Not sure how many people on this newsletter keep tabs on Canadian Soccer, but if you’re not… you should start.
Most recently they participated in their first ever Copa America.
This tournament is the Euro Cup equivalent for South America. This year, Canada, Mexico and the USA participated as well.
Canada took this opportunity to prove to the soccer world what a lot of hard-core Canadian soccer fans already knew… Canadian soccer is legit!
They played some really exciting soccer and kept up with the best… even Argentina and Lionel Messi, who they had to play twice.
This is a picture of us watching the game at the resort, while vacationing in Cancun.
Okay, I’m lying… this is actually a picture of us watching the England semi-final Euro Cup game.
England fans get rowdy!
We did watch the Canada-Venezuela quarter-final game at the same place… but unfortunately aside from my family, there weren’t a lot of other Canada Soccer fans.
Nonetheless, we got rowdy as well when Canada won that game in in penalty kicks. 😊
They ended up finishing the tournament in fourth place, after losing in the third-place game to Uruguay, in penalty kicks. A game they should’ve won!
Overall, this tournament was a huge success for Canadian soccer.
The result exceeded expectations, and so did the quality of play on the pitch.
Between Copa America and Euro Cup, June/July were very fun months for my family.
Sad to see it come to an end!
Lately, we’ve been talking a lot about first-time homebuyers and single-family homes.
We’ve even written a report to help first-time homebuyers purchase their first home.
You can download a copy of this report, here.
Sticking with this theme, I am going to share a story with you…
Back in 2008, before my wife Jackie and I got together, she bought her first home. A quaint two-story semi-detached home in South Windsor, for $150,000.
She had just graduated from Teacher’s College and had been hired full-time by the local school board.
Up until this point, she had been living at home with her parents, working several part-time jobs to save for a down payment on a house.
As a first-year teacher, her income wasn’t great.
So, to qualify for the mortgage for that house, Jackie took on a 5% down, 40-year mortgage.
Yes, back in 2008, there were 40-year amortizations.
I don’t recall exactly what her mortgage interest rate was, but I believe it started with a 6.
Even with a 40-year amortization, she struggled with the payment and had to work two part-time jobs in the summer to keep up.
Shortly after that Jackie and I got together, in 2011, after getting engaged, we decided to go shopping for a house that we could purchase together… our “family home.”
In the Summer of 2011, we closed on an older four-level back split style home in a nice neighborhood in LaSalle.
We purchased this home for $163,000. It needed quite a bit of work, and we used that to our advantage when negotiating the purchase price.
The work was mostly cosmetic, and we immediately had a vision as to how we could transform this home.
Back to Jackie’s South Windsor two-storey…
Without hesitation, when our offer was accepted on the LaSalle home, we decided to list Jackie’s house for sale. Because that’s what you do, right? If you buy another house, you sell the one you’re currently living in.
If you recall, 2011 wasn’t the best of economic times. It was the tail end of the Great Financial Crisis, and although Canada was not directly impacted by that crisis, our economy and our housing market were pretty stagnant at that time.
Long story short, we sold Jackie’s South Windsor House for $135,000 fully furnished. That’s $15k less than what she paid for it.
Her mortgage at that time was still around $140,000. Throw in penalties and fees, and at the end of it, we had to stroke a cheque to the bank for nearly $10k, to close out the mortgage.
This was 2011… this kind of stuff didn’t happen back then.
For a long time, we joked that we were likely the only people in Southwestern Ontario to ever be underwater on their mortgage.
But the truth is, losing money on the house is not what I look back on as our worst mistake.
Buying that home wasn’t the worst mistake either.
The worst mistake I made was selling that home.
We could have very easily held on to it and rented it out.
No money came from the sale, so it’s not like we had to sell it to help with the down payment on the new house… In fact, it took away from our down payment on the new home because we had to pay the bank.
To pour salt in the wounds, a few years later I started investing in real estate.
And I vividly remember the realtor showing me a house on the same block as Jackie’s old house, and it was selling for $189,900. It hit me right then and there what a mistake we had made selling that house.
The major lesson I took away from this experience, is that when it comes to investing and making financial moves… don’t just do what everyone else is doing, or what you think you’re supposed to be doing.
Look to get advice from people who didn’t do it the traditional way.
Not one person in our inner circle at the time, even questioned why we were selling the home if we were going to lose money on the sale.
That’s because they didn’t know any better. They would have done the same.
Jackie bought her house under very unfavorable terms and conditions because she thought she was doing what she was supposed to do. Graduate from school, get a job, buy a house.
We sold that house because that’s what we thought we were supposed to do.
If you buy a new house, you sell the house you are currently living in.
Renting out a house was for slumlords! Lol
For fun, I just did some realtor.ca homework, and a house similar to the one my wife owned, is now selling for over $500k, and is renting for $2,500/month! Smh!
If only I would have been okay with being called a slumlord… lol.
Oh, and just in case you’re wondering… the house we purchased in LaSalle… this was one of the best real estate moves I’ve ever made!
We lived in it for 11 years. All three of our children were born in that house.
We don’t live in it anymore… but we still own it!
And get great rent from it. 😊
Sometimes, timing is everything!
Until Next Time,
Vince
P.S. As there is a Bank of Canada meeting next week, I should probably touch on interest rates. Inflation has come down, and unemployment has increased. To me, this sets the stage for a 25-bps rate cut at next week’s meeting. Let’s see what happens.
