When your money takes on a life of its own

 When I updated my networth this month, I was again surprised to see it go up almost 10k to 560k+ now. I don't think the market was doing particularly amazing this month so imagine my surprise. I know it's all virtual gains on paper until I sell, but this is more than my monthly pay?!

I remember back when I started this money journey, one PF blogger wrote about investments snowballing after 200k (he has long sold his blog etc, I remember he was based in Seattle). Now, I can't say I really noticed it when I hit 200k, but I'm definitely noticing it now (surprised pikachu meme). 

Anyways, that prompted my update. Wonder if I'll miraculously hit 600k by my birthday in Feb? That'd be really cool. 

In terms of liquidating my assets to prepare for a down payment, I sold about 10k worth of TD stock so now I have 20k in my TFSA. Will liquidate about 10k in my RRSP to transfer to my FHSA to max out my contribution for this year (I have 16k room according to my Notice of Assessment this year). 

December is also the month I give my end of the year food bank donations etc so I'll get on that. 

On the personal side, I mentioned thinking about yolo-ing to Korea in my September post. So I did yolo, and a friend even came with. I made sure we did some awesome tourist stuff for her first visit. We rented hanbok and even hired a photographer for a quick photoshoot (we looked like we were eloping royal handmaidens hahaha). 

    

Hit a few different cafes (omg Starbucks Reserve desserts in Seoul was to die for), and kbbq (I wish we had charcoal grill in the city!). 

And Jin's concert was unreal, so so much fun. What a performer. The whole concert experience is top notch. I've always said ARMY is an amazing audience, warm and the best place to experience hive mind in a positive way.

  

It has started snowing for real here so it's slowly starting to feel more festive and I need to sleep early to wake up for the charty cookie sale tomorrow morning. I hope there will be very creative and tasty cookies. 

There will be an end of the year update in Jan. Have a great holiday season and see you then (unless somehow I get inspired again)!

I have a bad feeling about this market

 The US government basically not announcing job numbers and bunch of other indicators just have me feeling very uneasy about the current market. 

Normally I'd be on team 'just stay put through the storm', but since I do have plans to possibly purchase a property next year, I want to have the downpayment money and a bit of extra available. I think it might be wise to have that amount just out of equities at least and keep the rest in. So 50k from RRSP homebuyer's program and I should have about 25k FHSA this year and able to put another 10k (I'll transfer from my nonregistered account) next year. 

So a total of 85k from registered accounts, I think I'll free up another 15k so we're at a nice 100k round number maybe? Or should I liquidate more of my equities? Maybe a quarter (about 135k) to a third (180k). 

I like my current lifestyle and don't want to live cash poor, so ideally I find a cheaper condo or somewhere with not super high condo fees (surprise! the condo fees in this city is usually 500-800 for a 1-2 bedroom). My current arrangement with my roommate was really great for cash flow, I could basically float all my yolo trips and such. Too bad she's moving out after this year's lease and I don't want to find another roommate. 

Houses are better than condos for capital gain potential, but I'm more looking to my portfolio for retirement than my residence. Also houses are a lot of work and I am honestly not a handy maintenance person. But if I find a good townhouse it could be the best of both worlds. 

I guess I'll just keep an eye on the local housing market and see. Right now it's a buyer's market but prices haven't really dropped. 

One step at a time. Get my questions answered at the work RRSP program and start liquidating my FHSA first. 

** Sidenote: I love being BTS ARMY. This fandom is honestly the coolest, the b-cd.app website to-do-list tool is the bestest! I put this post down as one of my tasks today and here I am! It's really helping me with productivity in a gentle positive way. 

September 2025 update - a really great money month

To say I was surprised when I updated my networth spreadsheet this month is an understatement. I just hit 500k networth in July and in September I've hit 550k? Well I sure hope the last 3 months of the year will be just as good 😂

Anyways, the pleasant surprise was almost my entire reason for posting. I've ceased updating the monthly networth charts so please look forward to the year end one (the only one I keep up to date for now). 

BTS' Jin has announced a super last minute encore concert in Seoul for the Halloween weekend. The urge to YOLO is very strong, since I already took a day off - originally planning on going to this year's Figure Skating GrandPrix Canada stop event that weekend. I'm afraid the artifical 30k networth gain is not helping my YOLO brain right now. While I know I'd probably enjoy the figure skating competition, the euphoria from a BTS concert is basically guaranteed while competitions can be disappointing (Ha! GPF 2019 ha!).

A dear friend has all of us doing a healthy October challenge for her birthday, so I'm struggling with getting my protein quota and staying away from junk food. Nothing gets my cravings on like being told you can't eat chips nor drink soda. 

On a not so happy note, I've hurt my left wrist. It's been gradually getting more painful and I'll have to go see the doctor to get it investigated soon. Even though I don't want to file for worker's comp (as this is likely a repetitive stress injury from work), everyone is telling me to at least get it documented. 

Hopefully my wrist won't get worse and hang on til I hit FI. Though I'm not too far from Barista FI from the ways things are going this year (yeah yeah I know past performance isn't indicative of the future, but just let me enjoy this for a bit). 

It's been a fairly warm fall so far for Calgary, but I've been pretty busy. Fingers crossed that I get out to the mountains for one last hike!

Wishing everyone a great October! Are you doing anything exciting? As for me, I'm particularly looking forward to mooncake this weekend. 

I'm back!!

So, my coworker made me feel bad about my money😂, and therefore I'm back!

The story goes: at work we're getting a retention bonus this month, and casually I was chatting with a coworker friend about where to put the money. We have the option of directly depositing it into our work RRSP account or receive it as income to do as we please. And I said I'll probably put it into TFSA instead of RRSP. My coworker was like 'Yeah I guess if you haven't maxed that out!' And to add insult to injury 'That's just play money amounts anyway'.

So that hurt my feelings/pride as an ex-money blogger😂. Therefore I've decided to come back to keep myself a bit more on track with financial accountability.

Since I last wrote on this blog, I've made a legit PF blog website, abandoned it in a year (and the whole PF blogsphere).

Travelled quite a bit (I'm the cliche that fell in love with traveling to Japan). Fell passionately into fandoms (hello figure skating! Have you heard of Yuzuru Hanyu? And from that, into BTS who really helped me get through the pandemic).

Just hit 500k networth this year so even though I'm not as hardcore frugal as I was in the early working years (2013-2018), I think I've still done well financially.

I have a short term goal for FHSA savings that I'll be working on since my living situation might be changing soon.

Otherwise I just miss have a space to chat about money (my friends are either the more active/risky investors or find it to be a chore😂).