Hey FImily!
This week we are reporting in to let you know we were recently featured over on our friend Bob’s blog, TawCan, as part of his FIRE Canada Interview Series. As promised, we added this guest post not only to our Guest Appearances page but we are also posting to let you know it’s there 😉
If you are not familiar with TawCan, Bob is Taiwanese and Canadian (hence the name), living in Vancouver, and on his way for his family to reach FI shortly through dividend investing. We are on team index funds as our path to passive income so if you are interested in learning more about dividend investing, check out his site as he really goes into tons of details regarding what funds he holds and how his portfolio is doing. And don’t worry, we have Bob lined up to be part of our monthly FIRE interview series and the next guest interview is also a dividend investor too.
Bob reached out to us this summer and slammed us (in a good way) with some great questions so please head on over to check it out if you’d like to learn more about our back story! And if you haven’t noticed, we have tweaked many of his questions to be included as part of our monthly FIRE interview series. He was the inspiration for us to start our monthly FIRE interview series – so you can thank him if you’ve found any value from our interview series so far. We are all about trying to showcase as many individuals in the FI space as possible here so we feel it’s our duty to also be on as many guest blog posts or podcasts as possible to share our story too so others can see how diversified this space really is.
So without further ado, head on over to TawCan and check out our guest blog post on Being A Valuist.
What did you think? Borrrrrrring? Or learn something new? Can any Canadians related to my costs of post-secondary education?
What do I mean when I say we are valuists? I mean that we spend money on things that we value and bring us joy, and we don’t spend money on things we don’t value. We’ve figured out how to cut out the fluff, and so we do.
To dig even further, here’s a list of some of the things we do value:
- Spending time with each other as a family
- Reading books
- Spending time outside in nature
- Traveling
- Getting a good nights sleep
- Making home cooked meals and eating together
- Spending time with family and friends
- Playing and watching hockey
- Taking a hot bath on cold days
- Being active/getting exercise
- “Gaming” life to try to get the most bang for our buck
- Sitting and thinking in silence
- Hiking
- Annual passes
- Keeping our home clean and tidy
- Library cards
- Skiing
- Making things with our hands
- Watching our child grow
- Listening to music
- Connecting with like minded individuals
Notice a trend here? Most of these items are either free or low cost. Those items which come with a cost, we hack the shit out of with the most research as possible to make sure we’re getting the best value from it. “Enjoy the little things in life so one day you’ll look back and realize they were the big things.”
And here’s a list of some of the things we do not value:
- Marketing
- Impressing people
- Single-use plastic for the sake of convenience
- Manis/Pedis
- Advertising
- Brand names
- Hangovers
- New cars
- Haircuts from a salon
- Over-consumption
- Style over comfort
- Over paying for the sake of convenience
- The latest trends
Notice a trend here? Most of these items come at a cost. We couldn’t care less what other people think about us in terms of image. We would much rather be known as that family who’s always smiling or lending a hand rather than that cool family that drives the Yukon, has a trampoline, a pool, Nintendo Switch, PS4, AND Xbox (I had to look those up).
And so guess what? We don’t spend our money on those things. Simple as that! Head on over to our guest post over at TawCan to read more.
We’ve had a busy month over here! In addition to this guest post, we also interviewed with Brad and Jonathan over at Choose FI (episode coming out ~February 2020), John and David over at Queer Money, and are having a podcast “meet-up” with the Explore FI Canada gang next week to have a more round table type discussion with others in the FI space. I’m not going to lie, I’m really enjoying the podcast space a lot more than blogging. Even though I have the memory of a goldfish (thanks hockey concussions) and half the time can’t remember the questions being asked, it’s more interactive and frankly Word Press is not the most user friendly platform and is constantly filled with kinks and set-ups that are not intuitive (for instance I currently cannot get our Instagram page linked up anymore). But, the show must go on, we bought this domain name for 3 years, so we’re here to stay! I feel like we are able to get out a lot more content in a 1 hour podcast interview than in a blog post as I am a slow typer and it takes hours to write each post and then proofread it (which makes $0, you’re welcome dear readers) – yet there always seems to still be errors. Any who, that’s my rant for today, and morale of the story, if you’d like us to be a guest on your blog or podcast, hit us up 😉
Feel free to comment below or on Bob’s site to let us know what you think once you’ve tuned in 🙂
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.)
- How much are you paying for your monthly utility bills? See how you can likely save on this monthly expense.
I found it to be an incredible interview and insight to the journey you have been on and the exciting future ahead. Thanks for sharing with everyone and shout-out to Bob for doing the invite to you both to be on Tawcan
Thanks Chris for the kind words and glad to hear you enjoyed it 🥰 And you sure are right – an exciting future is ahead! And yes, thank you again Bob for having us on!