First day on the job.....

Today was my official first (self-appointed) day on the job.  My appointment  at the bank was at 10:00.  Despite the awful weather, I decided to dress up a little bit.  After all, I don’t know whether or not talking to financial planners-banker  is similar to a woman going in to get their car fixed.  (eg. If you don’t look and act like you know what you are doing, you get taken advantage of.)  As you can see, I am a little paranoid.

The fact of the matter is, saving money is not an easy thing.  For those of us that have to scrimp in order to save money, investing $500 to $5000 may not seem like a lot of money to them, but it is just as precious to us as a million dollar investment that someone else might be making.

Entering into my appointment, I was greeted by two gentleman. (One wore an account manager tag and either is in training or supervising…not sure which) and the other was the one that was going to help.  Both were very personable and easy to chat with.  The main person advisor  told me that he had just noticed that it had been a very long time since I had been into the bank to discuss my portfolio…in fact he was in grade 11.  Hmmmm.  I don’t know whether that made me feel old, or reminded me of how sad it was that I neglected my little secret bank account for such a long time.  However, gave me a clue that the person I was dealing with was probably under 27 years of age?

However, the experience validated my purpose for doing this blog.   This is not easy stuff.  I sat with  them and answered questions about my risk tolerance and goals all in under 50 minutes.  We determined that where my money was sitting was probably not the best place for it (big surprise…J), and moved my rsp to a balanced fund.  We also are in the process of moving my investment account into a balanced fund within a TFSA…which will take a couple of days to process.  Within one hour I signed a whole bunch of documents and have an appointment to go back on Tuesday to finalize things.  

I would rate my experience as good. However, I have to admit, that had I not previously tried to learn about tax free savings accounts or resps or RRSP’s, this would have been a completely foreign experience for me.  It still is a little bit of unfamiliar jargon. 

I feel like was treated like I was just as important as someone who had $100,000 they were investing, which is something I really appreciated.   But still, I just put $20,000 that I have saved (and sacrificed for)  into the hands of someone I didn’t know 4 hours ago, and am really just hoping they know what they are doing.   That seems a little presumptuous to me.   

I do feel though that the onus is on us as individuals though, because in one hours time you really can’t expect to learn all the ins and outs of investing.  I feel lucky that I have this little bit of side money available so that I can try and invest it and hopefully make some wise decisions that will help us financially in the future.  I still have a lot of questions and am hoping to still find direction as to how better to focus our savings and still maintain a happy standard of living and helping those around us.

I really want to try harder to find a better balance between living and saving.   The time to live is now, but the time to save is now too.  BALANCE.

Onward and upward.....