Structured discipline, from intent to results.
Once I had the mindset, I needed structure — something that could carry the weight of consistency over decades. Mindset is what keeps you started; structure is what keeps you on track. I’d learned how to control my impulses, but I also knew I needed a framework that would keep my money working even when I wasn’t paying attention.
That’s how SURE-FIRE was born: Secure. Uncomplicated. Resilient. Effective.
A system of Financial Independence through Rational Engineering.
The truth is, most people start saving seriously only in their 40s or 50s — like I said earlier, life gets in the way. Priorities shift, careers take over, families grow, and saving becomes an afterthought until it suddenly feels urgent. You can’t blame anyone for that — if you didn’t know, you didn’t know. But by the time most people start, they’ve already missed the most powerful years of compounding. Investing early doesn’t just give you more time to grow wealth; it gives your decisions more room for error. Time forgives mistakes. Delay doesn’t.
Chasing perfection wasn’t the goal here — it was about building a system of accountability and sustainability. Each dollar I earned needed a clear purpose, a destination that matched both time and intent. I started dividing everything I had into buckets.
Bucket 1: Cash and near-cash for 3–7 years of living expenses.
This is your certainty bucket — the foundation that lets you sleep at night. How much you hold here depends entirely on your risk tolerance. Mine is fairly high, but I still keep around five years of expenses, in high-interest cash accounts and cash alternatives — very conservative. It gives me peace of mind and the freedom to ignore market noise. When markets drop, I can draw from this bucket instead of selling investments at a loss.
Most people keep their savings parked here their entire lives — and that’s the costly mistake. Cash, high-interest savings accounts and GICs feel safe, but over decades, inflation quietly erodes it. Year after year, surveys show that roughly a third of Canadians never invest at all, and many keep the bulk of their money sitting in regular savings accounts instead of growth assets. It’s understandable — markets can feel risky — but over time, avoiding risk becomes the bigger risk. Security isn’t the same as progress; you need both.
Bucket 2: A balanced, medium-risk portfolio designed to refill the first — typically holding 5–10 years of expenses.
This bucket works like a buffer. It’s my bridge between safety and growth — roughly a 60/40 mix of equities and different types of bonds. The annual gains here usually replace most of what I withdraw from Bucket 1 each year. It also buys me time. If markets perform poorly, I can draw from here and still have a decade for recovery, which historically matches most market cycles.
Most people underestimate how much time changes the equation. Younger investors, with decades ahead of them, often play it too safe — keeping most of their money in balanced portfolios that trade long-term growth for short-term comfort. I’ve seen it many times: a little extra, calculated risk early on can make a lifetime of difference. Still, risk is personal. It depends on your time horizon, your temperament, and what helps you sleep at night. If you’re unsure, work with a financial advisor to find the mix that fits you — something you can hold through full market cycles.
Bucket 3: Long-term growth investments — global equities and factor ETFs — the engine for decades-long compounding.
This is my future fuel and the largest bucket. It’s built for growth, not income. I hold 100% equities here — diversified globally, with exposure to technology, value, small cap, and emerging markets. This bucket is what keeps everything else growing over the long run. When it performs well, the excess flows down to refill the others.
Before retirement, this was my entire portfolio. With a twenty-year horizon ahead of me, I could afford full exposure to equities and the patience to ride out any downturns. That understanding of risk and time horizon paid off.
Bucket 4: Creative and project capital — the money that fuels what comes next.
This is where life stays interesting. It funds new projects, ideas, and creative pursuits — things that don’t always have financial returns but bring meaning and fulfillment. It’s a reminder that financial freedom isn’t about stopping work; it’s about choosing what kind of work to do next.
Each bucket has a clear purpose, internal thresholds, and rules. I manage it sparingly, reviewing it quarterly. If one overflows past its limit, a percentage flows into another. If markets fall, I draw from the short-term bucket while the long-term ones recover. It’s predictable and boring — exactly what investing should feel like.
Together, these buckets form a living structure — a quiet feedback loop that moves with the market instead of reacting to it.
This type of setup could be argued to be inefficient — there’s a lot sitting in cash, not technically “working.” But that’s the point. The system isn’t built for maximum returns; it’s built for sustainability and certainty. Holding cash is a buffer against chaos. It removes the pressure to sell in panic or time the market. It turns volatility into patience. By doing this, you eliminate unnecessary worry and anxiety and gain the one resource most investors never have — peace of mind.
In practice, this doesn’t differ much from a traditional 80/20 portfolio — it’s still a blend of growth and safety. The difference is control. In SURE-FIRE, cash isn’t an afterthought or a rounding error; it’s the first line of defense and the first resource to draw from. In a fully integrated one-fund portfolio, that separation doesn’t exist — your assets move as one, which can work well on paper but removes your ability to act strategically in real life. Here, every bucket has intent, and that intent creates stability.
This shift toward using buckets and a large cash position for income, only happened once I made the decision to retire. Before that, my portfolio was almost entirely equity — like an entire portfolio built on bucket 3, designed for long-term growth, not withdrawal. The transition was deliberate. I wanted enough cash and short-term assets to provide predictable income for as many years as it might take to survive a deep market crash and allow the rest of the portfolio to recover. Based on historical data, that window is roughly five to seven years — long enough to ride out almost any downturn without ever needing to sell investments at a loss. That’s what this structure protects: time.
I’ve also seen the other extreme — people who treat investing like a casino. They chase penny stocks, crypto tips, or “can’t-miss” recommendations from friends and social media. That’s not strategy; it’s speculation. The odds are terrible, and the outcomes are usually the same — stress, regret, and loss. I’ve tested it myself in my early years, and it always ended badly. The truth is, gambling gives the illusion of control, but removes it the moment emotion takes over. Long-term investing is the opposite: calm, consistent, and deliberately boring. That’s where real wealth builds quietly over time.
That covers investing and building wealth for retirement — but what about the part most people forget to plan for? Building wealth is only half the equation; withdrawing it wisely is the other half. I’ve seen countless people spend decades filling their RRSPs, only to discover later that withdrawals come with mandatory minimums that can push them into higher tax brackets when they least expect it. Many never even use a TFSA, which can be one of the best tools for reducing or eliminating tax entirely in retirement.
When I designed my system, I didn’t want to be trapped by forced withdrawals or unpredictable tax bills. So I spread my investments across RRSPs, TFSAs, and non-registered accounts — each with a clear purpose. That mix lets me choose where to pull income from in any given year. By drawing from the TFSA first or blending withdrawals strategically, I can keep my taxable income low and sometimes avoid paying any tax at all.
There’s another option people rarely talk about — leaving.
Once you begin withdrawing from your RRSP, those withdrawals are fully taxable, and when it converts to a RRIF, you’re required to take out roughly 4–5 percent a year. Add CPP and OAS on top, and your taxable income can climb faster than expected. Most people never question that structure, they just assume taxes are inevitable. But they aren’t fixed; they’re situational.
Canada doesn’t tax non-residents the same way it taxes residents. By moving to a country with a double-taxation treaty — and one that doesn’t tax Canadian-sourced investment income — it’s possible to live on those withdrawals at very low, or even zero, tax for many years. You’re still following the rules, you’re just designing your life within them.
Americans don’t have that luxury. The U.S. taxes its citizens on worldwide income, no matter where they live. Canadians, by contrast, can choose where to reside and how their income is treated, a flexibility that’s rarely recognized and often misunderstood. It’s one of the great advantages of Canada’s tax structure, if you plan ahead.
Leaving Canada isn’t about escaping responsibility; it’s about designing the life that fits you best — financially, emotionally, and practically. For some, that means staying close to family and familiar systems. For others, it means taking their independence abroad, where the cost of living is lower and every dollar of savings stretches further.
That single design choice — tax flexibility — is one of the most overlooked parts of retirement planning. It’s not just about building wealth; it’s about keeping control of it once you start using it. A balanced structure gives you options, and options are what protect you from both market volatility and the tax system.
That’s what Financial Pragmatism really means. It’s not just saving money, but designing a life that can survive both chaos and comfort. Remove randomness from your finances, and you remove it from your mind. Freedom becomes measurable.
None of this came easily, and it’s not for everyone. Over the years I became a kind of semi-minimalist — not out of philosophy at first, but necessity. I had debt, limited income, and a deep desire to never feel that kind of financial pressure again. That meant cutting habits that quietly drained money, learning to find peace with less, and building satisfaction from control instead of consumption.
For me, that was the only way forward. But if your income is higher, and you can both maintain your lifestyle and save twenty or thirty percent of what you earn, great — you can take a different path to the same goal. What matters isn’t deprivation; it’s direction. You have to know where your money is going, and why.
I chose safety and simplicity. My core investments were broad-market, globally diversified equity funds — heavy in U.S. markets and technology because that’s where I understood the growth. But this isn’t investment advice; it’s what matched my risk tolerance and long-term plan. After twenty years, I learned that no single sector leads forever, and that chasing quick wins almost always ends badly. Past performance is never a guarantee of the future. What worked for me and many others before me was patience, discipline, and staying diversified.
I even became a licensed financial advisor, to understand the machinery from the inside, and to learn directly from the people managing the money. You don’t need to go that far. But for me, learning deeply was part of how I stayed disciplined. Knowledge reduced fear, and fear is what makes most people quit or hesitant to make those tough choices.
Looking back, I didn’t set out to build a system. I just wanted to reach my goals sustainably and comfortably. Financial Pragmatism grew out of that process — years of refining, testing, and questioning what actually worked. It started as a means to an end: how to reach freedom without stress or excess risk.
To have what you want, you have to become the person who can understand and appreciate it. Freedom doesn’t appear when the numbers line up — it appears when you’ve developed the mindset and maturity to truly value what those numbers represent. The system gives you the means, but becoming that person gives you the meaning.
Most people skip this part — they want results without a repeatable process, a shortcut instead of a system. But treating investing like gambling isn’t it. Freedom isn’t a single goal you hit once — it’s a structure you live inside every day. And once you build it, you realize that wealth isn’t about having more. It’s about needing less — and knowing exactly how to make what you have last.
In the next part, I’ll show how this structure turned into independence — the point where the system finally did what it was built to do
Continue to part 4 – Freedom by Design.
Financial Pragmatism: The path to independence
This four-part series traces how I went from $50,000 in debt to retiring before 50 — not through luck, but through deliberate design. Financial Pragmatism is the system I built along the way: equal parts mindset, structure, and restraint. Each post explores a step in that journey — the trade-offs, the mental rewiring, the system that sustained it, and the freedom that followed.
Part 1: The Trade-Off
Part 2: The Mindset
Part 3: The System
Part 4: Freedom by Design