My Plan To Retire Early At 35 | Canadian Stock Portfolio & Expenses

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Tomorrow is my birthday, and I am now 1 year away from semi-retiring. And today I want to explain to you the plans behind this, kind of what it looks like, and as God says, share with me your plans and I'll laugh cuz God knows there's a lot of variables that could come into play with this, but I want to break down kind of my monthly expenses or at least the major ones, and maybe you can compare them to your own living circumstance and how I actually plan on managing this. So, if you're on a path to financial independence yourself, you want to join me on that journey, hit that subscribe button, folks, and let's do this together because I am now 34, and I've actually had this plan to be kind of at least what they call barista fired by the age of 35, and I want to explain to you what that means cuz we're going to talk about the accounts and potentially the stock setup what this might look like closer as we get to that goal, but basically a barista fire is a semi-retirement strategy where you save enough to let your investments cover your base expenses while working a flexible part-time job to fill the gap. I don't actually plan on quitting at 35. I consider myself far too young to quit, but I have been very aggressive in this strategy getting to this point since I was like 23.

[00:01:12]I think it was 22, 23. I just finished paying off about $20,000 worth of debt, and when I discovered the stock market and somebody explained to me that if I put 50% 50% of my net take-home pay into investments, by the time I'm 35, 40, I should be able to retire, and here I am between my significant other and I sitting in a very incredible position, and we'll talk about the first and most expensive aspect of living that I think is the true defining factor to whether you'll be able to retire early, and that is your cost of living. I know a lot of people are going to throw math at you that it is far substantially cheaper to rent and invest the latter half of that capital rather than putting a lump sum of it into an asset that isn't really considered an investment vehicle because of interest expense, phantom costs. You don't actually make money on a property to some extent, right? But I don't look at this necessarily as an investment vehicle as much as I do as a vehicle that is going to load lower my total cost of expense in retirement. I live in Toronto. It's one of the most expensive areas in the world. Uh we found an older building that we bought and by January of next year I should have the mortgage paid off. And that was not easy. I mean, been aggressively paying down the mortgage on this sucker. And it's about 1,300 square feet. So it's a very comfortable, uh you know, place for us to live between the two of us. Two bed, two bath.

[00:02:36]At least we have our own extensions to work, you know, at home without kind of overlapping on top of each other. But it is a very expensive place to live. But my total cost of carry, uh you know, presuming there's some on top expenses.

[00:02:48]I added a little bit extra just in case we got to like replace a fridge or fix the heating or whatever. But luckily the HOA does cover like the windows and a lot of the external stuff. But it'd be around $15,000 a year. It's less than that, but I'm rounding up, right? So that's without the mortgage. And that is a substantial uh that's like less than half as much as it would cost to rent just about anywhere in the city. I mean, to be comfortable and get around 1,300 square feet, you're probably going to be looking at 3 to 4,000 a month. Maybe a little less depending on the area these days cuz rent prices have come down. But that is like the significant bulk. And I feel like most of people's fire, their financial independence relies on their living expenses. So let's talk about some of these with the second most highest expense that I have uh being a car. And in the city, I used to live up in cottage country. As soon as I moved down here, my car cost just in insurance doubled. I went from like $90 a month to 180. And I'm driving a car I bought for $7,000. The best car I ever owned. I've been through several cars in my life. I've owned Dodge Chargers, Jeeps, all kinds of weird vehicles. but this guy by by far my favorite because it's been the cheapest thing I've ever bought and I'm praying to God it gets me through one year more year. Aesthetically, things are falling apart. I've This is a 2016 Hyundai hatchback. I bought it in 2020 uh for about 7,800 bucks uh and now with over 230,000 km on it, one by one things are starting to fall apart. I need to top up oil in between oil changes. We're burning oil. Aesthetically, the frame is you know, I mean plastic parts, the wheel well, I I've lost the undercover.

[00:04:22]Like there's a lot of things that are starting to fall apart. I've got to patch the uh exhaust once in a while, but I'm praying to God and Gemini has told me that I'm likely going to get 1 to 3 years left out of this car if I'm lucky, but I'm praying it makes it till next year when I pay the mortgage off because my plan is to buy a more reliable, thusly safer car and I have been looking at EVs because we do have uh charging within our building and Teslas have finally come down in the used market enough that comparatively to what I was looking at like Toyota Camrys are roughly almost within the same price range. You can get around a 2022 uh that has probably around 100,000 km on it for around 23,000 bucks give or take, right? So, this is on my roster for what I want to buy probably next year uh when I pay the mortgage off and I'm just going to pull this out of my investments.

[00:05:10]I always buy cars in cash. I'm not financing any of this, but this is an expense that I do have to start prepping myself for and I have been eyeballing this sector of the market or Toyota Camrys. The only reason I'm leaning more toward the EV side is the amount of money I just save on oil changes and gas. Like I said, the prices finally are now comparable uh to, you know, your typical Toyota. So, it's probably worth it. I'm guessing for most people to start looking at the EV choice if they have convenient charging. So, these are the biggest expenses that I think largely, you know, make it impossible for many people to retire because they're leasing brand new Mercedes. I mean, I see everyone that is financing on their vehicles and it's just crazy to me. It's one of the biggest expenses that hold people back and because of this little car right here, I'll never forget you. You've been a gem. You've changed my life, my Hyundai hatchback.

[00:05:57]What a dream car this has been for fast-tracking my financial dependence.

[00:06:01]Now, next and I'm shocked at how many people finance their phones, total rip-off. Go buy a used phone on Marketplace, get a couple two or three-year-old phone. I mean, basically once you go back to like the phone I have, which is like the 13 Pros or even just a 13 is sufficient enough these days and then just go outright get a plan when they're on sale. Like we just got a good plan from Freedom Mobile when it was on sale and I'm paying 36 bucks a month. I got a better plan than the current plan that's $35 because I'm getting I think 70 gigs, 75 gigs this $40 plan, but for literally 36 taxes in. That's That's the entire expense. So, phone bill, woo, baby, we got some good good deals out there right now. Talking about the internet side of things, because I live in the city, internet typically far cheaper than I imagine what most people are paying out there.

[00:06:48]This is only costing $57 a month. Again, my significant other I just split this, but 57 a month for basically fiber, absolutely incredible. Now, this is also a killer for most people out there and that is their subscriptions to streaming services, Xbox. I can't get over what the average person is paying for streaming services and guess what? I have none of this. I'm a Canadian millionaire. I have none of this. I don't pay for Netflix. I don't I don't pay for Disney Plus. Even though Xbox is now lowered, you know, their their monthly subscription to get access to all that, I'm not paying for any of it.

[00:07:24]At most, we watch a lot of YouTube and to be frank, I'm more willing to pirate the content that I am willing to pay, you know, these crazy monthly fees that absolutely destroy people.

[00:07:34]Again, people finance their cars, paying crazy amounts for rent, they're paying for all these subscriptions. This is the lifestyle creep that ruins most people's early retirements and again, I I don't care. I'm not I'm not taking into any of this stuff. So, uh my total cost of living once the mortgage is paid off could literally be $40,000 or less.

[00:07:55]And that is because we're just frugal people and we use that frugality to invest, to donate, uh and to travel more or less. I mean, that's pretty much our our biggest buckets right now for expenditures are going out and eating and traveling about maybe once or twice a year. But, in our positions, you know, we're both employed, it's something that I want to enjoy still while I'm young.

[00:08:15]But, again, like this has been about a 12-year journey for me and I'm shocked at how well it's worked, but the market environment has definitely justified it. And a lot of you have been asking me like, what am I going to do with the portfolios? And to be fair, I'm not going to do a whole lot. Uh I'm very happy with the portfolio setup that we do have. And because I'm barista firing, as they call it, where I don't actually plan on quitting work. Like, I enjoy my employment as it stands today. Uh if that employment remains as I hit these goals, then yeah, I'll continue doing it. Now, obviously, I'm not sharing my significant other's accounts here. That is, you know, coming into the contribution of this kind of early retirement. But, more or less, we just want to be in a position where we can actually talk about having kids, uh you know, just being able to relax and take the the foot off the pedal because, again, I don't think people can appreciate on the back end like how much I've actually done to get to this point and the level of frugality and the level of just employment and hard work just to finally have a base where I'm like, look, like if you want to quit your job, quit your job. If you want to work part-time, we can just work part-time.

[00:09:18]This will carry us. Like, our portfolios can easily carry us at the current cost of living that we have. The only thing I will do is I'm going to roll over the individual investments and I've told you guys, this is kind of the final mile for me and I'm looking at about 1 to 3 years for my tech companies, if they continue to pay off the way they're paying off, I will eventually roll these over. Uh and same with Take-Two Interactive, which you guys know is a short-term trade.

[00:09:39]That entire trade I'm rolling over mostly into the mortgage regardless whether it works out or not.

[00:09:44]And I'll roll some of these investments over into buying probably a new car and basically putting it into a international ETF. I'm looking at the final accounts to be mostly, you know, probably about 50% the US, the 30% Canada, and maybe somewhere between 10 and 20% international. And potentially this channel might shift over into maybe making 5 or 10% of my portfolio more geared toward looking for other trades that exist out there. I know a lot of people have been pointing out the option ETFs, and this is something we do for my parents, like the dividend ETFs like SCHD. If I do end up becoming fully unemployed, I will likely take 10 to 15% of my portfolio and roll it over into some of these higher yielding ETFs just to supplement some income. I don't look at the option ETFs as like a major contributing factor to this, but in my RRSP, because I have a lot of US investments and I can capitalize on the withholding tax that gets waived, I would probably roll a percentage of my RRSP over into SPY, SCHD, at which I can actually draw against these dividends and just pay whatever the income tax is because I'll be in a substantially lower income bracket.

[00:10:50]But my international ETF, I'll probably shift some of my portfolio over into VIGY and just build out like a properly structured retirement account that I can just draw against.

[00:10:59]I'm hoping to get around a 2% yield set and done off this portfolio. And I'm again, I know a lot of people look at the dividends and said, "Oh, you could do so much better." But I'm happy having a total return portfolio that takes into consideration growth and income from international and domestic markets here in Canada, right? So, if I can get a thousand a month off my portfolio, I would be more than happy with that considering that I'm still going to potentially want to do this YouTube channel. I'm still potentially going to have some other level of employment.

[00:11:26]It's just a matter of we'll see what happens when we get to that point, and then I I variably out whether I need higher income from the portfolio or whether I can just let the portfolio ride, potentially take some capital gains here and there if we want to go on a trip or do whatever. And I think you can realize it's not actually that overall expensive to retire, especially considering we're trying to do this in one of the most expensive cities in the world. But I think people think they need like multi-million dollar portfolios. And that again, are you taking business class flights? Are you driving a brand new Mercedes? Like if you look at your cost of living, that is it. That's just the defining factor to how big this number here for total portfolio has to be. And for us, to be fair, like I, you know, between our combined accounts, I want it to be over a million. But realistically, most people I think, if they're as frugal as we are, could easily have a barista fire on probably half a million-dollar portfolio up to 800,000. Like I think 500k to 800k making you 10%, you know, 8% after inflation, you should be relatively significant enough to supplement, you know, an extra $60,000 of annual income, at which you only need to pull like 2 or 3% of that off. Probably 2% realistically if you're still working. And that's if, right?

[00:12:39]Like if you're not fully, you know, getting enough money from employment.

[00:12:43]There's so many variables at play here.

[00:12:44]But the alleviation of buying my own time has changed my entire perspective on life. And I I want people to recognize here cuz my own friends don't.

[00:12:52]My own friends just think I'm cheap, but they don't realize what I'm buying is not a nice car. What I'm buying What I'm not buying is luxury items. What I'm buying is my time. That's what I'm doing with this. Like every dollar I put in here is another day of work I bought back to myself that I no longer have to put in. And again, life is short. We don't know what our time horizon is realistically. So I'm hoping to inspire people in their 20s that you don't have to have a degree, which I don't. Uh for most of my working career, I didn't make much more than 50 or 60k up to the last couple years. And yes, I think a significant other is going to be another major contributing factor to how you do this, and it's going to be one of the most important factors. So, make sure you're careful with, you know, who you're marrying.

[00:13:36]Definitely take that into consideration.

[00:13:39]You do have options. You know, do keep those options open cuz that can make or break the reality of what's going on here, and you want somebody that's on the same page.

[00:13:47]But again, I if you're 20 years old, guys, you don't need to go into crazy student loan debt. I you know, to be fair, I'd probably get into a trade, and you could easily fast track into exactly what I've done here. I am not special.

[00:13:57]I just put my boots on the ground. I stuck with a plan someone told me, and here we are 11 years later.

[00:14:04]And we're we're there almost, right?

[00:14:05]Like it's crazy. It's crazy. But I'd love to know what you think in that comment section below.