This Is Our Biggest Money Goal Yet 🥹

Happy New Year! 🎉🎊

It’s the first day of a new year (2026 in case you already forgot!), and we’re really excited for a fresh start and new beginning. We hope that you feel the same, and that you’re feeling recharged after your holiday break. 

Today’s issue of Money Convos is going to be focused on setting you up for an amazing year ahead, so let’s get into it! 

Here’s what’s up in this copy 🤑🗞 

• We have a big goal for 2026 🤭

• A new year = a new budget template 💻

• It’s time to set some money goals 💰✨

• Our free investing workshop is back! 

• How much can you do in 1 year? 👀

Money Convo Of The Month

Our Household Goal? To Hit A Combined Net Worth Of $500k In 2026

As a newly engaged couple (side note: how long are you technically ‘newly’ engaged for…?), who just went through our first end-of-year money wrap up and reset for the new year together as fiancé(e)s, we have some things to report. 

First of all, we’ve felt very connected with our finances for a long time now. We’ve lived together for 7.5 years (meaning that we’ve shared all of our household expenses), and we’ve run our business together for 4.5 years (meaning that we’ve earned all of our income together throughout that time). We also communicate everything that happens with our money (we’re talking every single transaction - we literally share all of that info here with you, so of course we share it with each other!). 

So, despite having separate bank and investment accounts, we’ve felt very ‘combined’ in our financial approach overall. 

With that being said, something still changed mentally when we got engaged - it’s just that extra level of connectedness, I guess you could call it. 

So… What does that actually mean for us? 

Honestly, not a lot that’s tangible. For now, we’re still planning on keeping our money system - aka our bank accounts, investment accounts, etc. - the same (and we’ll probably do that until we move at some point in the future!). But, we are going to start viewing our goals and milestones as a household instead of individually. 

Again, we already technically did this - we’ve always celebrated each other’s individual wins and viewed a win for one of us as a win for both of us. But, like I said, with this extra feeling of connectedness we’re doing it even more than before. 

For example - our collective investments. We’ve always looked at our expenses from a household level (aka we collectively spent a total of $75,400.46 in 2025). This year, we started looking at our investments from a household level, too (aka we collectively invested $78,200 in 2025). 

Another one is our collective net worth. We’ve been tracking our net worths from the very beginning of our money journey, and we’ve been sharing the progress on our YouTube channel the entire time. You can go back and see me starting from an ~$0 net worth, and Dennis starting from an ~-$50,000 net worth (yes, that’s a negative symbol!). We still think it’s fun to track our individual progress - mostly because we’ve been doing it for so long - but moving forward, we also want to look at our collective household net worth and really use that as our main benchmark. 

You’ll see later on in this Money Convos issue that we have individual net worth goals for the year, but they roll up to our collective goal of hitting a combined net worth of $500,000 in 2026. 

To go along with that, we plan on creating a ‘household’ on the investment app that we both use (basically, the investing platform that we use allows you to add your partner to your profile, so you see your collective household total at the top of your app, instead of just your individual total!). Stay tuned to see us do that next month! 

TLDR? Now that we’re engaged, we’re taking our combined finances to the next level, and it feels really exciting! 

Keep an eye out for more content about this topic on our YouTube channel and Instagram account throughout 2026, because we’ll definitely be sharing more insights as they come up.

It’s Budget Time! ⏰

ICYMI, our new budget template is here! 

You’re hopefully already using our free budget template, but in case you haven’t set it up for the new year yet, you should check out our new version (if you’ve signed up for it in the past, you should’ve received an email from us with the new version within the past few weeks!). 

We took your feedback, made some tweaks, and it’s now better than ever and ready for you to use. 

We also filmed a new instruction video that walks you through how it works, so in case you missed it, or if you have any questions, check it out. 

Click to watch the Budget Template Explainer Video ⬇️

If you still have any other q’s, please submit a question to us, and we’ll get back to you. 

We hope that you have another amazing year of budgeting ahead!

Our 2026 Money Goals 📝

As you know, it’s a new year… and that also means new money goals! 

We always take some time before the new year hits to write down all of our goals, and especially our money related goals, so that we have them fresh in our minds (and don’t worry - if you haven’t set your money goals yet, you’re not too late! Take some time today to jot them down). 

Here’s what we came up with for 2026. 

• Goal #1: Spend $32,000 or less - This one's for me (Steph!) specifically… The first year that I really went dramatically over budget was back in 2023, when I spent $37,000. Then, in 2024, I brought it down to $32,000, and last year - in 2025 - I spent $36,000. Clearly, things trended back upwards, which I want to get a hold of this year! 

• Goal #2: Invest $2,000/month - This is a goal that we’ve both had (and hit!) for the past two years, so we’re keeping things consistent and are planning to hit this goal again in 2026.

• Goal #3: Re-max out our investment accounts - On that note, we want to make sure that we max out our tax-advantaged investment accounts again this year. For me, that means re-maxing out my tax free, first home and retirement accounts; for Dennis, that means re-maxing out his tax free and first home accounts, and maxing out his retirement account for the first time! 

• Goal #4: Hit our net worth goals - My goal is to hit a $275,000 personal net worth by the end of the year (I’m currently sitting at ~$230,000). Dennis’ goal is to hit a $225,000 personal net worth by the end of the year (he’s currently sitting at ~$170,000).

• Goal #5: Set our wedding budget - Our last money goal for the year is a fun one… it’s setting a wedding budget and actually starting to save for our wedding! We got engaged in August 2025, but decided to hold off on wedding planning until the new year… and, somehow, the new year is here! We’ll of course keep you posted on this process - and what our plans are - as we make decisions throughout the year. 

We hope this gave you some inspiration to create your 2026 money goals, too! We’ll also be posting a video about these goals soon, so keep an eye on our YouTube channel.

Free Investing Workshop

If one of your goals is to focus on investing this year, then you’re in luck - we’re hosting a free investing workshop this month! 

We’ll break down how you can start investing in the stock market now, and build your confidence with investing - and, if you already have gotten started, we’ll help make sure that you’re doing the right things for you. 

We’ll specifically focus on passive investing, and taking a do-it-yourself approach. 

We 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. 

• Tuesday, January 6th @ 8:00pm EST 

• Wednesday, January 7th @ 8:00pm EST 

• Saturday, January 10th @ 1:00pm EST 

If you’re looking to start investing - or improve your investing strategy - this year, then this is for you! Seats are limited, so save your spot ASAP (again, it’s free!). 

Please note: We focus on Canadian specific investment platforms and accounts throughout the session. You’re welcome to join if you live elsewhere, as the general information shared will still apply to you. 

Sign Up Here - Free Investing Workshop 

We can’t wait to see you there! 👋🏿👋🏻

How Much Can You Really Get Done In 1 Year? 🤔

All of the reflecting that we’ve been doing recently really got us thinking about the quote ‘most people overestimate what they can do in 1 year, and underestimate what they can do in 10 years.’ 

This has definitely been true for us, and it’s shown up in a few different ways. 

On one hand, we tend to set big, lofty goals for ourselves - and, when you do that, you can sometimes be discouraged by not hitting those goals within the short time frame that you originally set. But, when we look back over a series of multiple years, we usually realize that we did hit those goals - it just took longer than we thought it would. 

On the other hand, we’ve also seen that, when you set good habits and are consistent, ‘success’ starts to really snowball and compound more over time (it’s kind of similar to the exponential growth you see with investing!). 

Here’s an example - when Steph was filming her favourite end-of-year video last month, she mentioned how she’s been sharing her money journey since she was 23 years old. She’s been building her saving / investing muscle ever since then, which is great! But - what’s really crazy - is that when we did that math, she invested ~30% of her total investment contributions ever this past year. 

Let me repeat that - in her lifetime, she’s contributed a total of ~$165,000 to her investments (that’s her investment contributions, not its current value). Of that amount, she contributed $47,000 of that just last year in 2025 (*Note: We previously mentioned that she invested $37,000 last year… but we forgot to include the $10,000 she invested from her tax refund)! That’s specifically 28.5% of her all time contributions. 

That was really insightful to us, and it goes to show that there’s really something to be said about setting goals and building habits early on. You never know when it’ll start to pay off (literally)!