Welcome to Broad Money

Welcome to Broad Money!

Hello to all of my Broads out there and Welcome to Broad Money! This is my first ever blog post, and not one damn ounce of it was written by AI. I promise! 🤞

I am so excited that you’ve decided to sign up for my emails as I’m going to throw a lot at you over the next however many years that we’re in this together. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you ever have thoughts about a topic that you want me to cover. I’m excited to get into the world of personal finance with you as I’ve been nerding out hard over it since I was 7 years old. I’m even more excited to empower the bad-ass women+ out there who are ready to be better with their finances. I’ll try to make this as entertaining as I possibly can.

Hopefully, you’ve been able to check out my (sexy AF) site by now and read a little bit more about me and my story. If not, you can head here to do that, because I don’t need to bore you with it again if you already have.

Funnily enough, before I launched on Jan 1, 2025, I did a full rebrand of the site and made it a little bit more in line with who YOU are. You see, I’m a huge Broad City fan, and my previous site had a wee bit more of that stoner-comedy vibe to it, which some of my Broads mentioned was a little “off-brand”. So, I changed it. Do you like it? If not, I don’t care – because I REALLY like it now. But I also want you to feel comfortable going there, so hopefully you like it! – God I’m so bad with design….

Ok - so onto the post! I wanted to use this opportunity to hold myself accountable to you for achieving some financial goals this year. I used to have a lot of goals that I would try and stick to, and then I would overwhelm myself and my anxiety would kick in, so now I only have 2!

And here they are:

- Max out my TFSA ($7,000) by January 31, 2025. I am going to do this next week!

- Max out Jacqueline’s TFSA ($62,000 in contributions) by December 31, 2025.

Now, I’m fully self-employed and riding solo (which is scary in all kinds of exciting ways?) so my income is going to be all over the place and will solely start from the financial coaching that I do.

I also have some investments in my corporate investment account that I’m going to transfer to my TFSA to help achieve my goals, but I also need to be extremely mindful of cash flow and running a business! I have a bunch of expenses (like my amazing virtual marketing assistant) that I need to cover each month, so it’s just about monitoring and planning ahead.

Jay-queline (Jacqueline - my wife) works in Brampton as a firefighter (I know – sexy right?) so thankfully she has a steady income. This definitely helped me in making the decision that I could go out on my own.

I’m quite confident that we can achieve our goals by the end of the year but it’s going to take some serious diligence and planning.

We’re in the midst right now of setting up our budget for the year ahead and I’m finally going through all of my spending from last year (which can be a bit of a doozy – but so necessary!) Then I’ll grab a bottle of wine, some chocolate-covered pretzels and Reece’s pieces for Jacq, and then we will plan out our year ahead.

We’ve got a few trips coming up that we need to accommodate for so that we are prepared for them!

Costa Rica in Feb 2025. This is going to cost us around $7,000.

Germany for my Opa’s 90th birthday in April 2025. This is going to cost us around $7,000)

A summertime RV trip – MAYBE to Napa?! This can cost us upwards of $10,000, depending on gas prices for our 28ft RV Wynona, and how much wine we drink?

Plus, we own a home in Toronto, which is hella expensive and costs us around $55,000+/year, George (our handsome fur-baby) costs us around $6,500/year, then we like to spend our money on nice Toronto restaurants and experiences. Plus, we go to Costco every quarter, and it’s always $400+. WTF.

Long story short. We need a plan!

Do you have your plan set up for the year ahead? Have some goals that you want to achieve? You can do it! But it’s necessary to review your income and expenses and then set yourself up for success by creating a cash flow/budget for the year ahead. It’s what I do with all of my coaching clients, and once they have a plan in place, the stress starts to melt away.

Give it a try. It may sting like a m*therfucker once you realize what you’ve been spending your money on, but how will you achieve your goals without knowing where your income has been going?

And you can always reach out for a free financial coaching assessment call if you feel like you need some extra help 🙋‍♀️. Click here to set up a meeting!

Kick ass and conquer 🚀,

Alanna