More Money Podcast - 059 The First Millennial Money Meetup (Live Recording) - Jessica Moorhouse, Barry Choi, Michelle Summerfield & Daniel Teo

Episode Date: September 22, 2016

I hosted and organized my very first event recently, called the Millennial Money Meetup. It was graciously sponsored by EQ Bank, and featured fellow money experts and bloggers Barry Choi, Michelle Summerfield and Daniel Teo. This event was all about creating a community and a safe space for Millennials to get together and talk about something that's generally considered taboo...money. Not only did we get a full house, I got a lot of great feedback and everyone had a rockin' time! This is definitely the first of many Millennial Money Meetups, and I can't wait for the next one. Show notes: http://jessicamoorhouse.com/59 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, and welcome to Episode 59 of the Mo Money Podcast. This is a very special episode. Oh, hi, I'm Jessica. Just in case you don't know, Jessica Morehouse, your host of the Mo Money Podcast. But this is a very special episode because it is the live recording that I did from last week. I held my first event called the Millennial Money Meetup. I cannot say that fast. Millennial Money Meetup. Not bad. And it was the first event I did and I was very nervous and it was a lot of work, way more work than expected. Basically, I put it all together in about a month and it was all about getting millennials together who live in Toronto to my event so we can hang out, create a community, talk about money, and then it would kind of culminate in this panel

discussion I would have with Barry Choi, Michelle Summerfield, and Daniel Tio, who are personal finance bloggers and money experts just like myself. And it was a blast. It was awesome. Not going to toot my own horn too much, but it was kind of a big deal, kind of a success. We were at capacity and all the chairs were filled to the brim. And I had a lot of great comments from people saying that they hope I do this again and that the panel would be a little bit longer. It was only 30 minutes. So next time I know, maybe a little bit longer. But basically, everyone said this is a great idea. And I think so too. Kind of like, why isn't anyone else doing this? So I'm excited for you to hear the panel discussion at my event. And I would love, once you listen to it, I would love if you could tell me what you think.

You can either tweet me or email me or, better yet, let me know what you think as an iTunes review. Give me a review of this episode. I would absolutely love your feedback so I can do more events, make them bigger and better and awesomer. Special thanks to EQ Bank, who sponsored the event. Without them, I literally could not have put it on because I don't have that kind of money just to put on events like, you know, no. I did that once for a wedding. That's once enough in my lifetime. So thank you so much, EQ Bank, for helping me put on this event, promoting financial literacy amongst millennials and just being overall

awesome. And all the people that I met at Ecobank, they were also awesome, like the nicest people I've ever met. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And okay, enough yibber yabber, jibber jabber. Here is the panel discussion. I hope you really enjoy it. And please send me your feedback. And yeah, that's it. Let's get to it. All right. Thanks again for joining us. First, let's kind of introduce ourselves. I'll introduce myself first. I'm Jessica Morehouse. If you don't know me, that is okay,

but I am a personal finance blogger at jessicamorehouse.com. I am the host of the Mo Money podcast, which you can find on iTunes or SoundCloud. I am the founder of the first Millennial Money which you can find on iTunes or SoundCloud. And I am the founder of the first Millennial Money Meetup here in Toronto, and I hope it's the first of many. And I'm very excited to have these wonderful panelists here. These, if you don't know them yet, you will soon, because they are the top personal finance experts and bloggers, content creators in Toronto. And next to me, would you want to introduce yourself, Daniel?

Okay. Hi, folks. My name is Daniel. First off, I'd just like to say thank you, Jessica, for having us on. And I'm in a very good company, and I think these are some of the most relatable members of the personal finance community in Canada. I'd just like to say my name is Daniel. I'm a father of two, married happily, and I'm a bit bitten by the travel bug. I'm a bit of a sci-fi geek. And I write at Urban Departures as a way to simplify personal finance for a rich and balanced life. Really, I think of it as personal finance on autopilot, if you will. And the intention there is, you know, as career professionals, as family, you know, as someone with young families, I find that we get pulled in so many different directions with so many different things vying for, you know, priority. And I feel that that's something that we have something that we have to offer to be

able to address that. So we want to take what we have, establish a framework for managing money so that people can really get back to the things that they care about. That's what we're about at urbandepartures.com. Thank you. Hello, everyone. Thank you for coming. And thank you, Jessica, for hosting this fantastic event. And I'm in very good company. I am Michelle Summerfield. And you might have known me as Budget Blogist, but I recently went through a rebrand. And my website is now theclassysimplelife.com. I've realized recently that in order to really take control of your finances, you really need to simplify your life. So that's the direction that I'm moving in. I'm moving away from stuff. I'm selling all my

things. That's my latest adventure. I am probably the shopaholic of the group, or I should say former shopaholic, because I have now taken care of that problem. And it is a big problem that affects a lot of us. So my message is basically overcoming shopaholism and simplifying your life. Hey everyone, I'm Barry Choi. I blog at moneywehave.com where I'm a personal finance expert and I write a lot about budget travel and travel in general. And my thing is more about spending money on experiences instead of things. So I don't care what your experience is. As long as you're saving first, do whatever you want. All right. Well, without further ado, I guess let's start. So I've got a bunch of questions,

and I'm excited that so many people have filled out the kind of the money question box, their questions. So hopefully we can do another event and answer some of your specific questions. But for this first event, I've got, we kind of, you know, put our heads together and we're like, what are the most important things millennials need to know about money? Or what are some of the questions they're asking? And so we are going to address some of those today. And the first one I've got here is how important is a budget? Why does everyone suggest one? And that, it kind of, for me, it always seems like that's the first people, first thing people tell you when you're just getting into personal

finance, start a budget. So what are your guys, what are your thoughts on starting a budget? What's a budget mean to you? How do you budget and why is it so important? You want to go first, Barry? You're staring right at me. I don't know why I got, you know. You know what? A budget is probably the most important thing you'll have when it comes to your finances because it really dictates what you're doing with your money.

And more importantly, you've got to understand that budgets change. Your life changes, income changes, anything else. So you should constantly update it. But more importantly, like I was saying before, as long as you're saving first, then it really doesn't matter what you're spending your money on other things. What do you think, Michelle? Budgets are very important, especially if you have a spending problem like me or like I did. It really lets you understand where you're spending your money and then you can figure out why you're doing it.

So once you figure out where those areas are that you're spending your money, maybe it's on you're spending tons of money on Starbucks or maybe you're spending it on bars all the time. You're going out with friends too much. You can really figure out, okay, well, why am I doing that? You can figure out your why behind it and realize, wait, maybe I'm doing that because I'm unhappy at my job. Or maybe there's something other emotional reason that you're spending your

money that way. And budget really helps you to track your spending, figure out what's going on in the background. Daniel? Thank you. I think to understand the importance of a budget, we need to take a look at the power of analyzing data. You know, if we're looking at Google or Facebook, we all know that we give them all of our personal information. What do they do with that? They take that and they use it to sell targeted advertisements, right? That's information that they take, they analyze trends, and so they can push things to you to make you buy things. We can think of it like, you know, taking a poll in an election campaign, or, you know, stats from last night's Blue Jays game, or today's Blue Jays

game where they lost, right? You can tell a player how good a player is by the numbers they put up, or how good a team is doing by their last 10 games, right? And really, it's analyzing the data and understanding the trends behind your behaviors that will get you to, like Michelle said, to understanding what behaviors you need to change. A budget does exactly that. And without it, honestly, you're just flying blind. So if you want to set goals, if there are things that you want to achieve, you need that system in place to be able to get to where you want to go. There's, you know, whatever your goals are. You know, there's debt, there's down payment, there's Disneyland.

Whatever it is that you want, right? Great answers, guys. I'd say just from my personal experience and just kind of how I view budgets, for me, my budget is a roadmap to my success. So every time I make a budget, and I'm a super nerd, and I've had the same budget kind of spreadsheet for the past six or seven years, and I've kept every single one. I change it whenever my income changes, my finances change in any way. I kind of make a new tab in my spreadsheet.

And so I know, that's so nerdy. But I can look back to 2010 and see where I was at. And now I get to look at 2016 and see where I am. And it's really cool because you can see, wow, I've come a long way. I made no money in 2010. How did I live? And for me, yeah, it's a way to kind of record my success and how I'm going. It gives me a roadmap to where I want to go, saving for retirement, saving for trips, saving for a wedding, saving for a down payment. And it just gives me peace of mind, honestly.

Without my budget, I'd probably just be floating in the clouds. Well, and it lets you track your net worth as well. You can see the progress you're making that way as well. Not only that you've changed your spending habits, but if you're net worth oriented and you're trying to build up that nest egg or build up exactly for travel, like you were saying, you can see that line going up. Exactly. Exactly. All right. So next we're going to talk about debt. How do you suggest best managing debt? Now, how many of us have dealt with debt personally? I've had a student loan. It was tiny, but I still had it. Now I have a mortgage, so I'm in that for a while. And you guys, what about you, Daniel? So for me, I guess the reality is that

debt is, in some situations, it's unavoidable. So coming out of school, I ended up with $30,000 in student loans, and that's a tough pill to swallow of school, I ended up with $30,000 in student loans. And that's a tough pill to swallow. I think I was talking about it earlier. And we're talking about, you know, you hold off until the no interest payments six months after, and then you realize, oh, crap, I have to actually pay this back, right? So really, in terms of addressing it, you know, we're all super nerds here. With $30,000, working backwards, we're looking at, if I want to, I figured, okay, I don't want to make minimum payments. I want to pay this off as quickly as I can. Six years seems like a reasonable timeline. Working backwards,

that worked out to about $500 a month. For me, that, it was a bit of a stretch, to be honest. But what that meant was I needed to cut in my budget, like we talked about, cut back a little bit on the things that I felt that weren't necessarily required and put forward my plan in action to be able to achieve my end goal. So along the way, I rented a basement room apartment. That was not the happiest or the funnest times, right? But you do what you got to do to get to where it is that you want to go. Exactly. I agree wholeheartedly. You do have to make sacrifices, especially when your spending gets out of control and you're wondering why, you know, what's going on here? I've got fancy car, I've got all these nice clothes in my wardrobe for my fancy corporate job. And where has it gotten

me, you know, $30,000 in debt? Or, you know, if you come out of school, you're, like you were saying, you've already got that debt and then you're just heaping more on top of it when you do get that corporate job and you're thinking, well, I need the wardrobe and I need, you know, I need the car. It's, it's, I want, I want, or you think you need it. And you really have to manage it by making, by making sacrifices. You do have to sacrifice some of those things. You have to say, no, I have to cut back. And you need to make it a priority. And you also have to remember that this time in your life will pass.

You will get past it. It's not something that's going to be permanent unless you make it permanent. It's all a choice. It is be permanent unless you make it permanent. It's all a choice. It is up to you to make that change. You just have to be diligent in making debt a priority and cutting some of those things back. Okay, I guess I'll take the more practical approach answer for this. So if you've got any debt, you got to look at what debt it is, what's interest rate. So credit cards have an average interest rate of close to 20%. So if you're making just the minimum payments on your credit card, you're never,

ever going to pay that off. If you ever looked at your statement, it might say, I'll pay $10, but it'll be paid off to full balance in about 50 years. So I don't know about you, but I don't want to be paying off my credit card and everything else when I'm 80. Let's pretend, let's say 60, okay? So that's your obvious thing. So you want to look at that, but there's a lot of strategies, too. So if you've got some high-interest debt with your credit cards, you can look at low-interest credit cards, right? Maybe do a balance transfer, which will give you some relief for six months, just to kind of get ahead just for a little bit. With that being said, there's also, if you've got,

say you've got multiple debt accounts, but you've got one that's only $1,000, maybe psychologically it makes more sense for you to pay that $1,000 off right away. So then you've only got to worry about your other ones. But like these guys said, you've got to make those sacrifices because it's not going to take care of itself. Yeah, absolutely. Great points. I say for me, debt, I mean, it is very personal.

Everyone has different debt. And yeah, kind of the rule of thumb is to attack the debt that has the highest interest rate. But sometimes when you have lots of different debts, it gets overwhelming. And you're like, how am I going to ever pay off $40,000, $50,000 in debt? For me, and especially from lots of people that I've been interviewing people for my podcast, there's kind of a listener series, just regular people telling me about how they're tackling debt

or what they're doing with their money. What I've been hearing a lot is people like to chunkify it. So they like to see where all their debt is and then attack the smallest amounts and then they get a little win. And then they're like, okay, I did that. Maybe I can do the next one.

It's a bit bigger, but I know I can pay it off because I just did that first one. And then just kind of go that way. So I know that's one strategy that lots of people use that seems like it could be a good way to go if you're wondering how to attack your debt. All right, so the next kind of topic I want to talk about is what are some of the best personal finance habits to build? And I feel like personal finance is very habits-based and it's sometimes hard and sometimes you don't really think about it that way. But I mean, building a budget, sticking to a budget,

tracking your spending, all that kind of stuff, those are habits you have to build over time. Sometimes it takes years. So what are some of the best personal finance habits to build and how have you maybe built some of them and how have they affected your life or changed your life?'re staring at me now i'm not staring at anyone in particular i just have it i'm sorry um well for me it was um spending my money wisely that that was the biggest change and and the habit that i had to develop because I've spent so long spending it unwisely. I'd been spending it

on clothing and travel and all these, well, actually too many things. That's another bit of advice is try not to have everything because you can't. You ultimately can't. I don't like to say can't in front of you, but ultimately you can't buy anything unless you're a millionaire. Even then you can't have everything. You're a millionaire. Even then you can't have everything. You can't have the entire world. So you have to develop that habit of spending wisely and also smart purchasing. When you are buying things, you need to look at quality over quantity. You need to look at the quality of items. I know for the amount of time that I've been spending on clothing, I've finally honed my skills at purchasing quality clothing. And you realize that something that's a little bit more expensive today will last you a lot longer. fast fashion and all the trends. You can have a few trendy items, but really you want to have a core classic wardrobe that's quality. Or even with anything, even with a vehicle, you have to look at

the quality level and say to yourself, this item's probably going to, item Y is going to last me 10 years. Item X is only going to last me a year. So you need to look at that. It's basically the simple math of return on investment. Is that item going to last longer and be worth it, worth the cash outlay in the beginning? For me, I think it's about being smart. So all of us, we know a lot about money, but we're no different from anyone else there. We have to learn about it.

So there's so many great personal finance books out there. You know, Million Dollar Teacher is one favorite of mine. Wafting Lake Rabbits. If you take the time to read one personal finance book, it might take you 10, 15, 20 hours, whatever. But I guarantee you, you'll know more than 80% of the population when it comes to money. It's that simple.

You realize how easy it is. But also, it's about taking advantage of what's offered to you. So one of my things I always tell people is if someone offers you free money, you take it. So think about your job. Think about what benefits are available to you. There's so many people out there who have pensions or stock plans. It's becoming very rare. Don't get me wrong. But take a look at what's offered to you. So if you've got children, you're talking about RSPs, the CSG grants, or even tax breaks. So as long as you understand what's available to children, you're talking about RSPs, the CSG grants, or even tax breaks. So as long as you understand what's available to you, you should be trying to take advantage of it.

So I think the building of habits, that's a very good question. I think that it's a little bit too generic of a question to be able to fit the different personality types that are out there. So I think that, so, you know, taking a page out of my family's book, and I'm going to pick on my wife a little bit here, she's a little bit more of an impulsive spender. So the habits that she works on is more around the activities of trying to control the triggers to curb spending. So some things that she's tried before are unsubscribing from brand newsletters, for example. If you're not exposed to it, you're less inclined to pursue it or foregoing a shopping trip altogether, something like that that fits your personality. Me, on the other hand, I'm not

an impulsive shopper. I'm actually a little bit more lazy. So the way that I approach it is I still have habits that I need to work on. Part of me being lazy means I hoard money and I just leave it sitting there not doing anything. What I have to work on and what I try and work on actively is to try and automate those processes so I can think about that less and, like I said, get back to the things that I want to focus on. So that's, so, so I guess to sum that up, depending on your personality, you got to understand your motivations and why it is that you're, you're pursuing that purchase and then use that to develop your strategy to kind of tackle that. So. Great. When I think about habits, I think about one that I've haven't successfully, you know,

figured out a way to do. I've tried lots of different things. The one habit that I'm trying to get better at it because I know it's very important is tracking my spending. Um, I definitely keep track of, um, my budget and how much money is in every account. I tend to, uh, check all of my accounts at least once a week or sometimes daily if I'm bored and just want to see how things are going. But I like to think that tracking your spending is probably one of the biggest things that you could do. The biggest question I bet all of us have asked ourselves, where did all my money go? Or why is my credit card so crazy right now? I don't remember spending anything on it. And so that's definitely something that I

think is very important. And I'm not, you know, saying that I'm perfect at it, but I'm definitely trying. So I think that's something we should all try a bit better at. All right, this one is about investing. So, you know, we've kind of talked about budgeting and saving a little bit. Now let's talk about investing. What advice would you give to millennials who want to start investing? I know lots of people I know, you know, they've kind of figured out a way to tackle their debt. They're starting to save a little bit. They've got a budget in place.

Kind of the next step is investing, but they don't know where to go, what to do. It seems very complex and confusing, and I totally get it. So what do you all think about that? Barry, I am looking at you this time. If you're thinking about investing, the first thing to do is just start doing it. The power of compound interest, when you think about it over your investing years, let's say you're starting at 25, investing into your 65. Just the natural returns is going to get you where you need to be as long as you're setting aside enough money. Now, you can make excuses all you want.

You're like, oh, I'll start investing later. But you're not going to invest later. That's the reality. And for millennials these days, it's interesting. There's more tools available than there have ever been. Ever, pretty much. You've got robo-advisors. You've got more wealth management advisors

who are adapting to what millennials need. So all you've got to really do is just go out there and seek help. At the same time, you can invest on your own. Remember I was talking about reading a book? It's the same idea. You can just learn about it, and then you figure out when you need to get help. The resources are available to you.

All right, I'll take that one. Yeah. All right, so how to get started with investing? I think there's, I guess I would say this. If you're looking for a place to start, check out index investing for two reasons. The first of which is it's not that hard to pick up. The second reason is your money will grow and you don't have to take a lot of time to manage it. So essentially, let me take you through an example here. Warren Buffett, we all know Warren Buffett, he bet a hedge fund manager $1 million that his passive index fund, which takes not a lot of time to set up, would outperform the pick of the hedge fund manager's funds over 10 years. Over 10 years. So this is Warren Buffett saying, you go pick

whatever you choose. I'm just going to invest in the market as it is, and we'll see who wins. This is eight years in this year. The index is up 66%, whereas the other guy is up 21%. So you tell me which one's better. That's just the numbers, right? We talked about the power of the numbers. So with that in mind, I'm not saying that the market can't be beat. There are very smart people that will be able to do it. I'm just saying that if you were one of those people, you wouldn't be here tonight. Sorry, I'm just saying. I'm just saying. So with that in mind, I would recommend two books. Barry mentioned one of them.

The first one actually is by a gentleman by the name of William Bernstein. He wrote a 15-page booklet called If You Can. And I love the title because it's really if you can. It talks about the approach to index investing, the philosophy behind it, why people get so riled up about the emotions of trying to time the market and beat the market, and eventually why you end up with probably better returns than 80% of the people just by investing in the market. So that's the first thing. Oh, a really important part. He says, a seven-year-old can understand it, and it takes 15 minutes to manage in a year. If it's too good to be true,

think of Occam's Razor, right? It's not too simple. The second piece is The Millionaire Teacher. The Millionaire Teacher is a great book. That's actually what got me to start practically speaking. There's a lot of good practical startup as to what to invest in when it comes to index funds. So I'm sure you've probably heard of index funds before,

but what does that mean? What funds are index funds? That book will point you in the right direction. Jeez, you guys took it away there. My goodness, okay. The real place is just start. That's the biggest thing with investing is to just start. No matter what the amount is, start. I started when I was 16, the best advice that my father gave me. I was working part-time at that point. So, you know,

I could only put away $25 a month. So that's what I did. $25 a month either went into a GIC, which unfortunately no longer pays the 6% that it used to. And then I eventually got into mutual funds, which unfortunately we've all learned now. Some of the management expense ratios, which are the fees associated with mutual funds, are a little bit on the outrageous side. So this is why you've heard Daniel and Barry suggesting index funds, because they're going to minimize your fees. They're going to be your lowest cost option. So if you really do want to get into the stock market, you can look into index funds. Several of the banks, several of the robo-advisors, there's many

companies out there that have low cost. They have different levels. There's some that are beginner level, and then they work their way up. I've actually got a different resource on that one. I love Canadian Couch Potato. His website is amazing. And it's great for someone just starting out. He actually gives solutions for beginner investors, and he gives examples as well. So he says, if you're investing $10,000, here's how you should split it up. Because when you're investing money, you don't want to be all in in one particular area of the market, because what can happen is your whole balance can just drop. So let's say, for example, a great example is Britain. What just happened with Britain? Brexit. Everybody knows Brexit. If you were invested primarily

in the foreign markets, you potentially could have seen a huge drop. So if you had all your money in international markets, in an international index fund, everything would have gone down. Now, obviously, things have come back up a bit, but the whole point is to be balanced. So you want to be balanced when you start this, no matter what the dollar value is. If you do decide with index funds, be balanced. And that's where Canadian Couch Potato is great, because it gives you those examples where he says, put 25% into Canada, put 25% into US, and it's based on your tolerance. So again, we go back to personality. What is your tolerance? How willing are you to lose a certain percentage of your money? Are you willing to have big gains, but the possibility of a big

drop? You got to look at your personality, And he gives you examples for all of those, which is fantastic. So check out Canadian Coach Potato. That's my one reference. Absolutely. Yeah, great resource. I've got a different resource than they all. John Robertson has a book called The Value of Simple, and it also goes into very specific detail about index fund investing, which is awesome. There's also a podcast episode. I interviewed him. A little plug there. Also, I did one with Barry about index fund investing, so y'all should check that out too. But I kind of agree with you. GICs, mutual funds, they aren't what they kind of were. And index funds and ETFs are kind of the cool new thing

to invest in. But before you kind of get into all that stuff, my main tip is start right now if you haven't yet. The sooner you start, the better you'll be off in the future. That's kind of the big rule of thumb that every personal finance book will ever tell you is even if you don't think you can afford it, still, yeah, put $25 a week or a month in something. So you create that habit, then you start kind of putting more money and more money into it. It becomes a habit. You don't even notice that you're putting money away. It doesn't really change your lifestyle. But then over several years, like, wow, look at how big that's grown. I'm so glad I started. And it's great if it's locked away in an RRSP because you can't

touch it. Exactly. And also the tax benefit. So if you're tempted to dip into an account, you can't because the tax man will come and take 40% of your money from you. So I'm kind of getting the cue that we should wrap up because apparently we can yab for a while and didn't realize we'd get through these questions like this. So for the last question, I'm going to say what are some of the things that you guys are saving for? What are some of your savings goals? I think it's always really helpful to find out what other people's savings goals are so we can kind of be like, huh, maybe I should think about it.

Or, oh, I didn't know I should start saving up for that. What do you all think? Barry? I'm always saving for travel. It's like my one thing that I don't mind spending a lot of money on. It's my one vice. I'll sacrifice everything else, but I won't give up travel. I will never do it.

Okay, I love travel as well, but Barry, I'm not going to sacrifice my retirement. I don't want to live in a cardboard box. So travel is one of mine that I save my money up for. Retirement is obviously a portion. And then also learning and growth. For me, constantly learning throughout life is, I'm a firm believer in that, that you need to continuously learn. You should never stop. There's a new term actually out there for retirement called rewirement. Apparently,

all the baby boomers, the 60s and 70s year olds, they're all changing things up because they don't want to stop. They don't want to stop working, but they do realize that they have to leave the corporate world. So they're moving on and creating small businesses and they keep going. So learning and growth is a huge one. This is the fun one. Hey, you know, you never know. So I think, okay, so we do the, you know, index investing to save for our future. I have small children, so we put aside money in the RISP for them. You know, you get the priorities out of the way. And every month we put aside a certain chunk of change to travel.

We're on the same page. We do get along. And what we do is, you know, this year we spent a month in the Philippines. We're headed to Copenhagen and Iceland with the kids just in a little bit. And that's a product of being able to prioritize, use the budget, you know, use the tools that we have available to us and set those goals, you know, that work for us. Travel might not necessarily be your thing, but just think about that one thing that you wish you could do that you never had the chance to be able to, and use the tools that you have to be able to go read a book and work out your budget, figure out why it is that you're spending your money in places that aren't getting you to where you want to go, and then do it.

All right. For me, well, the big thing was buying a place, but I bought a place now. So now I'm kind of on to what my next, oh, a high five. Oh, I got a high five. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry we didn't get to talk about that topic. That was like my next question, but we don't have time for it. Maybe next time. For me, I'm trying to figure out what my next savings goal is. Travel is obviously very important. I love to travel, but I also have to go, you know, I'm from Vancouver, so I have to make sure I go there at least twice a year. So I'm always saving up for that. Another thing I always save up for is education. I have gone back to school numerous times and it just always, I always find something new to learn. So I need to pay for it somehow. And I don't want to take out student

loans. So that's another thing. But for me, I think the biggest thing for me, why I put so much importance on saving money is, to me, the more money I have, the more secure I feel. I sleep better at night. So it's kind of honestly my biggest savings goal, why I save, is to sleep better at night, to feel like I'm not chained to debt or a circumstance because I can't afford to get out. That's kind of me, guys. Before I let you guys go, just in case people want to learn

more about us, can we go down the room and see where can people find you, Barry? Right now! What's your website and how can they find you on Twitter? MoneyWeHave.com is my website and Twitter, I'm at Barry Choi. Michelle?

Okay. Website is TheClassySimpleLife.com, and Twitter is at Mish Summerfield, because Michelle Summerfield was taken. UrbanDepartures.com. I write with myself, Daniel, Tio, my wife as well. You can find us on Instagram, Urban Departures, and as well at Twitter at UDepartures. Fabulous. And of course, you can find me at JessicaMorehouse.com.

Not hard to figure that one out. And my Twitter is J-E-S-S-I underscore Morehouse because also someone else took Jessica Morehouse. It's not nice when they take your name. It's not cool. They should know that I am the Jessica Morehouse. You're going to get the blue check mark? Yeah. No, I don't have that yet. I'm working on it. So thank you so much for joining us. We're going to have a few minutes to kind of mingle and chat after, but thanks again for being part of the first Millennial

Money Meetup. And thank you guys for being my panelists. You're awesome. And I hope we can do this again sometime soon. And that is the recording from my Millennial Money Meetup. Also episode 59 of the Mo Money Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. I would love to know what you think. What should we talk about next time?

I definitely want to make this kind of a regular thing. I don't know in what capacity still figuring that out. It just happens. Give me a minute, guys. So yeah, I would love to know what you think. And also I forgot to do at the beginning of this episode, or even at the event, I forgot to give the biggest shout out to my husband, Josh, because I literally also couldn't do this without him. He, listened to, I think it was episode one. No, was it? No, episode two. Sorry. Of this podcast, he was my first guest. And without him, I probably wouldn't be able to do this podcast because he figured out all

the equipment and all the logistics of how to podcast. And same with his event. He did all the live sound. So without him, I wouldn't have known how to record that, uh, you know, event basically. And it sounded fricking awesome. So, you know, if any of you need an audio engineer or whatever, you just hit me up. I can put you in touch with them. He's pretty good. So thank you, Josh. I owe you a million dollars. I'm pretty sure at this point for all the free work I've gotten out of you. And thanks again for the event sponsor of EQ Bank. EQ Bank, thank you so much for being a part of this event and making this possible. It was awesome to get that many people in a room chatting about money.

And it was really cool. There was lots of points, especially kind of near the end when there was just a little bit of mingling happening. Or I'd go up to, you know, a group of people and I'd be like, hey, are you all friends? Like, no, we all just met. How freaking cool is that? That, A, I got people, you know, in Toronto to like get out of their house and come to my event. And some people just came on their own because they're so interested in this topic and wanted to learn more about money. And they just started making new friends. It was like, I don't know.

I was just like, I can't even. This is the coolest freaking thing I've ever done. And I'm an introvert, guys. This is very crazy for me. So I'm very excited about what this will turn into in the future. Maybe something big. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. But thanks again for listening. Please give me your feedback. Send me an iTunes review of what you think of this episode, what you think I should talk about. Send me an email, tweet, whatever. Thank you so much. I'll see you next week. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.