Last week, an article appeared on The Globe And Mail about an unfortunate case of an customer of Questrade who lost $70,000 after her trading accounts got hacked. In early January, Megan Tong lost around $70,000 after hackers logged into one of her self-directed investment accounts, cashed in all her holdings and briefly bought and sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of two Chinese stocks. But Ms. Tong’s discount brokerage, Questrade Financial Group Inc., has declined to reimburse her f...| Millennial Revolution
They say parenting lets you relive your childhood. Great, if you had an awesome one. Not so great if you didn’t. Mine nearly made me swear off having kids forever. It wasn’t just the yelling, the constant criticism, or the way love felt like a performance review I could never pass. It was that the one person who was supposed to love, care for, and protect me, instead kicked me when I was down. Some people remember how they healed from sickness when they were children, nestled in their m...| Millennial Revolution
The past 6 months have seen so many scary economic headlines that you just kind of get numb to it. Tariffs are going up! No wait, they’re paused! Now they’re back on again! But last Friday really took the cake. It started with (yet) another announcement of tariffs. Across-the-board tariffs of 10%-15% tariffs on all countries, plus a bunch of other random numbers that were made up targeting specific countries. India’s at 25%, Switzerland’s is at 39%, and Canada’s got jacked up to 35%...| Millennial Revolution
Photo by bady abbas on Unsplash They say parenting lets you relive your childhood. Great, if you had an awesome one. Not so great if you didn’t. Mine nearly made me swear off having kids fore…| Millennial Revolution
Photo by Kaptan Ravi Thakkar @ Wikipedia “May you always life in interesting times.” –Ancient Chinese Proverb To which I reply: Shut the Hell up, Ancient China! Oh, we live in interesting tim…| Millennial Revolution
Photo by Chang Duong on Unsplash “How do I get my family and friends onboard the FIRE train? We’ve had little success. Some friends are excited in the beginning but lose steam over time. Others are…| Millennial Revolution
An article from the Atlantic caught my eye recently, entitled “‘Success Addicts’ Choose Being Special Over Being Happy”. As a recovering “Success Addict” who quit her competitive engineering corpor…| Millennial Revolution
Photo by Jorge Ramírez on Unsplash Hope you’re all having a good summer and not drowning in sweat like we are. When we’re not out at community pools or chasing our toddler around at playgrounds, we…| Millennial Revolution
Hope you’re all having a good summer and not drowning in sweat like we are. When we’re not out at community pools or chasing our toddler around at playgrounds, we managed to find the time to look through our readers cases and this one jumped out at me. It’s about an American living in Merida, one of our favourite places in Mexico. If you’ve never been there, I highly recommend it as the people are so chill and laid back. Plus, it’s been rated not just the safest city in Mexico, but ...| Millennial Revolution
I thought the biggest economic news that would be coming out of the Trump administration this year was the trade war, but as usual, the Trump administration continues to surprise everyone! Trump has publicly attacked Powell over the past several days, calling the Fed chair “a major loser” whose “termination cannot come soon enough.” Trump goes after Federal Reserve’s Powell again, CNN.com “So what?” You might think. Trump’s going to fire someone. Trump fires people all the ti...| Millennial Revolution
Stop Working. Start Living.| Millennial Revolution
“How do I get my family and friends onboard the FIRE train? We’ve had little success. Some friends are excited in the beginning but lose steam over time. Others aren’t interest at all and think it’s deprivation. Some friends even lost touch with us because they think we’re no longer relatable.” I’ve heard these experiences from at least 3 different couples/families after retiring early and quitting their jobs. It’s understandable when you discover this magical formula to a lif...| Millennial Revolution
What time is it? It’s reader case time! Hi Kristy and Bryce Thank you for your awesome blog + investing course series! I’m also a big fan of your book (and a UWaterloo alumni living in Waterloo 🙂 Answers to your questions are below (gross/net income etc if this is important to answer my question) My partner and I are now mostly-FIRE and are harvesting the dividends in our non-registered accounts for our income stream (before, when we were CoastFIRE, we were reinvesting the divi...| Millennial Revolution
Posts about Kids written by FIRECracker and Wanderer| Millennial Revolution
Posts about Rent written by Wanderer and FIRECracker| Millennial Revolution
Posts about Invest written by FIRECracker and Wanderer| Millennial Revolution
An article from the Atlantic caught my eye recently, entitled “‘Success Addicts’ Choose Being Special Over Being Happy”. As a recovering “Success Addict” who quit her competitive engineering corporate job to retire 10 years ago, this article resonated with me deeply. What I realized after reaching FIRE is that it doesn’t solve all your problems...| Millennial Revolution
“May you always life in interesting times.” –Ancient Chinese Proverb To which I reply: Shut the Hell up, Ancient China! Oh, we live in interesting times alright. A little too interesting, some might say. I typically enjoy reading the news, sifting through the headlines of the day and figuring out what moves might affect the world economy and the FIRE community as a whole, versus the clickbait-y noise. Not this year, though. Nuh-uh. Now, whenever I open a news site, it’s with a feeling...| Millennial Revolution
A frequently asked questions from readers is “how do you save on groceries”? This surprises me because I thought it’s such a no brainer and boring topic that no one would want me to write about it. And in the past, when we had carefree lives where we could just jet off to South East Asia and feast on $2 noodle soups without every needing to cook again, grocery prices were not top of mind. But now with a hungry toddler whom we can no longer feed for free with breastmilk and not being abl...| Millennial Revolution
What time is it? It’s reader case time! Hello – I’ve read your book Quit Like a Millionaire, which provided a lot of very useful information. I’ve now found your blog and am finding it interesting reading through. Thank you for sharing all of this information. I’m wondering if you’d be interested in doing a reader case on saving to help your disabled child become financially independent. I’m a 48 year old single mom and my son has cerebral palsy. He’s very bright but has...| Millennial Revolution
It’s been another whirlwind week in the news, and I haven’t really been commenting on most of what the Trump administration has been doing because, quite frankly, I can’t keep track of all of it. Even limiting my attention to trade and finance related issues, tariff announcements that seem like a big deal just get walked back a few days later. Even last week’s supposedly bombshell revelation that a federal court ruled all the tariffs illegal, briefly sending stock market future soarin...| Millennial Revolution
“Of all the bloggers and podcasts I’ve read and listened to, I never heard anything mentioned about CCB or Canadian Child Benefit. I would love it if you write a blog about this so that every…| Millennial Revolution
Photo is public domain, courtesy of RawPixel.com Today’s reader case comes from a reader contemplating a move abroad and is wondering how this might speed up their journey to FIRE. Let’s find out! …| Millennial Revolution
Now that Little Matchstick is more than a year old, other parents and our family members have started asking, “are you putting him in daycare?” When it comes to raising kids, everyone and their dis…| Millennial Revolution
“You’re only renting because you don’t have kids.” “Your lifestyle doesn’t work for families.” “You’ll change your tune when you have a baby.” We’ve been hearing variations of the…| Millennial Revolution
The US flag and Canadian flag. Original public domain image from Flickr A few weeks ago, we did an example of how our portfolio is taxed after retirement, and showed that by constructing a portfoli…| Millennial Revolution
The US Stock market has been so volatile lately, it’s like a toddler on Krispy Kreme’s. Screaming one minute, giggling the next, and nothing anyone says can get it to calm down. This is why we don’…| Millennial Revolution
Posts about Build written by Wanderer and FIRECracker| Millennial Revolution
What a start to the new year this has been, and it’s only fricking February! While the US news has been bombarded with so much crazy crap that I can’t even keep up with it anymore, the news in Canada has been dominated by one topic: The threat of a US-Canada trade war. Trump will impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico for no good reason. The Dumbest Trade War in History, WSJ.com While the imposition of tariffs have been put on pause until March, the looming threat of a trade war and the ...| Millennial Revolution
It’s been a while so it’s time for another reader case! This one caught my eye immediately because ever since I became a mom I developed an endless admiration for single parents. Some days I can ba…| Millennial Revolution
Photo by Zooey @ Flickr After a brief reprieve following the inauguration where it looked like President Trump may have been open to not starting a trade war, it looks like tariffs are back on the …| Millennial Revolution
Now that we have a kid, naturally the next step is to buy a house, right? I mean, that’s what people tell us, anyway. Of all our friends and family members, the number of parents we know who chose to rent are next to nil. This is because not only is owning viewed by North Americans as the ultimate status symbol, renting carries a stigma. I’ve heard the phrase “renting is throwing your money away” and “home ownership is the key to wealth” so many times I can no longer roll my eyes ...| Millennial Revolution
Life is weird sometimes. We spend the first half of our lives trying not to get pregnant, and the 2nd half trying to get pregnant. And that’s how I found myself injecting strange chemicals into my belly at 7am in the public bathroom of my fertility clinic, with seconds to spare before my one-hour window ran out. Why they had to schedule my doctor’s appointment within an hour of the exact time I needed to administer the meds was beyond me. After feeling the biting sting of the meds as I pu...| Millennial Revolution
Now that we have an infant son, we no longer have the time to spend hours on the phone with Airbnb support, live in dangerous “ghost hotels” disguised as homes, or risk getting cancelled on last minute. Unfortunately, relying on hotels for long term stays wouldn’t work for us since we need a kitchen and laundry more than ever. Luckily (or unluckily), since we’ve had to get a long-term rental to stay around and help take care of my father-in-law over the past few years, we discovered a...| Millennial Revolution
How Are Investments Taxed In Retirement?| Millennial Revolution
We’ve all collectively been through a rough few years. After a brutal global pandemic and stock market crash, followed by years of inflation and the subsequent rise in interest rates, you can be forgiven for feeling kind of shitty about the state of your finances. The rising cost of living has affected everyone, and on top of that there’s now a housing crisis to deal with too! While Millennials were seen as whiny and entitled, Gen Z has been described as “financially hopeless,” and ha...| Millennial Revolution
You asked; we delivered. Welcome to the Millennial Revolution Investment Workshop, a step-by-step guide to teach you how to invest from the ground up! How does it work? Right here in this space, we will be running a year-long workshop, using REAL money, in the REAL stock market, to show you exactly how to build your own portfolio of low-cost index ETFs, just like ours. And we will be there, every step of the way, to help you out and answer your questions. And the cost for all this?….FREE!!...| Millennial Revolution
Hey, remember travelling? Yeah, I sure do. As the world continues to drop COVID-related restrictions for travellers, tourist operators have reported a surge in bookings. Clearly, the world misses international travel as much as we do, and while it may still take some time for the international tourism sector to recover, I’m more than happy to contribute to that recovery. Accessing Money Abroad Used To Suck When FIRECracker and I took our first trip together to the Caribbean waaaay back in 2...| Millennial Revolution
TV show guest: “Back in my day, we didn’t have video games. The only toys we had were chalk that we used to draw on a sidewalk” Eric (*incredulous*): “You had chalk?” Me (*even more incredulous*): “You had a SIDEWALK?” I never expected to find my country bumpkin doppelganger in Miami, but that’s exactly what happened when I met my Airbnb host several years ago. A flight attendant who grew up in southern Kentucky, Eric had a surprisingly similar childhood to mine, despite being...| Millennial Revolution
Hi! I’m FIRECracker, a computer engineer/children’s author, and I used to live in one of the most expensive cities in Canada. Like my fellow Millennials, I was desperate to make my parents proud…| Millennial Revolution
What time is it? It’s reader case time! This reader case caught my eye because this international family decided to say no to the conventional North American 9-5 lifestyle by starting their own business and moving away from the US and to an island in the Pacific! They are also at a major turning point in their FIRE journey (something we’ve had experience with). So, without further ado, let’s get to it! /*********************************************************************************/ H...| Millennial Revolution
Last week, stock markets looked like they were on the edge of teetering over the abyss, as stocks plunged in multiple stock exchanges around the world. The Japanese Nikkei 225 index tanked more than 12% on Monday, marking its worst performance since 1987. The S&P 500 sank more than 3% and shed $1.3 trillion in value, notching its worst day since the 2022 bear market. The Dow lost 1,000 points that same day, and the Nasdaq Composite ventured further into correction territory. All three major i...| Millennial Revolution
After being retired for 10 years and preaching about FIRE, I’ve learned somethings about why certain people are more resistant to FIRE than others, but overall, it’s still a mystery. In fact, even though we get daily e-mails from readers thanking us for helping them get to FI, most of our family and friends are surprisingly not interested at all. I thought this might have something to do with...| Millennial Revolution
We love doing reader cases on this blog, as that’s kind of our way of giving back to the FIRE community that has been so kind to us over the years. Most of the time, we don’t really have any idea whether our analysis has any actual impact. This isn’t one of those times. Hi Kristy and Bryce, It’s been a little more than 5 years since my husband wrote in with our story that you took on as a case study. I wanted to give you a happy update. I mean, who doesn’t like to hear “Hey, I...| Millennial Revolution
Hi FIRECracker and Wanderer (and Little Matchstick), I could also title this, “I think I’m mathing my shit wrong.” I’ve never been a Mathlete and always like to use the excuse that I was an art student and the reason we’re “starving artists” is because they don’t teach us how to do math. I know that’s just an excuse but I really flounder around in anything having to do with arithmetic. To be honest, I spent the first part of my working life oblivious to the FIRE possibility....| Millennial Revolution
Every time I think this decade can’t get any crazier, I keep getting proved wrong. 2024 was never going to be a walk in the park, but holy shit! By now you’ve all heard that former President Trump narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by some nutjob at a rally in Pennsylvania. The investigation is ongoing, with updates seemingly every few hours revealing new details about the shooter, but regardless of how that goes, we’ve all just witnessed a pivotal moment in American political hi...| Millennial Revolution
I never thought raising a kid is like investing in the stock market…until I had a kid. Someone once described parenting to me as “winning the lottery while losing a leg”, and I didn’t quite get it but now I know they were trying to convey the emotional rollercoaster ride of having a kid. Compared to being childfree, the emotional highs are breathtakingly higher, but the lows are also devastatingly lower. Just like investing in the stock market, which is also an emotional rollercoaster...| Millennial Revolution
