It’s the 2 year anniversary of when I first opened my TFSA and RRSP 🎉🎉
I planned to do a more comprehensive review and look at some interesting trends but life got busy. I’m now running math club this semester, lots of fun, lots of time needed. It’ll eventually come, just not for a while haha.
This is a rambling post, hope you like this sort of thing.
Spendings Report: $1,381
Schools in China have a month off for Chinese New Year so much of my February was spent on vacation, and my spendings reflected that. Did not leave my city but I ate enough to make up for it.
Lifestyle creep has crept in, the last three months have all been over $1,000 which feels unusual for me. I’m trying to find a good balance between spending money on experiences vs. spending money as retail therapy and might have leaned too far into retail therapy. I also went to the dentist for a checkup this month and while the checkup itself was very cheap the taxi ride there was not. I live far out in the suburbs and the international hospital is 2hr away by public transport.
I did pick up a couple of other sources of income that will hopefully offset this string of expenses coming up:
- Tuition for next semester in a couple of months
- Tax season in Canada
- Need to replace my phone
- Need a new(er) rice cooker (my current one is 3rd hand)
- Equipment for my new hobby of bouldering
Wish I had tried bouldering sooner, but before this year I lacked either 1) money, or 2) time, so it needed the stars and my wallet to align. I’m really liking it! The most expensive part of it are the taxis to get to the gym :'(
It’s hard to reign spending back in once you get used to a certain level of comfort. The few extra hundred a month coming in seems to be disappearing into the capitalist ether rather quickly.
Update: I just bought bouldering shoes, chalk bag, and chalk. About $100 in all. My toes are feeling the hurt.
Net Worth Update: $153,769
I’ve now reached my goal for this year, 5 months ahead of schedule! My original stretch goal was $165k (or was it $160k?), but I’m going to update that to $170k. To clarify, when I say year, I’m always referring to the school year from September to August.
When I calculated my original goal, I was cautious, but genuinely not trying to low-ball myself. I think the miscalculation came from me using my numbers from the first term last year, when there was no covid and my salary was lower. I also did not factor in a bonus I received this month. Colleagues had told me to expect one but with covid I didn’t want to be that optimistic. To be transparent, the bonus was roughly $4,100.
This is my 5th year working so it would be cool to have a chart that matches the number of working years. Sadly, there are no monthly records for my time in London, but in the two years I was there I saved just over $10k so yeah, basically a flatline on this chart if it was extended back in time. I might pretend it’s a roughly linear growth and add it to the chart for completeness. It’s going to be super exciting at the end of this year to see how far I came in 5 years.