Author: Wanderer
Full Circle
This has been a very difficult few years. At the beginning of 2020, while we were travelling in Bali, I got a call from my mom that nobody ever wants to hear. My dad had gone to see a doctor to check out some dizziness that didn’t seem to go away, and an MRI scan had found the worst possible explanation there could be: a mass in my dad’s head. It was brain cancer. The diagnosis completely upended our lives. In an instant, our days of living nomadically and travelling the globe without a care in the world came crashing […]
Yield To Maturity Might Be Indicating a Bottom in the Bond Market
At the beginning of 2023, I moved the fixed income portion (25%) of our portfolio to a Preferred Share Index tracked by the BMO Laddered Preferred Share Index ETF (ZPR.TO), and this might have seemed like a puzzling move at the time given that ZPR’s been all over the place this year. All that criticism is valid, and for the record, I am not officially recommending everyone follow along with us. Remember, there are 2 phases of the FIRE journey: Accumulation (building your FIRE portfolio) and Withdrawal (living off your FIRE portfolio). We are in the 2nd category and care […]
Reader Case: Nomadic Superfans!
Today’s reader case comes from two self-professed superfans who are trying to pull off this awesome awesome nomadic lifestyle, so how can I say no to that? Hi Kristy and Bryce, My husband and I have both consumed your book (favorite personal finance book btw) and your blog. We’ve had the dream to quit our jobs and travel the world as nomads for years, so when we found your book, it spoke to us as a blueprint to success. We love your approach to FIRE, you guys are badass. We’ve made some serious and honestly kind of tough changes to […]
Canada’s Inflation Hits Target, US Close Behind
As the summer months bring temperatures soaring, one thing that’s been moving in the opposite direction has been inflation. After massive government spending to fight COVID all around the world spiked inflation to double digits, central banks have been desperately spiking interest rates to bring inflation back down. The theory was that by increasing the cost of money, the amount of spending in the economy would go down, resulting in less demand and therefore lower prices. In practice, this meant repeatedly taking a baseball bat to anyone holding a variable (or in Canada’s case, even fixed-rate) mortgage, spiking their monthly […]
The Mortgage Renewal Trap
The year was 2007. Steve Jobs unveiled a funny-looking little product named the iPhone and changed the world of smartphones forever. The final Harry Potter book, Deathly Hallows, was released to rave reviews. And whispers of something bad called a “sub-prime mortgage” was starting to grow into something that could no longer be ignored. Little did we know the freight train that was about to hit us. There were a lot of causes of the Great Financial Crisis, but the main one was banks handing out mortgages to people who had no business owning property. No income, no jobs, and […]
