Picture perfect squares on Instagram
Highlight reel posts on Facebook
Meetups with friends who tell you everything is “going great in their lives”
And yet you silently struggle.
Struggle because you wonder how they’re able to afford all.the.things and how they have time for all.the.adventures.
While you stare at your bank account, figuring out what expense you can cut and even then still having more month than money.
> Living pay cheque to pay cheque.
> Not sure when you’ll be able to buy that family home you’ve been dreaming about.
> Worried how you’ll be able to save money for your Littles to go to school.
> aaand unsure whether you’d have any savings left at the end of the day for retirement?
I’m not sure if you can relate to this or know of family/friends in this situation, but this was something I was waaaay too embarrassed to share with anyone because everyone looked like they had their life together and I thought I was the ONLY ONE struggling with our family finances.
Then I got the courage to open up to some mommy friends I trusted and they started to share that they were in a similar situation…
– going on EI to stay home with their baby and making very little $
– debating whether to go back to work because the money they’d make would cost the same as childcare (so why pay someone else to care for the kids)
– partner working long hours away from home to make ends meet….
and I realized I wasn’t the only one struggling with this and I started looking for solutions and learning how to make money go further for families like mine trying to raise young children in the city.
What I learned is that finances isn’t a hard or scary topic. It’s actually really easy to understand when it’s taught in simple language (AND when people aren’t trying to SELL me a product without having my best interest in mind).
Using the concepts and strategies I learned, in a span of 9 months, I’ve been able to:
+ reduce the amount of taxes our family pays by allocating money in the right place for our situation
+ set up an education savings plan for our kiddo that is super flexible so she can use the money for whatever she chooses if she decides not to go to school
+ make sure all our family assets and liabilities are properly protected, not only to ensure our family wouldn’t be financially devastated if something heaven forbid were to happen to us, but also to create a legacy of wealth we can transfer to our kids
+ figured out exactly how much money we’ll need when we want to retire and implemented a plan that will get us there so we weren’t just winging it anymore.
+ aaaaand I’ve even helped some friends get out of debt. Debt that would have taken them YEEEEEEARS to pay off
It baffles me that I grew up in the Canadian education system and was never taught the basics of the money game. I even worked at one of the big 5 banks before entering this profession of parenting and the bank NEVER taught me any of this financial knowledge.
So in addition to all the work I do around positive parenting and fostering social and emotional literacy, my hope is to also be a resource to help foster financial literacy within your family.
Because I believe we all deserve to know all of the options available to us and the pros and cons of each so WE can make an educated decision about what’s a good fit for our families. Things I wish we knew yeeeears ago so we could have stressed less. Habits that we can also pass on to our kiddos, as they develop responsibility with money.
If you’re curious about what we did to change our family’s financial situation or have been putting off looking at your family’s finances because it’s overwhelming and confusing, let me help break it down for you.
Shoot me an email below and I’d love to share the basic financial concepts and strategies that has changed the future for our family, and has offered us the peace of mind we had been desperately searching for.
