Struggling with financial strain is something many Canadians can relate to. Recently, there have been many trending videos on TikTok showing the despair Canadians feel about the current conditions in Canada. This week, we're stepping into their shoes and exploring how to navigate through the current economic struggles within our country.
Then we lay down practical steps with our 'fall tune up' strategy. We will begin to understand why adapting to and adjusting is key to reaching our financial goals. Stay tuned for an engaging dialogue filled with actionable advice, oriented to transform your financial roadmap.
Links mentioned:
https://thefinancialmoment.com/falltuneup
Join the The Financial Moment community on:
Instagram
Facebook
Website
Email: info@thefinancialmoment.com
Grab this FREE guide with 10 easy tips to keep your budget on track!
Submit guest suggestions HERE
Struggling with financial strain is something many Canadians can relate to. Recently, there have been many trending videos on TikTok showing the despair Canadians feel about the current conditions in Canada. This week, we're stepping into their shoes and exploring how to navigate through the current economic struggles within our country.
Then we lay down practical steps with our 'fall tune up' strategy. We will begin to understand why adapting to and adjusting is key to reaching our financial goals. Stay tuned for an engaging dialogue filled with actionable advice, oriented to transform your financial roadmap.
Links mentioned:
https://thefinancialmoment.com/falltuneup
Join the The Financial Moment community on:
Instagram
Facebook
Website
Email: info@thefinancialmoment.com
Grab this FREE guide with 10 easy tips to keep your budget on track!
Submit guest suggestions HERE
where the last couple of months a bit excessive when it comes to spending and entertaining and dining out. Perhaps we have a little bit higher credit card bills than we normally do. Well, I have the perfect tool that is going to get you back on track and focusing on your financial goals. It's the financial moments fall tune up. I have a checklist that is going to walk you through the different steps of what you need to look at, how you can reassess and get you right back on track to your financial goals. So head to thefinancialmomentcom backslashfalltuneup and download right now. Hello everyone, my name is Carolyn. Welcome to the Saving for your First Home podcast.
Speaker 1:I am the CEO of the Financial Moment. We offer money coaching for those who are ready and willing to make financial changes in their lives. For the most of us, there comes a point in time where we think to ourselves it would be really nice to own property, but it sometimes can feel like a pipe dream and not very easily obtainable. So I created this podcast to give you all the information and tools you need to take the steps forward toward home ownership. Take it from me. My husband and I started our lives together, working part-time jobs with a young child Fast forward. Through many hiccups and failures, we stepped our feet into our very first home. For us it was a pile of dirt, but eventually our family home was built on that dirt. Now we are in the midst of growing our investment property portfolio. I created the savings for your first home podcast to give you easy, actionable tools for you to do the same. If you have that same gut feeling that I did and want to create a life for yourself and your growing family, but don't know where to start, you are in the right place. Let's do this.
Speaker 1:Hello everyone, welcome back to the Saving for your First Home podcast. I'm Carolyn, your money coach. Now I know I know I have been on hiatus for a little bit and I'm so sorry about that, but it was in the summer. There was a lot going on and so, anyways, I have a jam-packed September for you and I will be consistent with my episodes. So I know a lot of you have reached out saying what's up, carolyn, we miss it. So I do appreciate the feedback and we are going to be giving you tons of information coming up in the next few weeks.
Speaker 1:Now, today is also a very special day in the podcast because it's our 50th episode. You have no idea how excited I am about this. I started this podcast I want to say July of 2022. And so they're just over a year now and we have 50 episodes in, and the feedback from you guys, the listeners has been so inspiring and it really makes me humbled to know that you guys are appreciating the information that I'm sharing and that it's helping you along your financial journey. I mean, that is my main goal is really to give you as much tools as I possibly can for you to improve your financial path. Now, it doesn't hurt that we reached the top 20 of the how to podcast in Canada, numbering at the 16th position, so that's nothing too shabby as well. But, like I said, I do this for you guys, and if you are totally enjoying this podcast, I would appreciate it if you would put a review out there and just tell me what it is that you enjoy the most. And even if you want to give me some feedback about topics or things you want to know about, I am more than happy to take on your requests as well. Okay, so enough about me and the podcast.
Speaker 1:Let's get down to why we're really here. In the last few weeks there has been a lot of TikToks that have gone viral about living in Canada. I'm not sure if you're on TikTok or not, but there has been a lot of viral videos about people kind of expressing their opinions and how they feel about the cost of living and how they're surviving in Canada and ultimately they're feeling frustrated and hopeless about how they're supposed to cope and manage. One of the videos that I saw was a young woman and she was in tears talking about how life has gone so expensive and she understood that she would never be homeless because she has family and other people to rely on. But even with a job paying $40,000 a year, she's finding it difficult to get by. Now she is 33 years old and doesn't own a home, but she says she feels stuck right. She can't move anywhere else. I think currently she's living in rural BC, could be on family property and after this video went viral, she claims that she got a lot of personal messages stating that she should take personal responsibility for her situation. But she claims that this is a systemic problem and not only her personal issues. So I just want to pause there for a second and think about what it is that is going on in this situation.
Speaker 1:We know that the current environment in Canada is becoming a lot more expensive. I think all of us can agree on that right. Our interest rates are going up, and if you already own a home, that means if you are in a variable interest rate situation, your mortgage payments are going up. Now, if you don't own a home, it is becoming much more difficult to purchase a home within the city centers because the costs are so high. This podcast is about saving for your first home, so I am addressing people that have not yet purchased real estate, but want to. They have the ambition to, but just don't know how. So what do we do in this situation?
Speaker 1:First up, I do believe that is a systemic problem, and the government is doing what they think is the right thing by raising the interest rates in order to slow down the increase of properties on the market, which will therefore decrease the demand and then therefore reduce the price. Now, is that going to happen overnight? No, what we are going to see happen, probably in the next few years, as people's mortgages start to renew at a much higher rate, is that we are going to see a lot of people losing their homes because they cannot afford to keep up with that payment and the younger generation that are coming out of university or college and are looking to even rent a property it is so expensive on that front as well, and so they are forced to live with their parents a little bit longer and they don't get started on their life either, even though they've gone to school, got the education to obtain a decent job with a good wage. It's becoming very difficult for them to kind of break away from the parents' help and move on. So I can't really speak to the systemic issues, because that is something that's going to happen and change over time, depending on government direction, depending on supply and demand and how. There are so many factors that are going to affect the systemic issues that we're facing. But what I can address is you on a personal level.
Speaker 1:When situations change, we need to adjust, and I think that's where the disconnect is. Since 2020, we have been through such turbulent times I'm not using that term lightly, because it really has been turbulent. You know, at one point we're seeing gas prices for like 65 cents I think that was like a march or April of 2020 and now we're headed to $2 for gas. That is in a period of like three years. So we can see that there is a definitely turbulent time out there. So 2020 going into 2021, the amount of savings that people had probably due to the shutdowns and different reasons, different factors the amount of money that they had saved in the bank was at a record level. So why I'm saying this is because when things change in our society, in our economic environment, our finances change. So when we were shut down and things weren't easily as available to us, we tended to save a lot of money because we weren't going out, we weren't doing some of the things that we normally do. Now we're in a different economic time and we still need to adjust right, so we can't be living the same lives as we were back, even two years ago, when things were much, much cheaper to live. So what can we do? Okay, I'm going to give you a couple steps of what I call the fall tune up.
Speaker 1:Now, my brother is a bike enthusiast and so he usually tunes up my bike, you know, yearly, and make sure that it's ready to go on the road. So recently, my husband and I went for a long bike ride and he put the bike on the car and we were ready to go. We take the bike out of the car and we're ready to get on the bike and head on to the trail. And I get on the bike and I'm like I think the tires are flat. And he goes what? Because you know we've had tuned up the bike earlier in the season. Well, I hadn't ridden the bike probably in a couple weeks and sure enough the tires were flat. So he's like oh man, I should have checked this before we left, right. So I say all this just to say that you know it's important to get a tune up every season and I'm talking about your finances now. But at the same time, if you're not monitoring it, weekly things can happen and things change, and so you really need to kind of stay on top of what it is that's happening with your finances so that you don't end up in a position where you are struggling. Okay, so let's jump in to what a fall tune up is.
Speaker 1:First off, you need to review your financial goal. So if your goal is to purchase a home and you had a plan, an existing plan that was spending, let's say, over two year period and it was going to save approximately $20,000 for your down payment. Now, based on the current situation, you may need to adjust that. Maybe you need to add time. You maybe need to add more to the savings. You need to adjust it based on the current environment. So this is what I mean by reviewing your financial goals. Does what you're doing right now is it still serving you the way you want it to? Is it having an impact on your daily life? Like, perhaps you're saving too much now and you don't have enough to do the daily things, like by groceries and gas and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:So what I want you to do is really review the financial goals. Your goals should be very specific, right, you need to have your goals, stating what timeframe, how much you're saving, where you're putting your money. And if you haven't done this yet, I'm going to send you way back to episode number four, where it really breaks down how to set up your goals. But for now, we're going to assume that you've already set some goals. So what I want you to do really is just to review them and ensure they are still serving you in the way you want them to.
Speaker 1:Secondly, we're going to either create one or update your budget. So if you don't have a budget, then I suggest you do create one. It's actually the first eight episodes of this podcast really go through some of these fundamentals. But if you don't have a budget, please feel free to reach out to me. I have lots of tools and things that can help you with this.
Speaker 1:But for the most part, what you need to do is review your income and your expenses so you look closely at how much it is that's costing you to live and how much it is that you're making and see if it needs to be adjusted right. You may need to cut some unnecessary expenses. If things are raising in price, then you have to look at how much am I spending and where can I actually cut. You know, this is the part that people don't like about budgets and unfortunately it's just an exercise that needs to be done at least quarterly for every season. We're coming out of summer, where spending is on a high, everybody's having fun, you're outside, you're doing things and you're spending more money, right. So in the fall, in order to kind of compensate for that, to reduce those credit bar bills that are coming, you need to maybe be cooking more meals at home. You need to be looking for cheaper alternatives, maybe for the groceries that you are buying. You need to look at canceling some unused subscriptions, like. There's lots of ways you can find money within your budget if you just take the time to review it. So that is an important exercise that, like I said, should be done on a quarterly basis.
Speaker 1:And then, next up, if you don't have an emergency fund, I really highly suggest you start making one, because when we get into these times where it's kind of turbulent and we don't know what the government is gonna do and what kind of an impact it's going to have on us, we need to have a little bit of a reserve. And I know this is difficult when you already feel like your money is tight, but you need to put something away. Put something away so that, when something unexpected happens, you're not gonna reach for a credit card or debt to help you through it. You're going to have a little bit of the reserve there waiting for you. Okay, next up, I want you to check out how much debt you've incurred. Now this is the perfect timing for this because it's the end of summer, and so I know that summer spending can be different than any other time of the year, especially for those who live in Canada, because we enjoy our summers. So definitely take a look at how much debt you've incurred.
Speaker 1:Pull out all the credit card statements, lines of credit loans, anything that you have that is debt related, and figure out how much it is that you owe and if you're paying high interest to these credit card companies. Right, there are different ways that you can go about reducing your debt, and I will address that in a different episode, probably in the next few weeks. So stay tuned for that one. But you need to do the assessment first Find out how much it is that you owe and we'll see if we can do something to prioritize paying that down. And then this is a little bit where the fun part begins. I guess we want to set up some automatic transfers into savings or investment accounts. Now, it doesn't have to be a lot of money, right. Again, I understand that we're in a time where the leftovers is becoming smaller and smaller, but even if it's $20, and you're setting up that to an automatic savings or investment account, it's $20 that you probably spend on takeout. Or can you even buy McDonald's for $20? I don't think you can. I think it's more than that now. So take that money better to invest it and see if you can actually build your savings that way.
Speaker 1:And then next up, after you've reviewed your budget, you've looked at the expenses. I want you to flip the other page and look at your income. Is your income enough to cover the basics? And if it's enough to cover the basics, great, but isn't enough to plan for the future, like saving for a home, creating an investment account, starting up an emergency savings fund. Is it enough to cover all of these things? And if the answer is no, then you do need to look outside of your current income stream, right, and that means to perhaps take on a part-time job, start a side hustle, do some freelancing, anything like that, just to kind of boost that income and it doesn't have to be forever, it can be for a very short period of time just to boost your savings, just to boost that emergency savings fund to protect yourself, right, if you do a part-time job for three months and that's gonna give you enough savings to build that emergency fund, and then that's it. That's enough, right? And then you have at least a feel like you have a cushion and you don't have to worry as much if things maybe go sideways. So really take a look at that side of the budget as well.
Speaker 1:And then I want you to do some forward thinking, and that means that we need to do some tax planning. So we're in September now. We are four months away from the end of the year, and there is still time to contribute to various programs that are tax savers. So if you have an accountant, reach out to them. Perhaps they can give you an idea of what you should have at the end of the year to avoid paying additional tax. And if you don't have an accountant, then save what you can right, say, put something into a retirement savings fund so that can offset your income in some way.
Speaker 1:And then, finally, I really want you to seek out more financial literacy. Now I know you guys are dedicated to listening to my podcast and I so appreciate that, but perhaps push yourself a little bit further. If you need a money coach to help set up your goals, set up your budget and put you in a good position for the next quarter, then again I'm here to help, but there's many people out there, it's not just me. Whoever you feel comfortable with, even if it's just getting a mentor, a family or a friend to keep you accountable. I really want you to seek that out, because it's going to take you to the next level.
Speaker 1:Doing things on your own in silo is so much more difficult than it is to do it with a partner, with a friend or with a coach, right? You? Look at these professional athletes right now. The Canadian basketball team has just made it into the Olympics. I think they won the last game and so now they're qualified to actually participate in the Olympics. They didn't get there without proper coaching and, obviously, skill, but they needed some help, right, and so you guys want to improve your financial situations.
Speaker 1:You have goals that you want to reach, so get the help that you need right, and that means getting more and more financial literacy. Not only will you gain more knowledge, it will also help you to stay motivated, right, because financial goals sometimes it's easy to lose motivation. It's not fun, it requires discipline, but having someone by your side really reminds you of why you set the goals and it really helps you to celebrate your progress along the way. So, just getting back to those TikToks that have gone viral, another one that I saw was focusing on the grocery bill and they had spent $70 on a grocery bill, but they hadn't gone very much for their money.
Speaker 1:Now, if we refer back to the fall tune-up, if this has been completed, you will understand that the grocery budget actually needs to be increased, right?
Speaker 1:Because the cost of the goods are more expensive. Now again, I get it if your income is static and it's not moving and you increase the grocery budget and you don't know where to find that additional money, then everything needs to be reassessed when you live, what you drive, your transportation, the other expenses that come along with living, everything needs to be reassessed because we cannot change the cost of food at the moment. Now I encourage everyone to lobby to their MPs and explain how difficult it is, but we have to do an adjustment on our own right. So I'm glad that these TikToks are going viral, because it gets people talking about the problem and perhaps the government will see that and make some changes. But until then, I really want you to go through these steps for a fall tune-up and see if you can change the way your money is being spent. All right, bye for now, and we'll see you next Thursday, I promise. Take care, guys. Thank you for listening. We are committed to helping you place your very first steps into your new home. See you next time.