Blog Posts
Let’s Go Exploring! Melbourne, Australia: Coffee and Sporting Capital of the World
My first thought going from the airport to our HomeExchange in Melbourne, was “are we in Toronto?!” My second thought was “did we just fly 22 hours only to end up back in Canada?” Approaching downtown gave me an odd sense of déjà vu, even though we were clearly on the opposite side of the road and as geographically far away from North America as humanly possible. Something about the road signs and the concrete jungle in the distance felt oddly familiar. That feeling, however, disappeared as soon as we were inside the city centre. Unlike the North American car-obsessed […]
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 […]
Reader Case: To Worldschool or Not to Worldschool?
Remember Worldschooling? The thing that was seen as alternative education for weirdos before the pandemic? Well, that has changed ever since schools were forced to close and parents realized for the first time how much worse the quality of education has gotten and all the safety issues that come with it. In fact, Worldschooling has exploded so much in popularity since 2020 that the US Census Bureau reported the number of homeschooling doubled in just one school year. And not only that, diversity in home schoolers has gone up, with respondents who identified as Black or African American increasing from […]
Student Loan Repayments Are Back…But Help is on the way!
In May, the world watched in horror once again as the US once hit its debt ceiling, and the bitter infighting between Congressional Democrats and Republicans threatened to derail the world economy. Democrats once again wanted the debt ceiling to be raised without conditions, while Republicans wanted massive spending cuts, and were willing to risk a default to get it. Fortunately, in the end cooler heads prevailed and a deal was reached that allowed the government to continue to pay their debts without going into default, and everyone promptly forgot about it. Until…now. After three years of relief, the U.S. […]
What Netflix’s Beef Taught Me About Financial Independence
Have you ever been so angry you wanted to burn someone’s house down? If so, you’ll relate to the Netflix series “Beef”. Oh, and if you haven’t seen the show yet, SPOILER ALERT. You’ve been warned. Anyway, the show follows the story of 2 characters: Danny Cho, a struggling contractor, and rich bitch Amy Lau who’s about to sell her successful plant business for 10 million. They get into a road rage incident and try to dole out revenge on each other, competing to see who can hurt the other more until both their lives blow up. I thought this […]
