~A 20 year old's journey out of the rat race~

[humble_pie]

everything sounds good. You're certainly not a noob, you have talent. Also never mind the accounts are still small, they're being built on a strong foundation.

just one little thing. I'm not sure your ex-rent $400 is enough spending money for Fun. Stuff like girls, nice dinners out occasionally instead of fast food, parties, girls, weekend trips out of town now & then, xmas presents, girls, travel, really expensive leather boots ...

perhaps you could add $100-150 to your spending budget even though it would mean cutting the savings budget by the same amount. Put it down to tuition at the School of Life. The memories you will end up with will be worth far more than the 1200 per annum lost from savings.

[SkyFall]

Wow! I just finished reading your thread...very inspiring! I'm 21 living in Quebec, I'm a little bit like you. I really like what you are doing. Is it crazy the way we view things (in my case) in the financial world, we keep learning stuff just to realize we know so little hheheheh.

I'm trying to learn stuff by myself too, reading, researching, etc... pulling late night reading at financial stuff, learning things...times goes by so fast I'm starting uni too it's crazy how your story is inspiring me! even tho sometime it's hard because around me people aren't interested in finance...anyways

keep your good job gonna follow your work!

[cannadian]

everything sounds good. You're certainly not a noob, you have talent. Also never mind the accounts are still small, they're being built on a strong foundation.

just one little thing. I'm not sure your ex-rent $400 is enough spending money for Fun. Stuff like girls, nice dinners out occasionally instead of fast food, parties, girls, weekend trips out of town now & then, xmas presents, girls, travel, really expensive leather boots ...

perhaps you could add $100-150 to your spending budget even though it would mean cutting the savings budget by the same amount. Put it down to tuition at the School of Life. The memories you will end up with will be worth far more than the 1200 per annum lost from savings.

Thanks humble, that's a good suggestion - and I did cut the savings down slightly, but to be honest I don't really spend that much to have fun anyways. I'm a musician and the funnest thing in the world for me to do is have a few beers and play/write music with my band on weekends, and that costs less than 10 bucks

Wow! I just finished reading your thread...very inspiring! I'm 21 living in Quebec, I'm a little bit like you. I really like what you are doing. Is it crazy the way we view things (in my case) in the financial world, we keep learning stuff just to realize we know so little hheheheh.

I'm trying to learn stuff by myself too, reading, researching, etc... pulling late night reading at financial stuff, learning things...times goes by so fast I'm starting uni too it's crazy how your story is inspiring me! even tho sometime it's hard because around me people aren't interested in finance...anyways

keep your good job gonna follow your work!

Good stuff sky, it's always refreshing seeing younger people who "get it" financially.. Time is on our side, especially when it comes to compounding gains!

[cannadian]

Hey everyone, I haven't been posting much, super busy with work and school and I currently have strep throat/just finished midterms hah.

I'm pretty pleased with my developments so far though, I ended up purchasing another 100 ounces of silver for $28.50 (physical) and then sold all of it when silver hit $34.

I made another realization - the interest rates I'm getting on $1000 in an every day savings account (need 5k for a HISA) is 20 cents a month. I feel as though if I keep the rainy day money in my TFSA it will still be accessible to me in an emergency, but I will also be able to deploy it at any time in the market if there's another 08/09 or something of the sort... Basically the opportunity cost of not having immediate access to invest that money is far greater than a measly 20 cents a month.

So I moved almost all the money from my silver sale, as well as cash I had been saving from working so much into my TFSA (I was working 30-35 hours a week for most of sept, but recently cut back to 24 hours as I couldn't really handle that much).

I increased my TFSA contribution room to $18,000 - I'm 2k away from maxing it out, which I should be able to do before Christmas - so I'm pretty stoked about that!

I've made some additions to the portfolio, here's what it currently looks like:

1. TGL - 800 shares - $8.515 per share cost avg (bought 200 more shares at 11.22, it tanked down to 10 shortly after, oh well - I can't time the market, I'm in this for the long haul)
2. PEY - 175 shares - $17.38 per share cost avg
3. BAC - 250 shares - $7.65 per share cost avg
4. FEZ - 65 shares - $27.00 per share cost avg
5. HUZ - 100 shares - $22.30 per share cost avg
6. Cash - $2292

Will soon be increasing the cash position to $4292 (within the next 2 months)...

Total Portfolio Value - $21,885

I basically just added a little bit to my tgl position, added some silver to the portfolio and some cash on hand in case of a big correction.

[My Own Advisor]

@cannadian - good luck! Take some time to check out my site and drop me a line. Starting off investing in your 20s like you are, you definitely have a chance to quit the rat race in <20 years.

Be mindful of what humble said....life tends to get in the way - which can be a great thing

[humble_pie]

may your tfsa exceed your age in 2012

it looks like that looming 2k contribution is going to clock it, as long as the market holds up.

[Argonaut]

A tip regarding silver. If you intend to trade it in a short period of time, stick to the paper markets. Less commission that way. If you have USD kicking around, the best avenue is with SLV. If not you can use your HUZ, but I'm not a fan of the low volume. Then of course there's options and futures for leverage, but not for the average guy. I would hoard physical metals indefinitely or at least for long periods.

[cannadian]

may your tfsa exceed your age in 2012

it looks like that looming 2k contribution is going to clock it, as long as the market holds up.

Cheers humble! It dawned on me the other day while riding the bus that despite the fact that the amount of money in the account is still exceedingly small compared to what would be needed to retire, it's starting to approach the size of a down payment - so I'm making some progress at least! It's starting to become a not-so-insignificant amount of money

@cannadian - good luck! Take some time to check out my site and drop me a line. Starting off investing in your 20s like you are, you definitely have a chance to quit the rat race in <20 years.

Be mindful of what humble said....life tends to get in the way - which can be a great thing

Thanks mate, sleek looking site you got there, you have a new follower

A tip regarding silver. If you intend to trade it in a short period of time, stick to the paper markets. Less commission that way. If you have USD kicking around, the best avenue is with SLV. If not you can use your HUZ, but I'm not a fan of the low volume. Then of course there's options and futures for leverage, but not for the average guy. I would hoard physical metals indefinitely or at least for long periods.

Hey, I actually didn't pay any commission on the physical silver as I bought at market prices off people instead of dealers and then sold at above market prices.

I understand that HUZ is lower volume than SLV, but with QE^infinity, and the possibility of the euro area stabilizing (a ton of money fled the euro and went to the usd for safety over the last few years), these 2 scenarios I believe could put substantial pressure on the USD, so I would rather be holding my silver ETF in CAD...

Or do I have the wrong idea here? If the USD drops faster than the CAD, would SLV's gains outpace HUZ's gains proportional to the divergence between the 2 currencies?

[cannadian]

Oh, and what I thought was strep throat... I got the test results back today... Turns out I have the dreaded mono

I have no idea how I managed to get it, but oh well. At least I get more time to study for this econ midterm haha. The last week was AWFUL, but I'm feeling much better now, though extremely fatigued all the time.

[Argonaut]

Yeah, theoretically HUZ is hedged to Canadian dollars but the ETF has not done a good job at all of tracking. In the last three years it has diverged from SLV to the tune of 34%. Compare this with the perfect lock-step performance of CGL and GLD. That's 34% totally lost in the void for no reason, this is inexcusable. I retract my earlier comment that one should buy SLV if they have $US to spare and HUZ otherwise; HUZ should not be bought under any circumstance. I had not looked at it this closely enough before, as the low volume turned me off right away.

Horizons really is the back-alley amateur of the ETF world.