Personal Finance Canada

I was hopping someone else would chime in as I don't really feel competent in term of state of mind, but I'm going to try my best.

First : don't feel behind, you're probably not. You may have bought a place at peak market, but your living in a place you like (I hope) and you have options in case things go south, wether renting your rooms to other people, or even selling the house.

In terme of finance in general, taking accountability is kind of hard, as it seems overwhelming. The flowchart that you got in the other comment is great and you can follow it if you feel like, it'll get your finance in order if you give it time.

I recently had to deal with someone, my brother, that had neither the mental space nor the interest to deal with something so complicated but needed to get his finances in order, so we did the following :

• listed all his mandatory expenses (utilities, rent, food, phone, internet, ...). Those came out below his income, which was awesome.

• we then added some padding to these expenses to account for unexpected expenses and things he had forgotten, and planned some amount to be saved, and some to be invested.

• we automated his finances as much as possible : most of his bills are paid automatically, and so are his credit cards, his rent, his savings and his investments. He had a credit card that didn't offer automatic payment : we closed it.

• we opened a new account with a prepaid card (like KOHO), where he receive an "allocation" from his income every week : that's the money he can spend this week. If he tries to spend more than there is on this account, the transaction is refused by the bank.

We did that a little more than a year ago, and he has been much better since : he is able to make all his payments, has some money invested, his savings have been kind of depleted by a holiday he took recently but that's what they are here for so no big deal, and he even has some money left on his prepaid account so that he can pay for something more expensive if he wants to, as he know he can spend this money. He still has absolutely no interest for it though, but we now take around 1h each month to review his numbers around a beer, to adjust what's needed, and that's more than sufficient.