It’s Our Podiversary | EFIC Turns One!

Money Mechanic
We’re starting this by singing the birthday song?

Chrissy
I’m horrible at singing! You do not want to hear me singing!

Money Mechanic
Okay, well, we’ll, we’ll skip the singing probably do everybody a favor, but it is Canada’s birthday. And is Explore FI Canada’s birthday.

Chrissy
Yay.

Money Mechanic
Yay! Blow out some candles. One candle.

Chrissy
One candle. We’re one year old, officially.

Money Mechanic
Yeah, it’s been an interesting year. So we’re just gonna drop a short episode here thanking all of our listeners and going through a few little things that we learned and things that have changed over the last year and where we’re gonna try and aim this podcast going forward so that we can be as useful and as educational to everybody as possible.

Chrissy
Yep, definitely. Yeah, it’s been a big year. A lot has changed and a lot has stayed the same but it’s it’s been a great year. It’s I’ve had a lot of fun recording this podcast with you and previously with Ryan. It’s it’s been a good year for sure.

Money Mechanic
You know, one of the things that I’m enjoying about the podcasting side of things, especially with both of you, and on the FI Garage is the collaboration. It’s great to have conversations with other people that, you know, whose lives are slightly different. And this whole thing is all about community and, and having some different opinions and voices makes such a big difference. It helps helps me on my journey.

Chrissy
Mm hmm. Definitely. I think that’s great. And I love getting feedback from our listeners too. And when they connect with another guest we’ve had or something that we said on the show, that is my favorite part of doing EFIC, for sure,

Money Mechanic
For sure. So that reminds me. So our first guest last year was T on FIRE. And I just came across because I try and keep up with a lot of the blog updates that are out there and she’s got a June 21 post that came out just a couple weeks ago about time travel. And she mentioned that she was listening to herself on Explore FI Canada, and some of the things that she said she was going to do and the things that she was successful at and some of the things that she needs to revisit. So was interesting. It was timely to see that come out. And I think, you know, we should probably talk about what we’ve learned for from a year and how our journeys changed. You want to start off with that?

Chrissy
Sure, let’s start with that. So the past year of podcasting, it’s been a huge learning curve for me. I was not expecting to become a podcaster, as soon as, as I did, but I’m glad you pulled me in. It’s worked out. I’m enjoying it. I’m a little less nervous now than I used to be. So I have progressed in that respect. So I just wanted to share some of the things that I feel like I’ve learned from this past year, just working on this podcast. So one of the things that I’ve learned is you don’t have to be perfect before you start a new project. And so I think that’s part of why I didn’t feel ready. When you first asked me to start a podcast. I felt like I don’t know anything about podcasting. I don’t know how to get started. And so if I’d let that stop me, I may still not have a podcast now. So I think it’s okay to jump in sometimes and just learn as you go.

Money Mechanic
Fail forward, right?

Money Mechanic
Exactly.

Money Mechanic
Yeah.

Chrissy
Exactly. And what about you?

Money Mechanic
Well, you know, it’s been, yeah, a year on this one, a little bit longer on FI Garage. And I’ve learned so much about editing and post production and the amount of background work that goes into producing content. And I’m not a fantastic writer. I did write a few blog posts, but I have a lot of respect for the bloggers out there that write huge articles. And when it comes to the podcasting, I think one day, I’d like to be able to outsource our editing and post production. But we’ll see, we’ll see what happens. And I realized, like, when we tried to go to a weekly release schedule, it was absolutely overwhelming. So yeah, just just learning how to use some of the software that’s available out there and, and all of our guests, everybody, I think sounds good when we’re all done and we all stumble along the way. So it’s just been a real learning process. And I like I enjoyed going through the edits, because I kind of get to listen to the episode again and get the flow. But yeah, it’s been a learning process getting better at editing as I go, I think.

Chrissy
Mm hmm. Now, that’s something I still don’t know anything about. Thank you for taking on that task completely. I still handle more of the background work, you know, working on the show notes and things like that. So I appreciate the work you do on the editing. I know it’s not an easy job.

Money Mechanic
Well, it’s a team effort because you do a lot of the background work organizing with guests and getting the show notes and you did such a fantastic job building the website. It looks beautiful. That’s all Chrissy’s work. I have, I have nothing to do the website. She did a great job on that. And you can tell that your skills as a graphic designer came in.

Chrissy
It does help. It definitely helps. It makes things easier for sure. So I was actually gonna move on to some things that I’ve learned about FI because of the podcast, but before we do since we’re on the actual podcast, technical stuff, do you want to talk a little bit more about how it’s It’s a little bit challenging when there’s a lot of people on the mic to make the conversation flow?

Money Mechanic
Yeah, I think, you know, we the idea of having the roundtable=type discussion, and Ryan did a great job, he had a few episodes where he had, I think it was like four or five people with a is super hard to organize because people are in all different time zones and have different, you know, responsibilities and time commitments. And then from a editing standpoint, and even the discussion standpoint, I mean, I think we’re all better at using online communication, whether it’s Zoom or FaceTime, or anything like that, and we’re better at it. But at the beginning, it was really, really difficult because people talk on top of each other and there’s interruptions. And I think moving forward, we’re gonna we’ll work towards that again. But yeah, having more than three people connected, and it was tough, and it’s tough to be a good interviewer. That’s what I learned.

Chrissy
Yeah, yeah. Ryan did a good job with that he, the meetups that he hosted. He was passing the mic to each person, and he did a great job bouncing it equally between everyone and it’s not easy.

Money Mechanic
No, no, definitely not. Yeah. So did you learn anything else before we move on?

Chrissy
No, I think there’s, there’s so much I’ve learned, but I’d bore you with the list I could read out, but it’s been overall fun. Like I’m happiest when I’m learning. So it’s it’s been a great year for that.

Money Mechanic
Well, I think else another one other thing is that just when you think you may have covered everything, you realize that there’s another author out there or there’s another content creator, or there’s just another story to be heard and shared.

Chrissy
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Money Mechanic
Nice. So how about your FI journey? How is that changed in the last year?

Chrissy
Yeah, so that has changed quite a bit in the last year because we have decided to slow down even more because my husband has spoken up a little more, said he would like he would like to spend more money on certain things like eating out, and he bought a classic Mustang. And so he would like to spend more money on that. So there were certain areas in our life that we identified that we want to spend more. And so we’d already made some choices before that, like, for instance, me being a stay-at-home-mom full time, that had slowed down our journey. But we decided in the last year to slow down even more, and so that has changed for me and speaking to Jessica from the Fioneers about Coast FI and semi retirement, I realize, you know, there’s nothing wrong with slowing down. There, there are so many benefits if you can really identify what you’re going for and why slowing down is the best choice for you sometimes

Money Mechanic
It’s interesting you mentioned that because that’s in my notes here for this episode, too, is how I’ve really sort of embraced that Coast FI mentality in the last sort of six months or so. And I think what I realized, and even a bit of the pandemic that we went through earlier this year’s made me realize that I do enjoy my job. I just want to do it on my own terms.

Chrissy
Yeah.

Money Mechanic
So that kind of going, yeah, I don’t really have any intentions to quit. I, I’d like to scale back. I’d like to have a little bit more autonomy. But yeah, I think the whole retire early, we never, you and I really never brought that up a ton. But I think we’re FI-focused. And I think the other thing too, I don’t know, you probably notice as well. We’re fairly similar in age. But I really started to see the compounding effect now, but we’ve been saving really aggressively and sort of, you know, I’d like to think we’re optimized but the accounts are all there and I’m a terrible money nerd because I look at them way too often. But you start to see the growth like visibly…

Chrissy
Oh yes.

Money Mechanic
… happening. Even though we went through a market downturn and somewhat of recovery. You can actually see the compounding working and I think that’s one of those things. That’s the you know, a lot of people say the first time hundred thousand’s the hardest to make. And I feel that I don’t know what the number is. But there’s sort of a tipping point where you’ve got things dialed in, it’s all automated. And then all of a sudden you’re like, Huh, I’m making more money when I sleep now than I ever did before. And that’s what compounding looks like. And, you know, I think that changes your journey to FI a little bit because we’ve talked about it before you kind of go through like the doldrums, right?

Chrissy
Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. And that’s something I realized this year too, that I can’t force it, you know, I it’s not going to happen any faster just because I want it to. I have to be patient. And so I’ve learned to just be patient and be with it and just be with the journey wherever I am. Even if it’s it’s tough sometimes to, when it feels like it’s not moving along, especially if the market stalls or drops or anything. But it also helps to be able to blog and podcast because that’s really distracted me take my mind off things.

Money Mechanic
Yeah, and I mean, at the end of the day, this whole FI journey is all about living your best life and, and being able to ultimately, hopefully be able to spend your time the way you choose.

Chrissy
Exactly.

Money Mechanic
So what about the future of Explore FI Canada? Where are we going?

Chrissy
Well, we were sad to see Ryan go. A year ago, there were three of us. And now there are two. So that’s, that’s a big change that’s happened. So in the future, we’re hoping to bring more of our friends of the show back on, hopefully, including Ryan, if he’s not too busy. We kind of like having that. And we also, of course, like new voices all the time, but it’s nice to have those recurring voices, I think because it it kind of feels like meeting up with old friends.

Money Mechanic
It does. It does. And it’s you know, the Canadian community is is just sort of magnitude smaller than all the people content creators in the US but it feels it feels nice in that way. It’s like you’re part of a smaller community where everybody kind of gets to know each other a little bit more and we’ve had so many fantastic guests on the show already. Even having some of them if they’re in should come back on and be like co-hosting. You know, we did that a little bit with the RESP episode and I thought it was great. Court was fantastic on that. And we’ve had Shaidah on the show. And yeah, it’s it’s kind of a work in progress for me. You know, the original Genesis, the original idea is this is to just to share everybody’s stories. You know, it doesn’t have to be us that that are sharing our story. I mean, we’re happy to but yeah, every anybody that wants to be on the show can reach out to us.

Chrissy
Yeah. And most of our last year was focused on Canadians and talking to Canadians, but we did have one non-Canadian guest and that was Jessica from the Fioneers. So we’re not against non-Canadians. We’d love to have more of them on if they have a great, great content to share. We’d love to share it with our listeners as well.

Money Mechanic
Yeah, well, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having you know, whether it’s international or Americans on the show, when the a lot of the philosophies and you know, life lessons things like that they’re the same. We don’t need to talk about the technicals of the different accounts between the countries and specific investments. But a lot of what this boils down to and the FI movement or the FIRE movement is our individual psychology and how we view money and how we view our investments. And that psychology side of it is really interesting. I think Phia over at Freedom 101, she writes some really good articles about that she digs into the psychology of, of money and investing and how we each view that and deal with it.

Chrissy
Mm hmm. Yeah, exactly. She writes a lot about that so her content’s great for that. And, you know, like I said, it’d be great to bring her back on or bring T on FIRE back on because Tanya was so great in her show. It’d be nice to catch up with her and see how she’s been doing in the last year.

Money Mechanic
I wish we had time to shout out to every single person we had on the show and but I think especially we need to say a big thank you to all the listeners because without you, we are just talking to ourselves on Zoom.

Chrissy
Exactly as we’re doing.

Money Mechanic
Yeah, yeah, so it has been good. It’s with the great outpouring of support and comments. And and we do love the comments, Chrissy and I have had a few long email chains back and forth with listeners. And it’s enjoyable because at the end, that’s one of the things I learned a lot because I have to go and do some more reading.

Chrissy
Mm hmm. Yeah. So keep keep the messages coming. We always love hearing from you, even if we’re slow to respond. We always read and we always do our best to reply as soon as we can. But be patient if sometimes it takes us a while to get back to you.

Money Mechanic
Yeah, we brought up a little bit earlier about the sort of live unedited versions that Ryan worked with a bit last year and just drop us a line if you think those were okay, if you don’t mind a little bit of a more raw, less polished episode, then then we can try those. It’s just depends how they come across and whether they’re, they’re valuable for the listeners.

Chrissy
Yeah. And also, let us know what you want to hear from us. We are always open to feedback. If you have some show ideas like some of them we’ve incorporated like the RESP I think Kari was the one who suggested it. We said, let’s do it. So she came on and shared her expertise with us. So if you have your own story, or if you have a topic that we haven’t covered that you want us to cover where we’re always open to that kind of feedback.

Money Mechanic
Yeah. And I think we’re probably gonna just maybe start doing quarterly Smith Manoeuver episodes biannual. You know, that’s like the number one question right now is should I use my HELOC to invest?

Chrissy
So many questions about that, yeah.

Money Mechanic
Well, it is, Chrissy, it’s been a pleasure working with you. And it was great working with Ryan while he was here too, and I’ve had such a good time. I’m so proud of where we are. And I look forward to see where we are where we’re going.

Chrissy
Yeah, same here. I look forward to another year and many more years. Hopefully, with EFIC. Enjoy your Canada Day.

Transcribed by Otter.ai