Most people find personal finance overwhelming because they try to tackle everything at once. They read one Reddit thread, open four browser tabs about investing, feel like they’re already behind, and close the laptop.
The thing is, getting your money in order doesn’t require a finance degree or a perfect budget. It requires five things — done in the right order — and a willingness to start before you feel ready.
Here’s where to begin.
Before you can make any real financial progress, you need an honest picture of where you stand today.
This means sitting down — once, for about 30 minutes — and listing:
Subtract what you owe from what you own. That number is your net worth, and it’s your starting point. It might be negative. That’s okay. Most people starting out are in the negative. The point isn’t the number — it’s that you now know it.
Write it down. Put a date on it. You’ll look at it again in three months, and watching it move in the right direction is one of the most motivating things you can do for your financial life.
You don’t need a complicated budget. You need to know the difference between fixed costs, variable spending, and the money you’re losing track of entirely.
Spend 15 minutes going through your last two months of bank and credit card statements. Look for:
You’re not trying to restrict yourself. You’re trying to see clearly. Most people discover $100-200/month they’re spending with no real intention. That’s $1,200-2,400/year you could be pointing somewhere useful.
Cancel one thing today. Just one. Getting started is the whole point.
Before you pay down debt aggressively. Before you start investing. Before you optimize anything — build a small cash buffer.
One month of your essential expenses, sitting in a savings account, separate from your day-to-day chequing account. This is your financial shock absorber.
Without a buffer, every unexpected expense — a car repair, a dental bill, a short paycheque — goes on a credit card and undoes weeks of progress. With a buffer, those same expenses are just… expenses. You handle them, you rebuild the buffer, you move on.
High-interest savings accounts (HISAs) through online banks in Canada often pay 4-5% on cash savings — far better than letting it sit in a big bank chequing account paying nothing. Search for current HISA rates and open one. It takes 20 minutes.
Start with $500 if one month feels far away. Progress matters more than perfection.
Once you have a buffer, your next priority is making sure any money you save is sitting in the right place. Canada gives you two powerful tax-advantaged accounts that most beginners underuse.
Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA)
Any investment growth, dividends, or interest inside a TFSA is completely tax-free — forever. You can withdraw whenever you want, for any reason. In 2026, the annual contribution limit is $7,000, and unused room accumulates from the year you turned 18.
If you have savings sitting in a regular bank account earning interest, that interest is taxable income. Move it into your TFSA. Same money, same bank if you want — just in a better wrapper.
First Home Savings Account (FHSA)
If you don’t own a home and think you might want to buy one someday, the FHSA is worth knowing about. You can contribute up to $8,000/year (lifetime max $40,000), get a tax deduction for every dollar contributed, and withdraw tax-free for a qualifying home purchase. That’s the RRSP and TFSA combined — for a first home.
You don’t need to invest the money aggressively right away. Even parking it in a cash savings option inside the account gets you the tax deduction and starts the clock on your room.
Carrying high-interest debt — credit cards, payday loans, some lines of credit — is expensive in a way that’s hard to overcome with investing. A credit card charging 20% interest is a guaranteed 20% return when you pay it off. No investment reliably beats that.
If you have high-interest debt, your job is simple: attack the smallest balance first (for motivation) or the highest rate first (for math), and don’t add to the pile while you’re paying it down.
If your debt is low-interest — student loans below 5%, a car loan in the 3-4% range — it’s less urgent. You can work on building savings alongside it.
The key decision is this: pick one debt and make a plan to eliminate it this year. Not all of them. One. Write down the balance, the interest rate, and the month you’ll have it paid off at your current payment rate. Then consider whether you can increase that payment by even $50/month.
That one decision, made consciously, beats a dozen half-formed intentions.
If you try to do all five of these at once, you’ll burn out in two weeks. If you do them in order, each one creates the foundation for the next.
That’s it. That’s the whole beginning. You don’t need more steps until you’ve done these.
Spring is a good time to start — not because of anything magical about April, but because the instinct to clean things up is already there. Use it.
If you’ve done one of these and hit a wall — or you’d rather talk through your specific situation with someone who won’t try to sell you anything — that’s exactly what I do.
I’m a financial coach, not an advisor. I don’t manage your money or earn commissions. I help you understand your situation, build a plan that fits your actual life, and stay accountable to it.
Right now, the first five new clients this spring get three months free on The Co-Pilot — my ongoing monthly coaching program. If you’ve been thinking about getting started, this is a good time.
See what working together looks like →
I want you to try something right now. Pick up your phone. Go to your screen time settings. Look at how much time you spent on social media this week.
Got the number? Good. Now multiply it by 52. That’s your annual total. Now multiply that by the number of years you’ve been on these platforms.
That number you’re looking at? That’s not “downtime.” That’s not “staying connected.” That’s a chunk of your one and only life, spent making someone else rich while you scroll past content you won’t remember tomorrow.
Let me walk you through exactly how to face this number — and what it actually means.
Every phone tracks this. Here’s how to find it:
iPhone: Settings > Screen Time > See All App & Website Activity
Android: Settings > Digital Wellbeing > Dashboard
Samsung: Settings > Digital Wellbeing and Parental Controls
Look at the social media category specifically. Most phones break it down by app — Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X (Twitter), Reddit, YouTube, Snapchat. Add them all up. Write that weekly number down.
If you’re like the average Canadian, here’s roughly what you’ll see:
| Platform | Average Daily Use |
|---|---|
| TikTok | 58 minutes |
| YouTube | 48 minutes |
| 33 minutes | |
| 31 minutes | |
| X (Twitter) | 24 minutes |
| 24 minutes | |
| Snapchat | 21 minutes |
The average person spends 2 hours and 23 minutes per day on social media. That’s 16 hours and 41 minutes per week. That’s over 36 full days per year — spent scrolling.
If that doesn’t hit you yet, keep reading.
Most people joined their first social media platform between ages 12 and 16. If you’re 30 now, that’s roughly 15 years of daily scrolling. At 2.5 hours a day, that’s over 13,600 hours already spent.
Thirteen thousand six hundred hours. Gone. On content designed to keep you watching, not to make your life better.
To put that in perspective: 10,000 hours is the amount Malcolm Gladwell famously cited as the threshold for mastery. You’ve already exceeded the time it would take to become world-class at something — and you spent it watching strangers dance, reading rage-bait, and refreshing feeds that reset every time you open them.
Here’s the part nobody talks about. Every minute you spend scrolling, you’re not just wasting your time — you’re generating revenue for the platform. You are the product. Your attention is being packaged and sold to advertisers, and the platforms are making serious money off every hour you give them.
Here’s what the major platforms earn per user per year in North America:
| Platform | Annual Revenue Per User (North America) |
|---|---|
| Facebook / Instagram (Meta) | ~$75 USD |
| TikTok | ~$35 USD |
| YouTube | ~$45 USD |
| X (Twitter) | ~$15 USD |
| Snapchat | ~$10 USD |
| ~$5 USD |
If you’re an active user across multiple platforms, you’re generating $100 to $200+ per year in ad revenue — just by scrolling. Over a lifetime of use, that’s thousands of dollars of value you created for corporations, in exchange for… what exactly? A dopamine hit that fades before your thumb stops moving?
These companies employ thousands of engineers whose sole job is to make the app more addictive. Every infinite scroll, every autoplay video, every notification badge is engineered to keep you there longer. Because every extra minute is worth money. Your money — paid in time instead of dollars.
This is where the calculator below gets uncomfortable. Because when you convert scrolling hours into real things, the numbers become personal.
Here’s what the research says about how long things actually take:
At 2.5 hours per day, you accumulate over 900 hours per year of scrolling time. That’s enough to learn a language and read 50 books and train for a marathon. Every. Single. Year.
Over a decade, you’d have enough time for two full university degrees. Over 20 years, you could have become an expert in four or five completely different fields.
Instead, you watched videos you can’t remember and read takes you’ve already forgotten.
Plug in your actual numbers. I built this to be honest, not comfortable.
Check your phone's screen time settings for the real number
You’re not being paid for any of this. Not a cent. You’re the one generating the value — your eyeballs, your data, your attention — and the platforms collect all the profit. Meta made over $130 billion in ad revenue in 2024. You helped make that happen. Your reward was a feed full of ads, outrage bait, and a vague sense that everyone else’s life is better than yours.
The business model is simple: keep you scrolling as long as possible, serve you as many ads as possible, and harvest your data to make those ads more targeted. Every feature — the infinite scroll, the pull-to-refresh, the notification dots, the algorithmic feed — exists for one reason: to maximize the time you spend on the platform. Not because it makes your life better. Because it makes their quarterly numbers better.
You are the product. Your attention is the commodity. And you’re giving it away for free.
I’m not going to tell you to delete all your accounts tomorrow. That advice sounds good in a blog post and fails in real life. Here’s what actually works:
1. Check your numbers. Use the calculator above. Let the number sink in. Awareness is the first step, and most people have never actually confronted the total.
2. Set app timers. Both iPhone and Android let you set daily time limits on specific apps. Start with cutting your current usage in half. If you’re at 2.5 hours, cap it at 1 hour and 15 minutes. Your phone will lock you out when you hit the limit.
3. Move the apps off your home screen. Put social media apps in a folder on your last screen, or delete them entirely and only use the browser versions. The friction matters — every extra tap is a moment where you can catch yourself and choose differently.
4. Replace the habit, don’t just remove it. The reason you reach for your phone is because you’re bored, anxious, or avoiding something. That trigger isn’t going away. You need to give yourself something else to reach for — a book, a sketch pad, a walk, a conversation with someone in the room.
5. Protect the first and last hour of your day. No social media before 9am or after 9pm. Those hours set the tone for your day and your sleep. Surrendering them to an algorithm is one of the most expensive things you can do.
6. Track the reclaimed time. When you cut from 2.5 hours to 1 hour, you’ve gained 1.5 hours per day. That’s 10.5 hours per week. That’s 546 hours per year. Write down what you did with that time — even loosely. Watching yourself build something real with reclaimed hours is the most powerful motivator there is.
The most sobering thing about the calculator above isn’t the number of hours. It’s the “What You Could Do Instead” section. Because time isn’t just time — it’s potential. Every hour spent scrolling is an hour that didn’t go toward building a skill, deepening a relationship, creating something, or becoming someone.
You can’t get back the hours you’ve already spent. But you can decide what happens with the ones you have left.
The average person has about 30,000 days on this planet. You’ve already used a significant chunk of yours. The question isn’t whether social media is “bad” — it’s whether the way you’re using it is worth what it’s costing you.
Run your numbers. Face the total. Then decide what you’re going to build with the time you take back.
If you want help designing a more intentional life — financially and otherwise — book a free discovery call and let’s talk about what matters to you.
]]>Nobody prepares you for the financial whiplash of parental leave.
You spend months getting ready for the baby — the crib, the car seat, the endless tiny socks — and then you have maybe three weeks to figure out how you’re going to live on a fraction of your income for the next year. The logistics of the baby get all the attention. The finances get a panicked Google search at 2am while the nursery paint is still drying.
I want to change that. This is the guide I wish existed when my family was planning for parental leave in Saskatchewan. It covers the numbers, the decisions, and the Saskatchewan-specific details that most generic Canadian content glosses over.
Employment Insurance (EI) pays 55% of your average insurable weekly earnings, up to a maximum of $729 per week in 2026. That’s the standard parental benefit rate.
Let me put that in plain dollars:
| Pre-leave salary | Monthly take-home (approx.) | EI monthly benefit (approx.) | Monthly drop |
|---|---|---|---|
| $50,000/year | ~$3,400 | ~$2,380 | ~$1,020 |
| $70,000/year | ~$4,500 | ~$3,162 | ~$1,338 |
| $90,000/year | ~$5,500 | ~$3,162 | ~$2,338 |
Notice that the cap kicks in hard above roughly $69,000. Once your salary exceeds that threshold, your EI maxes out at $729/week regardless of what you earn. If you make $90,000 or $140,000, your EI benefit is the same.
This is the number most families don’t stress-test until they’re in it.
The 1-week waiting period. EI has a mandatory 1-week unpaid waiting period before benefits begin. Budget for at least two weeks without income after you stop working — one for the waiting period, one for processing lag.
This is one of the most consequential financial decisions new parents make, and most people default to whatever their friends did without actually running the numbers.
Standard parental leave: Benefits paid at 55% (max $729/week) for up to 35 weeks (for non-birthing parent: up to 35 weeks; birthing parent gets 15 weeks maternity + 35 weeks parental = 50 weeks total).
Extended parental leave: Benefits paid at 33% (max $437/week) for up to 61 weeks (shared between parents).
The trade-off is simple: standard gives you more money per week but a shorter leave. Extended gives you more total time off but significantly less income.
For most Saskatchewan families, the math comes down to childcare costs. Saskatchewan has $10-a-day childcare ($217.50/month) for regulated spaces — one of the best childcare subsidies in Canada. But regulated spaces are not always available. If you’re in a smaller community or can’t get a spot, you may be paying market rates that push $1,200-$1,500/month per child.
If you can get a subsidized spot at 12 months, standard leave often makes more sense financially. If you’re looking at $1,200/month daycare starting at 12 months versus $437/week extended leave, the extended option may actually pencil out — you’re saving childcare costs while continuing to receive some income.
Run your specific numbers. Don’t just copy what your coworker did.
Here’s something worth knowing: Saskatchewan has the longest maternity leave in Canada — 19 weeks (compared to 15 weeks federally). This is a provincial employment standard, not a federal one, and it means birthing parents in Saskatchewan get more job protection time than almost anywhere else in the country.
The provincial job protection extends even further: Saskatchewan allows 63 weeks of parental leave per parent (not combined — each parent can take up to 63 weeks). The job is protected for that entire period.
However, the EI benefit itself is federal. Saskatchewan’s longer provincial leave protection doesn’t give you more EI money — it just guarantees your job is there when you come back. The EI timing follows federal rules.
This section is for the GoS employees, Crown corp folks, teachers (via STF agreements), and University of Saskatchewan staff — roughly a significant chunk of Regina and Saskatoon workers.
Many GoS collective agreements include a top-up to 95% of your regular weekly salary for the first 17 weeks of leave (including the 1-week waiting period). That top-up is paid by your employer on top of EI — so you’re getting close to your full salary for the first four months.
If this applies to you, your first 17 weeks aren’t really a financial hardship at all. The hardship comes in weeks 18 onward when the top-up ends and you’re suddenly down to 55% (or 33%) of your income.
Plan your budget around what you’ll receive in weeks 18+, not weeks 1-17. It’s easy to adjust to the top-up rate and then experience a second income shock when it ends.
Check your specific collective agreement — the terms vary by employer and bargaining unit.
Here’s where having a baby actually improves your finances in the short term.
The CCB is a tax-free monthly payment from the federal government based on your adjusted family net income and the number of children you have.
In 2026, the maximum CCB is:
These amounts phase out as family income rises, but here’s the thing: during parental leave, your family income drops significantly. That means your CCB for the following benefit year (July 2026 to June 2027) will be calculated on your lower parental leave income — and you may receive a higher benefit than you expect.
File your taxes promptly. The CCB is recalculated every July based on your prior year’s tax return. If you were on leave in 2026, your 2026 taxes (filed in spring 2027) could trigger a CCB increase for the 2027-28 benefit year. The CRA cannot adjust your payments without your filed return.
If your family income is below $28,600, EI’s Family Supplement can push your benefit rate up to 80% of your average insurable earnings. This is rarely advertised and many families miss it. If your income is near that threshold, it’s worth checking.
Saskatchewan offers the SLITC for lower-income residents. On parental leave, your income may drop below the threshold. It’s worth factoring in when you’re projecting your finances for the year.
The RESP (Registered Education Savings Plan) isn’t just a “nice to have someday” account. It’s free money, and the clock starts at birth.
The federal government adds a 20% Canada Education Savings Grant (CESG) on the first $2,500 you contribute each year, per child — that’s $500/year of free money. The grant room accumulates from birth, and unused room carries forward (up to age 17, with some conditions).
If you open the RESP when your child is born and contribute $2,500/year, you’ll capture the full $500 annual grant every year. Over 18 years, that’s $9,000 in free government grants before investment growth.
Open the RESP as soon as you have the Social Insurance Number (SIN) for your child. SINs are issued with the birth registration in Saskatchewan. You don’t need to fund it right away — just open the account to establish the grant eligibility year.
If your family income is below $55,867, your child may also qualify for the Canada Learning Bond (CLB), which adds $500 initially plus $100/year until age 15 — no contributions required. Check your eligibility.
Here’s a realistic skeleton budget for a family of two going from two incomes to one EI benefit. Adjust for your situation.
Assumptions: One parent on standard leave, $70,000 pre-leave salary, no employer top-up, 12 months leave.
On a $70,000 salary, after taxes and EI, you’re looking at roughly $3,000-$3,200/month on leave when combining EI and CCB. That’s tight but workable in Saskatchewan if your housing costs are in the $1,400-$1,600 range.
The families who struggle are typically those who bought a home at the top of their budget on two incomes and didn’t stress-test the single-income scenario before the baby arrived.
Aim for 3 months of bare-bones expenses saved before leave begins. The waiting period, processing delays, and unexpected baby expenses eat up cash reserves fast.
If you’re in a higher tax bracket before leave, your TFSA contributions are particularly valuable. You’re saving at a high rate now and can withdraw later at a lower (or zero) tax rate during leave if needed. In 2026, the TFSA annual limit is $7,000.
If you don’t own a home yet, the First Home Savings Account (FHSA) offers a $8,000/year tax deduction with tax-free withdrawal for a qualifying home purchase. Contributing before leave gives you the deduction in a higher-income year. Once you’re on leave, your income is lower and the deduction is worth less.
Don’t wait for your Record of Employment (ROE) to show up. Apply through Service Canada’s online portal the day you stop working. The ROE usually follows electronically, and waiting to apply just delays your first cheque.
EI benefits are taxable income. Service Canada deducts some tax, but often not enough — especially if your partner is still working and you’re filing jointly. You may owe money at tax time if you don’t plan for it. Consider requesting additional voluntary deductions through Service Canada, or set aside 10-15% of each EI payment in a separate savings account.
Parental leave strains relationships because it upends the financial dynamic most couples operate on. Two incomes become one-and-a-half, spending habits don’t automatically adjust, and resentment builds when nobody talks about it explicitly.
Before the leave starts:
Money fights during the exhaustion of new parenthood are brutal. A conversation before the leave is far less painful than a fight after.
If you’re returning to work after leave, Saskatchewan’s $10-a-day childcare program ($217.50/month at regulated centres) is genuinely extraordinary. Most provinces don’t have this. In Ontario or BC, families pay $1,200-$2,000/month for full-time daycare.
This program was extended through 2026-27, and the province confirmed continued federal funding beyond that. But spots are limited. In Saskatoon and Regina, waitlists at popular not-for-profit centres can stretch 12-18 months.
Put your child’s name on childcare waitlists before they’re born. Seriously — many families do this during the second trimester. The eligibility rules allow you to register before birth at most centres. Don’t wait until month 10 of leave to start looking.
Parental leave in Saskatchewan is financially manageable — more so than in most Canadian provinces, thanks to $10-a-day childcare, the CCB, and a relatively lower cost of living. But “manageable” requires planning, not improvisation.
The families who struggle aren’t struggling because the math is impossible. They’re struggling because they didn’t run the numbers before the baby arrived, didn’t build a buffer, and didn’t have the budget conversation with their partner.
You don’t need a financial advisor to figure this out. You need to:
Do those five things, and you’ll handle parental leave finances better than 80% of families going through it.
The first year is expensive and exhausting. But it doesn’t have to be financially chaotic.
Saskatchewan-specific resources: EI maternity and parental benefits calculator — Canada Child Benefit amounts — Saskatchewan childcare information
]]>Most people I talk to have no idea how much they need to retire. They’ve heard numbers thrown around — a million dollars, two million, “as much as possible” — and the vagueness keeps them frozen. The truth is, your retirement number is personal. It’s based on one thing: how much you actually spend.
Not how much you earn. Not how much your neighbour has saved. How much you spend.
And if you live in Saskatchewan, that number is probably lower than you think.
The 4% rule comes from the Trinity Study, which found that if you withdraw 4% of your investment portfolio each year, your money has historically lasted 30+ years — even through recessions, crashes, and inflation.
The math is dead simple:
Annual Spending x 25 = Your Retirement Number
That’s it. If you spend $40,000 a year, you need $1,000,000 invested. If you spend $30,000, you need $750,000. Spend $50,000? You need $1,250,000.
The multiplier of 25 is just the inverse of 4% (1 ÷ 0.04 = 25). You’re building a portfolio large enough that you can live off the returns without touching the principal.
Saskatchewan has a lower cost of living than most of Canada. Housing in Saskatoon and Regina is a fraction of what you’d pay in Vancouver or Toronto. Groceries are PST-exempt. Heating costs are real, but predictable with budget billing. A comfortable life here costs less, which means your retirement number is smaller.
On top of that, if you’ve worked in Canada, you’ll likely receive CPP (up to $1,433/month at 65) and OAS (up to $728/month at 65). That’s up to $25,932 per year in government income that reduces how much your portfolio needs to cover.
Before you touch the calculator, I need you to do one thing: track every dollar you spend for one month.
Don’t change your habits. Don’t try to be “good.” Just observe. Use a spreadsheet, a notes app, or a piece of paper on the fridge. Every coffee, every grocery run, every bill, every subscription.
Here’s what to capture:
At the end of the month, add it all up. That’s your monthly spending. Multiply by 12, and you have your annual spending — the only number that matters.
Take your numbers and drop them in below. The calculator will give you:
Your retirement number is a target, not a prison sentence. It’s the point where your investments can cover your lifestyle without you needing a paycheque. A few things to keep in mind:
It’s based on today’s spending. If your lifestyle changes — kids move out, mortgage gets paid off, you move to a smaller place — your number drops. The reverse is also true.
CPP and OAS are a bonus, not a guarantee. I included the toggle because those benefits are real and significant for Canadians. But I’d rather you hit your number without them and treat government income as gravy. That’s the position of strength you want to be in.
You don’t need to get there overnight. The gap might look intimidating. That’s fine. The point is knowing the number so you can work toward it intentionally instead of guessing.
Track your spending for the next 30 days. That’s it. Don’t optimize, don’t cut anything, don’t stress about it. Just write it down.
At the end of the month, plug your monthly number into the calculator above. You’ll know your retirement number in five seconds. And from there, everything gets clearer — what to save, which accounts to use, and how long the road actually is.
Most people are closer than they think. Especially here on the Prairies.
If you want help building a plan around your number, book a free discovery call and we’ll figure it out together.
]]>There are three writers who have quietly reshaped how a generation thinks about money, work, and time. They rarely cite each other. Their audiences barely overlap. And yet, if you read them carefully, they’re all circling the same mountain — just from different trails.
Tim Ferriss wants you to escape the deferred-life plan. Mr. Money Mustache wants you to stop setting your money on fire. Cal Newport wants you to do fewer things, better. Put them together, and you get something that none of them have fully articulated on their own: a complete operating system for financial independence that’s actually worth living.
Let me show you what I mean.
Tim Ferriss diagnosed the disease of “someday.” Most people spend 40 years trading their best hours for a retirement they may never enjoy, in a body that no longer works, doing things they put off too long. His solution — the 4-Hour Workweek framework — is essentially: compress income generation, eliminate the unnecessary, and spend your life now rather than later. He’s obsessed with time freedom above all else.
Mr. Money Mustache (Pete Adeney) diagnosed the disease of lifestyle inflation. The average North American is, as he famously put it, “a suckling on the teat of consumerism.” We earn more and somehow save less, upgrading our cars and subscriptions and takeout habits until we’re trapped by our own comfort. His solution: save 50-70% of your income, invest the difference in boring index funds, and retire in a decade rather than four of them. He’s obsessed with savings rate above all else.
Cal Newport diagnosed the disease of shallow busyness. We fill our days with email, meetings, social media, and low-value tasks while the rare ability to think deeply — and the value it produces — atrophies from disuse. His solution: ruthlessly protect time for deep work, embrace the craftsman mindset, and build rare and valuable skills. He’s obsessed with depth above all else.
Three different problems. Three compelling solutions. But here’s what none of them fully addresses on their own.
Ferriss’s framework is exciting but incomplete. Outsourcing and arbitrage are clever — but what do you do with the freedom once you have it? The 4-Hour Workweek is light on what to work toward. Many people who escape their 9-to-5 find themselves adrift, bouncing between mini-retirements without a sense of purpose or craft.
Mustache’s framework is financially bulletproof but can feel ascetic in the wrong ways. The math is airtight — a 50% savings rate really does get you to financial independence in roughly 17 years. But frugality without intentionality can slide into joyless penny-pinching, and the philosophy can undervalue the income side of the equation. There’s a ceiling to how much you can cut; there’s much less of a ceiling on what you can earn if you develop genuine expertise.
Newport’s framework builds rare skills and meaningful work, but it doesn’t give you much guidance on the money side of the equation. You can be a brilliant deep worker who’s also financially illiterate and chronically overemployed. Deep work is a means; Newport is sometimes fuzzy on the end.
Here’s the synthesis: financial independence isn’t just about the number. It’s about having rare skills that generate income you don’t have to trade your whole life for, a spending profile that doesn’t require an enormous income to sustain, and enough depth in your work that the freedom, when it comes, actually means something.
Think of it as three levers — and you need all three.
Before you can design your lifestyle or slash your spending, you need something to build from. Newport’s craftsman mindset is the right starting point: stop asking “what does the world owe me?” and start asking “what rare, valuable skills can I offer?”
This matters financially in ways Newport doesn’t always make explicit. Deep skills command deep pay. The person who can do one thing at a world-class level — write software, lead teams through crises, design systems, argue in front of judges — earns leverage that the generalist never finds. That leverage is what makes Ferriss-style income compression possible and what accelerates Mustache-style savings rates.
The practical implication: Before optimizing your spending or hunting for passive income streams, invest aggressively in your core skill. Take the hard assignment. Seek the mentor who will push you. Do the work nobody else wants to do until you’re undeniably good at the thing that matters.
Once you have income worth protecting, protect it. This is where Mr. Money Mustache’s math becomes your greatest ally.
The core insight — the one that people intellectually accept and emotionally resist — is that your savings rate, not your income, determines how fast you reach freedom. Someone earning $80,000 and saving $40,000 will reach financial independence faster than someone earning $200,000 and saving $20,000. Every dollar you don’t spend is a dollar that can work while you sleep.
But the Mustache philosophy is about more than frugality — it’s about recognizing that most of what we spend money on doesn’t actually make us happier. The research on hedonic adaptation is unforgiving: we adjust to new cars, bigger apartments, and upgraded phones within weeks, returning to our baseline happiness while carrying new fixed costs. Cutting the spending that doesn’t move the needle isn’t deprivation. It’s clarity.
The practical implication: Track your savings rate. Make it a number you’re proud of. Automate investments before the money hits your checking account. And before any significant purchase, ask whether it buys you time, health, or genuine experiences — or whether you’re just habituated to wanting it.
Here’s where Ferriss earns his place in the framework, and where most financial independence advice falls short.
Most people treat financial independence as a finish line: work hard, save diligently, hit the number, then figure out what you actually want. Ferriss argues — correctly — that this is backwards. You need to get clear on what you want first, then design your work and spending to produce it as soon as possible, not at some indeterminate future date.
This inversion is powerful for two reasons. First, it forces you to get specific. “Freedom” is not a plan. “Spending three months per year in Portugal, writing two days per week, and being home for dinner every night” is a plan — and you can often get there much faster than you think once you name it. Second, it protects you from the trap of over-accumulating. Many people who could afford to stop keep working because they never defined what stopping was for.
Ferriss’s tactical toolkit — geographic arbitrage, remote work negotiation, income automation, mini-retirements scattered throughout a career rather than banked at the end — is worth studying seriously. The goal isn’t necessarily to work four hours a week. It’s to stop assuming that maximum hours equals maximum results, and to ruthlessly cut the professional overhead that generates cost without value.
The practical implication: Write down your “ideal ordinary week” in specific detail. What are you doing? Where? With whom? Then work backwards: what would it cost? What income would it require? What skills would produce that income most efficiently? You may find you’re closer than you think.
Here’s how the three frameworks interact in a real life:
You develop deep expertise in something the market values — not because it’s lucrative, but because you’re genuinely drawn to mastery. As Newport argues, passion follows skill, not the other way around. The depth you build makes you hard to replace and, eventually, gives you negotiating leverage.
Meanwhile, you keep your spending profile lean relative to what you earn. Not monastic — you spend generously on things that genuinely improve your life — but you’re not unconsciously inflating your lifestyle to match each income increase. The gap between what you earn and what you spend widens, quietly. The investments compound.
And throughout, you’re not waiting. You’re testing the life you want in smaller doses — a month of remote work from somewhere you’ve always wanted to live, a side project that’s closer to what you’d actually do with total freedom, dinner at home instead of at the office. You’re not deferring your life. You’re building it in parallel.
By the time the number hits — whenever that is — you already know what you’re walking toward. The freedom doesn’t land on a stranger. It lands on someone who’s been practicing.
If there’s a single sentence that captures what Tim Ferriss, Mr. Money Mustache, and Cal Newport are all reaching toward, it’s this:
Build rare and valuable skills, spend less than you earn, and don’t wait until later to live.
You don’t have to choose between them. You just have to start.
What’s your current lever? Are you building depth, widening the gap, or designing the life? I’d love to hear where you are in the process.
]]>If you’ve spent your life raising a family and working hard here in Saskatchewan, you deserve a retirement that is peaceful, comfortable, and free from financial stress. But there is a lot of confusing advice out there. Banks tell you one thing, your neighbor tells you another, and suddenly, stepping into your golden years feels like a complicated math exam.
The purpose of this post is to simplify things. Let’s cut through the noise and talk about six foundational pieces of preparing for a prairie retirement—explained simply.
Before figuring out where your money will come from, you have to know where it’s going. People often say you need “80% of your working income” to retire, but that’s a made-up rule.
Your retirement budget is simply your current monthly bills minus the costs of working. You are no longer saving for retirement, you probably aren’t paying a mortgage anymore, and you aren’t paying for daily commutes to the office or parking downtown. What’s left? Groceries, SaskPower/Energy, property taxes/condo fees, home insurance, internet, and a bit of fun money. For most folks, this number is surprisingly low. Track your spending for just one month. Once you know exactly what your life costs to run, the panic of “Do I have enough?” usually melts away.
Here is a common trap I see people fall into:
“My house in Saskatoon is worth $450,000! I have plenty of money for retirement.”
It is wonderful that your home has gone up in value. But here is the hard truth: you can’t buy groceries with your shingles. Your home equity—the amount your house is worth—only helps your day-to-day retirement budget if you actually sell the house and move somewhere cheaper.
If you plan to stay in your current home for the rest of your life, that $450,000 is locked inside the drywall. You still have to pay property taxes, keep the furnace running through our brutal February deep-freezes, and replace the roof when it leaks. Rely on your actual savings and pensions; don’t count the house as spending money unless you plan to downsize to a condo or move out to a quieter, cheaper Saskatchewan town.
There is a strange phenomenon where people hit 60 and think, “I’m retiring, I need to go buy a brand new $55,000 SUV to start this chapter off right.” Unless your current vehicle is literally falling apart on the grid roads, buying a new car at the start of retirement is usually a mistake. Vehicles drop in value the second you drive them off the lot. Taking on an $800-a-month car payment on a fixed income will eat up the cash you could be using to spoil your grandkids or enjoy your hobbies. A gently used, reliable Toyota RAV4 or Honda CR-V with a good set of winter tires will conquer any Saskatchewan winter just as well as a brand new one—without robbing your peace of mind.
Think of your RRSP simply as a storage shed for pre-tax money. During your working years, the government let you put money in the shed without paying taxes on it. But they didn’t forget about it.
When you retire and take that money out of the shed to buy groceries, the government counts it as income, and you have to pay taxes on it. The trick to a smart retirement is to take this money out during the years when your overall income is very low (like in your early 60s, before your government pensions kick in). This means you pay very little tax on the withdrawals. By the time you turn 71, the government forces you to turn that shed into a RRIF (Registered Retirement Income Fund) and mandates that you take out a minimum percentage every year. But right now, at 60, you are in the driver’s seat.
You might have heard a friend say: “Take your Canada Pension Plan (CPP) as early as possible at 60. Invest that money in the stock market, and you’ll come out way ahead!”
It sounds clever, but mathematically, it is almost always a bad idea.
The government wants you to take it early, which is why they penalize you. Your monthly checks shrink by over 7% for every year you take it before age 65. Conversely, if you wait to take it, your payouts grow by a massive 8.4% for every year you delay past 65. Plus, those payments are guaranteed for life and automatically increase with inflation.
To beat that kind of guaranteed, risk-free return by taking the money early and gambling it in the stock market is nearly impossible. The smartest financial move is usually to draw down your RRSP savings to live on in your early 60s, and delay taking CPP and OAS (Old Age Security) for as long as possible. Think of it as longevity insurance—guaranteeing you a much larger, stress-free paycheck when you’re 80 or 90.
Retirement isn’t just a math problem; it’s a lifestyle design problem. When you stop working, you are suddenly handed back 40 to 50 hours of free time every single week.
You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on European river cruises to be happy. The best retirement hobbies are incredibly cost-effective, deeply fulfilling, and keep you connected to the people you love:
Retirement is just your next great chapter. Keep your money simple, protect your peace, and focus on the daily habits that bring you joy. You’ve earned it.
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]]>I don’t typically share my thoughts and emotions. I don’t have any social media, I try to stay detached from the news, and I do my best to be present. This blog is giving me an outlet to write.
But I have been wrestling with emotions related to AI. The feeling of doubt that what I create is good enough. The feeling that AI can do whatever I want to do faster and more efficiently. Even my own role in GTM seems like it is under fire with agentic AI operating at the level it is, and only getting better. So what do I do, the same as everyone else of course? I jump on the bandwagon, and start using AI to become more efficient.
But there is a bigger problem, self-doubt. This comes into play when I start trying to build a passion project. In the past, when I was younger, it might have been a tic tac toe game coded in python, a web app for tracking curling stats, or a personal finance dashboard using streamlit. I know these are all trivial little projects, but they were fun to build! These projects all get eaten alive for me now, because I don’t have to go through the creative process anymore, heck Lovable could build me a landing page in mere seconds. So I think, why even start a creative endeavor. AI will catch up and overtake me in the time that it takes to build whatever it is I want to build. It seems like all of my past creative pursuits could be created better than I could have ever dreamed of.
But this morning, while I was shovelling the 30cm of snow that blanketed my walkway something clicked. AI is not human. AI is far from perfect. AI can’t shovel this 30cm of snow, and it can’t replicate the raw lived experiences I have had.
The joy from the process, the effort, and the enjoyment from creating something from nothing can still be found. I just need to rediscover this.
In its simplest form, your time to retire depends only on one factor:
“Your household savings rate, as a percentage of your take-home pay”
“Your savings rate is determined by how much you take home each year and how much you can live on.”
Simple right?
To put it in perspective, Statistics Canada reported that the average savings rate in Canada as of Q4 2024 was 6.1%. Below is a conservative estimate of how long it will take to retire based on incrementally increasing savings rates:
| Savings Rate | Years to Retirement |
|---|---|
| 5% | 73 |
| 6.1% | 69 |
| 10% | 57 |
| 15% | 47 |
| 20% | 40 |
| 25% | 35 |
| 30% | 30 |
| 35% | 26 |
| 40% | 23 |
| 45% | 20 |
| 50% | 17 |
| 55% | 15 |
| 60% | 13 |
| 65% | 11 |
| 70% | 9 |
| 75% | 7 |
| 80% | 5 |
| 85% | 4 |
| 90% | 2 |
| 95% | 1 |
As you can see, the average Canadian in 2025 is not saving enough for retirement. However, there is an asterisk here because if you live and work in Canada for your career, you can qualify for Old Age Security (OAS) and the Canada Pension Plan (CPP).
When I consider my situation, I do not want to work or earn money until I am 65. I also don’t want to make significant lifestyle changes at that time. Most importantly, I want to be in control of my retirement; I do not want to have to rely on CPP and OAS being around to do it.
While many fear early retirement due to health insurance costs or market volatility, Canada’s social systems reduce the risk. Below are a couple of examples of why retiring early in Canada can be less risky.
No need for private insurance or job-linked coverage. Doctor visits, emergency care, and surgeries are 100% covered. In the US, private health insurance costs vary widely, but on average, an individual pays about $7,739 annually, and a family pays around $22,221.
As mentioned, we have CPP and OAS in Canada, which have a couple of catches.
For CPP, you can earn up to $1,433 monthly at 65 (before taxes, 2025 maximum). To receive the maximum CPP retirement pension at age 65, you must have made maximum contributions for at least 39 years. The actual amount you receive depends on your earnings and contributions during your working years.
To qualify for the full OAS amount, you must have resided in Canada for at least 40 years after turning 18. If you have lived in Canada for fewer years, your OAS pension will be prorated accordingly. The maximum OAS payment at 65 is $728 monthly (before taxes, 2025 maximum).
If you have always paid the maximum into CPP and OAS, your maximum annual earnings will be $25,932 ($2,161 per month) in 2025.
Canada Child Benefit (CCB) is incredibly generous and tax-free—your lower early retirement income = higher CCB. The maximum annual amount per child is $7,437 per year if they are under 6 years old, and it applies if your family’s net income is under ~$34,863, and gradually reduces above that. These amounts are not taxed or counted as income for calculating other benefits. Just need to be a resident of Canada and file taxes annually.
As much as I love all of the math behind early retirement, I believe there are steps that you must take as you embark on this journey to ensure that when you get there (and you will get there), you are left with a fulfilling life that you love.
With that all being said, feel free to take a look at where you land with this very simple and conservative early retirement calculator:
So let’s set the stage. Week 2 of the playoffs, our team is playing against one of the top teams in the league with a birth in the finals at stake. We are down a touchdown late in the first half, and we have the ball. The play call is a WR bubble screen to me, and I catch the ball, make the first guy miss, go to juke the second guy, and… we crash head-on-head. Both of us have a huge gash right above our eyes, in the exact same spot.
Since I am a competitor, and there is a spot in the finals at stake, I think let’s patch this thing up and get back out there. Well this is where shit hits the fan, I get back into the game and play a few drives in the second half. With 30 seconds left in the second half, we are still down a touchdown. If we score and get the one-point conversion, we win. So, in the drive’s first play, our quarterback tosses me a quick slant. The pass is a little high, but I make the catch, and the defender takes out my legs. I land on my head and my gash reopens. I am out of the game, and we end up just a little short of the win. On the ride home, I feel sick to my stomach, but I assume that I just feel bad about the loss the night before.
One sleepless night and a trip to the doctor later, I find out that I have a concussion, and since I am a remote worker and sit in front of a screen for 40 hours a week, I have to take a week off work. Also, it is still winter in Saskatchewan, and I cannot go outside to do things. Another thing about me is that I am an eternal optimist, and I always try to see the bright side of things. So what did I end up doing? I rested, took the dog on some self-led walks, listened to some audiobooks and podcasts, and most notably, I spent time reflecting on all of the things that I learned in my 20s.
One of my passions that has stuck with me since my early 20s is personal finance. There is an incredible amount of information on how to properly manage your expenses, be efficient with your money, or save for retirement. While I believe these are essential prerequisites to financial success in life, a few critical steps come before this, related to your lifestyle, and the why behind your financial goals. To me, this is finding your whys in life and the reasons for your hard work.
In the past few years, gosh there have been many days where I have felt like crap, not wanted to work, or not wanted to have any sort of responsibilities in life. But every single day, I sure as heck try to take steps in the right direction towards the life I want to live. I believe that this is driven by finding some core beliefs and a strong why.
So during that time off, I thought deeply about my why and tried to boil it down to what has made me tick in my 20s. I landed on five reasonably simple tenets, and they are as follows:
I want to highlight that, depending on who you are and where you are in life, these tenets will be unique to you. And in ten years (or maybe even in a year lol), when I reflect back on this post, I have a feeling that I will have a different world view, and I may not even agree with myself. What I do know for certain is that I will be proud of the fact that I spent the time in my 20s thinking about and trying to set my family up for the future. I want to go deep on each of these Tenets in future posts, but that’s it for today, blog post #3 in the books!
Before I get to all that, I want to share a little about myself. I’m Tony, and I have been trying to figure out this thing we call life since I started in the workforce about 8 years ago. I am 29 and live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, with my beautiful wife and rambunctious Golden Aussie.
I want to be the best husband/dad/person I can be.
Everything after is rooted in this non-measurable, ever-evolving, ever-changing vision. I have some theories about what this might look like, but trust me when I say I do not have it figured out.
So… 30 and having a baby. As these major lifestyle events are approaching, I have been thinking about what it means to be the best husband/dad/person I can be now. I think a lot of the groundwork for these goals has been laid ahead of time in my boulders:
You may have noticed that this blog does not include links to social media. In my early to mid-20s, I struggled with social media addiction. I used to spend hours and hours scrolling and lived in a state of constant distraction. I loved the social aspect of social media, but it stole my focus, time, and attention. About three years ago, I read Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, and I completely removed myself from all personal socials (Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat at the time). I am proud to say that I am still off of them today, with some, but not many, relapses along the way (outside of LinkedIn for work realted stuff). I still struggle to be genuinely present today, and I am still working on it, but I have seen dramatic improvement in this area, and I want to talk about how I got here. This is one topic I will revisit while writing this blog, as it is one that I will always hold near and dear.
Since reading that book, I have learnt so many interesting things that I have put into practice from Cal Newport’s podcast “Deep Questions”.
My journey with what it means to have “enough” started after I graduated from university. I had about $30k in student debt, and I was renting one bedroom of a three-bedroom main floor of a house with two other friends. The best job I could find at the time did not guarantee full-time hours, and in my first year, I made about $40K before taxes. At this time, one of my close friends shared the book 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. Within this book, there was a reference to an old Mexican proverb that I still love to this day. Here it goes:
An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The Mexican replied, “only a little while. The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine, and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life.”
The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and, with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.”
The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this take?”
To which the American replied, “15 – 20 years.”
“But what then?” Asked the Mexican.
The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!”
“Millions – then what?”
The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”
This led me to think about what my: “sleep late, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, stroll into the village each evening to sip wine and play guitar with my amigos.” would look like. Living in Canada, we need to think about life in seasons, and we can’t live the same way each season.
So for me, it is something along the lines of:
And one other thing to add: Today is the first blog post I have ever written, so go easy on me; it will get better.