Personal Finance Discussions Archive

The purpose of these posts is to encourage open discussion on personal finance topics outside budgeting and debt-repayment.

Key topics: side hustles, frugal living, life lessons, beliefs about money

Found a lost credit card? Here’s what to do

October 10, 2019

Found a lost credit card? Here is exactly what you should do next.

Found a lost credit card and wondering what to do with it?

This is a situation I found myself in recently. As a person who has lost a credit card before, I knew leaving it on the ground was not an option, but I was not sure what I was supposed to do.

In the same boat? Here’s the story of what I did and why.

How I redesigned my blog for less than $500

August 3, 2019

A budget-friendly website redesign | How I gave my website a new look for less than $500

When I started blogging in May 2018, I made a rule not spend money on upgrades for at least one year.

Why? Simple: I wanted to make sure blogging was something I actually wanted to do, not just a fleeting whim. I’ve started and abandoned many blogs in the past. Before investing any more money, I wanted to have at least a year of consistent posting under my belt.

After crossing the one year mark, I started looking into options for a website redesign.

And in true personal finance blogger fashion, here’s a look at how that process unfolded and exactly how much I spent in the end.

Three reasons to have accounts at multiple institutions

July 18, 2019

Three reasons to have multiple bank accounts at different financial institutions

For many years, I did all my banking at Royal Bank of Canada.

I’ve been with RBC for the better part of 20 years. I opened my first account — a savings account — when I was 10 years old. My client account looks a lot different today than it did then, with more products added and, for the most part, a bigger balance.

RBC has been good to me over the years. So why do I now have multiple bank accounts at multiple financial institutions?

There are a few reasons.

The purpose of money is to spend it

May 21, 2019

A news story circulated online in March.

The article was about coffee — more specifically, it was about a well-known figure in the personal finance world telling readers that spending money on coffee is like throwing away $1 million.

Here’s the link to the full piece if you’re curious. Unsurprisingly, the article got a reaction, with people coming out on both sides of the discussion.

Which is a great thing! We need to have discussions about money. We need to get over this idea that it’s a taboo subject.

So it is in that spirit I’ll say this: I respectfully disagree with the experts on this front. And I promise it’s not just because of my well-documented fondness for coffee.

They have math and numbers to support the position. That’s important. But, in my opinion, they’re missing one important point.

Yes, you can make your money work for you. To some degree, you should make your money work for you — you owe it to your future self.

But that’s not the only purpose of money.