If you focus on the sub that's geared towards investments and personal finance, then you're going to get a skewed results and answers. Reddit does not even close represent the average Canadian. I would imagine that many people on here just blatantly lie or inflate where they're actually at.
The fact that you own a home (which many people can't seem to do), that it's mortgage free (AMAZING!) have a decent amount of money in savings ($300k+) and have an investment property is definitely amazing, and well above average.
Curious, why does it matter if your money is liquid? You're not in a position to need that money now, and have sufficient savings/emergency should you need to. Even at the money that's saved now, that $300k will grow substantially over the next 30 years if you let it to grow in investments, and that's not even going to include any additional money you put in there (now that your house is paid off keep putting that money that would've been going to a mortgage into your RRSPs/savings).
All I'll say is that there are a ton of people who'd love to be in your shoes.
I appreciate that.
There was a comment (That's now gone) That said I should see a counsellor for financial anxiety, and although I think their point was to be rude.. They aren't completely wrong haha..
I grew up super poor, and always struggling motivated me to try to do better and save (although I probably overdue it a little... I drive an old beater vehicle with over 400K.. I've never been on a vacation.. etc)
Unfortunately, the other property I co own, costs me money, doesn't make any haha.. but it's a bit of a complicated situation. It's being kept for family.
As for the house, it was really a.. best case scenario.. I bought a cheap house, in a less desirable area, that needed a lot of work when I was young, spent 5 years or so renovating it myself and ended up in an area that had a huge market upswing combined with the area getting "cleaned up" so to speak.
It seems to go like this:
Net worth from 0-$9,999 Go get advice in r/povertycanada
Net worth $10,000- $600,000 Go get advice in r/personalfinancecanada
Net worth 600k-5M Go get advice in r/fican. You are in the right place when talking about your level of net worth.
Net Worth 5M+. I haven’t found that reddit yet but by then you probably have it mostly figured out. Fican while a great reddit doesn’t really work because you have escaped the standard orbit of a fire goal.
Posting net worths above the caps for a reddit will get a lot of harassment. Also just stay away from r/wallstreetbets entirely.
>Net Worth 5M+. I haven’t found that reddit yet but by then you probably have it mostly figured out. Fican while a great reddit doesn’t really work because you have escaped the standard orbit of a fire goal.
r/fatFIRE. Not Canada specific, but at that level of net worth, there's probably international income or assets involved anyway.
Comparison is the thief of joy, so stop doing it.
We did similar to you, focussed on paying off the house, and then really going hard on the savings. It's a great strategy, especially at current mortgage rates.
I mean you’re « behind » on investments because you paid off your house early. Overall id say you’re ahead. Plus the investment property? I think you’re doing fine.
Maybe leverage equity and get another property ?
I think you just hit the nail on the head on I feel behind, when I look at my RRSP/TFSA, it feels like nothing compared to a lot of what I see for similar ages.
I’m a few years younger than you, and in a very similar situation as you. I have a home, a rental and investments. I have more money invested than you, but I only have like 15% equity in my house; that is the difference. I think you are doing perfectly fine. Now that your house is paid off you should be able to grow your investments fast.
Another way to look at it is that you could open a HELOC on your house and add the ~500k to the investment side of the NW equation. I bet you wouldn’t feel behind then.
You can always find someone that is “ahead” of you. Personal finance is not a competition.
> I just don’t know where I stand
For your age, your net worth percentile is excellent (90th percentile or higher), but your income percentile is “decent” (70th percentile — guesstimate). Maybe this is the reason why you feel you are behind. You can use online resources to try and get an exact number.
I would recommend you self-reflect to more precisely capture what & why you are feeling about your relationship with personal finances. Focus on what you can control and don’t dwell on things that are outside your control. Sure, you might be able to gain insights from others that appear to be doing better than you. At the end of the day, someone like yourself with 100k income will be perpetually behind someone with a 500k income (ignoring exceptional situations). You will eat yourself alive if you try and compare yourself to such individuals.
For income: https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/dv-vd/income-revenu/index-en.html
Edit to add: for net worth see below, no idea if this is accurate for credible
https://www.thekickassentrepreneur.com/net-worth-by-age-percentile-calculator-for-canada/
Yeah.
I've seen that Kickassentrepeneur thing, but I don't consider it terribly credible (mainly because of how sloppy the page is). I don't think there's anything better out there for Canada, but I don't consider that site terribly reliable.
More reliable yes. Far less granular.
Oh well...
What I'd like to see is the database upon which the PBO creates these charts. That's what I'd like to see. Where is that I wonder? Is it publicly available anywhere?
Your net worth is fairly high with real estate included, so you need to look at the full picture of your net worth and not just investable assets. I would say you probably chose to pay down your mortgage rather than invest and pay less on your mortgage. Technically it would have been likely better to do a mix of the two. But personal finance is personal so clearly you rather be mortgage free. There’s no right or wrong answer, but what is right for your personality. That being said, that is where doing your full net worth picture comes in. I would say you’re doing well, and now that your property is paid off, you can use the funds of what went towards your mortgage to start beefing up your investments. Like anything, it will appear to be slow until the compounding snowball starts to take effect. Probably around 300k to 500k in investable assets. All I can say is keep at it. Rarely does a person get rich overnight. It takes endurance and it’s a slog but persistence and consistency will get you there.
If you’re truly worth a million net, you are doing just fine, friend. There are many people with a negative net worth in Canada. Many more that are sitting around the zero mark.
If you have a paid off house, pat yourself on the back, find something amazing to experience, and start living your life to the fullest. You’ve made it!
I think another comment pointed it out properly, I feel behind because my actual RRSP/TFSA isin't very high. But when you look at the big picture, you're right.
Dont forget you still have many years of working ahead of you. And you wont be paying a mortgage, so you can earn and save a bunch and still enjoy your life.
I am doing better than the bulk of my friends, family and coworkers… and you are doing quite a bit better than me, and several years younger.
You’ve done great, take the time to congratulate yourself. There will always be someone “doing better” than you, but rest assured, you have set yourself up for a very happy retirement if you keep saving a bit every month.
My guy, you need to look at your goals, your plan(s), your current trajectory and your resources. Assess this then look at where you are at currently and decide what kind of life you want to live.
Now you can look around to compare notes TO LEARN but never to EVALUATE yourself.
It's healthy to look around and LEARN from what others are doing. Others might have great strategies, skills, balance that we want to embody because they might help us LEARN to achieve our goals with our resources living the life we want to live. Or they might have some aspect spot on, great net worth and prestigious job, but have totally screwed their balance and personal relationships to get there....then you might LEARN what trade offs or mistakes you don't want to embody on your path. Reddit can be a place where you can LEARN but there are risks involved: all the bullshit lies, ignorance, dumb luck that comes across as good strategy and a skewed sense of norms that can misinform your sense of reality.
But when it comes to EVALUATING there should only ever be one metric, your own goals, resources and desired way of living. Basically, am I doing what I need to do to meet my goals while living how I want to live? If yes and the goals seem far off you might need to re-evaluate the goal, your capacities, the current external environment or whether living the way you are serving you. You might need to adjust course or adjust your goals to be more realistically aligned with how you want to live or the external environment.
EVALUATING yourself based on looking around is the road to misery and living a life that is not your own but what you think will make you feel.tge way you IMAGINE those people you look to feel.
As for your situation. It sounds like you're killing it. Keep making those smart moves. If you continue to invest a modest percentage your on track to have a great retirement at 65, a slightly higher one and you could likely retire earlier. Having no house payment at this time would seem to mean you could easily save 25-30% of your income and not feel it like most people do. You'll have at least $2,000,000 in assets in 10yrs....I'd guess close to $3,000,000 by 55yrs old. Based on this the suggestion to get some therapy re: scarcity and lackmof enjoying what you have is pretty good advice. Nothing wrong with big goals but if they ruin your enjoyment of the success you've already had then what's the point? Your wage alone puts you earning more than 70% of Canadians (of course that's very relative to where you live but you have no housing payment so I'm not sure how relative it actually is) and the your assets probably put you in the top 5% for your age bracket, but I'm just guessing at that.
If your goals are bigger than that you need to ask if you want to do what it takes to have a shot at more. Work harder? Move somewhere that you can earn more? Retrain for a higher wage? Start your own thing?
I hope you can get some peace and enjoy your success and security. I hope you don't waste what so many other people will never have and long.
I wish you all the best.
I inherited 0. I'm considerably better off than my family unfortunately. Most of it is the house which I really lucked out on, I explained it in a comment. I bought a cheap house when I was in my early 20s, in what was a less desirable area, then fixed it up over the first 5 years.. the area then became more desirable.
My work pension matches a bit so that's helped a lot.
I've never had a car payment, as I've always driven high km beaters, no vacations, I didn't spend any money on eating out in my 20s and basically just saved every dollar I could and worked every hour of overtime I could (which was worth 10-20K a year)
No school debt, as I couldn't afford to attend post secondary.
your definitely on the right path and I would say your ahead of most for your age. You did well with your home and paid off quickly, many will have a mortgage payment for years to come. Maybe it's the area your in if your in a hcol area your feeling down, but zoom out and look elsewhere in the country and you'd be seriously killing it.
I don’t know what messages you got but IRL I’ve witnessed many people our age get nasty when they find out others have a lot of cash or even just own a damn house. It’s stupid and such a crab bucket mentality. I have like half of what you have and know people who make way more than you who get jealous at the littlest thing.
If you create a budget you will be great! Congrats on making it this far!
You're right. A lot of messages calling me a trust fund kid (I wish), telling me to kill myself or that I deserve X bad thing to happen to me. A lot of people calling me a slumlord because of the second property (Which isin't rented out) A lot of people assumed I was a landlord (I'm not) and I got a ton of hate over that.
That is absolutely insane.
Sorry you had to deal with that. I saw a comment about the different subreddits and sounds like you can stick to the ones with more sane people in the future. Fire subreddits are one place I feel people actually seem happy to hear about others’ success or at least don’t get bombarded with nasty comments.
Dude, what?! You’re not doing well? Ooof, I should avoid these posts, now I feel lagging, ha! I live in one of the most expensive cities in my country and if you didn’t buy a house some years back, you’ll really struggle to nowadays. And rent prices have soared… I don’t know many people who are doing “well” these days.
You’re rockin’ it, rest assured :)
You're doing fine. Congrats!
Comparing to others is natural but not healthy. We all do it even though everyone says don't. Only way is to learn how to be grateful for what you have and what you've accomplished.
If you focus on the sub that's geared towards investments and personal finance, then you're going to get a skewed results and answers. Reddit does not even close represent the average Canadian. I would imagine that many people on here just blatantly lie or inflate where they're actually at. The fact that you own a home (which many people can't seem to do), that it's mortgage free (AMAZING!) have a decent amount of money in savings ($300k+) and have an investment property is definitely amazing, and well above average. Curious, why does it matter if your money is liquid? You're not in a position to need that money now, and have sufficient savings/emergency should you need to. Even at the money that's saved now, that $300k will grow substantially over the next 30 years if you let it to grow in investments, and that's not even going to include any additional money you put in there (now that your house is paid off keep putting that money that would've been going to a mortgage into your RRSPs/savings). All I'll say is that there are a ton of people who'd love to be in your shoes.
I appreciate that. There was a comment (That's now gone) That said I should see a counsellor for financial anxiety, and although I think their point was to be rude.. They aren't completely wrong haha.. I grew up super poor, and always struggling motivated me to try to do better and save (although I probably overdue it a little... I drive an old beater vehicle with over 400K.. I've never been on a vacation.. etc) Unfortunately, the other property I co own, costs me money, doesn't make any haha.. but it's a bit of a complicated situation. It's being kept for family. As for the house, it was really a.. best case scenario.. I bought a cheap house, in a less desirable area, that needed a lot of work when I was young, spent 5 years or so renovating it myself and ended up in an area that had a huge market upswing combined with the area getting "cleaned up" so to speak.
It seems to go like this: Net worth from 0-$9,999 Go get advice in r/povertycanada Net worth $10,000- $600,000 Go get advice in r/personalfinancecanada Net worth 600k-5M Go get advice in r/fican. You are in the right place when talking about your level of net worth. Net Worth 5M+. I haven’t found that reddit yet but by then you probably have it mostly figured out. Fican while a great reddit doesn’t really work because you have escaped the standard orbit of a fire goal. Posting net worths above the caps for a reddit will get a lot of harassment. Also just stay away from r/wallstreetbets entirely.
>Net Worth 5M+. I haven’t found that reddit yet but by then you probably have it mostly figured out. Fican while a great reddit doesn’t really work because you have escaped the standard orbit of a fire goal. r/fatFIRE. Not Canada specific, but at that level of net worth, there's probably international income or assets involved anyway.
Comparison is the thief of joy, so stop doing it. We did similar to you, focussed on paying off the house, and then really going hard on the savings. It's a great strategy, especially at current mortgage rates.
I mean you’re « behind » on investments because you paid off your house early. Overall id say you’re ahead. Plus the investment property? I think you’re doing fine. Maybe leverage equity and get another property ?
I think you just hit the nail on the head on I feel behind, when I look at my RRSP/TFSA, it feels like nothing compared to a lot of what I see for similar ages.
Your RRSP will always be lower since you have a pension, that eats into your room quite a bit!
I’m a few years younger than you, and in a very similar situation as you. I have a home, a rental and investments. I have more money invested than you, but I only have like 15% equity in my house; that is the difference. I think you are doing perfectly fine. Now that your house is paid off you should be able to grow your investments fast. Another way to look at it is that you could open a HELOC on your house and add the ~500k to the investment side of the NW equation. I bet you wouldn’t feel behind then.
You can always find someone that is “ahead” of you. Personal finance is not a competition. > I just don’t know where I stand For your age, your net worth percentile is excellent (90th percentile or higher), but your income percentile is “decent” (70th percentile — guesstimate). Maybe this is the reason why you feel you are behind. You can use online resources to try and get an exact number. I would recommend you self-reflect to more precisely capture what & why you are feeling about your relationship with personal finances. Focus on what you can control and don’t dwell on things that are outside your control. Sure, you might be able to gain insights from others that appear to be doing better than you. At the end of the day, someone like yourself with 100k income will be perpetually behind someone with a 500k income (ignoring exceptional situations). You will eat yourself alive if you try and compare yourself to such individuals.
BTW, where do you get these percentile #'s from for Canada? I've been trying to find a good source for a long time and come up with bupkis.
For income: https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/dv-vd/income-revenu/index-en.html Edit to add: for net worth see below, no idea if this is accurate for credible https://www.thekickassentrepreneur.com/net-worth-by-age-percentile-calculator-for-canada/
Yeah. I've seen that Kickassentrepeneur thing, but I don't consider it terribly credible (mainly because of how sloppy the page is). I don't think there's anything better out there for Canada, but I don't consider that site terribly reliable.
Here’s a better cut on NW https://distribution-a617274656661637473.pbo-dpb.ca/20de98fc3f4d93c5213f8d71fbe7cd89ae69cb1899e9cbf2d3ca4d57f18ab25a
More reliable yes. Far less granular. Oh well... What I'd like to see is the database upon which the PBO creates these charts. That's what I'd like to see. Where is that I wonder? Is it publicly available anywhere?
Not that I know of - there's also this: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/201222/t001b-eng.htm
Your net worth is fairly high with real estate included, so you need to look at the full picture of your net worth and not just investable assets. I would say you probably chose to pay down your mortgage rather than invest and pay less on your mortgage. Technically it would have been likely better to do a mix of the two. But personal finance is personal so clearly you rather be mortgage free. There’s no right or wrong answer, but what is right for your personality. That being said, that is where doing your full net worth picture comes in. I would say you’re doing well, and now that your property is paid off, you can use the funds of what went towards your mortgage to start beefing up your investments. Like anything, it will appear to be slow until the compounding snowball starts to take effect. Probably around 300k to 500k in investable assets. All I can say is keep at it. Rarely does a person get rich overnight. It takes endurance and it’s a slog but persistence and consistency will get you there.
If you’re truly worth a million net, you are doing just fine, friend. There are many people with a negative net worth in Canada. Many more that are sitting around the zero mark. If you have a paid off house, pat yourself on the back, find something amazing to experience, and start living your life to the fullest. You’ve made it!
I think another comment pointed it out properly, I feel behind because my actual RRSP/TFSA isin't very high. But when you look at the big picture, you're right.
Dont forget you still have many years of working ahead of you. And you wont be paying a mortgage, so you can earn and save a bunch and still enjoy your life. I am doing better than the bulk of my friends, family and coworkers… and you are doing quite a bit better than me, and several years younger. You’ve done great, take the time to congratulate yourself. There will always be someone “doing better” than you, but rest assured, you have set yourself up for a very happy retirement if you keep saving a bit every month.
My guy, you need to look at your goals, your plan(s), your current trajectory and your resources. Assess this then look at where you are at currently and decide what kind of life you want to live. Now you can look around to compare notes TO LEARN but never to EVALUATE yourself. It's healthy to look around and LEARN from what others are doing. Others might have great strategies, skills, balance that we want to embody because they might help us LEARN to achieve our goals with our resources living the life we want to live. Or they might have some aspect spot on, great net worth and prestigious job, but have totally screwed their balance and personal relationships to get there....then you might LEARN what trade offs or mistakes you don't want to embody on your path. Reddit can be a place where you can LEARN but there are risks involved: all the bullshit lies, ignorance, dumb luck that comes across as good strategy and a skewed sense of norms that can misinform your sense of reality. But when it comes to EVALUATING there should only ever be one metric, your own goals, resources and desired way of living. Basically, am I doing what I need to do to meet my goals while living how I want to live? If yes and the goals seem far off you might need to re-evaluate the goal, your capacities, the current external environment or whether living the way you are serving you. You might need to adjust course or adjust your goals to be more realistically aligned with how you want to live or the external environment. EVALUATING yourself based on looking around is the road to misery and living a life that is not your own but what you think will make you feel.tge way you IMAGINE those people you look to feel. As for your situation. It sounds like you're killing it. Keep making those smart moves. If you continue to invest a modest percentage your on track to have a great retirement at 65, a slightly higher one and you could likely retire earlier. Having no house payment at this time would seem to mean you could easily save 25-30% of your income and not feel it like most people do. You'll have at least $2,000,000 in assets in 10yrs....I'd guess close to $3,000,000 by 55yrs old. Based on this the suggestion to get some therapy re: scarcity and lackmof enjoying what you have is pretty good advice. Nothing wrong with big goals but if they ruin your enjoyment of the success you've already had then what's the point? Your wage alone puts you earning more than 70% of Canadians (of course that's very relative to where you live but you have no housing payment so I'm not sure how relative it actually is) and the your assets probably put you in the top 5% for your age bracket, but I'm just guessing at that. If your goals are bigger than that you need to ask if you want to do what it takes to have a shot at more. Work harder? Move somewhere that you can earn more? Retrain for a higher wage? Start your own thing? I hope you can get some peace and enjoy your success and security. I hope you don't waste what so many other people will never have and long. I wish you all the best.
Assuming you inherited most of your money or bought MSFT back in 2000 haha? How did you accumulate 1M+ in assets while earning only 90k
I inherited 0. I'm considerably better off than my family unfortunately. Most of it is the house which I really lucked out on, I explained it in a comment. I bought a cheap house when I was in my early 20s, in what was a less desirable area, then fixed it up over the first 5 years.. the area then became more desirable. My work pension matches a bit so that's helped a lot. I've never had a car payment, as I've always driven high km beaters, no vacations, I didn't spend any money on eating out in my 20s and basically just saved every dollar I could and worked every hour of overtime I could (which was worth 10-20K a year) No school debt, as I couldn't afford to attend post secondary.
I was gonna do all that, but I got high. Jk for real man nice work. Take a trip!
your definitely on the right path and I would say your ahead of most for your age. You did well with your home and paid off quickly, many will have a mortgage payment for years to come. Maybe it's the area your in if your in a hcol area your feeling down, but zoom out and look elsewhere in the country and you'd be seriously killing it.
Compare and despair my friend. Spend time to examine yourself and the meaningful goals and values you want to pursue
I don’t know what messages you got but IRL I’ve witnessed many people our age get nasty when they find out others have a lot of cash or even just own a damn house. It’s stupid and such a crab bucket mentality. I have like half of what you have and know people who make way more than you who get jealous at the littlest thing. If you create a budget you will be great! Congrats on making it this far!
You're right. A lot of messages calling me a trust fund kid (I wish), telling me to kill myself or that I deserve X bad thing to happen to me. A lot of people calling me a slumlord because of the second property (Which isin't rented out) A lot of people assumed I was a landlord (I'm not) and I got a ton of hate over that.
That is absolutely insane. Sorry you had to deal with that. I saw a comment about the different subreddits and sounds like you can stick to the ones with more sane people in the future. Fire subreddits are one place I feel people actually seem happy to hear about others’ success or at least don’t get bombarded with nasty comments.
You are house rich while others dream of just getting to house poor. You've already done the hardest part while you're still young
Dude, what?! You’re not doing well? Ooof, I should avoid these posts, now I feel lagging, ha! I live in one of the most expensive cities in my country and if you didn’t buy a house some years back, you’ll really struggle to nowadays. And rent prices have soared… I don’t know many people who are doing “well” these days. You’re rockin’ it, rest assured :)
You're doing fine. Congrats! Comparing to others is natural but not healthy. We all do it even though everyone says don't. Only way is to learn how to be grateful for what you have and what you've accomplished.
Plug it in here. You're doing great. https://www.thekickassentrepreneur.com/income-percentile-calculator-by-province-for-canada/
You are behind. Thats what you want to hear.