# Kaleb's money diary



## kaleb0 (Apr 26, 2011)

I'll try to not be too long winded.

I'm 28 years old. I'm from Windsor, Ontario but moved to Montreal 2 years ago when my wife was offered a job here - not to mention Windsor has a horrible job market. I work as a Business Intelligence / Data Analyst for a telco. My particular job is writing software to automate alot of the day to day reporting that has been done manually. I'd rather be the automator than the automated, heh. Married, no kids + no plans for kids.

Should be noted, before we moved to Montreal, I worked made alot less money (35k), so just starting to really save and hoping to catch up!

*Income - Annual*
*Salary* -- $58,000
*Company stock plan* -- 40% match on first 6% of salary contribution, works out to about $2000/year of compensation in the form of shares.
minus taxes
*Bonus* -- to be conservative we'll call it $5k
*Freelance software/website development varies, some years it's been $0, others I've had a gig pay $4k - wont count it here.

*DC Pension match from company* -- ~$3500 _*not counted towards taxable_

*Spouses income*
*Salary* -- $36k
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Total Combined: $104,500


*Expenses*
*Taxes* -- $17,200 for me + $6700 for spouse according to http://incometax.calculatorscanada.ca/quebec (not sure if I did that correctly)
*Rent* -- $6860 per year
*Food/Dining/Snacks* -- $5050 per year between us.
*Clothes/electronics/general shopping* -- $2535 between us
*Donations/Charity* -- $1800
*Internet + Cell phones* -- $852 (employee plan for cell phones, $17/month after taxes)
*Transportation* -- $581 over the past 12 months (wife walks to work, I work from home about 4 days a week, during certain months I go into the office though and I'll buy a pass to take the subway to work). We live right down the street from the subway station, no car.
*Hydro* -- $700 per year
*Other travel* -- $2500 (we go back to Japan every _other _year to visit the in-laws, my wife is from there and I lived there before, annualized this expense and added in other train trips and such to visit friends/family in Ontario)
*Cat* -- $350
---------------------------------
Combined: $45,128

*Debts*
None 

*Assets*
*Cash:* $52,000 in HISA for me, $72,000 in HISA for her (we are very cash heavy, I know :cower, think the wife has more cash back in Japan in an account somewhere, but not sure about details.
*TFSA:* (td waterhouse brokerage): $35,000 for me (maxed out, returns have been so-so), $14,800 for her (she just opened this and put in $14k, she is very risk adverse).
*Company stock plan:* $9,500
*DC pension plan:* $9,800
-----------------------------------
*Combined: *
$183,300 excluding DC pension (I tend not to count it as it's not really usable money)
$193,100* including DC pension

*The plan for this diary*
Going to keep tabs on month over month earnings vs. spending.
*Plans*
None really, not sure if we want to stay in Montreal (we don't speak French, and taxes are crazy here), so not sure about buying a place, etc. My wife's job is here but I can work from pretty much anywhere in the country. We'd probably move if my wife lost/left her job.

*Goals* - increase earnings, looking to eventually move to Senior Business Analyst role, continue to improve my skillset, learning JavaScript+jQuery+PHP+T-SQL or PL/SQL and perhaps Python or Ruby on Rails so I can build even more agile reporting platforms at work.
I have no formal education - all self taught for my current job, learned C# and VB when I was 14 years old, I started off in the front line call centre of my current company, managed to impress the right people at work by building some useful tools and automating some of my manager's reporting tasks. My current boss has said if I wanted to pursue any formal training he would get me financial support.


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## RBull (Jan 20, 2013)

I read that you're doing very well with your net worth and career progression. You're also extremely frugal. 

Good luck with setting up some financial life goals and reporting in.


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## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

kaleb0 said:


> I have no formal education - all self taught for my current job, learned C# and VB when I was 14 years old, I started off in the front line call centre of my current company, managed to impress the right people at work by building some useful tools and automating some of my manager's reporting tasks. *My current boss has said if I wanted to pursue any formal training he would get me financial support*.



there you go, it's the million dollar financial bonus. Find out which is the most prestigious university offering degrees in your field & work it up. Your CV will glow!

trivial comments:

- you might consider learning french while you're here, you'd be a tri-lingual family at the very least & other languages are excellent assets on the CV?

- an RRSP to lower taxes might be a good idea?

- the amount budgeted for food & dining is too low for montreal, fabled gastronomic home of la bonne bouffe. Perhaps you could consider forcing yourselves - my sympathies, i know how painful this is going to be - out for an insanely extravagant celebratory dinner every 2nd month? meanwhile adding a few things like butter, cream, truffles, lobster, steak, unbelievably fresh organic vegetables from Lufa farms & champagne to the home kitchen?


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## Nemo2 (Mar 1, 2012)

Very impressive...keep it up! :encouragement:

(I, too, am basically self taught......but, unlike you, I don't know anything. :wink: )


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## gladaki (Feb 23, 2014)

How come such a low rent ?


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