Another story to inspire you on your immigrant journey.
I really like this one because it is a slightly different pattern to the others.
Let’s call today’s subject “Tri”.
Profile
Gender: Female
Country of Residence: Canada
Profession: Program Manager
The first question I always ask is, why did you leave your own country?
So the main reason was, my parents got a new job opportunity.
If I were to talk about my experience personally, the reason we left was initially because my dad got a job overseas. He got the job when we were really young; maybe I was five or six or something like that. That job took us initially to go stay in Israel for a few years.
It was taking us out of the familiar and that just launched us into living overseas.
So from there where next?
From Israel, we moved to Cyprus.
Cyprus is in the Mediterranean and the reason we stayed in Cyprus was when we got to Israel it was just before the Gulf War and then the Gulf War happened. So my dad’s employers evacuated us to Cyprus. That’s where we stayed for a long, long time before we eventually moved over to Canada.
The story is, we’ve always moved around. But that’s given us a really nice multinational kind of viewpoint, but it also brought a lot of challenges in terms of trying to adapt to different places multiple times.
Yeah, let’s talk about those challenges, because I mean, you’re moving from Ghana to the Middle East to Europe, Europe to North America. It’s like just moving across the world. The only place you haven’t mentioned is Asia.
Yeah. hahaha
I mean, I know you were quite young when you moved, but at some point, you’ll have come into your teens and eventually, you become adults. How was that experience for you?
I would say the Israel one is a little bit vague. I can just remember some important places we went to visit with my parents.
But what I remember about Israel was definitely because of size. I was small and so if I think back on my memories, everything looks so big. And there, that was a real language barrier situation because we stayed in a place called Nahariya, which is close to the Lebanon / Israel border. I think because my dad worked over the border, every day he would have to travel across the border. All I know is that was my first place where it’s like so many different languages thrown at you.
Different accents too?
Yeah
I think that made the experience exasperating when we moved to Cyprus. Because yet again it was another language, it’s Greek, English, and another one I can’t remember now. The older generation will speak a different language, but the younger generation spoke Greek.
And they were not very many black families that lived there and could share similar experiences. I remember there were, maybe two or three other families that were also from Ghana that were around us. So we kind of all grew up together with the same experience and stuff like that.
Let’s talk about your life as an adult. In the initial years, it would have been Dad and mom financing your life, right?
Yeah they did.
I think my parents tried to instill good money habits and boy did they try!
So the big important thing, my first concept of money was getting some money to give in church. That kind of started early and then maybe high school era I opened my first checking account, a young savers account.
Around that time we moved to Canada and I was like “ohh it’s the summer Mommy find a job”. So as soon as I hit the the legal age that I could start looking for a job I got a job at McDonald’s. That was the 2nd year, and I did that for about a month or two which was hours after school, but the challenge was with the schedule.
We had to take a bus to go to our school about an hour away and then, you know, coming back trying to do homework and work schedules was a bit much. So eventually I guess I had to make the tough decision to put a pause and focus on school.
Thankfully my parents were able to support me to do my first degree. But then my first learning experience would be during my degree. While my parents were supporting me, I didn’t want to always have to go back to them to ask for money for simple stuff. So I got an opportunity to work on campus, work at a theater as an usher; basically just combining studying and working.
But I noticed when it came to money I was really trying to understand the concept of money and saving. It was around this time I got my first credit card. It had a balance of $500 CAD, so I was working with that. I started to get a hang of budgeting.
I remember I couldn’t always join my friends to go and do an activity if it didn’t meet my budget, and then also I needed to plan for maybe the semester afterward. Because with school work, you can’t work as well as many hours.
I was going to ask you, I mean, this was you at UNI already. Was there somebody who taught you or this is something you picked up along the way?
Well, the thing is like, I think my parents maybe tried to teach us, but, they can only teach what they know. What they knew was that; dad was working and my mom was supporting us in the home; they were doing it together. It was like a traditional thing whereby the man was working and the woman stayed home.
Watching how they were trying to raise us on one salary really gave me some ideas. Imagine trying to manage one salary in a foreign land and you have three children. And it’s not like we just went to public schools. So it was a really a lot of sacrifices on their part.
But that taught me that it is really important to prioritize.
They also try to make sure that you try and live within your means. Not get into debt and stuff like that.
Quite impressive. So what happened after Uni?
The challenge was even though I tried budgeting and stuff, right after getting my first big job, I forgot everything about budgeting because it was like ‘ohh now I have lots of money’.
For some reason when I started working, I thought I needed more clothes, my excuse was ‘I am a professional now’. I also thought I needed to set up the place where I was staying as well.
Long story short, I ran up the credit card.
Thankfully I eventually got to my senses! I was able to figure out how to clear the balance and then from then I made sure that I was saving, It is only recently I would say that I started looking at investing. It is really because for so long investing was something very foreign.
O right. Why did it take you so long?
Here in Canada, we have things like mutual funds, index funds, ETF’s and then actual stocks. It just feels too much. So I didn’t really know too much about how to go about investing in the stocks or was thinking the tools we had were very prohibitive or even understand the terms of some of the brokerages one would use.
Do you know they charge per transaction? but I think it’s only recently that I saw that. Oh, and there are some other tools that you can use whereby you know it’s going to be commissioned for you so you can.
So now I put my money there and do some research on the stocks and stuff.
Now that you started investing and what has that journey been like?
It’s been a very interesting journey just because of how the market is going at the moment. But one of the things that I’m looking at is having a short-term or a long-term view.
My short-term view is going to be mainly focused on investing just so I can take the investment increases to live on or do something with. Whereas with the long term, I want to invest in maybe really good quality stocks or ETF and then let it grow over a longer period of time.
But I have found what I really enjoy is doing the research. The research aspect of it is very, very interesting for me and rewarding. While also trying to look at it without being emotional about it.
And let’s talk about income generation for a bit. You have a job but I also know that you now have a business as well?
So for me, what drove it was looking long term long term, how can I increase the amount of money that I was making? And that made me start looking at providing some services for other people so that they will not go through similar challenges that I had.
I chose to help people adapt career-wise and help people really understand that they have a lot of value and skills. Just because they moved to a different country, they shouldn’t discount all of the value and the skills that they have brought with them. I also wanted to teach people, how to present these skills in a nice way so it meets the needs of the employers here.
The way I do that is by offering courses. And then I also do individual sessions but I really want to move more into a model whereby I’m able to help more people, maybe with self-paced courses, and then just kind of support them as they go through the program.
It’s a bit interesting trying to run a business because the thing is I understand the value, but now it’s about tying the value to the benefit that the clients will get and getting paid for it.
Do you think you are going to have more businesses?
I would definitely like more businesses, yeah. But I think I want to move more into, maybe real estate.
Real estate?
Yeah, because I think that there’s a gap. There’s a need for more houses.
Is that specific for your province or Canada as a whole?
It’s all over Canada, I feel. The challenge we have in Canada is the demand; the rate at which they build houses is not fast enough for the number of people that are coming in. And then the people that are moving around Canada as well. I feel like the inventory is not as much as it needs to be to meet the population demands.
Almost last question, I mean you’re doing well these nice days. What is the one goal financial goal that you are looking forward to?
I think that that’s an interesting question.
For me it is about legacy. No matter what I do, I’m not just thinking about myself. I’m thinking about maybe a generation or two after me. Giving them tools that can help them succeed, either financially or career-wise wise in the future.
So I am looking at the financial goal that will be about how much can I leave so that I can leave a good enough legacy for those that come after.
I like that. You are the first person I’m speaking to and the answer is different. Last question, I mean, before we round off, your credit card debt, how did you clear that?
I really looked at my income, I looked at my expenses and then I looked at what are some other ways that I can generate money.
I also started looking at my subscriptions, looking at all those little things that maybe had been added that didn’t need to.
But I looked at my spending as well. I recognized that, there seems to be a pattern. If I am stressed, I went to eat junk food and the reason I was eating junk food is that I didn’t have any food prepared at home So I started doing some meal prep. I got what I needed. Prepare the meals, have it ready, and then have it handy.
I also made sure I didn’t carry my bank card with me so I wasn’t tempted to keep spending.
I looked at some of the things that I had purchased that I didn’t need and tried to sell them on Gigi, Facebook marketplace, and then my old alumni site as well.
So I did some of that, and then I looked at picking up an additional job in the evenings and weekends as well to help with some extra pay to keep reducing the balance.
Thank you so much Tri this was a good conversation.
Everything Digital Tech and More 