Hi! I’m Meagan, and this is a snippet of my life story, what lead me to write this blog and what you can expect to read about should you wish to follow along.
In short, my main goal is to help people view and think about money differently and hopefully make some real difference in their lives, all while chronicling my own journey to financial independence with a combination of investments in Ireland and in Canada.
And now the long story…
My background
Growing up in rural Quebec, Canada in a six-person single income family I learned a lot about finances through observation rather than direct education. My mother was the penny-pinching money manager who made our house a home while dad sacrificed time with family to provide for us. With both parents putting in long, hard days, the formula of working hard and minimising spending sank in and I’ve applied that principle throughout my working life (with some blips along the way).
After college I came to Ireland on a working holiday visa and one month in, met my now husband. We did the right of passage jaunt to Australia before returning to Canada for some years (with 14,000CDN in debt) where we put our heads down and slowly climbed the property ladder – first renting with 3 other people, then contributing to a house purchased by my parents where we lived with my siblings through their college years and finally to our own apartment downtown.
During the 3 years in that apartment we still lived within our means but our savings rate was definitely not as high as it could have been. We paid too much for the apartment, we ate and drank at the many restaurants, which were within walking distance, frequently, we took exorbitant holidays etc etc.
I’d always wanted to come back to Ireland some day but we happened to return to Canada in 2007 right before the crash, as luck would have it we were in the most insulated city at the time and we continued to make decent money in an unstable economy, so did not make sense to leave then. Also Ireland did not recognise common law relationships as a valid means for sponsorship to live and work in the country so that deterred us as well. Finally one day, as the economy slowly recovered, I randomly came across the fact that Ireland was now accepting common law/de facto relationships as a valid means of sponsorship and so we began our year-long planning/saving to move back.
When breaking the news to our friends and families we were met with many raised eyebrows: why would we leave good stable jobs, a lovely apartment and lifestyle to come back to an uncertain economy where most other people were going in the opposite direction – but in April 2014, we landed back on Irish soil (you may notice a theme of me going against/questioning the mainstream a lot throughout this blog). It took seven months for my visa to come through and so eight months between pay-cheques and a dwindled savings account later I finally had a job in my field as a Business Analyst. I took a pay cut compared to what I made in Canada but with a few years of local experience under my belt was able to surpass my previous income through contracting. Although the move was not meant to be a career one, at one point, our household take home was 60% more than it was in Canada!
While living in Ireland, we got married, bought and updated a house, had a baby, took a mini-retirement trial in Portugal, took a mini-retirement in Canada, sold our property in Canada, went down to one part-time income with Mr. MH becoming a full-time stay-at-home Dad, burnt out and got diagnosed with autism, moved back to Canada and are now trialling semi-retirement.
Why am I writing this blog?
One day on my drive to work, an interview came on the radio with a fellow Canuck – Kristy from Millennial Revolution. She was talking about a movement called Financial Independence/Retire Early (FI/RE) and went on to briefly explain how herself and her husband were able to retire at 30 and travel the world on 40,000 CDN (~27,000€) on the proceeds of their investments. Needless to say, I got very little work done that morning as I was totally taken up with figuring out what it would take for me to do some version of the same. I will expand on this concept in the blog.
I have since spent many hours reading and researching how to achieve my own financial independence here in Ireland and found very little Irish specific information on the methods they, and many other FI bloggers, describe.
Aha! A gap in the market.
I’ve always been a bit of a nerd when it comes to my own money, spending hours researching how to save and analysing my spending – pair that with my love of being helpful and MrsMoneyHacker was born.
What can you expect to read about?
I will use my own funds to be a bit of an investment guinea pig and share my progress and how-tos.
Follow along to see:
- How my Canadian and Irish investments turn out
- Steps on how you can invest too
- General hacks for saving money
- General analysis for return on investments/considerations for purchases
- Summarised learnings from finance blogs and books I read
- Ex-pat tax guidance on remitting rental income tax in Canada
- Ex-pat tax guidance on selling property from abroad
- General guidance on how to file investment tax returns in Ireland
I may also take on reader cases if people want to submit questions for me to anonymously analyse on this blog. I love a good ol’ bit of analysis!
I’m also interested in interior design (which I studied in college), the environment (I have another blog on zero waste here), minimalism, attachment parenting and living with intention so you may also see elements of these topics throughout the blog in how they relate to our finances.
Welcome to my journey, I hope you find it inspiring and can apply some of my learnings to your own circumstances.