The Canadian Investor - 8 Simple Ways to Save and Have More Money to Invest

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

For Financial Literacy Month, Simon dives into one of the most overlooked parts of investing: freeing up cash flow. From understanding what your true inflation rate is to identifying high-impact savings in your budget, this episode is all about practical ways to improve your purchasing power and invest more even if your income hasn’t kept up with rising costs. Simon shares how he cut his own internet bill in half, how to negotiate with Canadian telcos, the smartest places to trim spending, and two simple questions he uses to avoid impulse purchases. Small changes can compound massively over time, and this episode shows exactly where to start. Personal inflation calculator Rent Report by rental.ca  Check out our portfolio by going to Jointci.com Our Website Our New Youtube Channel! Canadian Investor Podcast Network Twitter: @cdn_investing Simon’s twitter: @Fiat_Iceberg Braden’s twitter: @BradoCapital Dan’s Twitter: @stocktrades_ca Want to learn more about Real Estate Investing? Check out the Canadian Real Estate Investor Podcast! Apple Podcast - The Canadian Real Estate Investor  Spotify - The Canadian Real Estate Investor  Web player - The Canadian Real Estate Investor Asset Allocation ETFs | BMO Global Asset Management Sign up for Fiscal.ai for free to get easy access to global stock coverage and powerful AI investing tools. Register for EQ Bank, the seamless digital banking experience with better rates and no nonsense.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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opportunities for investors this has to be one of the biggest quarters i've seen from this company in quite some time welcome back to the canadian investor podcast my name is Simon Belanger. I am back for another solo episode of the podcast. Yes, Dan came back last Thursday, but they're still getting back in the groove of things with the twins. So he asked me if I could do an extra solo episode and then you'll start being back on the regular schedule starting next week. So I said, no problem. I have some content. So I decided to do an episode today that's focus on financial literacy and more specifically ways to save money to invest more because of course you can invest more in one of two ways or a combination of

two ways so the first way would be to increase your income so you're able to save more to invest the other way would be to save on your expensive so you're able to again have more money left over and then invest so it may not be a surprise to everyone that cost of living is going up sure CPI may have slowed down, but the reality is that a lot of people are feeling squeeze more and more with the cost of living. The headline CPI number where it's useful to get an idea of the rate of change, and again, it has some limitation because it's a full basket of items, which may or may not reflect what you're consuming. Again, it's just to get a general idea about inflation in Canada. It will vary from province to province. It will vary from individual to individual.

So very few people will actually have the same kind of inflation rate as CPI. The 2.5% you're seeing today or, you know, take a couple percentage points. I think it's around 2.5 in terms of the headline number. I think it could be slightly different. I don't have the full numbers in front of me. But I do know that it peaked back in June of 2020 for 8.1%. And because it's simply the rate of change, it doesn't change that prices really spiked a couple years ago and have remained elevated for a lot of people. And thankfully, there is a tool. Again, this tool has its limitation that's available by Stats Canada. Shout out to one of our listeners when I was talking about how CPI had its limitation. This person who works at Stats Canada,

If I remember correctly, I was not able to respond to the email. I completely forgot as I had other things to do, and I do apologize for that. That person did mention that there is a personal inflation calculator available on Stats Canada, and I will put the link in the show note. I encourage you to just play with it, have a look. And you can see, you can plug the information. You select your province, so I just took Ontario because that's where I live. And then you'll be able to plug information here, groceries, eating the app.

rent mortgage interest payments if you have a mortgage utilities communication then there's some annual expenses for example if you have a car all these different kind of things you can plug in and then it will give you a nice little grab just to give you in terms of the 12 month percentage change and the one month percentage change so I just pluck some fake numbers here because I am a homeowner and you'll see the blue is the official inflation data and you see the peak here that I was talking about that happen in 2022. And then you'll see the personal inflation rate with the data I put that is actually lower. When I put my actual data in there, it was actually higher. So that is something that's

interesting. But I think it's just a fun exercise to do. Obviously, if you really want you to know your personal inflation rate, you're not going to be able to do it with this tool. You'll have to actually keep track of your own expensive and have a look at how your expenses actually increase on a month-over-month basis and then a year-over-year. So it's definitely something you can do, but if you wanted a rough idea, it's a fun little tool to play with. Now, the point I wanted to make here is that the cost of living has increased for everyone. Hopefully, your income has surpassed or increase faster than your cost of living, but I suspect for a lot of people, that have been listening, that's simply not the case. Now, the main reason you should be

investing is to at least keep, but ideally increase your purchasing power. That's why we invest to increase our purchasing power. And I'll talk about a little bit later. Actually, I'll talk right now about nominal returns versus actual real return. And there's two ways to invest more. Like I said, at the beginning, you either increase your earnings at a faster pace than your personal inflation rate or you reduce your expenses. Now, even finding $100, $100 in savings per month per month can make a huge difference. So investor typically talk in nominal returns like I mentioned on the headline numbers that they see on their investment statement with their bank, their online broker, whatever it is, it might say 8% per year. We're all guilty of that. I mean, I'm guilty of that too, but what actually matters is your real return. Or your return after factoring in for inflation, because that's what determines

your purchasing power over time. So if you save $100 a month for 20 years and just hold the cash in your bank account, inflation will erode its value. So let's say there's 3% inflation, which I think is actually what we will be seeing in the years to come, maybe even higher, but I think the 2% inflation that we've seen in the past and the target of central banks will, without really admitted, will just change over time. Now, say there's 3% inflation, you lose 2% each year once you factor in the interest on your bank account. Let's say you're getting, like I said, 3% inflation, you're getting 1% interest in your bank account, so you lose roughly 2% each year. your 24,000 of contribution, which was $100 a month over 20 years because, like I'm saying,

you're trying to save $100 extra of a month, would be worth about $20,000 to in today's dollar. Even though you put in $24,000, it has eroded in time, just to keep things simple here. But if you invest and earn even a 4% real return after inflation, let's say you get 7% return, returns. But when you factor in inflation, it's actually 4% in terms of real returns. The same $100 per month grows to $37,000 roughly in today's dollars. That's close to double the purchasing power compared to just holding cash. Even if your investments only keep up with inflation. So a 0% real return, you still end up with a $24,000 purchasing power value, which is $6,000 more than letting it all sit in a bank account or even worse under your mattress and lose value.

And I don't know about you, but if I could get between 24 and 40,000 more in purchasing power in today's dollars by just saving an extra $100 a month, that sounds pretty good to me. Now, I'll go through a few different things that you can actually some concrete example where you can save some money each month. Run your home expenses like a business. For first thing, you need to know what you spend on, so you need to have a budget. So if you don't have a budget,

just pause this podcast and go make a budget right now. Apps can automate this by connecting to your bank account. Personally, I prefer to do it manually because it forces me to actually think about the expenses. What I do is I'll average it out over a three-month- period and make sure that include expenses that happen only once or twice a year and I'll average those out for a monthly amount. For example, car maintenance. That's a great example. I'll assign a specific monthly amount even though I don't have maintenance costs every year. Well,

ideally I don't or maintenance costs every single month. Ideally, I won't because if it's having every single month, I may need to change my car pretty soon. We have multiple bank accounts as well. and credit cards in our household, so it would be harder to link that. It's probably possible with different apps, but I also don't love connecting to third-party apps for my personal information. That's just a personal preference here. But some people may like it,

and the key is just using a system that you'll stick with. And if you're fine with those downsides with connecting through an app, but the convenience, that's fine. Use that. That should work for you. Second step here, once you've done your budget, review these expenses regularly. So to get back at that inflation, if inflation is going up, and it usually is, that's how our monetary system works. If

inflation is going up, clearly your expenses will likely go up. So go through your monthly spending line by line. And then the third step here, categorize each expense, essential housing, groceries, utilities that would be all in the essential category. The non-essential category for me would be dining out, subscription, impulse purchases, all these things that you don't really need to live. Think about the Maslow pyramid. I remember learning that in high school. Very useful. So in terms of the needs versus the wants. Step four, benchmark yourself. Housing, percentage of income, transportation as a percentage of your income, food as your percentage of income, ranges will definitely vary, but the point is to know what

percentage of your income you're actually spending on those. And then calculate your investable surplus. That's pretty simple. You just take your income, your monthly income minus your essential expenses, minus the non-essential. That's the amount you can actually invest. So we want to increase that amount you can invest. And if you don't want to invest that amount, then use that money for something else, but saving some extra money is a way to invest more. Want to buy a stock, but don't want to shell out hundreds or even thousands for a single share? With Questrade's new fractional shares, you can invest any dollar amount and build a diversified portfolio instantly. No delays, no trade fees, no excuses. Want to put $10 into a stock

trading at $100? No problem. Quest trade has, you. covered. They're the first broker in Canada to offer real-time commission-free trading for U.S. fractional shares in ETFs. It's simple, powerful, and finally available in Canada. Head to quest trade.com to open and fund an account. Use code TCI and you get $50 to get you started. Do you keep hearing about these all-on-one ETFs lately? Well, I have some exciting news. EMO ETFs just cut the fees on their flagship all-in-one ETFs to 0.15%, making them one of the lowest cost options in Canada. That's right, more value, same smart diversification, all in a single ETF. Whether you're just starting out or simplifying your portfolio, BMO all-in-one ETFs make it easy to invest with confidence.

Just ZD it and forget it. considering ETFs like Z-E-Q-T, BMO's All- Equity E-T-F, or Z-G-R-O, B-M-O's growth E-T-F. Earlier this year, I headed to Calgary for our Stampede podcast meetup. It was a blast. I got to connect with listeners, hear a few of their stock pitches, catch them rodeo events for the first time, enjoy the fair, and just soak up the energy of the city during the Stampede, all while rocking my new Cowboys hat. While I was there, I stayed in a home on Airbnb just a short walk from the Stampede grounds. After a full day making new connections with people just as passionate about investing

as I am, and a late night at the rodeo, it was the perfect place to come back to and make a quick dinner and unwind in a quiet, comfortable space that felt like home. That trip got me thinking about my own place back in Ottawa. While I'm away, my home usually just sits empty, but instead, I thought I could be hosting it on Airbnb. Hosting is flexible so I can set the timing and it could help me cover the cost of my next adventure while someone else enjoys our beautiful neighborhood. Your home might be worth more than you think.

Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com slash host. So I'll start off here with savings where 80% of the savings probably come from that and what I'll go through, I think it's important to keep in mind that you have to think in tradeoffs. So do you want to maximize the savings financially? Or are you looking to not maximize those savings because you like additional privacy or for certain non-financial reasons? You prefer, for example, a different kind of housing. So housing, that's an easy one here. situation will vary depending on your life stage, whether you have a family, whether you're

just getting out of university, you might not have as much income as someone in their mid-40s to 50s. There's all these different kind of things. So renting, the first thing you should do when you're renting is be aware of local rent trends. So you can go to rentals.ca forward slash national dash rent dash report and I will have a link in the show notes here and get a sense of where rents are moving in your city get a sense because right now I had a look at this and for most major metropolitan areas in Canada rents are actually going down and obviously that would be likely a consequence of the population grow that we saw in the last few years and then the lack thereof, clearly putting some price pressure on rents because if there's less demand for these

rental units, clearly there's going to be an impact, a downward impact on those rent prices. And when your rent comes up, it is a negotiation opportunity and be aware of that. When your lease renews, negotiate a hard, don't be lazy and renew it for one or two percent increase if you're seeing on rentals.com, for example, or you're going on different rental websites and seeing that rents are actually coming down. Negotiate that with your existing landlord. And if they don't want to budge, then you can look at getting a pretty good deal somewhere else, especially if you're in the driver's seat because it's a renter's market.

In many cities right now, not all. Like I said, rent grow as cool or rents are actually declining. So that's something to keep in mind. Consider a roommate. A roommate is something that you can consider if you really want to save on money. A two-bedroom split between you and your roommate will most of the time, if not almost 100% of the time, be cheaper than a one-bedroom alone. Plus utilities get split. The trade-off, of course, is privacy, but financially it's one of the highest-impact ways to reduce housing costs.

So again, it's all about trade-off. So don't add me in the comment saying, well, I don't want to live with a roommate. That's a decision you're making and I completely understand, especially if you don't trust that person. Maybe you're a stage in your life where you're just overliving with roommates. That's completely fine. But if you want to save money, that's an easy way to do it here. Homeownership. So if your mortgage is up for renewal, shop around.

Don't just sign the first offer that you receive from your bank for renewal. use a mortgage broker, an independent mortgage broker to compare rates across lenders. Your existing bank's renewal rate is very rarely the best offer. So you're in a good position to negotiate. Of course, your mortgage payment may go up regardless because rates are higher now than when you took your mortgage three, four, five years ago. That's fine, but try to get the best rate that you can get right now and at least limit that increase. Transportation.

So that's always a tough one. again, it comes to trade-offs. If your city has decent public transit, consider using that instead of owning a car. Of course, I know it's not as convenient. It can be a pain. You have to go on the schedule of the transit. But even using transit plus occasional Uber will often cost less than a full car ownership if you factor in payments, insurance, gas, maintenance, depreciation. Of course, I know some cities just don't have good public transportation and I completely understand that. If you do need a car, shop your insurance at renewal because rates can vary significantly. You can save some money there.

Buy use if possible. I never buy new cars. If I didn't have a young daughter that I need a relatively safe car, I would probably have a complete shitbox, lack of better word, as a car. I used to like nicer car when I was younger and some people like nice car don't get me wrong but for me it's just not that important and I see that as just something that

uses a lot of my money and is just not productive so that's the way I see it completely understand that some people are not in that situation some people may be renting cars because they have a business and it can be passed as a business expense completely understand that but keep that in mind that a car costs you a lot of money Now, the third big item here is food. We need food to live. So unless you want to do fire and

financial independence retire early at 40, 35, 45, or whatever age you pick and you want to eat crab dinner every single meal, most people will want to eat well. Meal plan ahead for the week. That's really important. Go to the grocery store with a list. It reduces waste and impulse buying and impulse buying will often lead to food waste and you if you look at a refrigerator and you just think over the years the amount of food that you've wasted and I'm guilty of that too but we've been doing a better job in recent years it's a whole lot of money so you can save a lot of money by just just reducing the amount of food that you waste and a good way to do that. A little trick, and I'm sure you may have seen that on social media, is using

AI, look at the items that may be perishing soon and ask AI to create some meals for you using those items. Maybe it's using those items and having to go buy something at the grocery store to complement it, but if you can save and spend less at the grocery store because you're using items that would, if not go bad and then you'd be paying even more money at the grocery store because you'd have to buy additional items. That's money saved right there. Try grocery discount stores or Costco for staples, a trick that I do as well. I'll look for food that's 30% off or something like that because it has to be sold pretty quickly. Oftentimes you still have a day or two to eat it, whether it's produce, whether it's meat. Sometimes I'll look for that.

Look out for things that are on sale that don't perish. So an example here, there's a specific brand of coffee that I like that is sold at Costco. And if you haven't noticed, coffee has gone up way up in price. I don't have the exact figures, but it's in the something like 20, 30 percent over last year, if not more. Well, when I see the coffee, I like go on sale, and I usually have a pretty good idea of what the price is, I buy an additional two to three bags of it, because it doesn't really go bad. It might be a little stale if I really push it, but even then I've never found it to go bad because I buy the whole beads. Well, recently I saw that and got it for $18 a bag instead of $28 that it had been in the past months. So I bought three bags and I save

almost, well, pretty much $30 right there. Reduce delivery and dining out. So look, I like to get Uber eats from time to time. My wife and I will like to go. for dinner from time to time. And that's completely fine. And I'm not saying, depending on your budget, completely eliminate it. But what I'm saying is you can always reduce it. And if you do like delivery, a little hag that I found, and I think I may have mentioned it on the podcast in the past few months, is Costco sells a lot of gift cards at a discount. And Uber is one of them, which you can use for Uber eats credits. So Costco, I don't know if it's the same price at every Costco, but around Ottawa, it's $80 for a gift card when it gives

you $100 in cash for Uber. So that's a way for us to still eat a little bit of takeout or delivery, but still save some money while we do that. So trying to save some money wherever we can. Now, the rest is where it gets pretty interesting. So mobile and internet plans. We've talked about Rogers, Bell, and Tell us, the reality is they are competing hard for your business. It is true because they were doing very well with subscriber growth when you look at 2020, 21, 22, 23 because the population was increasing so rapidly. So when you have new people coming into the country, well, one of the things that they need is a mobile phone. and internet plans, and now that immigration has slowed way, way down, they're seeing a lot

of pressure on those subscribers. And one of the issues that these telcos have is they have high fixed costs. And a lot of the time, it's better to keep an existing customer at a discount than lose that customer because let's say you're paying $120 a month for your fiber internet and you try to negotiate you get it down to $70 well what's the alternative for them I mean if they lose you all together they get zero money from you if you stay at a discount they still get some money from you and the reality is the cost, their cost doesn't change. So what happens here is they're better off keeping you at a steep discount than losing you altogether. It looks much better on their financial statements as well. So something to keep in mind. So you should

really price shop and not be afraid switching. So here's a little step by said that I actually did recently. So I'll give my backstory. I won't say which telco it was, but but was one of the big three. And I have fiber internet. And obviously, working from home, doing the podcast, I need one of the top speeds to making sure that the video is smooth when we record and everything goes smoothly. So I had gotten a two-year contract that ended on a promotion that ended in August or September of this year.

And then it went like up like a decent amount where I was paying. way too much for the internet should have i don't know why i waited a couple months i guess i was busy but i should have done it sooner so i'll give my exact example here afterwards i'll say how much i shave with it's a pretty significant amount so before that i'll give this step by step on how to save for mobile and internet plans so price shop a competitor via chat don't call them that's really important if they say oh can i give you a call say no i want to keep it on the chat Ask what's your best new customer promo for the same internet speed you currently have or mobile, of course, if you're asking for mobile, ask specifically for bring your own device plans because that's where you'll save money. If you're looking to get a device, that's where they won't be able to give you as good of a price.

And B.YOD is key. The business accounts only apply when you already have your own phone, like I said. Do one service at a time, internet or mobile. So if you start with mobile, go back in a day or two and then do the internet and vice versa. That's because if you ask for bundles, the pricing will usually be worse because they hide discounts in the package pricing. And then if they come back with you and say they give you a prize that you kind of know it's not a great price. It might be a bit better than what you're paying right now. well you can just say okay well my neighbor got better so can you recheck for any targeted or new customer promos and then if they come back and they come back with something that's pretty

good screenshot the quote plus save the transcript and then go to your provider's chat and last for loyalty slash retention if you can't really find it in the phone menu what i found for me is just saying you will cancel you're looking to cancel your service that will usually get you to the people that can give you the best deal. You do not want to speak to the customer service agent or the regular agents. You really want the ones who are loyalty, retention, anything like that. And say when you start talking to them, I have a competing offer of X dollars for this service. So maybe it's $75 for this fiber internet. Can you match or beat it? You have to stay, not be afraid, just embrace the silence.

And if they don't give you a satisfying offer, then you can thank them and switch. And one thing that I should mention as well is ask when you get that screenshot from the other provider if there's a connection fee or fees associated or they're waiving that and push for that because then it really shows your current provider to say, look, there's really no. incentive for me to really stay with you aside from the hassle of waiting for whoever it is rogers bell or tell us to come between 8 a.m. and noon or 8 a.m. whatever the window they give give people nowadays but you can really get and save a whole lot of money so for me like I mentioned earlier so I had my internet that was I had like a two-year on a pretty good promotion. It ended. So I was paying $135 a month. And I should have done that couple months ago and that's my bad. So I went with a competitor, did exactly what I said. And they

gave me like a so-so offer at first. So I then kind of pushed back and said, well, my neighbor actually got a way better deal. And then they were able to give me a $90 a month for the same speed of fiber that I had with my current provider. I said, okay, thank you. I need to talk that over with my spouse. And I said, thanks for the offer. I'll think about it. And then we'll come back if we want to go with you. Then I went through the phone and the phone is important because you really will get better results at that point by being on the phone. Selected the option to cancel my service, got to the loyalty retention, whatever they call it there. And then just tell them told them, look, I have this offer with one of your competitor. I named the

competitor. You don't need to do like all the competitors because then they might realize you're in a bidding war. It might not be all that good and they may not give you the best offer. And I just said, what can you guys offer me? Because there's no fees associated with the switch for me. It's a lower price. And then they came back and to my surprise for $60 $50 a month. The only caveat, and I would say it's important to make sure that you're aware of everything that's involved in that offer. So I clarified that multiple times because the person speaking the English wasn't as good, just to making sure we were on the same page. But essentially, I got it for $60 a month versus $135. They even waived the modem fee rental. The only

caveat was for me to lock in for two years. And if I do break the contract, I have to pay $20 per month for each month that the contract is broken for. But even with that, it's a pretty good deal at that point at what I'm looking for. So that's just an example where by doing this, I basically cut my internet bill in half. So sure, my costs are going up in general, but I'm definitely putting some lowering the cost of increase by being able to reduce my cause by a whole lot for my internet subscription. So that's just an example that I did. If you're not doing that, if you haven't negotiated your price in quite some time, make sure you do it because you can save a whole lot of money by doing that. Take me as an example. Now, other subscription, I would recommend setting a monthly

cap for a streaming and digital subscription. So for example, we cap ours at $80 a month. I've said that before on the podcast in terms of our video subscription or streaming subscription. Netflix stays there, that's the one we don't change, and then anything else has to stay within that budget. So what ends up happening is we'll have two or three subscription depending on the service. Sometimes they will offer you some promotion, so we'll kind of take it as long as we stay under that $80 a month. And to get a new one, we just have to cancel the existing one. So it forces us to constantly review it. And at the end of the day, when we start watching a show, We'll probably watch it for a month or two,

and then there's something else on another subscription, so we'll switch over to the other one. And when I try a new subscription, I canceled it immediately after signing up. This doesn't stop the subscription for the current month. It just prevents the auto renew. So I found that's a really good way to make sure you don't forget about canceling it. Sometimes if they are giving you a trial offer,

they won't let you do that. It'll cancel it right away and you won't be able to use it. So, of course, maybe put a reminder in your phone if that's the case. But if I really want it again later, I have to actively choose to resubscribe it. And that extra friction alone saves me a whole lot of money because it's way too easy to forget these recurring charges. Companies love when you forget, by the way. Want to buy a stock, but don't want to shell out hundreds or even thousands for a single share? With Questrade's new fractional shares, you can invest any dollar amount in,

built a diversified portfolio instantly. No delays, no trade fees, no excuses. Want to put $10 into a stock trading at $100? No problem. Questrade has you covered. They're the first broker in Canada to offer real-time commission-free trading for U.S. fractional shares in ETFs. It's simple, powerful, and finally available in Canada. head to quest trade.com to open and fund an account. Use code TCI and you get $50 to get you started. Do you keep hearing about these all-on-one ETFs lately? Well, I have some exciting news.

BMO ETFs just cut the fees on their flagship all-in-one ETFs to 0.15%, making them one of the lowest cost options in Canada. That's right. more value, same smart diversification, all in a single ETF. Whether you're just starting out or simplifying your portfolio, BMO all in one, ETFs make it easy to invest with confidence. Just ZED it and forget it, considering ETFs like ZEQT, BMO's all equity ETF, or ZGRO, BMO's growth ETF.

Earlier this year, I headed to Calgary for our Stampede podcast meetup. It was a blast. I got to connect with listeners, hear a few of their stock pitches, catch them rodeo events for the first time, enjoy the fair, and just soak up the energy of the city during the Stampede, all while rocking my new cowboy hat. While I was there, I stayed in a home on Airbnb just a short walk from the Stampede grounds. After a full day making new connections with people just as passionate about investing as I am, and a late night at the rodeo, it was the perfect place to come back to and make a quick dinner and unwind in a quiet, comfortable space that felt like home. That trip got me thinking about my own place back in Ottawa. While I'm away,

my home usually just sits empty, but instead, I thought I could be hosting it on Airbnb. Hosting is flexible so I can set the timing, and it could help me cover the cost of my next adventure while someone else enjoys our beautiful neighborhood. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. So other non-essential expenses, I'm not the kind of person who will say, like I've said before, like I'll just like be super cheap and just eat like craft dinner every day so I can just stop working altogether in five years. But for me, it's all about balancing the present and the future because we don't know

when our expiration date will be. I'm in good health. I'm 40. you might be listening to me, you might be 25, 30, 60, whatever your age is, but the reality is I could walk outside, knock on wood, and be hit by a bus tomorrow, and that's it. It's not a, like, impossible thing. It's a very low probability, but I have an expiration date.

You do. Everyone does. We just don't know when it is. So I think for me, that's always been important, is just making sure I'm balancing living in the present versus saving for the future. Because I've had back issues my whole life. The thing is I've gotten much better with the recent procedure that I got and when I got last year as well. So I think my back is probably 85, 90% of what it was when I was younger, which is as good as it's been since I've been in my early 20s. But I know that

generally your body doesn't get better as you get older so clearly you want to make sure you enjoy some of that money now so you make sure you balance that out if you like going to Starbucks every day for that coffee maybe instead of doing it every day do it once a week as a treat and make your coffee for the rest of the day you'll save tons of money and you'll still treat yourself with a Starbucks coffee once a week or maybe you buy an espresso an espresso machine which is a bit a higher one-time cost. Maybe you could buy one use that's pretty cheap. And you make your own lattes at probably a third of the cost that you would at Starbucks. That would be another idea. But there are some ways to still enjoy yourself and just balance the present with the future.

Like I said, I'm really not a fan of people just going all out and just not enjoying the present. And you can find a lot of stories out there where people were doing the fire thing and then only to get into their 40s and realize that, oh, I used to love running or I used to love doing X, Y, and Z. But it's something that's pretty active. And now I found that I'm retired. And it's much harder for me to do that because my body's not in the same shape than it was before. I have eggs. I have knee issues, whatever it is. So I think you really have to balance that up. And I'll finish this here with just two easy questions to try and reining the spending. It works very well for me. I don't know if it will work for you. It does need some discipline, but I find

asking those easy questions really helps. First, do I already have what I'm looking to buy? If yes, does it still do the job or do I need to have a new one? And is it something I actually need, a necessity, or something that's nice to have or want. And then, depending on what I answer, it'll probably rule out that purchase. I would say it probably rules out 90% of the stuff that I'd want to buy because I either already have it or don't really need it. And a good example here is my iPhone. So I have an iPhone 13. Does it still do the job? Yeah, it does. I can use pretty much all the apps. I want to use. The battery's still pretty decent. So I don't need to buy a new phone right now. Would it be nice to have Apple intelligence? I have it on my laptop. It's not, I have it on my

laptop. It's not that great. Would it be good to have a nicer camera? Sure, it'd be nice to have a nicer camera, better camera. But aside from that, it might be a little faster. I just really don't see the need in having a new phone right now. But again, when the battery starts being terrible or when the apps really start not working well altogether and it's really slow and now it's impacting my then I'll think about changing it. So that works really well for me. And I guess another tip here that can help you save some money is if you're someone that does some impulse buying online, I mean, it's super easy online then.

And I talked about shopping and how the road that they're seeing, but PayPal as well, where it has all your information stored, it's super inconvenient. Don't get me wrong, but an easy way to get your spending into check, especially if you've been known to make some impulse buys that you regret later because of that, you know, it gives you a high as you buy it and then you kind of regret it or those doom spenders. I've seen some articles about that where younger Canadians are spending because they're just don't see the point. Well, if you're in that situation, a way to help you out would be to just remove all the access from a shop pay from a PayPal, from your browser, saving the data,

and having to actually manually input your credit card data, banking information, whatever it is, every time you want to make a purchase. Sure, it's annoying, but that extra step, that extra friction, will might prevent you from making some purchase. I mean, it has worked on me before because I remember, now it's not as common,

but a couple of years ago, it was definitely more common. I remember vividly a few times where I was like, oh, I'll buy this. I want to buy this. But I had to manually input my credit card information and I was maybe in the living room and it was in the kitchen. I was like, I don't feel like getting up. So I never ended up buying it. And that saved me money. So that would be a way to do it. But hopefully that you found this episode very useful. Those are some ways that you can save money. Of course, there's other ways I didn't want to do super long episodes. But those are some things that you can probably. implement relatively easy for example the cell phone and the internet one have a look use chat gpt for example to just scan the web to see if your phone subscription the monthly amount that you're paying if it's competitive or not to see if your internet is competitive or not if it's not then you can just use the steps i did and it worked very well for me it just took me about like an hour and a half

of chatting and then trying to get on the phone with someone to cancel and then eventually offer me a much better deal. But, you know, it's a good saving when you think about it. And there's a lot of little ways you can save. And just with that one thing, I probably, not quite, but I'm pretty close at saving that $100 per month. So we'll probably tweak a few other things. My wife's cell phone plan is a bit more expensive.

So I'll be repeating that with hers and mine as well. So we'll probably get to the $100 savings per month just with that alone. So it's pretty easy and it can make a big difference in the end. And hopefully that will help you make a difference on your end, use that money for investing more. Or maybe pay yourself a trip after a year if you end up saving $100 a month or a year and a half a trip that you've been wanting to do. That's not too bad as well. At the end of the day, it's just creating that balance. So hopefully it helped.

and we'll do a few more of these episodes for Financial Literacy Month to just some things to get people started and investing or investing more. So these are kind of the themes that we'll look at Dan and I. But hopefully you enjoyed this episode, another solo one. It should be one of the last ones in a while that I do solo. For those who are not subscribing, we also have a Patreon page at join tCI.com Where we share our monthly portfolios. We offer the podcast ad free.

We also have some monthly update for my parents' retirement's portfolio, and I'll also be looking to do a bit more little videos here, little extra content that's exclusive there. I haven't decided if it would be just exclusive there, and then I would release a few weeks later on YouTube, for example, but those are the things that we're looking to do. So hopefully you enjoyed it, and I'll see you back this Thursday. The Canadian Investor Podcast should not be construed as investment or financial advice.

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