I came across this article from The Globe and Mail the other day. The article profiled Jeremy Finney, who retired five years ago at age 41. Soon 46, he is dealing with regrets about early retirement.
According to the article, Jeremy worked at IT and used to push himself to the edge: 70-hour work weeks, back-to-back meetings, working 50 hours straight without sleep. His typical work week meant he was leaving home at 4 AM on Monday to fly to Chicago and returning home late Friday.
The work was so demanding that Jeremy couldn’t take time off around Christmas and from time to time, he had to work through statutory holidays. His job was so stressful that he believes it may have contributed to the breakdown of his first marriage.
That certainly doesn’t sound like a good work-life balance. From the article, my impression was that Jeremy was focusing on earning a high income, saving as much money as he could, and crossing the FIRE finish line as early as possible. [FIRE is an acronym for Financial Independence, Retire Early.] Spending quality time with his family and having an identity outside of work simply weren’t a priority.
Since I work in high tech, I can relate to this high-pressure, high-demand situation. It’s not unusual for me to have multiple meetings back to back. Since I deal with people globally, it’s also not unusual to have meetings as early as 6 AM and meetings as late as 8 PM.
Sometimes, it can feel like I’m working constantly and the so-called work-life balance is simply not possible.
Three things I learned about work-life balance
Having said that, I have learned a few key things over the years to help me improve my work-life balance:
Setting limits and boundaries. Block off early morning, lunchtime, and dinner time in my calendar.
It’s OK to turn down meetings
If possible, delegate the meeting to someone else
I’m not perfect, but I’m working on getting better at finding the right balance between work and life.
When it comes to FIRE, I think it’s important to approach it with a balanced mindset. The FIRE journey isn’t a sprint, it is a marathon. It takes years and years of planning, saving, investing, and dedication to achieve FIRE. If you approach it like a sprint, I believe you will burn out very quickly. Even if you end up achieving FIRE, you will regret it like Jeremy.
Some additional thoughts on the FIRE journey and approaching it with a balanced mindset: Continue Reading…
Discover practical strategies for achieving Financial Independence beyond the confines of a traditional job.
This article presents expert-backed advice on creating multiple income streams and aligning work with personal goals. Learn how to leverage your skills, build value-based income, and take concrete steps towards your vision of financial freedom.
Leverage Your Skills for Side Income
Transform Evenings into Venture Capital
Build Value-based Income Streams
Adopt a Side Hustle Mindset
Future-Proof your Professional Value
Align Work with your Core Purpose
Build a Financial Foundation first
Get Specific about your Goals
Cut Expenses to Create Options
Leverage your Skills for Side Income
In today’s evolving job market, many professionals find themselves tethered to traditional 9-to-5 roles: secure, yes, but often creatively or financially stifling. The desire for financial freedom is not just about escaping the office; it’s about reclaiming time, purpose, and the ability to design life on your own terms. We’ve worked with countless individuals who once felt exactly this way: stuck, uncertain, but ready for a change.
If you’re feeling trapped in a conventional job, the most important first step is to acknowledge that your desire for more isn’t selfish: it’s strategic. Financial freedom isn’t just about money; it’s about choices. And that journey starts by understanding your own value in the marketplace.
Step 1: Audit Your Skills and Strengths
Take stock of what you’re naturally good at and how those skills can translate into high-demand, high-autonomy industries. Digital skills like coding, copywriting, digital marketing, or consulting are especially valuable in today’s freelance and remote economy. Ask yourself: If I had to solve someone’s problem for a fee: what could I offer today?
Step 2: Start a Low-Risk Side Income Stream
This doesn’t mean quitting your job immediately. Start small: freelancing on Upwork, tutoring online, offering resume reviews, or starting a blog or YouTube channel around a niche you know well. Build proof of concept without jeopardizing your current income.
Step 3: Invest in a Career Coach or Mentor
Working with a coach can help you shortcut the confusion. We help clients identify the right path forward based on their lifestyle goals, not just job titles. Our structured guidance has helped people launch side businesses, shift into more flexible roles, or double their income by making strategic pivots.
According to a 2024 report by LinkedIn Workforce Insights, over 60% of professionals under 40 are actively seeking roles that offer greater flexibility and autonomy. Additionally, Harvard Business Review found that professionals who pursue “career portfolios” — multiple income streams from various skill-based services — report 43% higher job satisfaction and 31% faster income growth than peers in static roles.
Feeling stuck isn’t the end of your story: it’s a signal. A signal that you’re ready for change. We believe that financial freedom isn’t just for the lucky few—it’s for anyone willing to make bold, informed moves. — Miriam Groom, CEO, Mindful Career inc., Mindful Career Coaching
Transform Evenings into Venture Capital
If you’re feeling stuck in a traditional job and craving more financial freedom, you’re not alone: and you’re not broken. That restless feeling? It’s your internal compass telling you that what you’re doing no longer aligns with where you want to go. My advice? Don’t silence it: study it.
The most powerful first step I ever took was treating my evenings and weekends like venture capital. Instead of doom-scrolling or complaining about my 9-to-5, I built skills that made me valuable outside of it. I didn’t quit blindly. I audited my strengths, explored high-leverage models like consulting and digital products, and tested small bets until one clicked. It was less about passion and more about leverage: where can I help people, solve problems, and get paid well for it?
If you’re after financial freedom, don’t chase quick wins. Chase agency. Build something that compounds. Start by learning one monetizable skill: something you can offer tomorrow. Package it, test it, refine it. You don’t need to be loud online or have a business plan that wins awards. You need to take the first step: and then the next.
What I’ve learned from growing multiple businesses and coaching founders is this: freedom doesn’t arrive fully formed. It’s built in the margins before it becomes the main thing. So if you’re reading this wondering if it’s too late or too risky: it’s not. Your current job might pay the bills, but it doesn’t have to define your ceiling. — John Mac, Serial Entrepreneur, UNIT
Build Value-based Income Streams
If you feel stuck in a traditional job, it’s because your income is locked to your hours. Financial freedom begins when you earn based on value, not time. The fastest path is building a side income that proves you’re worth more than your salary. That means selling a skill — marketing, coding, design, sales strategy — directly to people who need results, not resumes.
I replaced my paycheck by packaging my experience into targeted offers. One client became two. Two became four. The process wasn’t complicated. I identified a problem, built a simple solution, and sold it. The first $1,000 didn’t change my life. It changed my mindset. From there, scaling was execution, not hope.
Most people stall because they’re waiting for the perfect idea or ideal conditions. Neither exists. Start by solving one problem for one customer. Build income that’s not tied to your boss. Cut costs, track results, and reinvest profits. Don’t romanticize the idea of freedom. Make it measurable. Give yourself a deadline to match and then exceed your job income.
You’re not trapped. You’re unproven. The solution isn’t to quit. The solution is to validate your value outside the structure you’ve been conditioned to depend on. You move forward the moment you stop waiting. — Steven Mitts, Entrepreneurial Coach, Steven Mitts
Adopt a Side Hustle Mindset
Traditional jobs are great for many reasons, but I completely understand. I was stuck in a normal or traditional 9-5 job, and the only thing I was dreaming about was freedom. This feeling is more common than you might think, so anyone who is experiencing it, you are not alone. The best advice I can offer is to change your mindset, more specifically, to adopt a side hustle mindset.
Think about what you currently have in your job: stability, which hopefully provides a decent income. This is a huge asset. Use this stability to your advantage; don’t think of it as a cage, but rather as your investment stream to financial freedom. Then, make a list of the skills you have, things that you like (passions) that could be monetized, or if you’ve noticed a problem that many people experience and you may have the solution, it could be your golden ticket.
Once you have your idea, don’t quit your day job. Dedicate a small but consistent chunk of your time each week to your new adventure (5 hours to start with will do). When it comes to the steps I’d recommend you take, there is only one: validate your idea. Do your research; you don’t want to waste countless hours on something that is already thriving. Once validated, begin your journey. Draw up a business plan, get a name (register it), open a bank account (do not use your personal one), then start. Take that first bold step. It is incredibly exciting, and it can induce a whole heap of fear, but you will never know if you don’t take it.
My encouragement is this: every great entrepreneur started with a tiny step. No one jumps into success; it is built from the ground up. — Aiden Higgins, Senior Editor and Writer, The Broke Backpacker
Future-Proof your Professional Value
Honestly, the biggest shift for professionals feeling trapped isn’t just leaving a traditional role: it’s strategically future-proofing their value. Research shows 65% of workers who feel ‘stuck’ actually suffer from skill obsolescence, yet those who dedicate just 5 hours weekly to learning in-demand capabilities like automation fluency or data-driven decision-making see a 47% faster transition to higher-paying, flexible roles.
Start by auditing daily tasks for automation potential: this reveals immediate efficiency gains and highlights valuable skills to develop. Platforms offering certified, applied learning in operational tech turn that insight into tangible leverage. That frustration? It’s actually a compass pointing toward untapped potential.
Financial freedom isn’t about escaping the grind; it’s about equipping yourself to command the work that matters. Every expert was once someone who decided their growth couldn’t wait for permission. — Anupa Rongala, CEO, Invensis Technologies
Align Work with your Core Purpose
First, define your freedom.
I’ve sat across from many successful people who feel completely trapped by their traditional jobs. My advice is always to stop focusing on the financial spreadsheet and start with a psychological one. The feeling of being “stuck” is rarely about money alone; true freedom comes from aligning your work with your “why.” Continue Reading…
How real Spending Patterns challenge Traditional Retirement Income Planning
Canva Custom Creation: Lowrie Financial
By Steve Lowrie, CFA
Special to Financial Independence Hub
Here’s a contrarian thought.
When most people imagine retirement, they picture steady cash flow from their investments to support their lifestyle.
The common assumption is that they’ll preserve their financial nest egg and live off the growth” drawing a consistent amount each year while keeping the principal largely intact.
But there are actually three broad approaches. At one end, some plan to spend their entire portfolio over their expected lifetime (as one client joked, “I want my last cheque to bounce.” At the other end is the idea of preserving capital entirely. Most people, in practice, end up somewhere in between.
But what if that assumption is only part of the story?
The reality is that real-life retirement spending isn’t flat. It fluctuates unevenly and unexpectedly over time. And those patterns can have a big impact on your retirement income strategy.
Retirement Planning has changed. Have you?
For decades, retirement planning has focused on Saving: building a nest egg, maximizing RRSPs, and making the most of tax-advantaged accounts.
But the real challenge begins after you stop working. Then, the question becomes:
How do I turn my savings into reliable, lasting income?
This is where traditional models often fall short. Most assume spending stays constant throughout retirement. But as recent research from J.P. Morgan Asset Management shows, that’s not how real retirees actually spend.
J.P. Morgan studied anonymized spending data from more than 5 million U.S. households, offering a detailed picture of how retirees actually spend in retirement. These findings closely align with what I’ve observed over 30 years of working with Canadian clients.
Three key Retirement Spending patterns:
Spending Surge: Many retirees experience a spike in spending right around the time they retire. This is often due to lifestyle changes and delayed goals coming to fruition in the early retirement years, like travel, home upgrades, or helping adult children.
Spending Curve: Over time, overall spending tends to decline. For example, households with investable assets between $250,000 and $750,000 saw an average inflation-adjusted spending decrease of about 1.65% annually through retirement.
Spending Volatility: Perhaps most important, spending is anything but steady. According to J.P. Morgan’s 2025 Guide to Retirement, 60% of retirees saw their expenses fluctuate by 20% or more in the first three years of retirement. And this volatility often continues well into later years.
These findings show that retirement income strategies need to be flexible enough to accommodate spikes, declines, and everything in between.
Why it matters
Most financial plans assume a flat, inflation-adjusted income for 25 to 30 years. That’s a very good place to start. However, based on both this research and my practical experience observing hundreds of client habits over three decades, here’s what can happen:
You over-save early, delaying retirement unnecessarily
You under-spend during healthy years, missing out on the freedom you’ve earned
You get caught off guard by spending spikes, leading to early withdrawals or tax surprises
J.P. Morgan’s data shows retirees typically need about 92% of pre-retirement income at age 65, but just 70% by age 85. That is a significant shift and a reminder of why you want healthy exposure to equities, which is the only asset class that has historically given the best chance of outpacing inflation over the long run.
A better way to Plan for Retirement Income
Here are a few ways to build a more adaptable, evidence-based retirement plan: Continue Reading…
The good news for Canadians who build their own stock portfolios is that if you simply buy enough of those blue-chip companies, then get out of your own way, you’ll likely be a very successful investor. At least on the Canadian equity front.
Research shows that big ‘boring’ blue-chip stocks outperform the TSX Composite. Low volatility and high yield are top of the heap for Canadian equity over the last 25 years. On the Sunday Reads we’ll look at Canadian stock portfolios.
Here’s the post that offered Norm Rothery’s graphic on the performance of Canadian stock portfolios.
Yes we have to remember that the big dividends help us find those blue-chip stocks (and value at times), but the dividend payments don’t contribute to the wealth creation: as the dividend is merely a removal of value from your stock holding. The share price drops by equal on ex dividend day. That said, the dividends can help us find those great companies, and well, they make investors feel good.
From that post, the BTSX is having a good 2025 after a couple of years of underperformance. Of course, the big dividend payers suffered during the inflationary rising rate environment.
While the Beat the TSX invests in the top 10 yielding stocks from the TSX 60, I’d suggest investors consider more stocks from the sectors where the BTSX hunts: more financials, more utilities including pipelines. Remove some of the concentration risk. The approach has a very considerable long-term record of outperformance, but it can be very volatile. You might even consider the top 20 yields as I have suggested in the past.
Canadian wide moat portfolios
Personally, I like the Canadian wide moat portfolio approach. Greater returns, less volatility, that floats my boat in semi-retirement. I’ve updated the post for the Canadian Wide Moat Portfolios.
Be sure to give that post a full read, but here’s the wider moat portfolio:
And the returns comparison. There’s a nice beat with lower risk:
In that Canadian Wide Moat post I also offer an update on my wife’s Canadian Wide Moat portfolio. We added more financials and ditched the cyclical railways. There’s more than one way to ‘wide moat.’
While having a conversation with a podcast guest recently, I was introduced to a term I had never heard before: VUCA. That’s an acronym that stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.
According to my guest, all four are touchstones for the global environment in the middle of 2025. Many people have commented on how the world is becoming less predictable and more dangerous, but that was the first time I heard someone come up with a term that tried to encapsulate everything at once. Having heard the term, I thought I would take a moment to point to some specific examples of each of the four elements:
Volatility
In early April, the so-called ‘liberation day’ tariff announcement caused stocks to tumble almost 10% in one day. Then, less than a week later, those same punitive tariffs were postponed for 90 days and replaced with new, across the board 10% tariffs. Markets reacted swiftly and began a rapid ascent so that now, at the end of the quarter, most market levels are near where they were at the start of the quarter.
The VIX indicator has been more volatile than usual in the recent past. Many commentators see this as a ‘new normal.’
Uncertainty
Recently, the American administration was crowing about how it had utterly and totally destroyed Iranian nuclear capabilities. In the days that followed, the veracity of that boast was called into question. At the time of writing, it is unclear where the truth lies.
Similarly, ceasefire agreements are on again and off again. The stakes are high, but few people would go so far as to suggest that the end game is in any way obvious.
Complexity
Has there ever been a point in history where investors and policy makers alike need to contend with so many interwoven mega threats? The United States now has a $37 trillion accumulated debt and is adding to it by over $2 trillion annually. Climate change is an ongoing threat that demands our attention. Income and wealth inequality are the highest they have been in nearly a century. Political polarization is increasing throughout the world. Demographic challenges make meaningful economic growth nearly impossible …. and so on.
Solving one problem might well exacerbate another. There are several highly credible commentators who insist that for the first time in half a century, the stars are aligning for a prolonged bout of stagflation. Fighting inflation means central bankers need to be willing to raise interest rates. Then again, if economic growth really is grinding to a halt, higher rates will merely pump the brakes on economic growth and would also accelerate the aforementioned debt problem.
Ambiguity
If you can figure out what’s really going on, you’re either brilliant, or, more likely, deluding yourself with a false sense of control. Markets went up when it looked as though the Iranian nuclear facility was destroyed, then went up further when that appeared not to be the case. Political tensions caused people to worry about the security of oil supply through the straits of Hormuz, yet the price of oil dropped precipitously. Up seems to be becoming the new down.
Nothing seems to make sense anymore. In a previous blog post, I questioned the efficacy of the efficient market hypothesis. I remain surprised that markets seem unresponsive to tariff developments. There has been no material change over the quarter, even though the largest economy in the world has effectively slapped a new 10% tariff on all other nations.
No one really knows where all this will lead us. Will the conflict in the Middle East intensify or de-escalate? Will Canada and the United States reach a trade deal before the end of June? If so, what will it take entail, and what will American deals with other nations look like if Canada chooses to go first? Continue Reading…
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