Sunshine Blogger Award

“To the Academy, my co-workers, my fans, my mother, and God…  thank you!”

Okay, so maybe not such a BIG deal – big still a big deal nonetheless.  I’ve been nominated for the highly prized and overly abundant Sunshine Blogger Award.

What Exactly is the Sunshine Blogger Award?

The Sunshine Blogger Award is simply a community initiative to show appreciation for fellow bloggers.  There’s no actual physical trophy or award, but it does bestow upon you some positivity and lets you spread it to others.  This award also provides an opportunity for some  interaction and insights with your fellow writers and content creators.  Hopefully you learn something new and interesting about me.

Sunshine Blogger Award Rules

Who Nominated Me?

I’d like to thank my friend Chrissy over at EatSleepBreathFI for including me and nominating me in her Sunshine Blogger Award post.

If you don’t follow Chrissy, you should.  Her blog gives readers some insight into how you can aim for early retirement, without having to deprive yourself, all while living in an expensive city!  Definitely one of my favourite reads, as I feel we have a lot in common with our personal finance journeys, and are likely at similar stages.

Chrissy also co-hosts a podcast and ExploreFI Canada – go check it out.

My Sunshine Blogger Award Answers:

1) What’s your number one tip for someone just starting out on their financial journey?

It’s pretty simple, whether your goal is to retire early or just get out of debt.  Spend less than you earn. Maximize your savings.  Minimize your expenses.   And the number one tip – BE PATIENT.

Regardless of your age, patience and consistency are key factors to improving your finances.  Saving can be a slow journey initially, but if you keep at it and stay consistent, things will begin to snowball.  This is a long game, life throws us surprises, but patience is always rewarded eventually.

2) If you could start your financial journey over, what would you do differently?

I feel like I started my savings journey early but wasn’t focused enough on the end-goal and perhaps faltered along the way by making some poor purchases, buying depreciating assets and unnecessary toys.    We all make these money mistakes, purchasing something we really shouldn’t or waiting too long to invest our money.

While this is true for most people, I believe some of these mistakes are necessary to make on your own, in order to grow as an individual.  If I think about it honestly, if I could give my 20-year-old self advice today, I probably wouldn’t have listened or acted on it anyway.

3) If you have a partner (or if not, a close friend or family member) what’s one way they’ve inspired you to do better with your finances?

I handle all of the finances in our household, but at the same time my wife is a hard worker and earns more than me!

She inspires me to work just as hard, so I feel as if I’m contributing equally, whether that is a monetary contribution or otherwise.

4) Name one area in your financial life that you’d like to improve on.

Simplifying things and not focusing so much on minor details.  Sometimes I need to take a step back and not concern myself with every mundane financial detail, or counting every nickel entering or exiting the bank account.

When budgeting or searching for savings, you can go to the extreme, to the point where the time exchange is not worth it and that time can be more valuable.  Some days I have to remind myself to relax and realize it’s not worth stressing over the fact we spent $2.99 on a box of crackers that I could have bought  for $1.44.  It’s not going to kill us in the grand scheme of things.

Simply summed up, don’t sweat the small stuff.

5) Can you share your top three money-saving apps?

I’m a terrible person to ask this question, as I usually default to the desktop computer for these types of  tasks.  It’s faster!

Flipp – Is one of my favourites, used for price matching groceries (and anything else for that matter).  It’s a great collection of flyers that lets you comparison shop on your phone or computer.

RedFlagDeals – I’m counting this since they do have an app, and the app can make things a lot easier to navigate when you’re mobile.  An awesome site for saving money, or possibly feeding your spending addiction in the  Hot Deals section.

CamelCamelCamel – Well, it’s not really an app, but there’s a browser extension that basically functions like one.  This beauty lets you check the price history of items sold on Amazon and can alert you to any price drops or when things hit a desired price level.

6) What’s your most unconventional money tip?

Don’t skimp on your home for the sole purpose of reaching Financial Independence early.  I see people advocating to buy a small house or affordable house to minimize the mortgage, taxes and all associated expenses.  This isn’t always necessarily the right move.

Now I’m not saying to go out and purchase more than you can afford – but don’t cheap out either.  Your home is where you live and will likely spend a lot of your free time.  There’s no shame in enjoying your living space, your neighbourhood and the surrounding amenities.  For most people their Financial Independence journey is going to take a decade or more – you certainly don’t want to be regretting where you live the entire time, just to reach the goal sooner.  And once you do, you’ll likely be spending even more time there!

7) Other than blogging about money, what do you most enjoy doing in your free time?

I enjoy the outdoors and hiking with my family and our dog.  If we can weave that into a road trip and vacation somewhere, then even better!  I also love playing hockey, but the organized stuff is on hold for me with COVID still around, unfortunately.

8) Tell us something about yourself that would surprise your readers. (It can be anything—it doesn’t have to be money-related!)

My first attempt at blogging was back in 1999, when Amazon was still a young pup and Netflix movies were delivered via US postal service, not your Wi-Fi connection.  I got booted off my web host for using too much bandwidth as Flash movies used to be a big thing and I enjoyed creating animated shorts.  One of my animated videos at the time received over half a million views!

9) What’s the most impactful eco-friendly (or eco-frugal) thing you do everyday?

We try to be as low consumption as possible with our energy, using LED lights, power bars for the computers to shut off monitors and speakers when not in use.  I think that stuff just comes from wanted to save money on hydro bills.  Composting all our food waste is probably a good one.  I hate doing it, the bins stink, the bags are expensive and always rip… but we do it anyway.

10) If you had one environmental wish for our planet, what would it be?

I’m not sure this is a wish, but I’d like to say we clearly just have too many humans inhabiting the planet at this point.  At the same time, who is anyone to tell another person they can’t procreate to their hearts content?  So I guess slower (or no) population growth would be a wish, the planet can only support so many of us.  Sometimes I wonder if COVID is natures way of telling us to back off.

11) Which blog post of yours do you absolutely love, but doesn’t get enough attention? Also: why do you love it?

Hmm, I don’t know if there’s anything I absolutely love above everything else.  I do have a piece on working from home with kids, that doesn’t really get much interest.  Likely because it’s long and there aren’t enough images.  This question has inspired me to give it a quick refresh to try and spruce it up a little.  Nobody likes a wall of text, so I present you, Superheroes and Liars – Real Truths on Working from Home with Young Kids.

My Sunshine Blogger Award nominees

Thanks again to Chrissy for the nomination and interesting questions, I had to get out my thinking cap!

And now for my 11 new nominees in the personal finance space, in no particular order:

1. GYM at Gen Y Money
2. Maria at Handful of Thoughts
3. Rob at PassiveCanadianIncome
4. Another Loonie at AnotherLoonie
5. Dale Roberts at Cut the Crap Investing
6. Jessica Moorehouse at JessicaMoorhouse.com
7. Mr. CBB at CanadianBudgetBinder.com
8. Tom Drake at Maple Money
9. The Team at Nav.it
10. Barry Choi at MoneyWeHave
11. Ricky Zhang at Prince of Travel

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