I’m a French immigrant in Canada. I did contribute to my retirement plan when working in France, but I had to start over when I arrived in Canada circa August 2014. I remember one day when I couldn’t close my eyes a whole night thinking that I was going to be literally screwed if I didn’t act on my retirement. The next day, I was talking about that to the managers at work as my stress was palpable. They did a great job in listening and proposed an opt-in RRSP plan to everyone, and a financial advisor came to present his services.
By the time they did that, I took the bull by the horns and checked my own options. Thankfully, my wife had access to a “free” financial advisor and thanks to him, we set up many our financial future. In order, we did the following:
- set up an emergency fund (we had savings already, but it didn’t have a name!)
- subscribe to insurance plans
- open a RRSP as soon as we we got our permanent resisdency and were legally able to open one
- purchase our principal residency
- write a will at the notary
- secure a life insurance for our newborn child
We literally put all our eggs in one basket! But recently, I made the exercise to calculate how much I was letting on the table by sticking with the mutual funds I was buying with the RRSP through that insurance company. Those management fees were not explicit in the statement they provided, and I had to google every individual Fidelity funds to find out the management fees.
And there goes the wake up call.
If I’d stick with them, I would loose around $350,000 over 25 years of contribution. That amount is more than what my wife and I are paying for our house!
And here starts my DIY investor journey.
I’m thankful for the many bloggers that write on this topic. As a software developer, I hope to give another perspective, perhaps more tooling, and definitely some fun!
Welcome around!