More Money Podcast - 086 Listener Series - How Leona Was Able to Semi-Retire in Her Early 30s

Episode Date: January 26, 2017

Leona joins me for the first Listener Series episode for 2017. She shares her unconventional story of leaving home at 17, starting her career in the trades, owning her own condo at 20, and eventually starting her own construction company and real estate empire. Now, she's happily raising her family and considers herself semi-retired, with the flexibility of working for herself. Long description: Episodes like this make me so happy I started this Listener Series on the podcast. Leona was a listener of the show and heard my call out for guests. She sent me the best email with her story that included her moving out on her own at 17, going trade school to start her career, buying her first condo on her own at 20, then eventually starting a construction business and property investment side-hustle with her husband. She is a great example that you don't need to go to university to set yourself up for success. What it ultimately comes down to is being smart with your money, working hard and never giving up. Now, Leona considers herself semi-retired and is focused on adding more properties to her portfolio while raising her family and adding more balance to her life. I think that's one of my favourite parts of our chat together. When she talked about getting up early to have that personal development time, making working out a priority, and doing her daily gratitudes...basically it was everything I needed to hear to get me to do it too. It's easier said than done, and it can be hard when life gets busy, but scheduling those things into your day like Leona does is so important. Thanks so much Leona for sharing your story and being such an inspirational guest! Book Leona Mentioned The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM) Interested in Getting Started with Robo-Advisors? Leona mentioned she recently moved away from high-free mutual funds and is exploring different investment strategies like index fund and ETF investing. She also mentioned getting into the new trend of using robo-advisors, so I wanted to share two that I personally recommend if you're looking to do the same. Wealthsimple - This robo-advisor is available to both Canadians and Americans, and is seriously simple to use. The whole process to get started will take less than 10 minutes and when you sign up using my special link (wealthsimple.com/jessicamoorhouse), you'll get a free $50 bonus! Justwealth - Another great robo-advisor for Canadians is Justwealth. They're whole brand is centered around justice and delivering amazing service and results. And if you sign up with them at justwealth.com/jessica-moorhouse, you'll also get a $50 bonus to get you started. You can also learn more about them when you listen to my podcast episode with President of Justwealth Andrew Kirkland. Helpful Resources I Mentioned to Help You Get Your Money & Life on Track My Crazy Simple Budget Spreadsheet Net Worth Spreadsheet Mortgage Interest Calculator Mortgage Preparation Checklist The Ultimate Moving Out Checklist Got a story that you think would be good to share on an episode on of Listener series? Please email me! For more podcast episodes, check out the podcast page. Show notes: jessicamoorhouse.com/86 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, and welcome to episode 86 of the Mo Money Podcast and the first official listener series episode of season four of the Mo Money Podcast. So excited to share my interview with my next listener. Her name is Leona. She is from Canada. And she sent me this really great email. It was like a really awesome breakdown timeline of basically what she's kind of gone through since teenagehood to where she is now, and she has definitely had some struggles, but she's made some really smart financial decisions

to get her to where she is, where she's basically semi-retired. She is married with a family, but she has kind of the flexibility, the freedom now to be semi-retired, not have to have a typical day job because of lots of the choices she made and investments she's made. So I'm excited to share my next episode with you with Leona. Thank you, Leona, for joining me on the show. I'm very excited to chat with you for another awesome listener series episode. Thank you so much for having me on.

You're welcome. I'm so glad that you emailed me this very detailed email, very organized. You seem like a very organized person. And it was a very cool timeline of just lots of the things that you went through and achieved. And you're so young. And I'm like, wow, I can't believe you've done all this. And you're only 33. Sorry, I said your age, but whatever. That's fine. Whatever. I'm 30. It's fine. So I would love to kind of start from the beginning and we'll kind of just move our way through. But it seems like basically from, you know, what has gone on from your life, personal finance has always been a very prominent thing in your life. When did that kind of, when did you get interested in money and personal finance and really figuring out how to be good with money?

It seems like at a pretty early age. Yeah, I think it was lucky because it was something that my parents spoke with us about all the time and it wasn't a big secret. So it was just something that was part of our lives. And we just did things that we needed to do to save money where we could. And it just kind of went from there. But yeah, we always talked about it. So it wasn't a big deal. Like, did they talk about like how to pay bills?

What a budget means? Did they talk about their salaries? Like, what kind of things did they talk about? So you really understood it. So yeah, when I was younger, my mom stayed at home. And we were just aware that part of her staying at home meant that we didn't have both parents bringing in an income my dad worked she took on jobs that she could do from home and fit in to when we were busy doing other things and then she did end up going to

work once we were a bit older but yeah we were just always aware of finances and that aspect we didn't get into the budgeting or anything but yeah but you kind of knew like how to save money and kind of live fairly frugally and that was just like just a normal thing yeah yeah we saved money where we could and we didn't do anything extravagant and we made choices as a family as to like, remember there was Disneyland or buying a trailer and we decided that we would buy a trailer so we could all go camping and yeah. Yeah, I never got to go to Disneyland as a kid and I still like to bring that up to my parents. Like remember, remember when we didn't go to Disneyland, but you took my younger sister? Oh no, that's way worse. Like, remember, remember when we didn't go to Disneyland, but you took my younger sister? Oh, no. That's way worse.

They did. Well, to be fair, I'm six years older. And so at that time when they could afford to take her and I was a bit older. So, but still, whatever. I went there in the end. I went there for my honeymoon. So I got my trip eventually. So you wrote to me and you said that you moved out at a fairly early age and started

working fairly young. I did. Yeah. Well, I started working even when I still lived with my parents just because that was kind of expected of me. And I think kids maybe used to work quite a bit more at younger ages when I was a teenager and it was just odd jobs and A&W and those type of things. I totally worked at A&W too. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome.

But no, I think that's good for kids. I think kids should get work, but yeah, no, then I ended up moving out early and I needed to pay the bills that I did have. So I just continued working and yeah, kept going to school. Yeah, I bet you have a very good work ethic to be able to do that at such a young age. And you also said that you participated in Katimovic at 17. And I remember, is that program? I'm not sure if that program is still around. It probably is. But I remember seeing that program. I'm like, oh, that sounds awesome. It's basically, for all the Americans listening, it is a Canadian program where you get to, well, you can probably explain it more than me, but you get to visit different parts of Canada.

Yeah. Yeah, we spent about nine months and three months in each province. And we lived in a communal house of 12 people and then one kind of supervisor and we uh did regular jobs as volunteer work and yeah we did communal meals and it was uh yeah it was a really good experience but yeah they have cut funding and that hasn't been around for a couple of years now, but yeah, it was a really good experience and got to do a lot of jobs that I otherwise wouldn't have.

And interesting to live with that many different people from different areas that know nothing about each other. yeah. And Canada is such a big country. I think that's such a hopefully that program is reinstated because yeah I think it's such a great idea for kids to really get a good idea of what's going on in Canada such a big country and just to see what's going on and yeah that definitely sounds like it did kind of give you a good uh you know would help you kind

of grow up quick like trying to you know be on your own and figuring all that stuff out. And, and after that, so did you go to post-secondary after high school or what was your kind of next step after that? Well, I knew that I would have to pay for my education myself. So it wasn't very high on my priority list at that time. So I did Katimovic after I graduated and then I went to Red Deer and I got a job at a John Deere dealership and then went and took my parts training, my first year trade school. And then, yeah, I ended up making more in scholarships and that cost me to go there. So that worked out really nice. And yeah, that was pretty much the only real formal education that I took. So yeah. Nice. No, I, you know, honestly, the, the group of friends that I have, um, lots of them are my husband's friends. Lots of them decide to go

into the trades instead of like the kind of typical university route. And honestly, all of them are doing really good. I can look at them and they all have like really great careers or they own their own business. They were able to buy their first place way sooner, like in their early 20s. And it's one of those things where it's, you know, looking back, it's like I always had this idea that, you know, the right thing to do or the smart thing, you know, what it was drilled into my head was to go to university. And now, like, I'm like, I don't know, I feel like there's something to be said for, like, I think there needs to be more education around the benefits of going into the trades, because lots of it is like, you know, going to the trades, you can be an entrepreneur, you could be your own

business person and really take ownership. And it seems like that's kind of, you know, the route that you took is you're, you know, you've invested in properties and you run your own several businesses. Yeah. recessions and through any kind of economic downturn, you're going to have the skills to support yourself or at least just make a decent living with those, whereas not all university educations will. Yeah. Can't do that with a philosophy degree. Yeah. I always felt bad for the guy. I mean, no offense to anyone who has a philosophy degree, but I always kind of like look at those people in university. I'm like, what are you going to do? Yeah. That's another big perk to trade school. Yeah, definitely. And so you went that route. You went to trade school and then you bought your first car and then you also bought a condo fairly

early in your life too which is pretty remarkable. I did. I always had dreams of living downtown Calgary and so then as soon as I was able to do that I decided to buy my first condo in downtown Calgary and it wasn't obviously the penthouse that I wanted, but it was a little house and I did it on my own. And I love that little place. But yeah. Yeah. So did that kind of give you just an idea like, huh, you know,

homeownership, this could be something that, because you wrote to me that you huh, you know, home ownership, this could be something that, because you wrote to me that you've, you know, since bought several properties sold and bought several properties, kind of as, I guess, you know, one way to invest. And, you know, as a business as well, like, how did you kind of learn about, you know, investing in property? Well, I like show home shopping more than I enjoy many other activities. So on the weekends, I used to go around and go look at all the houses and just dream and make plans. And I've been a renter, obviously, for quite a few years before I even bought my house. So I knew that there was money there and you could still buy properties fairly affordably. And I knew I wanted to, but at the time I didn't have more than enough to just buy the place that

I was living in, but I knew that eventually I would want to. And we were kind of at a good time for buying and selling. Compared to what it is right now. Right now it's a little bit crazy. But yeah, just kept following where it was booming and tried to buy as many properties as we could when we could afford them. As long as you could make money off of them. Yeah, so do you own a bunch of different properties and rent them out and have that as a source of income? Yeah, right now we have two residential properties

and then one commercial property. And then the house that we live in right now is actually part of one of our rentals as well. So yeah, we're always looking for more. Yeah, no, I'm so interested in like, I know, I feel like I know a lot about investing in residential properties, but how do you, I don't really know anyone who is invested in commercial properties. How did you kind of get into that? And is there like a big difference between owning a residential property? Is it more

complicated? It's actually more simple because usually in commercial properties, it's a longer term lease and it's a lot more legal than just having tenants in month to month. And you're not dealing with all the background checks because it's usually established businesses that are looking for commercial leases so it's completely different and I would say it's probably a little easier and my husband's a journeyman carpenter so he's completely able to do all the renovations to make it suit everyone's needs and that again is easier when you're dealing with a commercial property that isn't going to get as damaged as a residential one.

Yeah, no, that's very true. And very handy to have someone in the family who knows how to do that. Like I always talk to my husband about, oh, you know, we definitely have plans in the future to invest in some properties. But at the end of the day, I mean, we do not know how to do a damn thing. We do not even know how to, I mean, we know how to paint. That's about it. There's lots of that in rental business. Yeah, that's true. There's probably a lot of that.

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. You also mentioned that, so you started a construction company and you said you built most of the houses on your block. That's pretty crazy. Yeah, it was actually super, super fun. We moved to Saskatoon and there was only three houses on our block. And then my husband ended up working and being a framer for the company that was developing all the land in our neighborhood. So, yeah, we had started our construction company and we framed most of the houses and we didn't have to drive. We just walked down the street and that's where we were working.

Nice. It was pretty fun to see the whole development filled with houses. When we moved in, we could golf out the back. Wow. That's pretty cool. I feel like your kind of route into life is so interesting because it's very different than lots of the other guests I've had. But it's very – it seems like you never had a problem trying to figure out how to make money. Like you're like, hmm, let's do this.

Let's start a business. Let's invest in property. Whereas lots of people would – I mean kind of the typical thing is like, okay, let's find an office job and then I'll, you know, maybe consider investing and then maybe I'll do this and this. I really like kind of your, you know, journey with finance in that kind of respect. I think it's very interesting and unique. Oh, thank you. I don't know. I do find it all very easy, but I think we've made a lot of choices and we kind of have a formula that we follow and we just kind of see where we can see the most potential income and we just follow it and we're adaptable and we can be flexible to make our decisions.

And I think that's always helped us. And you also, you also wrote just like talking about personal finance a bit more broadly in investing, like you, like a lot of people invested some money into mutual funds and they do have high fees that everyone knows that. And so what have you, cause I know you you know you said uh now you've hired a financial advisor and have you kind of changed what you're doing with those kinds of investments have you kind of experimented a little bit yeah we uh well we fell into the same trap of going to your bank and then just getting whatever mutual funds that they sell you and not really looking into the fees because it looks like it doesn't cost you anything. And since I've been looking into different plans a lot more thoroughly, I've realized that that was not helping me at all. And I was wasting so much money on that. And so, yeah, we ended up switching and

now we are in some mutual funds, but they're way lower fees. And then we do have some stocks and ETFs as well. And I'm trying to start with the whole robo-advisor thing, but I haven't actually pursued starting an account yet. But yes, that is on my list of things to learn. And I was thinking of taking the Canadian Securities course just for that reason, so I can learn to invest for myself a bit more confidently. Yeah, I know a lot of people who have taken that course and it's sort of on my eventual list to do, but I also know it's like a lot of, a lot of reading and a lot of time commitment. So I hope you do do it. Props to you. Thanks. That's, that's my late winter,

early spring project, I think. Yeah, totally, totally. So I know kind of wrapping up one of, you know, the things that I always like to preach or like i'm always striving to find is more balance and i know you mentioned that in your email that you were trying to find you know work family life balance and uh so i'm so curious what are some of the things that you're trying to do in this new year now it's like a new year and fresh start what are some of the things that you hope to kind of do to kind of integrate more balance into your life? Because it seems like you're very busy. I think the biggest thing is, I read a book called The Miracle Morning. And it's just essentially all about setting aside an hour before you start your day to work on yourself. And you do your little routine every

morning. And so I've really been trying to integrate that into my mornings. I wake up before the rest of my house wakes up and I do my personal development reading and have my silence and affirmations and then I exercise. And exercise has always been a very important part. So I really prioritize that. And my day just actually doesn't go on unless I do that. So yeah, I think just really focusing on personal development and exercise and health and then taking care of the rest of my day after that. And I plan out my days and my weeks. And yeah, it actually doesn't look like I'm that busy when I have it broken down into hour sections and it's fine. And do you feel like since you've kind of integrated that to your life, because that's definitely something that I, that's my big goal for 2017 is to add more balance into my life and to have more of a routine. I really like the idea of setting aside an hour every morning to work on yourself. I love that. Have you found like it has been a

positive, you know, addition to your life by doing that? Huge. Yeah, I actually found that it's really, really beneficial just because at the end of the day, you have so many excuses and you're tired and you want to visit with your husband and kids to bed and sports and doing all that. So you sometimes forget about it. I have started doing my gratitudes at night as well, which I also think is helping. But yeah, just having that time that you spend on yourself before dealing with the rest of everything has been a huge help. Definitely. That's awesome. I'm definitely gonna link to that book of the show notes and possibly check it out because it sounds right up my alley. Well, thanks, Leona, for chatting with me and sharing your story. I'm so glad that you emailed me and we got this chance to chat.

Thank you very much for having me. You're welcome. And that was episode 86 of the Mominy Podcast with the wonderful Leona from Canada. Thank you so much, Leona, for joining me on the show, taking some time out of your day to chat with me, share your story. I really appreciate it. And I know everyone listening really appreciates it too, because I love listening to these episodes. I love recording them. And I know people like you listening right now really appreciate it too. It's a very cool look into what your neighbor is doing, what your acquaintance is doing, what your friend is doing with their money. I think that's really powerful when it comes to educating yourself about the different aspects of personal finance. And of course, if you have a story that you would like

to share on the show, email me straight up, Jessica at JessicaMorales.com. Let's chat and see if we can get you on the show. I have a bunch of empty slots right now. I'm kind of freaking out because there's a lot of empty slots. I've got a lot of episodes in the queue for the show this season of the Momenty podcast. So make sure to shoot me an email. Jessica at JessicaMorehouse.com. Don't be shy. I do not bite. I'm super nice and we'll have a ton of fun. And one last thing before I go, and I want to make sure I kind of integrate this more into episodes because I keep forgetting. Because I mean, I've been busy, guys. This is now I'm kind of getting to the mode of, you know, I just have one job. Okay, I can kind of do this. So throughout the year 2016,

I spent a lot of time making a bunch of helpful financial resources. So I've got, you know, a budget spreadsheet, moving out checklist, a tax prep checklist, a bunch of great checklists. If you like checklists, if you want to keep yourself organized, just things that help me keep myself organized, me and my husband, when it's, you know, comes to tax time or, you know, we have to rejigger budget or whatever. These are things that I personally use. That's why I created them. And then I wanted to share them with you for absolutely free. So make sure to go to jessicamorehouse.com slash resources.

That's where you can download as many as you want. You know, you can alter them, customize them, do whatever you want. But there are great starting points if you just, you know, need a little bit of direction in your life. I've got you, boo. So check them out at jessicamorehouse.com slash resources. And on that note, I will see you back here next Wednesday. Peace. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.