’s so much more to explore.  But there is a bit of unrest and instability going on (in comparison to the other areas we were considering). And of course, with the recent earthquake boy are we thankful to not be there at this time. The Balkans are *very high* up on my list but we thought it may be too off the beaten path with kids.  So, Portugal it is!

Once we decided on Portugal our itinerary changed oh I don’t know, 42 times.  Originally we were trying to find a place to park for a month with 2 weeks of travel on each end but then we’d tweak it slightly. And then adjust again, and again, and again.

The Final Itinerary

Finally, after weeks of digging around, we settled on our itinerary and here it is!

• Amsterdam
• Lisbon
• Madeira Island
• Lagos
• Lisbon
• Peniche
• Porto (Arcozelo)
• Lisbon
• Amsterdam

We will have a car rental for all locations except Amsterdam and Lisbon and will be using public transit in those two cities.  We will be staying in hotels while in these two locations and Airbnbs everywhere else.

Amsterdam: (1 night)

We will be spending 1 night on both ends of the trip in Amsterdam mainly as hang out and rest days.  Our hotel (paid via IHG credit card points) is near a few shops/restaurants that we can walk around and stretch our legs.

Lisbon: (4 nights)

We will be starting things off in Lisbon via a 3 hour direct flight from Amsterdam, again staying at an IHG hotel paid with points.  Overall, we will be staying in Lisbon for 12 nights spilt up between three 4 night stays (mainly because of IHG’s 4th night free point system).  Since we won’t have our own kitchen to cook in, we ensured our hotel comes with free breakfast and we are also close to Pingo Doce (Portuguese grocery chain) to pick up some easy-to-prep items.

To start things off, we always try to see if the place we are visiting has a free walking tour and Lisbon does so that will likely be the first thing we do.

Other places to check out during our overall 12 nights in Lisbon include:

• Alfama neighbourhood and take Tram 28 up to Estrella Cathedral
• Belem – Torre (tower), Padrao dos Descobrimentos (Monument of the Discoveries), Jeronimos Monastery, and the original pasteis de nata
• Chiado neighbourhood – Time Out Market
• Parque Eduardo VII and Estufa Fria (greenhouse)
• Oceaniaro – largest aquarium in Europe
• Praca do Comercio and Rua Augusta side street
• Funicular/lifts: Ascensor da Gloria, Bairro Alta, or Ascensor da Bica
• Pink Street

Madeira Island: (12 nights)

I think we are both really looking forward to this part of our trip as Madeira looks very tropical and Hawaii-esque.  We were trying to decide between the Azores and Madeira and choose Madiera because it seems like it has more kid-friendly type hikes (levadas) and walks for us to go on.

We’re excited to check out the natural swimming pools, check out many of the levada trails, and drive through stunning scenery.  It also sounds like the town we’re staying in (Santana) has some great little restaurants to check out. And then of course, the jagged rock formations and beaches.

Lagos: (14 nights)

After doing some digging, I’m quite excited to explore the southern part of Portugal and the Algarve region.  Most people say this is the sleepy part of Portugal (which is just fine with us) but the beaches and rock formations look unreal.  There definitely seems like there are plenty of beaches and things to see in Lagos let alone some of the other nearby towns.  Our Airbnb has a pool on sight so while most locals will think we are crazy, I’m sure we will be in the (unheated) water often during our 2 weeks here.

Some places to check out:

• Praia de Marinha
• Salema beach (dinosaur footprints)
• Meia Praia
• Farol da Ponta da Piedade Lagos
• Beach Estudantes
• Forte da Ponta da Bandeira
• Praia do Barranco do Martinho
• Ponta da Piedade
• Praia do Camilo
• Praia de Donna Ana
• Praia dos Mos
• Algar Seco in Carvoeiro

Lisbon: (4 nights)

We then start to work our way north with a stop back in Lisbon for 4 more nights.  We will see what we were able to accomplish during our first round of Lisbon being jetlagged and go from there.

On the way from Lisbon to Peniche, we plan to stop in Sintra for the day.

Peniche: (8 nights)

While Peniche doesn’t seem to be on any tourist radar, we were able to find an Airbnb here for 1/3 of the cost of anywhere else along the Silver Coast, so Peniche it is! I’m actually excited to be calling Peniche our home as it looks like it a central spot for the Silver Coast region and there are some great little restaurants and bakeries in town.

Places to check out from Peniche:

• Obidos
• Caldas de Rainha
• Foz do Arelho
• Sao Martinho do Porto
• Nazare

Porto (Arcozelo): (10 nights)

We’re staying just outside Porto in a town called Arcozelo.  Reason being, we found an Airbnb with a nicer and larger setup than anything in Porto proper for a lower cost and only a 10 minute drive into the city.  Originally we were planning on Aviero as our most northern location but after some digging it sounds like it’s quite sleepy there this time of year.

Things to do in Porto:

• Again, a free walking tour is in order
• La Ribeira river walk
• Bolhao market
• Take a tram ride
• Teleferio da Gaia cable car
• Funicular doa Guindais
• Jardins do Palacio de Cristal
• Day trips to Aviero, Braga, and Guimaraes

Lisbon: (4 nights)

On the way back to Lisbon from Porto we plan to stop at Coimbra on the way down.

We likely will be exhausted at this point and I imagine us winding down and going to strolls along the streets, checking out our favourite places one last time, and checking out the aquarium.

We’re also looking into getting dentist appointments for teeth cleanings while in Portugal so if that does end up happening I’ll report back with more info about our experience with medical tourism.

Amsterdam: (1 night)

We then hop back on a plane to bring us back to Amsterdam for a night before heading back to Calgary.

There you have it!  I honestly have done very little planning (for my standards at least) for this trip.  I liked how when we spent 5 weeks on Vancouver Island last year we came up with a list of things to do but not really much info for each place which added a bit more spontaneity to the trip which I surprisingly enjoyed. We shall see if I wish I did more planning once all is said and done.

For those who have been to Portugal before, any suggestions of places to check out, off the beaten ideas we haven’t thought of yet, meals/restaurants to try? For those who have Portugal on their radar, hope this itinerary helps with you future travel plans!

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