ORIGIN STORY:
I have been thinking about writing a personal financial blog for a while now. At work I spend a large amount of my time training new employees, many of whom are fresh out of University. And in addition to teaching them about their new jobs and the industry they have joined, I include some financial basics. The basics that are far too often overlooked by our system of education.
As part of this process I constantly provide links to articles from newspapers, magazines and various blog sources. Each link needs a bit of an introduction for content to focus on, or bias of the author, or some alternatives or next steps. Since personal finance is, well, personal it isn’t a case of “one size fits all”.
It would be easier to direct them to a single source and allow them to either read tailor made content, or a selection of content to look at with both fundamentals as well as situational, or preferential, options for learning / pursuing.
Back in late September 2017 I was reading an article in The Globe and Mail <link> while eating lunch at my desk…and I started to literally laugh out loud. Duncan Hood had written a piece about his personal experience in home ownership, and the error in the advice he had been giving for years when it came to buying a home. Basically his advice had been the typical “Renting is cheaper than owning, so rent and invest the difference”. But the line that got me was this: “…but I now realize that real people, as opposed to soulless money robots, generally don’t invest the difference…”.
I save and invest the difference. I manage my finances manually for maximum mindfulness. I suppress my wants and focus on the balance between a fabulous life now and reaching Financial Freedom as quickly as possible. When it comes to personal finance I am definitely a Soulless Money Robot.