Last month I introduced a guest blogger, Mom2KG who is writing about her family’s quest to take control of their finances and become better money experts. Mom2KG is posting once a month and updating us on how her and her family are doing. January’s post can be found here. I am passing along her request to provide as many comments, suggestions and recommendations as possible since she found January’s comments so helpful.

Thanks to the readers of TMW who offered support and encouragement. It was interesting that the comments noted that my husband and I are doing more or better than a huge percentage of Canadians with our savings and investing. However, one can always do better, and our goal is to be as good at the planning and saving etc. as we can, not simply better than the masses.

One reason is that we have pretty lofty goals (I liked TMW’s blog on goals and tracking). The main one is to “retire” at age fifty, less than 20 years away. At that point, we’ll live off our savings while pursuing our “real” dreams. No doubt I’m going to get some flack for this plan. It’s a trite comment that the best way to make money is to find way to make money doing something you love. But we are conservative, with a combined fourteen years of postsecondary education we don’t want to “waste”. We are risk-averse, and simply not willing (or brave enough) to gamble on our incomes.

Having said that, the “dream” involves real estate, and we are getting on the road to investing in that area. We are progressing with one group in particular in a buy, rent and hold model. It’s slow going, but we are learning along the way.

We have gotten some basic stuff done, like maxing out the RESP contributions for the kids. We’ve been looking closely at our budget, and are determined to save a certain amount in cash each month as a priority. However, we keep blowing the budget and still have no idea how to control our spending. Seriously, we’re ramping up the potty-training with our kids so we don’t have to buy diapers anymore – is that ridiculous? Next I’ll be growing our own food in the backyard.

We will meet with our financial advisor next week, at which point I’m going to be pretty demanding about why in hell my RRSP portfolio (almost 100% mutual and money funds) has shown a dismal overall return of only 6% over the last 11 years! My husband started his only a few years ago and has consistently lost money (and his portfolio is in much less riskier funds than mine). And why hasn’t the advisor called about this? What’s going on? Oh yeah, I am ready.

I’m going to get out of mutual funds and into GICs for a bit. I like the “G” part of GIC. There’s no “G” in mutual funds. I note that if it were not for my newfound determination to involve myself more in personal finance, I never would have realized 6% ain’t so hot (actually, I probably wouldn’t have read my statements to realize this miserable fact). I used to think I just had to wait and wait and eventually I’d make money. [editors note: Mom2KG and I had a little discussion about asset allocation after I read she was going into GIC's. Maybe that will be next month's blog?!?]

As for our weekly money meetings, they’re going well. There was one moment involving an if-you-know-so-much-then-you-do-it. One great thing about having scheduled meetings is that any money issues coming up during the week can be noted and put away for our scheduled time. We’ve made some good progress in goal-setting (and achieving), both weekly and long-term.

TMW mused about whether men and women think about money differently. I’m not sure I can generalize based on gender, but I have noticed, among couples, that one tends to be the spender and the other is the anal retentive saver (no prize for guessing who is who in our marriage). No wonder couples divorce more over money than anything else. Notably, however, The Millionaire Next Door found that millionaire families almost invariably had partners with the same – frugal – attitude towards money. How nice for them. At least the rest of us support industries in second marriages, divorce law, and therapy.