Hello, and welcome to post 15. First off, I have to apologize for my extended absence from my blog. I had some family stay over for the last 5 months and my blogging code was only on the PC in the room they were staying in aka my “office”. They recently purchased a new home so my office has been freed up again (yay!). I have to admit, it was a bit frustrating not being able to use my PC, but I was more than happy I was able to help them out. That being said, I missed my PC terribly so I'm glad I'm able to use it again. Hey, for someone that's used to working and studying on his PC during his free time it was hard to go cold Turkey!

Since it's been awhile, I'd like to give you guys an update on a few things:

1. I’ve changed jobs. I saw an opportunity to move laterally to a more stable job with my current (now permanent) client. As a former consultant I can honestly say it sucks when you don’t know where your next job is going to come up and you have bills to pay and a family to take care of. My new job has more stability and I was able to negotiate a higher salary which bumped me to the top 10% of what a programmer normally earns. As a plus, I didn’t burn any bridges with my former employer and I left on good terms.
2. I finally was able to save 100K in my RRSP! It took 10 years of saving with my former employer matching a maximum of 5% of my salary and my putting in more than 5% of my pay into my RRSP with manulife. I was in a fund that was giving me 9% returns but that had IMF/MER fees over 2% so I switched it to a S&P index fund earlier in the year with a .017% IMF fee and an estimated 12% return. Plans for this money now are to transfer it to my TD account, divide it equally into my eSeries funds and let it grow for at least 20 years with a $100 contribution towards it every month (split equally amongst the 4 eSeries funds). Based on the estimated value from the compound interest calculator at MoneyChimp , I should have $401,983.25 by the time I’m 60 using those numbers. I’ll probably bump the amount I contribute to my RRSP when the kids are done school, so that number is very conservative as I have other expenses I need to worry about for the meantime. Also, I have a pension at my current job so I don’t need to focus on growing my RRSP as fast now.
3. After almost a year, I finally made my first sale with my online store! I’ve revamped the store to sell winter gear and I was able to make 10 sales in November! My ads weren’t performing as well as I thought they would after I made the 10th sale so I stopped running the ads on Facebook till I can figure out how to get more sales. My own estimate profits from those sales was over $300!

Those are a few of the major things that happened to me while I was away. I’m going to do my best to get back to creating my weekly entries like I did in the beginning. Thanks to everyone who stuck around while I was on hiatus. I’ll talk to you all soon! Have a great week!