We Have BIG News... 👀💍

Good morning, and welcome to October! Fall has officially started, and we’re definitely feeling the new season energy in the air. 

If you hadn’t noticed yet, we’re back with another issue of Money Convos, and we have a lot to talk about this month. We’ll start off with a really important money convo of the month, before diving into an exciting personal update and some money tips. 

Here’s what’s up in this copy 🤑🗞 

• How to figure out your investing risk-level 💡

• We have big news 💍✨

• How much Dennis spent on his surprise 🤭

• Did you know… ⁉️

• Catch us live later this month 🎙️

Money Convo Of The Month

Why Investing Risk Level Should Be Based On Risk Capacity (Not Tolerance!)

One of the most important concepts when it comes to investing in the stock market is risk-level. 

Risk-Level = the level of risk that you take on within your investment portfolio (don’t worry, we’ll explain that more in a second). 

There are two main components of risk-level - risk tolerance and risk capacity. 

Risk Tolerance = the emotional side of the equation - it’s all about how comfortable you are with the idea of losing money in the short-term in order to earn a higher return over the long-term. 

Risk Capacity = the factual side of the equation - it’s all about the amount of risk you can actually responsibly take on without negatively impacting your long-term financial stability. 

TLDR? Risk tolerance is how much risk you think you can handle, and risk capacity is how much risk you actually can and should handle.  

The main problem that we see when it comes to figuring out the right risk-level for you is that - in the traditional investing industry - risk-level is typically heavily impacted by risk tolerance specifically. The main tool banks (or any traditional financial institution) will use is a risk questionnaire that asks you (the investor) a series of questions to figure out your risk tolerance specifically. 

The problem? Once you fill out this risk questionnaire, your investing risk-level is based on the answers you gave - so, regardless of your risk capacity, your investment portfolio will become based on your feelings about risk (aka emotions, not facts). 

Your investment portfolio should ideally be based on your risk capacity and not your risk tolerance. 

Now, that doesn’t mean that you should blindly base your portfolio on your risk capacity (particularly if it’s high) if it doesn’t align with your risk tolerance (particularly if it’s low). The key is getting your risk tolerance to match up with your risk capacity - and you can do that by educating yourself on how the stock market works, and why your risk capacity is what it is.

By the way - now’s a great time to mention how you can figure out what your risk capacity is. In general, your risk capacity is all about your actual ability to take on risk, and your actual ability to take on risk is mostly based on your age and how long you have until retirement (or how long you have until you need the money you’ve invested for other purposes, like to pay for education, to buy a house, etc). 

Why? Because it relates to your investing time horizon. To keep things simple, the stock market in general has ups and downs over the short-term (aka a handful of years), but historically has always trended upwards over the long-term (aka multiple decades). 

When you’re further from retirement (for example) you have a longer investing time horizon (aka more years for the market to trend upwards), and you have the capacity to take on more risk. When you’re closer to retirement, you have a shorter investing time horizon (aka less years for the market to trend upwards), and you don’t have the capacity to take on as much risk.  

Here’s the moral of the story - 1) risk-level should ideally be based on your risk capacity, and 2) if your risk capacity and risk tolerance aren’t aligned, then educate yourself to fill that knowledge gap.

If you want to learn more about this topic, and hear some in depth examples, keep an eye on our YouTube channel for a video that we’ll be posting later this month!

We Have Big News… 🥹💍

We’re so excited to share a little bit of personal news with you - we’re engaged! 

ICYDK, Dennis and I met in our final year of university. Fast forward 8 years later, including 7 years of living together in Toronto and 4 years of working together full-time, we’re really excited to take this next step in our lives. 

You might’ve seen the video we posted earlier this year that covered why we weren’t in a rush to get engaged - but we’re definitely excited that the right time officially came! 

We haven’t started wedding planning yet, but we do know that we’re not planning on breaking the bank, and we’ll of course share the financial side of things as they come up, along with our money saving tips and general thoughts along the way. 

But for now, we’re enjoying this exciting time and soaking it in! If you want to see a few more photos from the proposal, you can find them on our Instagram account.

How Much I Spent On A Surprise Proposal 🤭

Okay, so I know Steph just mentioned not breaking the bank on a wedding (which we won’t!), but I definitely did go a little all out on the proposal, aka our ‘getaway’. 

Now, even though securing the engagement ring technically came first… let’s save that for last. 

So, in general, when I was planning the proposal I knew that I wanted to make it special, and I ideally wanted it to be somewhere that we had never been (but had talked about going). Thankfully, I remembered that Steph had always talked about going to a town that was less than 2 hours away from Toronto called ‘Prince Edward County’. So, I secured the location and found a hotel called the ‘Drake Devonshire Inn’. Btw, this hotel was not cheap - but I decided to opt for a regular room as opposed to their $2,000/night premier room that often hosts couples for their wedding nights, anniversaries and/or engagements. So, I booked 2 nights (earlier in the week for a ‘discount’) at a rate of $534/night + tax for a total of $1,255.11.

After that, I booked our transportation! You guys know that we don’t own a car, so in order for us to go on this ‘getaway’ I reserved a car for three full days for a total of $285.18. 

Next up on the list was finding a photographer during peak weeding season… which was not easy! But to us, photos are memories and I knew that having a photographer would allow us to just be in the moment and not have to think about anything else. So, I placed a deposit for the photographer, and later paid the rest for a total cost of $847.50. 

That more or less covers the majority of the main expenses, but here’s a list of the other costs that were related to our day-to-day activities during our three day ‘getaway’. 

• x1 Champagne Bottle - $37.45

• Multiple Wineries & Lunches - $163.01

• x2 Dinners - $249.50

• x2 Breakfasts - $112.27

• Gas - $57.18

Now, when it comes to the star of the show (minus Steph of course!) - aka the ring - this was something that Steph and I spent some time picking out together. 

Check out our Instagram account to see a full breakdown on the ring we chose, why we chose it and the behind-the-scenes of us going ring shopping - but overall we ended up going with a lab grown diamond that cost me a total of $4,746.

Did You Know? 🤔

Did you know… that you can negotiate your phone and/or internet bill? 

We love sharing this tip, because it’s a simple way to bring down your recurring fixed cost(s) - and save you money - pretty much right away. 

Here’s how it works - typically, when you originally sign up for an internet and/or phone bill, you get a discounted or promotional rate for being a new customer. Then, once your original plan is up, the cost typically increases dramatically. 

Well, when this happens, you can actually call your provider and see if they have any other promotions running, or if they can give you a customer retention or loyalty discount. 

We do this every single year - it usually just takes a quick phone call in January, and we save hundreds of dollars.

Now, if you ever call and for some reason they won’t lower the price for you, you also have the option of switching providers - the new customer promotions are usually a great deal, and then you can call them to negotiate in the future. But, in our experience, they always lower the price to keep you on as a customer.

If you want to hear more about how this works, and an example script you can use as a guide for your phone call, check out this video.

Watch Us Live! 🎙️👀

ICYMI earlier this year, we were guests on TD Direct Investing’s live show. 

They invited us back this month for Investor Education Month, where we’ll be talking about how you don’t need a lot of money to start investing - it’s all about getting started now and being consistent over time. 

We’ll also talk about our simple investing approach and how it helps us navigate the ups and downs of the stock market. 

There’s going to be a live Q&A at the end of the show, so if you watch live you can ask us a question, too! 

We’ll include the specific details below - 

• What: Live convo with Steph & Den hosted by TD Direct Investing 

• When: Thursday, October 16th, 2025 @ 2:00pm ET 

• Where: Virtual live stream 

Register here to be sent the link to the live stream (note that it’s a free, virtual, live event!). 

We hope to ‘see’ you there!