My Investment Results After 1 Year 🤑

Happy Saturday (aka February 1st)! 

I don’t know about you, but this month flew by, and somehow we’re 1/12 of the way through the year already. 

Anyways, we’re back with another issue of Money Convos with Steph & Den, and we have some fun updates, and - as always - useful money tips and news for you. 

Here’s what’s up in this copy 🤑🗞 

• DIY investing results after 1 full year 👀

• How much we spent in Nairobi, Kenya 🇰🇪

• Should you save or invest in 2025? 💸

• Sign up for our free investing workshop! 

• How to get ahead of tax season 🤓

Money Convo Of The Month

I’ve Been DIY Investing For 1 Year… Here’s The Result (So Far)

I’ve been investing my money completely by myself, taking a DIY or do-it-yourself approach, for exactly one year now! 

To be clear, I’ve been investing in general for about 6 years, and intentionally investing for about 4 years, but I’d never done it completely by myself (until last January). Up until then, I’d been using a robo-advisor to invest, and I stuck with that approach for three full years. But, after realizing that I’d built up the confidence to invest on my own, and that I could bring down the fees I was paying substantially by investing on my own, I decided that it was time to make the switch from managed investing to self-directed investing. 

It was an intimidating switch in the moment (picture me selling off $50,000 worth of investments, transferring them to a different account, and then repurchasing another $50,000 worth of investments - my biggest ‘purchase’ ever!), but now that I can look back one year later, I’m so happy with my decision and where I’m at in my investing journey. 

Okay, before I get too ahead of myself, let’s back up for a second - not only did I switch from a robo-advisor to a DIY platform, I also changed up the investments that I was buying. The robo-advisor was investing in a combination of six different ETFs, which was fine when I didn’t have to make those individual purchases (I just sent money to the account, and the robo-advisor did the rest), but now that I do… I wanted a simpler set up. So, I decided to invest in an all-in-one ETF! 

All-In-One ETF = multiple passive ETFs all bundled up into one overarching ETF for you. 

That way, I was able to invest in one single ETF every month (which is super easy!), but still have a globally diversified portfolio that passively aims to match the market(s). 

Now, once all of those decisions were made, investing over the past year has been very simple and straightforward! I invest $2,000/month, and I invest within one investment account at a time until it’s maxed out - at that point, I move onto the next account until it’s maxed out, and so on. 

To explain that a bit more - I prioritize investing inside of my tax free investment account, and because it’s tax free - an amazing perk - there’s a maximum amount of money that you can add to the account. So once I maxed out that account, I invested inside of my first home investment account. Then, once I maxed that one out, I invested inside of my retirement investment account. 

Now for the one year results…

Keep in mind that these are my results after one year, which is a very short period of time when it comes to long-term investing. These amounts will fluctuate, going up and down, but ideally they’ll trend upwards over time.

If you want more details on exactly what ETFs I invested in, and more of my thoughts on this process, then check out this YouTube video.

How Much We Spent In Nairobi, Kenya 

We started the new year 8 hours earlier than usual with Dennis’ family in Nairobi, Kenya - and it was so much fun! 

We had an amazing time visiting and spending time with Dennis’ family, exploring the city, and then on a mini trip we took to the coast - aka Diani Beach, just south of Mombasa - where it was seriously so hot and beautiful. 

Now, we always track our spending (seriously, even when we’re back from a trip!) so we wanted to share a quick breakdown here. 

Keep in mind that this was a family trip, so our expenses were a little bit different than a typical vacation (for example, we stayed with Dennis’ family, so we didn’t end up having any accommodation costs!). 

Flights: $2,461 per person - Yes, you read that right! Flights from Toronto to Nairobi are expensive (and we booked these about 7 months in advance - next time we’ll book earlier to try and save at least a few hundred dollars per ticket). We ended up flying from Toronto to NYC, and then from NYC to Nairobi. 

Food: ~$2,000 total - Like we said, this was a family trip, so we had a lot of meals with family that we didn’t pay for, and then other times we paid for six people - this was also over two weeks. Overall, we’re happy with this amount! 

Activities: ~$500 total - We did so many fun activities on this trip, from going to the movies and mini golfing with Dennis’ cousins, to visiting Giraffe Centre and the Nairobi National Museum, to walking through different forests… the list goes on!

Now that we’ve been home for a few weeks and had some time to reflect and miss the trip, we’re feeling so grateful that we were able to spend so much time with family. So many nice memories were made! 

If you want to see everything we got up to in more detail, check out this video. 

Oh, and if you want to see how much we spent on our mini trip inside of a trip (aka to Diani Beach!), then check out this video.

To Save Or Not To Save? 🤔 

Should you save or invest your money in 2025? Good question! 

If one of your new year's goals was to work on your financial situation, but you aren’t sure what you should actually be focused on (Should you pay off your debt first? Student loans or credit card debt? Or should you create an emergency fund? Jump straight into investing??), don’t worry - we’ve got you. 

Personal finance is personal, but there are a few steps that you should ideally be taking in order when you’re first starting out. 

1. Create A Budget - Before you decide what to do with your money, you need to know what’s going on with your money! Outline how much money you have coming in (your income), and how much you’re spending on your fixed expenses (your needs), variable expenses (your wants), and your savings. 

2. Build An Emergency Fund - An emergency expense could come up at any time, so you want to have some money saved up and put aside in an accessible account so you can use it if necessary. Keep this money in a high interest savings account, and save up at least $1,000 first (a mini fund), and then work your way up to having 3-6 months worth of your necessary expenses.

3. Pay Off High Interest Debt - Once your emergency fund is set (or at least your mini emergency fund), work on paying off any outstanding debt. Start with your high interest debt (think credit card debt, where interest rates are commonly around 20%!), and then work down towards your lower interest debt (like student loans) afterwards. 

4. Start To Invest Your Money - Once your budget is made, your emergency fund is full, and your debt is paid off (specifically your high interest debt), you can start to invest your money. This will be your primary money focus from this point onwards, unless you have another saving-specific goal in mind. 

What’s a saving-specific goal? Think: saving up to buy a house, saving up for a wedding, saving up for a big one-time purchase… the list goes on. 

Take some time to figure out whether you should be saving or investing right now (or paying off debt!) according to these money steps. 

If you want to hear why we’re personally focused on investing right now, then check out this video.

Free Investing Workshop  

You saw that right - we’re hosting a free investing workshop later this month! 

We’ll break down how you can start investing in the stock market now, and build your confidence with investing. 

We’ll have a few sessions available - each one will start with the workshop, and end with a Q&A where we’ll answer all of your money and investing questions. 

Seats are going to be limited, so save your spot by signing up on our website once we share the sign-up form (it should be up within the next two weeks!). 

We can’t wait to see you there! 👋🏿👋🏻

Tax Season Is (Almost) Here 🫣 

I know, I know… who wants to think about taxes?!

But, tax season is coming up, and we want to make sure that you’re prepared and ready to go (no procrastinating this year!). 

Here’s what you need to know - 

• Add key tax filing dates to your calendar: What’s the tax filing deadline where you live? (Aka in Canada it’s April 30th, 2025, and in the United States it’s April 15th, 2025).

• Pick a day to file your taxes before the deadline: Now that you know the deadline, pick a date well before that day to actually sit down and file your taxes, so you aren’t stressing out at the last minute. 

• Decide how you’re going to actually file your taxes: For example, if you’re going to be doing it yourself, figure out what platform you’ll be using. 

• Compile all of your important tax information: Gather everything that you might need, like your 2024 taxable income (from your salary, from your investments, etc), your tax slips and documents, and any updated personal information (like your address if it’s changed, marital status if it’s changed, etc).

• Learn what’s new for 2024 taxes: There are new tax benefits and credits every single year, so take a few minutes to look up what you might be eligible for this tax season.