When I first started pursuing FIRE, it was mostly about investing more and watching the number go up.

Over time, I find myself thinking more about how to reach FIRE sooner, what actually matters for measuring progress, and whether I’m truly on track.

Curious if others have had a similar shift as they’ve progressed - what became more important to you over time?

Quick disclosure: I’ve been running the Smith Manoeuvre myself for over five years, and I built this calculator:

https://www.deductibleinteresttracker.ca/smith-manoeuvre-projection

It’s free and doesn’t require signup. Mods, I’m happy to remove the link if this isn’t allowed.

Most SM calculators boil the strategy down to a few assumptions and one large number at the end. I wanted to model what actually changes over time: the mortgage balance, the readvanceable limit and 65% ceiling, capitalized interest, taxes on distributions, and what happens to the refund. It also lets you compare up to three strategies side by side.

One difference is that it tracks total wealth rather than stopping at net worth. That becomes important when comparing different ways of using dividends and tax refunds.

Here are three results I found interesting. The baseline is an $800,000 home, a $400,000 mortgage and a 6% HELOC.

1. The tax deduction helps less than the usual back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests.

In this scenario, the break-even total return is just under the HELOC rate: roughly 5.5% against a 6% line.

So the deduction provides about half a percentage point of cushion, not the two-plus points implied by saying that a 6% loan “really costs” only 3.4% after tax. The missing part of that calculation is that the investment return is also taxable.

Small changes to the return assumption can therefore change the outcome quite a bit.

2. A net-worth chart can make faster mortgage repayment look worse than it is.

Suppose you send dividends and tax refunds to the mortgage, then reborrow the available amount to invest. The mortgage is paid off sooner, but a basic net-worth chart may show that strategy falling behind.

The problem is that the chart ignores the mortgage payments you no longer need to make after the mortgage is gone.

When those freed payments are included, the faster-paydown strategy comes out ahead by the tax savings generated along the way. That’s why the calculator tracks total wealth: net worth, plus freed mortgage payments, plus any other cash contributed or withdrawn.

Looking only at net worth can lead to the wrong comparison.

3. Capitalizing interest improves cash flow, not wealth.

Borrowing to cover the HELOC interest keeps the cost out of pocket for a while, but it doesn’t make the interest disappear.

It also works only while there is enough room under the 65% limit. Once that room is exhausted, the HELOC interest has to be paid in cash and may be roughly comparable to the old mortgage payment.

The model still has limitations: returns are constant, there is no sequence-of-returns risk, final-sale taxes are excluded, and it assumes you don’t spend the freed cash on a boat.

I’d be interested to hear about any incorrect assumptions, missing scenarios or ways to break the model.

Just found out I've been getting a 30% withholding tax on my corporate trading account dividends instead of the 15% it's supposed to be. Apparently my W8-BEN-E expired and iTrade didn't bother to notify me. Fun little gotcha, I think a lot of people will miss if you're handling your own investments in the US. I didn't even realize this thing expires.

I've escalated with iTrade to see if there's any way I can be reimbursed, but there's likely a less than 0 chance they do anything for me.

Pretty concerning that I was never notified about this document expiring, seeing as the outcome is false unrecoverable costs.

Should I hold what I have in VCN and XDIV or get into what everyone seems to love XEQT? curious!

Hello, I'm 18 and I just realized that I've been paying off my credit card wrong this whole time.

I thought you just needed to pay it off before the due date, however, I never knew you had to wait until after the statement balance releases and then pay it off. I always just paid like $90 on my credit card, waited a day and then paid $90 from my chequing to the card to pay it off.

My structure is like this:

1. Last statement: July 10th

2. Payment due date: July 31st

3. Minimum payment:

4. Statement balance:

This whole time I thought you could just pay it off whenever in full and that would build the credit, so almost all of my statement balances from the past have $0 because I thought that showed what I owed so I wanted to make sure I owed nothing.

Im stupid. Gotta lock in FICAN

I need help and I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m basically guessing my way through this. I only started investing in 2024 and I’ve made pretty much FA. Only real moves I’ve have made is VFV because I read it’s S&P 500 and also buying more into CLS because I noticed it was the main thing making any money.
Should I be focusing on ETF’s or stocks? What should I be looking for? What rookie mistakes am I making?
I would appreciate sincere advice. I don’t have much saved for retirement so I’d really like to change that.

Hey r/fican,

I've been tracking my path to FI for a few years using a pretty messy spreadsheet. As a designer, I wanted something cleaner and more visual to test scenarios, so I turned my sheet into a basic web app.

It handles budget inputs, investment growth, and projects FI timelines specifically around Canadian account logic (TFSA, RRSP, and FHSA).

Everything runs locally in your browser with zero data saved anywhere.

I'm trying to make sure the underlying math, growth logic, and tax assumptions hold up before relying on it completely.

If anyone is willing to test it out and try to break the logic or UX, I’d really appreciate the feedback!
I'll drop the link in the comments below.

30M

Restarting my investing journey after landing a job in luxury automotive sales. I like REITS because of the monthly dividends, as well as the exposure to Canadian Real Estate.

What do you guys think of a long term hold (stock) mixed with holding big reliable REITS in a TSFA?

I understand different types of stocks be split between different accounts (US Stocks in RRSP) and etc however I’m new to the guidelines and I’m curious to hear your feedback based on experience.

Feel free to roast my portfolio.

Not the company specifically, but what is this type of bidding? Saw it on the main page just looking for clarification

Just started investing a little over a year ago. Pretty simple portfolio, and I plan on selling the Nvidia once I break even someday. Just wondering if it’s too simple and if I should add any gold or other etfs?

Hi, I was wondering if you have a satellite DCA position in your portfolio for PE stocks like

• BAM
• CSU
• STCK.TO

For example. Because the pre-IPO game is too short-term for me.

Hi guys I’m 19 and Nebius is going to retire me. We are constrained on computer and the buildout will take decades we are so early. Let’s fucking go who wants to retire with me. Started with 30k this year

Hi everyone,

​What are your thoughts on using a student line of credit to invest in taxable equity accounts?

​Quick context:

​$50k income, living with parents ($0 debt, car paid off).

​TFSA & FHSA nearly maxed.

​Can borrow $20k/year @ 4.5% interest (tax-deductible).

​Cash flow easily covers monthly interest out-of-pocket.

​Is using student margin early on generally a solid strategy under these low-overhead conditions, or am I taking on unnecessary risk?

​Thanks!

My husband and I (both 34) are wanting to take the next step in life and start family / buy a house. However, we’ve recently had a pretty steep drop in income, and want to see if what we want is still even possible. We went from making a combined take home of about 12k to now about 7k. I feel this basically wipes out our ability to save much going forward if we were to have a mortgage and kid.

Right now we have about 500k in cash and investments and also own a rental property worth about 750k with 545k left on the mortgage - it’s rented out and is about break even on a month to month basis - hoping to become cash flow positive when we refinance the mortgage to a lower rate. My parents also owe us about 45k and will be paying that back soon. We are staying rent free with my parents at the moment but don’t want to be doing this forever - it was meant to be temporary while we look for a house for ourselves. However, with our reduced income we’re feeling stuck. We’re looking at much cheaper houses than we were before and think we could get something decent for around 570k. We’re both actively looking for work to increase our incomes but with the current job market it’s not looking good for the short term.

The loss of income kind of hit us both a bit hard, we were pretty confident in being able to take this next step while continuing to save and invest but now we’re not sure. Both of us have had to help our parents financially and know we’ll most likely be responsible for them entirely in the future, based on the stress and pressure this has put on us we never want to put our kids in that position. So we don’t feel good about having kids if we’re not sure we can provide and be financially independent in the future. Are we being too pessimistic and cautious, or are we right that this will impact our ability to become financially independent? Any suggestions on how to move forward with our goals?

Retired in my 40’s and been early retired for almost 4 years. I share this with you all because none of my peeps would understand. This morning it dawned on me that I was treating retirement like a bunch of tasks and etc that belonged more with the work life.

My epiphany is this is my life . Life . Lifestyle . I shouldn’t rattle off the list of countries I want to check off - honestly it’s the whole world lol. So I’m about to make a vision board for retirement - something I’d never done for this new stage.

Anyone else ? How do you view your days? Do you justify your time for others ? Do you try to fill in empty hours? Let’s inspire each other ?

Curious how people here plan for major financial decisions and their long-term financial future.

Do you use your own spreadsheets, tools like ProjectionLab/Optiml, a financial planner, or something else?

And are you happy with what you use, or do you still end up jumping between different tools to get the full picture?

Just wondering if anyone here is sitting on cash waiting for the next crash to go all in?

How much you have in cash? Will you go all in when the crash happens?

Selling a rental property (condo) would likely pay off our mortgages leaving my family debt free and owning our home (townhouse) outright. Sounds great and we’re blessed to be in this position. Is that the right move or is holding a cash flowing asset the better long term play.