We Sold All Of Our Single Stocks 🫢

Good morning, and welcome to May! This month really flew by for us, but we’re ready for the slower, warmer months that are just around the corner. 

Today we’re back with a new issue of Money Convos with Steph & Den - we have a few personal financial updates to share, and some money news you can use in the future. 

Here’s what’s up in this copy 🤑🗞

• We’ve sold all of our single stocks (or, almost all of them) 📈

• Exactly how much Steph’s saved on food in 2024 (so far)

• Come with us to ‘ring the bell’ at the stock exchange 🔔

• Flight delays just got a little less painful ✈️

Money Convo Of The Month

Why We Sold All Of Our Single Stocks

Yes, you read the title right… we’re selling all of our stocks, and don’t plan on investing in any single stocks moving forward (but don’t worry - we’re still investing!).

Over the past two years, we’ve been putting as much money as possible towards our investment portfolios - specifically low-cost, passive ETFs. 

Since the beginning of 2021, when we started gaining more control over our money (and investing by ourselves), we’d been investing in passive ETFs. We knew that they were an important part of a long-term portfolio, and wanted to ensure that they were the bulk of our investing strategy. 

But, we still invested in some single stocks on the side. Keep in mind that this was in 2021 - the stock market was up across the board, ‘everything’ was going up in value, and we were seeing a wave of people talking about - and investing in - stocks. 

We felt great about our plan, because we were putting the majority of our money into passive long-term investments, and then a small portion of it was dedicated to investing in individual ‘good companies’ that would ideally deliver a slightly higher return than we could expect from the passive ETFs. 

Then, not long after we started investing in these single stocks, we learned something very important - passive investing performs better than active investing 90% of the time. Statistically, you’re more likely to have a higher long-term return if you aim to match the overall market than if you attempt to beat it. 

Now, some people - even after learning that fact - might still want to invest in stocks along with their passive ETFs, which is an option. Personally, we want to be able to put as much money as possible towards our long-term goals, and we started to feel like taking away any portion of that money from our passive ETFs, would be more likely to have a negative impact on our long-term returns than a positive one. So, we’re now investing solely into low-cost, passive ETFs that track the market, and we’re removing the single stocks that we had originally invested in from our portfolios. 

We’re big proponents of getting started on your money journey now, and growing your knowledge and confidence over time. That’s what we’ve done, and we feel great about our decision and where we’re at with our investing game plan! 

If you want to hear more about this topic, check out our latest YouTube video here.

$0 UberEats Challenge - Steph’s Monthly Update

Month four of spending $0 on takeout = ✅

I had another successful month, spending $0 on delivery apps or takeout food in April! And we finally made a trip to Costco to stock up on some items - like meat and cleaning supplies (I typically include this in my grocery spending) - which should be a big win for future months. 

This month, I spent $383.70 on groceries - pretty much exactly the same as last month, which is $80+ above my goal - but, because of the Costco stock up, I expect to finally see this trend downwards in May. 

I was also under my restaurant budget for the month, spending $146.07 on pizza from one of our favourite spots in the city (Maker Pizza in Toronto) two times this month, and a few other low cost meals. On top of that, I hit my coffee shop budget of $50 this month. 

That means that I spent a total of $579.77 on food in April, which is lower than my total food spending for the past two months. 

We actually posted a recap video of how much I spent on food in total for the first three months of the year - check it out here if you’re interested.  

I can’t wait to (hopefully!) report back a total spend of only $500 next month!

Bucket List Moment: We ‘Opened’ The Stock Exchange

We did something really exciting last month - we got to ring the opening bell at the stock exchange! 👀

In case you didn’t know, we live in Toronto, and we were invited to visit the Toronto Stock Exchange - aka the TSX - and be a part of a bell ringing ceremony. Sometimes companies ‘ring the bell’ when they’re going public (meaning that they’re going to be listed on the stock exchange, so you can buy shares of the company), or when they’re becoming a member of the stock exchange. In this case, Moomoo (a global investing platform) was becoming an official member of the TSX, and we got to see the behind the scenes of the event, and be a part of the bell ringing process. 

(FYI - no one actually rang a bell, it was a big button that you pushed, instead! I guess ‘ring the bell’ still sounds better than ‘push the button’). 

It was a really fun experience, and it was interesting to see how modern and digital the TSX was - there were no traders running around, as everything happens mostly online. 

If you want to hear more about this, check out the video we made here.

Flying Might Become Less Of A Headache ✈️

We just got back from a quick trip to NYC (we’ll share more about why we were there next month!) and our flight was slightly delayed. Luckily, it was only about 30 minutes, but I’m sure most of us have experienced multi-hour delays that are definitely an inconvenience, to say the least. 

The good news, that just came out last week, is that airlines are now going to be required to provide automatic refunds for ‘significant delays’. This is specific to airlines within the United States that are flying either domestically or internationally. 

Here are the details - 

• Automatic cash refunds if your flight experiences a significant delay - aka if a departure or arrival time is different by 3 hours for domestic flights or six hours for international flights (also, if your departure or arrival is from a different airport, there are more connections, you’re downgraded to a lower class, or the plane is less accessible for a person with a disability). 

• An automatic refund means that the airlines have to issue the refund without requiring passengers to request them - they also must issue them within seven business days if the tickets were purchased with a credit card, or within twenty calendar days if purchased using another form of payment.

• If a checked bag isn’t delivered within 12 hours of a domestic flight arriving, or within 15-30 hours of an international flight arriving, passengers will be entitled to a full refund of their checked-bag fee - passengers will have to file a ‘mishandled baggage report’ (ie. this refund isn’t automatic). 

• Passengers will also be eligible for refunds if they pay for services including WiFi, seat selection, or in-flight entertainment and the airline doesn’t provide those services. 

• Airlines will be required to be more transparent with fees - including for checked and carry on bags, and changing or cancelling a reservation.

Keep in mind that these changes will come into effect within the next six months to one year, so we’ll keep an eye out on how they’re being implemented in the coming months.