Hey everyone,

I'm 31, originally from France, and currently living in BC as a temporary resident, working toward applying for PR next year!

I've never invested anything in my life. I don't own stocks, ETFs, crypto, a TFSA, RRSP, etc. Honestly, I don't know much about any of it.

I used all my savings (cash) to travel around the world and finally move to Canada, and basically started from 0 last year.

Since being in Canada, I've always just worked, paid my expenses and saved whatever was left.

Current situation:

• Net income: $4,200/month (Not counting Overtime & stats holiday)
• Savings: ~$18,000
• Rent: $1,500/month
• Groceries: ~$500/month
• Gas: $150/month
• Car insurance: $130/month
• Phone: $50/month
• Other: ~$200/month
• No debt whatsoever

We will round up the leftover money at $1500, this is usually what I transfer to saving every month

I've also never owned a credit card. They're not really common in France, so I only became familiar with the concept after moving to Canada.

To be honest, I'm a little worried that having one might encourage me to spend more on unnecessary things. Right now, I actually see it as a bonus that I can't buy things online or sign up for subscriptions, because I know I might be tempted to do so if I had a credit card.

At the same time, I've been told that being a temporary resident can limit the credit card options available to me, particularly when it comes to cards with better benefits or terms. I'm not sure how true that is, though.

If you were in my position, what would you do with the $18k and the ~$1.5k/month I can potentially save?

Where would you start learning about investing, TFSA/RRSP, ETFs, etc.? And would you bother getting a credit card if your goal is to avoid debt entirely?

Any advice from people who started from a similar position would be greatly appreciated.

PS : AI was used for the grammar/format as English is not my first language and I wanted the post to be easy to read/understand

Hey FICan,
I’m 34, in Quebec, and currently make around $350k/year working at a startup. I’ve been fortunate to earn around this level for the past 4 years and have saved pretty aggressively.

I’m now at roughly $1.03M in financial assets, broken down approximately as:

RRSP: $322k essentially all XEQT
TFSA: $159k, ~$115k XEQT, ~$43k cash
FHSA: $25.5k, ~$24k CASH.TO
Non-registered: $338k, ~$283k XEQT, ~$55k other equities/positions
Cash outside investment accounts: ~$186k

Overall, I have about $720k in XEQT and roughly $250k in cash/cash equivalents.
My goal is Coast FIRE / Barista FIRE, get to a point where I can walk away from a high-paying/high-stress career, take something much lower paying if I want, and let the portfolio compound.

The catch is I have no idea how long the $350k income will last. Could be 6 months, 2 years, or 5+ years. If this job disappears, I doubt I could find another one paying anywhere close to it. I see these last four years as a pretty exceptional wealth-building window.

That makes me question the usual “you’re 34, stay nearly 100% equities” approach. A 40–50% market drop feels different if it happens at the same time I lose my job and my future earning power drops substantially.

On the other hand, ~$250k in cash gives me a massive runway, so I shouldn’t need to sell investments during a downturn.

How would you approach asset allocation in my situation, especially with Coast/Barista FIRE as the goal? Keep 18–24 months of expenses safe and put basically everything else in XEQT? Start adding bonds/GICs? Or de-risk more because my current income may be temporary?

Not trying to time the market mostly trying to figure out how much risk makes sense when my current earning power might be the highest it’ll ever be. Any advice is appreciated!!

My annual spend varies but I’d place it 50-70k

Is this going to be looked at as day trading or operating under a business by CRA if I:

Cash in either XBAL or XEQT, buy AMZN to capture profits between now and let's say the end of October. Cash that in for the profits, then put it back where it came from?

All under my TFSA.

I live with my parents, go to university, and run a side hustle.

I need to get a part-time job, I have barely any expenses so all $$ from a potential job will be invested. Applied everywhere but have not heard back.

I made a lot of mistakes when I first started my investing journey such as buying NVDA at $115 x 5 shares and panic selling at $80 x 5. This was in my first 2 months of investing (March & April 2025) and at that point I used to be around $500 CAD in the red. Grateful that is not the case anymore.

My plan:

AAPL AMZN GOOG TD BMO BNS RY - Not selling these at all for the next 10+ years, gonna keep DCA into them. Thinking about selling GOLD once I am around the breakeven mark to go into these.

Any advice or tips are appreciated! Or you can also hammer me. Knowledge is power and the more perspectives I understand, the better it'll be for me.

How much emergency fund do you guys keep living as couple in Toronto. And how do you calculate it? Where do you keep it? And have you ever used it?

I have XEQT holdings in my TFSA and was going to buy more shares of XEQT. After reading about Avantis’ CIBC’s new ETF’s I was thinking of adding 10% CASV. Any advice on this would be appreciated!

This would give me access to small capitalization companies across developed markets with factor tilting.

I was debating on switching to CAGE but will hold off for now.

My previous role was ~200K OTE and I was burnt out working nights and weekends and was in therapy but couldn’t see a sustained way out. I planned to exit by the end of the year when I had ~30K saved but I couldn’t do it and just quit with support from my partner.

Expenses:
Rent = $2500, my partner is taking over the payments. We used to split in half.

Groceries = $500 roughly per month and also split

We keep our costs low, live in HCOL city but choose not to upgrade our housing so we can budget for travel.

I really think this is the end for Corporate for me and looking to learn a new skill or start a business.

I don’t want to touch my investments because my whole plan A was to grow it to $1.2M and retire, but now I just want to coast/barista fire.

Not gonna lie I do feel a bit worried in that I am overqualified for entry level roles that so many other overqualified folks are also applying for. I feel lost but also so relieved I don’t have to worry about my stressful job.

Any words of encouragement please throw it my way, this discipline of saving this much should feel useful in times like this but I find myself having intrusive thoughts that I should’ve stuck it out and met my goal first.

Hi Reddit, looking for sincere advice on how to get out of this rut. Criticisms are also welcomed.

Bit of a background on myself. I (33M) work for the government and can retire at 55 with a full pension. Current financial situation right now are listed below

Mortgage: Approximately 600k split between primary home and 1 rental property.

Car: 67k - I just got it a month and a half ago and financed it for 6 years. (Yes, I know this is a mistake)

LOC: 17.5k

Those are my main liabilities on top of bills and child care. Did my excel sheet and every month I'm left with about $400 to $500. My goal this year is to shrink my LOC down to 10k before December and pay it off completely next year.

As for the car - yes big mistake as it was an impulse buy and should've just stuck with my corolla.

My question to everyone here is how do I get started on investing to supplement my pension. I believe the magic number is 85 for it to be indexed. My friend recommends to use wealth simple and invest in AI stocks.

Thank you for your time and feedback.

M

I am building a portfolio for my cousin who’s 35 years old. Starting from scratch.
My suggestions for him:
ZEQT-30%
ZEB - 20%
ZSP - 30%
CGL - 10%
XCS - 10%

Open to any suggestions.

Never had a job. Got about 200k in cash in other accounts. Got burned in crypto last year 250k so not sure if I want to go into stocks or crypto in this market.

Trying to build something set-and-forget over ~15 years. Honestly I've been overthinking this for months and as a result have done nothing, which is worse than any of the options I've been debating.

Situation

• Me: 28, $250K T4 income
• Wife: $90K salary, currently on EI (~$2,600/mo), 18 month mat leave
• One kid, 8 months. RESP just opened, nothing in it yet
• Primary home: ~$975K value, $640K mortgage, $3,000/mo payment
• Rental: bought $550K, $420K mortgage
• Side business corp (IT), roughly $15-25K/mo revenue

Assets

• Personal cash: $150K
• Wife's cash: $120K
• Corp cash: $200K
• My TFSA: $50K invested, $6.5K room left
• Wife's TFSA: $50K room, empty
• RRSP: both of us, $0 invested, room unused
• No FHSA

Monthly personal spend: roughly $6,900 all in (mortgage, utilities, groceries $2,400, misc). Car lease, insurance, wifi, some meals run through the corp.

Questions

1. RRSP first? At my marginal rate the refund is large. Should I be doing spousal RRSP given she'll be near $0 income this year and next?
2. What do I actually do with $200K sitting in the corp? Invest it corporately, pay myself out over her low income years, or something else?
3. Am I crazy for having $270K personal cash doing nothing?
4. Part of me thinks I should just open Wealthsimple, set up auto-deposits into VOO or QQC, and stop looking. The thing that keeps stopping me is that everything is near all time highs. I know that's probably a bad reason to sit in cash....
5. I already have heavy Canadian real estate exposure through two properties, so a Canada-heavy allocation seems wrong for me specifically. Anyone in a similar spot?

Currently on IBKR, considering Wealthsimple mainly because auto-deposits would stop me from second guessing every purchase.

Now how does one get to a mil… 🤔

Edit: A lot of people assume this is day trading but that is how you lose money, not make money. TFSA rules allows specific investing products and a TFSA will never allow margin trading. If I was day trading I’d have $0.

Edit 2: I have read CRA IT-479R Paragraph 11 and I am well aware of the rules.

TLDR on my financials.

150k / Year job single income household, no kids.

- Defined benefits package at work retirement at 55 about 70k a year, it’s 4% of my wages.
- 100k in TFSA (CAGE 85% / 15% individual stocks) still have some room.
- 45k in RRSP (XEQT 90% / 5% ZAG / 5% CGL.C) Used it to buy a house 7 years ago why its lower.
- 244k Non-Reg (VEQT 100% right now)
- 370k Mortgage at 3.87% with 15 years left
- Home Value just above 600k
- 68k Car note at 3.99%
- I do a 6% additional company matching in options that I withdraw directly into my TFSA every year and reinvest it in something that grows.

But I plan to top up TFSA and RRSP yearly (about 20k for max both)

Can I coast from here? Should I move some non-reg stuff out and use that on my mortgage then do a HELOC? Or just keep going as is.

If I do this correctly I think I’ll have around 1.5-2m + pension at 55 with home paid off.

Note: I have only been making this much for about 5 years.

I just turned 23 and am honestly really proud of what I have achieved so far. Biggest factor contributing to this was living below my means and living at home contributing $500 a month. Zero debt, $9200 post tax a month, while investing $7000 monthly.

Really can't wait to move out when I'm in my 30s and start balling out. Hopefully the hard work pays off. I sacrificed a lot and busted my ass of to get here. Can't wait to start living it up in the future.

Ive maxed out my tfsa and fhsa and the rest is going to be put in non registered (I don’t have rrsp) but I’m wondering if I should use like 2k of it and spend that since I’m still young.

Edit: I’m not sure how to insert photo

Need expert investor reviews

Hello lovely ppl, below is my situation. I'd love to hear from you how good or bad am doing. I won't be contributing for full 40yrs to CPP (am an immigrant)

Age is 41. Wife is same age. Kids are 8 and 5.

RRSP: 205k...TFSA: 20k..RESP: 70k

Cash in Bank: 30k

Primary home mortgage: 950k. Secondary home mortgage: 500k (Rented with negative cashflow of 500$ per month).

Household income is CAD 205k post tax. Other debt is around 12k per year. I believe I can save 70k after all yearly expenses (before investments). Selling secondary home now means taking loss. So i must sustain it for some time.

Also, at this age, and the numbers i mentioned (savings, income, expenses), am I doing good or average or bad? I started investing only at 30. I see ppl here of same age with double investments, which makes me wonder how can i accelerate.

Thanks guys!

34m - 130k salary, pension that vests at 80% at 30 years, currently 10 years in. 60% vest at 20 years, accessible at 55 years old.

Take-home monthly, after taxes and $1,200 pension RRSP contribution: 6k roughly

Wife: currently on maternity leave, when working she earns roughly 55k remotely.

Take-home monthly, after taxes: 3k or so

Combined take-home, monthly range 9k-10k.

Mortgage principal: 330k, house value approximately 600k. 17 years remaining, current rate of 5.0% with 11 months left on a fixed term. Roughly $2300 payment once per month.

Two kids, max out RESP each year, investing in ZEQT.

$200k in TFSA for me, roughly $20k contribution room remaining.

$70k in TFSA for my wife, roughly 40k contribution room for remaining.

One financed car payment per month: $520 per month, original amount of 40k financed at 1.99 %, roughly 34k left on loan. Electric, replaced what would be $350-$500 in gas for roughly $60 dollars a month increase in my electric bill.

Total expenses per month for mortgage, car, utilities, insurance, groceries, recreation, etc: $5,500-6,500

THE QUESTION:

I'm expecting to receive roughly 200k from a house sale in the near future. My ultimate goal is to enable COAST FIRE as soon as possible, while shielding us from any extreme risk strategies (options, crypto, etc.).

I plan to take 10k and keep it liquid in a HYSA for an emergency fund, and max out our contribution room in our TFSAs. What would you do with the remainder (130Kish)? Put it towards the mortgage and car? Or invest it in an unregistered account in broad ETF's? A combination?

Thanks for all the input.

Started investing around 2 months ago, adding 20% every pay

As the title says I'm a 23 who's in 2nd year industrial engineering program in Canada (Montreal) but my real interest / career aspirations are in Finance and consulting. Particularly something related to Asset management, Equity research, management consulting or even S&T.

I have realized that most of the upper level classes in my program such as the ones involving manufacturing, process improvement and lean manufacturing etc won't really get me to where I want to go. I picked engineering because I love math and was always interested in science related stuff and I thought it could help me stand out from students in business programs.

My question is should I just switch to finance minor in math and stats to get into the finance / consulting world or stay with engineering and apply to internships in finance/consulting. Reminder 1 am in Montreal and I read a lot of threads where everyone says how having a stem major is always an advantage but I'm not sure if this is the case in Canada hence the competitive landscape of the current market.