We Can Stop Investing 🤩 (...kind of!)

Good morning, and welcome to October (aka to the fall season)! We hope that you’re feeling as excited as we are for a new month, fresh energy, and to tackle the final ~90 days of the year. 

We’re back in your inbox with a midweek pick-me-up, and this month we have some useful investing info, other money tips and personal spending updates to share. 

Here’s what’s up in this copy 🤑🗞 

• It’s time to double check our work 👀

• How much Steph spent last month 💵

• Was it worth the money? 🏓🏀

• The best savings account option 💰

• Did you know… ⁉️

Money Convo Of The Month

Was My Adjusted Cost Base (ACB) Calculation Right?

Investing is (in our humble opinion) one of the most empowering things that you can do for yourself - but it also comes with some responsibilities! 

People tend to picture the life that they’ll live at some point in the future - as a result of investing - but put less thought into the time that they should continue to spend learning about the different details and nuances that go into becoming a confident passive long-term investor. We believe that everyone (and we seriously mean pretty much everyone!) has the ability to invest on their own, but it does take some intentional effort.

With that being said, back in our April issue of Money Convos, we not only shared the news that I (Steph!) had been investing inside of a taxable account for the past year (yay for taxes!), but we also broke down something that’s not talked about all that often - my adjusted cost base. Now, before we lose you with what sounds like a technical term, here’s what an ACB is in simple terms. 

Adjusted Cost Base (ACB) = the total average cost of buying and ultimately owning an investment.

To keep what could be a long story short, when I first opened up my taxable investment account last year, I was feeling both excited to have reached a major milestone (opening up my 4th investment account!), and tentative about the responsibilities that came with having this type of account. 

Why? Well, I knew that I was going to be on the hook when it came to keeping track of the investments that were purchased and sold inside of this account. 

Now, the investment brokerage you use will tell you what they think your ACB is, but they'll also be the first to tell you that it's your responsibility - as an investor - to keep track of, and report, the activities that occur inside of this account every tax year. This allows both you and the government to have an accurate calculation of things like capital gains and losses. 

BTW, if you want to learn more about the adjusted cost base, and how I went about calculating my ACB, check out this YouTube video for the full breakdown. 

Anyways, given that I only invest in one single ETF inside of this account, calculating my ACB actually turned out to be pretty easy! But I also wanted to compare my ACB calculation to my brokerage’s ACB calculation, to see if we came up with the same result (and if we didn’t… why not?).

And, drum roll please 🥁… they were (almost) the same. 

I say almost because the calculations were very slightly different, due to a timing difference. When we took that timing difference into account, it turned out that my ACB calculation and my brokerage’s ACB calculation were exactly the same. 

Now, does that mean everyone should just use their brokerage’s ACB calculation? No - remember, my taxable account is very simple and easy to calculate, and that’s not going to be the case for everyone. But it was nice to see that they did ultimately match up! 

If you want to hear us talk more about this, and see the full comparison, check out this YouTube video.

$35,000 Or Less Challenge 💰

I’m back with another $35,000 or less challenge update!

This past month was definitely a good one (in many ways, including from a budgeting POV!). It was Dennis’ birthday, so I had a day of splurging on him (aka we went out for dinner, for cake, and to a jazz show). 

Other than that, I was pretty much on budget this month, and it was a lower spending month for me (compared to prior months this year).

With that being said, in September I spent $3,090.86, and here’s how it was split out -

That means that I have $7,020.21 left in my annual total to spend for the next 3 months of 2026. 

I would now need to spend an average of $2,340.07/month for the next 3 months in order to hit my goal. 

If you want to see us ‘compare’ our spending for September, keep an eye on our Instagram page!

Worth The Money ✅

Now that summer’s officially over (if you’ve been avoiding that fact, we’re sorry!), we’ve been reflecting on all of the fun things we were able to get up to that we feel was worth the money. 

We really like spending as much time as possible in the summer being out and about in our local neighbourhood, and trying new things - so, we thought we’d share what we got up to this summer! 

Here’s a list of some of our highlights that were worth the money from the past few months, and how much they cost - 

• Playing pickleball at a fun indoor / outdoor location - $67.80/hour for x1 court booking

• Going to multiple WNBA games (our local team = the Toronto Tempo) - ~$80/ticket, per game (we bought a x10 game pack for both of us!)

• Checking out a few musicals at our local theatre (Hell’s Kitchen, Water For Elephants) - as low as $59/ticket

• Watching local outdoor music shows at various parks around the city - $0 (aka free!)  

• Enjoying outdoor concerts at our local amphitheatre (Kehlani, The Fray) - ~$75/ticket (that’s what we paid!) 

• Trying multiple new restaurants IRL (some of our new favs in Toronto are Conejo Negro & Mayrik) - $? (it depends on what you order!) 

We had a great time getting outside and enjoying our city this summer, and we hope that this list gives you some fun ideas for either next summer, or at any time throughout the year!

Saving Money 101 🏦

Where should you save your money? 

You probably know that we’re all about investing your money… But, there are multiple different reasons for why it would make sense to save your money, instead. We’re talking emergency funds, saving for a specific short-term expense (like a vacation, a wedding, a gift), or potentially for a near future home purchase. 

When you do need to save some money, there’s one big question that you’ll probably be asking… Where should it be saved? 

There’s a few different options - 

1. A high interest savings account - Learn more 

2. A notice savings account - Learn more

3. A Guaranteed Investment Certificate (GIC) - Learn more  

All of the above options allow you to grow your money via interest, and all ensure that your money won’t go down in value. *Note that there are different timelines for how quickly you can access your money (HISA’s are anywhere from immediately to a few days; notice savings accounts have a range - like 10 days or 30 days; and GICs also have a range, depending on how long you chose to ‘lock in’ your money for). So, keep that in mind when exploring each option! 

If you’re looking for a new savings account, and you’re based in Canada - KOHO just launched a new free option called the ‘Core Account’. It has no fees or minimum balance requirements, it offers 2% interest on your savings, and 1% cash back if you do spend from the account. 

We have a link that will give you a $40 sign up bonus if you’re interested - https://www.koho.ca/40-offer/#referral=STEPHDEN4026

Did You Know? 🤔

Did you know… that if we stopped investing today, we could potentially retire by age 55 and spend $100,000 per year in retirement? 

Let’s back up for a second… There’s a retirement strategy called Coast FIRE, and here’s how it works. You save and invest as much as possible early on in life, until your portfolio hits a point where it can grow large enough to fund your future retirement through compound interest alone - aka you don’t need to contribute to your retirement savings ever again. 

Currently, we’ve contributed ~$375,000 to our investments (the current value is higher than that, but we’ve chosen to use our contributions for this exercise). 

If we let that amount grow for the next 25 years (so until we’re 55 years old), and assuming an inflation-adjusted (real) average annual return of 8%, it could turn into $2,568,178.20. 

From that, we could plan to take out $100,000 per year (that would be 4% of $2.5 million) and potentially never run out of money. 

Keep in mind that there’s nuance to this situation - There’s no guarantee that the average annual return we get on our investments over the next 25 years will be 8%... There’s no guarantee that a 4% withdrawal rate will work in the first few years that we’re retired… And the list goes on from there. 

But this exercise shows us that if our goal was to retire at age 55 and spend ~$100,000 per year in retirement, then we could likely stop contributing any money to our investments today and still hit that goal. 

The lesson here? The earlier that you prioritize investing in the stock market, the earlier you can stop contributing your own money and let compound interest do more of the work for you. 

Check out this video if you want to see this example in action.