🔥 On Saturday over 2,000 Blossomers came out from all across Canada for an incredible day of learning and connection! I was shocked to see close to 1/3 of folks travelled from outside of Toronto to join us, huge thanks to everyone who made the trip! ⚡️ The energy during the day was absolutely buzzing and it was so awesome to meet so many members of the Blossom community! Special shout out to Blossom's Creator of the Year @jacobb and Blossom's Rising Star @nettspend who won our community-nominated Blossom awards 👏 🌱 Blossom has grown from an idea, to an app, to a movement and BlossomCon is the biggest testament to that. To see 2,000 folks from all different walks of life take time out of their weekend to connect, learn, and build financial literacy together is exactly what Blossom is all about and I am so fired up to keep building for this amazing community 💕 😍 Can't wait for BlossomCon Vancouver and New York!!! (https://www.blossomsocial.com/blossomcon2026) 👏 Special shout out to the Harvest ETFs team for being our Headline sponsor for the 3rd year in a row and to all our amazing sponsors for making this event possible 🙏
Well saw this for the first time today, had a creators call last month with @max discussing about potential ways to reward creators and benefit Blossom content creators while continuing to impeove Blossom. I think this is a cool step to keep creators on this platform and continue to contribute to @blossom. I never started posting to make any money but simply for the love of finance and educating people/sharing my story. I think overall this will benefit the platform and make good creators want to continue to post on Bloosom and and value to Blossom as a whole. What are peoples thoughts??
I joined Blossom 3 years ago and I’ve been a Blossom PRO member the whole time. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed setting goals, tracking dividends and more recently, using the AI chat. Unfortunately, I opted not to renew it this time, only because I’m not currently working and decided to cut most of my subscriptions. I already miss it 😢 If you’re considering a PRO subscription, it’s worth it! Some appreciation over the years in the posts below: https://link.blossomsocial.com/7uYa/dbdyoh80 https://link.blossomsocial.com/7uYa/7xtef6lxread more
Last year, we handed out awards to some incredible people in the Blossom community like @williamwang23, @flipflopfinance, @perryf and @paulsantori. This time, we're switching it up and we want YOUR input 🫵 Our community has shared thousands of posts, sparked countless discussions, and helped investors of all experience levels become more confident. Now it's time to recognize the members who made the biggest impact. We're officially opening nominations for the 2026 Blossom Community Awards! Here are the award categories to which you can nominate someone: 🏆 Creator of the Year Awarded to the creator who has consistently delivered outstanding content, inspired the community, and made an exceptional overall impact on Blossom throughout the year. 🌸 Community MVP Awarded to the community member who made the biggest positive impact on Blossom through their kindness, helpfulness, and consistent support of others. ✨ Rising Star Awarded to the creator who has had a breakout year on Blossom, rapidly growing their presence, engaging the community, and showing tremendous potential for the future. Know someone who deserves one of these awards? Nominate them here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfSlYHZBjj-F0lQ1ACtZYF_gqopbPBLV93Kka56vzrCYPWPGg/viewform?usp=dialog Nominations will be open until Friday, July 10. One submission per category per person. We can't wait to celebrate the incredible people who make Blossom such a special place. ❤️read more
If you’re interested in being part of the biggest retail investor event in North America and help bring the Blossom community together IRL, we’d love to have you join us! We’re looking for volunteers who are available for the full day on July 25 in Toronto. Volunteers will receive: 🍽️ Food + drinks provided 👕 A BlossomCon shirt 🎁 A small thank-you gift 💙 A behind-the-scenes experience with the Blossom team and community Apply here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSehHzvurSoNLbOS6obk6ev89RAW9w3MoguAcZImL1stBQ_qYw/viewform If you're not interested in volunteering but want to come to BlossomCon Toronto, tickets are still available!!!! Get them before its too late here: https://admitone.com/events/toronto/community/conference/blossomcon-2026-toronto/SP8BHC and use code BLOSSOM for 15% off!! Can't wait to see you all in a few weeks!!!! It's gonna be a blast 💥read more
Yesterday we went to Ryogoku, the Sumo district. In the months leading up to our trip to Japan, we got hooked watching Sumo wrestling tournaments together as a family. My son's favourite Sumo wrestler is Aonishiki Arata, a Sumo wrestler that's originally from Ukraine. We would have loved to attend an actual Sumo tournament, unfortunately we came during the off season (it only occurs during specific days on odd # months). Instead we visited the Sumo Stadium (which has a Sumo shop) and we also visited the famous Takashi Sumo Shop. The district is filled with restaurants run by retired Sumo wrestlers. In the stadium's sumo shop, My son asked if they had the signature and handprint of his favourite Sumo wrestler and they did. (We told the lady at cash to mark it clearly for us since we are completely illiterate in Japanese). My husband asked for the signature prints of the best fighters and I asked for the wrestler who fought with the most heart. The original goes for about $350-$400 dollars, luckily for us a copy of the signatures we got are only $3.5 dollars a piece. Today we had a magical moment, as we exited the subway station right by our hotel we saw a crowd of people surrounding real life Sumo wrestlers! In Japan these Sumo wrestlers are national celebrities. They date supermodels and are considered sex symbols! They couldn't walk, everyone was trying to get a photo with them. Their handler was getting the croud to go away, when a women with the Sumo wrestlers spotted my son. I head the woman say 'Chisana ko' a few times, something that translated to 'the little one'. She pointed to my son and told them to let the little one have a picture. The kind Sumo wrestlers immediately obliged, they couldn't say no to a child. The woman also invited us to get into the shot as well. She asked us to give a thumbs up (that's why my arms were flexed in the photo). This was an unbelievable, magical moment. We showed the photo to the gentlemen working reception in our hotel, his jaw dropped, he could not believe it! Japan is amazing, I still can't believe this happened. We went from buying sumo souveners to actually posing with real life sumo wrestlers in a photograph. What a trip!
Pinch me, I am going to Japan? (I must be dreaming right?!). It's a surreal feeling when it's the day before a trip that's been planned a long time ago. International travel is a luxury, I feel guilty for the extravagance of an overseas vacation, this was not something I did growing up (other than visiting family in Egypt). While my focus is always retirement planning and saving, my husband needs these family trips and experiences. I finally understood what he was saying during our trip to Egypt, because my husband is a little over a decade older than me, and due to his chronic pain, I noticed the change in his body. He couldn't go inside many of the pyramids (they are quite physical, requiring crouching, climbing and crawling into ones stomach at times). This gave me an understanding of his need to prioritize these experiences now, since it will be unlikely that he will be able to do these things at age 60. Similarly, we only have a narrow window to travel with our son and give him these wounderful experiences. In a blink of an eye he will be too busy with school, work and his own life. What is truly increadible is that for the first time in over 10 years, we reached a point in where we can afford to make these trips happen. Visiting Japan has been my husband's dream for fourty years! and tomorrow it is happening for real, we leave at 5:00 am. This was unimaginable just a few years ago. What has changed is out income has increased dramatically and our housing costs are low relative to our income (below 15%). This gives us the runway to save, invest regularly while also setting aside money for travel. To plan for this, I work backwards. First, I set aside half of my annual tax refund from RRSP contributions to cover the costs of the flights. My husband knows how to optimize Amex credit card points to reduce the cost and get 'perks' and cancellation protection. (P.S. Americans have access to far better credit card travel rewards than Canadians do) Next, I considered the costs of the hotel bookings, restaurants, transportation, outings and gifts. I tally everything up than I increase the number by 20% because travel ALWAYS goes over budget. From here I divide by the number of months and I work out how much I need to aside every paycheck into a separate 'travel' high yield savings account. Now is a great time to visit Japan because the Japanese Yen recently dropped to decades low, making everything surprisingly 'cheap' relative to our currency. The fact I can travel is a huge privellage, one that I don't take lightly, I can access many countries visa free without hassle due to my Canadian passport. My family in Egypt don't have that same freedom of movement. Finally the real MVPs here are my coworkers who will need to cover for me for the over 3 weeks+ I am away! They are all excited for me 😊. Just like last time, there will be no more days off the rest of the year. The dress below is a gift my husband surprised me with to wear on our trip, I was glad to see that he bought it on sale! 😉 P.S My husband diligently saved in his watch fund TFSA for this trip (using blossom growth recommendations), unfortunately he is down 30%.read more
I find myself often not relating with my colleagues at work and I am curious if anyone else feels like they don't fit in. The people I work with are lovely but there are constant reminders that I am... well 'different'. As child of immigrants (born and raised in Canada/ US), I can't help but wonder if these cultural differences stem from being the only one in the room with an 'ethnic' background and hence a different experience growing up. Perhaps it is socioeconomic because I am the only non-homeowner, (despite having a much higher family income due to my husband's private sector job...Strange times we live in). Everyone was talking about cottages, and I let it slip that I didn't care about the 50% of capital gains being taxed when a cottage (if it's a second property) gets passed on to heirs. My manager was upset, 'So you don't care that a cottage that has been in a family for generations, all their hard work and all the money poured into it for years, blood sweat and tears gets robbed from them because they can't afford the tax bill?' I replied that such heirs will have already inherited one property (the parent's primary residence) without any of those gains taxed, that's a huge amount of tax sheltering that I, as a life long renter, will never have access to. If someone stands to inherit more than one property, then they are more fortunate than most Canadians and even with the tax bill they are still better off than most. As a renter, I have to work Extremely hard and I need to save more money than my peers for the privilege of being able to afford to not work until the day I die. As a non-asset holder with less tax sheltering opportunities, I think it's fair to have some form of tax on the wealth generated from a secondary property. 'You have to live in reality' my manager said. Now I was the heartless hater wishing that everyone loses their family cottage (I don't wish that at all and yes I get it we ALL hate paying taxes). To defuse the situation, I apologized for my comments, reminded him that when my heirs inherit my RRSP it will be taxed as income (definitely less favourably than a cottage). Inside my frustration builds, our income will always be taxed at 100% capital gains, the RRSPs will be taxed as income. Aside from my TSFA, as a renter I don't have access to anywhere near the amount of tax sheltering homeowners have. I am sorry but I can't bring myself to feel bad for people that are far wealthier than me and in a more tax favourable situation. Since I was never exposed to the cottage growing up, I sat out the rest of the conversation to avoid further offending my colleagues. Anyone else feel like they came from a different planet? If so then please share!. So that I may feel a bit less alone, LOL. read more
Yesterday was a whirlwind day... good and sadly bad (my dad had a a medical emergency in the morning and having to deal with that and still get the event in the evening done).... But it was a great event... about 30 showed up... perfect weather. and having my pal @paulsantori fly in to help as well as @kar0825 valuable to help soo much and take these photos! i didnt take many myself. of course .... paul and i forgot the 1 year anniversary youtube cake to share with everyone! ohh well more for me. and thanks @maxstocks and team for helping with all your support!!
to fight @paulsantori and I had another great meetup with some of theblocal blossomers... includimg two that drove all the way from Guelph. ohh hahaha and eastern Toronto... guess that is as far. :) thanks all those that attended... it was a lot of great talks ! and perfect weather on the patio.
Success! 🎉 CRA has received my response, and proceed to finally issue my revised 2022 tax refund.🙏🏻 After several months of gathering documentation and corresponding with the CRA, they accepted my explanation regarding the investment interest deduction related to my Smith Manoeuvre strategy. This experience reinforced a few important lessons that I think every Canadian investor should know. What did I do wrong? When I refinanced my mortgage, I borrowed $70,000 based on the existing equity in my home, but after financing costs and fees, only around $68,00p actually made it into my investment account. Under the CRA's tracing rules, you can only deduct interest on the amount of borrowed money that is actually used to earn investment income. That meant I could have claimed interest on the approximately 97.7% of the interest (the percentage of the borrowed funds that were actually invested), which I totally had not claimed (oops! 😬). Fortunately, I had kept detailed records showing: ✅ The mortgage advance ✅ The transfer of funds to my bank account ✅ Every transfer into my brokerage account ✅ The investment purchases ✅ That the funds remained invested in a non-registered account Having this paper trail made responding to the CRA much easier after I was asked to provide documentation whe I had refiled my taxes for the previous years. My biggest takeaway If you're implementing the Smith Manoeuvre or borrowing to invest: * Keep meticulous records from day one. * Trace every dollar from the loan to the investment. * Understand that financing costs can affect the deductible portion of your interest. * If you're unsure, don't hesitate to call the CRA or speak with a qualified tax professional. 📹 I had made a YouTube video walking through this entire experience, including the mistake I made, the CRA review process, and what I'd do differently: https://youtu.be/cSz5dkI4o6A On another note, my readvanceable mortgage (currently with Scotiabank) is coming up for renewal in December. ➡️ I'd love to hear from anyone else who has a re-advanceable mortgage: Which bank/financial institution are you What are some of the pris and cons of it? For me, overall I like the Sccotia STEP readvanceable mortgage. The only con I can think of is that the mortgage principle that isnpaid down every month or any prepayments usually take up to 2 banking cylces (typically 2 months) before they auyomatically getbadded to my HELOC as an additional available balance for borrowing. I wished it was a bit more instant but that is frankly the only main con that comes to my mind. read more
waiting for my early morning flight to Toronto to start the big BlossomCon Toronto week. I am arriving today to Co-Host a Blossomers casual meetup this evening starting at 6PM with my Youtube/Blossom Bro @paulsantori ... we will be at the Arizona Bar & Grill right beside the Airport. If any blossmers are free and wanna drop in for a great more intimate one on one chats with bubblies and snacks... we would love to see you !
For those who may have missed it, Kar (@karyungtom) and I (Moe) started Financial KarMoe about 4 months ago as a way to celebrate the amazing investing conversations happening within the @blossom community. Over the years, we’ve learned so much from fellow investors on this app — from creative strategies and thoughtful discussions to the occasional “I probably shouldn’t have done that” moments that teach us the most. 😅 Investing is a lifelong journey, and the best part is that we don’t have to figure it all out alone. In each episode, we highlight interesting ideas, posts, and discussions from the Blossom community, share our thoughts, and connect them to our own experiences building wealth and working toward financial independence. Think of it as two investors sitting down, sharing what we’ve learned, questioning our own assumptions, and trying to keep the financial karma flowing. 💰✨ We’ve now put all current and past episodes in one easy place on YouTube: 🎥 https://www.youtube.com/show/VLPLfxYbxI9o498?sbp=QAE%3D If you’ve watched any of the Financial KarMoe episodes, we’d love to hear from you! 😇 ⭐ What topic or episode did you find most helpful? 🛠️ What could we improve for future episodes? Your feedback helps us make the show better. 🙏🏼 Thanks to everyone in this community who continues to share knowledge, experiences, and lessons learned. We’re grateful to be part of this journey with all of you. 🌸read more
Good afternoon everyone! Portfolio sitting at $34,628 to close out the month of July. Down a tiny -0.33% across all my accounts! 42 trades total this month(buying into $VFV $VDY$XEQT$ENB) Putting in $600/week, split between $300 on Mondays and the rest later in the week. Slow and steady, consistently adding no matter what the market does 📈 Around $10,000 left to max out my tfsa before the end of the year. With $2,400 going into it every month, it’s looking very promising!! read more
The platform and my page have grown a lot since I last talked about this, but I wanted to share why I make Blossom content and want to help others with their finances so much During my time on Blossom I’ve realized how many people don’t know the financial basics and all of these complex financial topics because nobody wants to teach you. Schools won’t, the government won’t, many families won’t. My goal is to fill that gap and hopefully take on that role in order to help teach a whole generation of investors how to better understand their finances. I’ve been using Blossom for over 2 years now, and the platform has grown from under 100k users to over 800k. In that time my own page has grown to almost 8000 followers with dozens of posts. I’ve been essentially non-stop making content for over 2 years, and I’m not stopping yet! Throughout that time, my girlfriend and now wife has been a huge encouragement to me. She supports me in all of this, and often times will read most of my content and sometimes even help me with ideas. She’s seen my talent in finances and constantly encourages me to create and help teach people, even if I don’t always see it myself. There’s been many times where I feel I don’t want to continue using this knowledge and gifting to help people, but she sees how much I could do if I just keep doing it. Picking the perfect partner is the ultimate financial and life decision, do it wisely! Shes one of the reasons now I’m so passionate about helping people with finance. The same way she fully trusts my financial guidance and direction in our own life and marriage, she wants other people to have that same level of insight and support. Not everybody grew up with an opportunity to learn about finances so early and understand money like I did, and I want to make sure more people have that opportunity. I started investing at 16, something probably 95% of people will never do and I don’t take it for granted. The reason I’m still on Blossom and constantly doing this still is very much primarily to help all of you get better with your finances. I don’t get any sort of compensation for my time, I do it because it’s important. If you haven’t seen, one of my pinned posts is my Top 100 posts on my page, and doing that many in-depth posts sure takes a lot of time. If you have learned from anything I’ve put out, feel free to share, I absolutely love to hear that from any of you! If you haven’t met me before this is hopefully a little more insight for you into why I’m on this platform and what my goal is. Hopefully many of you are helping those around you get better and more accurate information on how to be financially savvy. It’s a blessing to have, and not a gift to take for granted. As always, do your research and happy investing! read more
Thanks again @perryf for leading this event ! and @paulsantori it was nice for you to visit Winnipeg! We will now expect you to come visit at least once a year lol 😃😜 Met lovely folks yesterday, so nice to hear their own journey and continue to learn from each other! ❤️ Taisa @montai we started with a lunch for Perry's retirement in 2023 and now we're both so happily retired as well! Love our journey and thank you Blossom 🌸
i seriously can’t express the amount of joy i felt today at blossomcon2026, this was the best blossom event ive ever been to and i genuinely had a blast. i met so many amazing people and had many great conversations, this couldn’t have been any better. thank you to anyone who came up to me and talked to me i loved every second of it. i met so many of the people i look up to and time and time again they told me that they also look up to me, this blew my mind and caught me by surprise knowing that the people i look up to also look up to me. i was so shocked and so so happy at the same time. ALSO - MEET YOUR 2026 BLOSSOM RISING STAR AWARD WINNER ⭐️ @alejcanales7@perryf@paulsantori@simple_acre_homestead@jacobb@leonli8@cjs033@maxstocks@convoswithjj@snowpea30@afterthedividend@francescasbudget@incomewealthinvestor@tigertim@anthony.invests @mytranslator@karyungtom@25andinvested@kylel@linalikesmoney@nanamgc if i missed anyone i apologize but genuinely everyone tagged made the day so special for me i wouldn’t have wanted it any other way❤️ thank you everyone for all the support and follows it means the world and thank you so much for voting me for this award❤️ read more
I did not expect to receive today this amazing NASA SLA lego as a birthday gift, shout-out to @maxstocks for this surprise 🐐 I would love to do livestreams where I’m building this while answering your space stocks questions! 👀🚀 — In case you missed it, here’s the replay of my AMA on space stocks with Global X! We covered topics including how to value space companies, SpaceX, rocket reusability, the return to the Moon, and more. If you’re a space stock holder, it’s definitely worth a watch. https://www.youtube.com/live/nkNkEU4Jmrs *note: Nothing discussed in this AMA constitutes financial advice.read more
Last week a friend asked about @blossom app I had referenced. BIG MISTAKE PARTNER !🤠 That inevitably led to a conversation about investing. I was genuinely impressed and proud to learn he’d built a portfolio worth over $400,000 across his TFSA, RRSP, and non-registered account. (he’s an entrepreneur in the trades and built a company five years ago, so having that much capital surprised me) Then he told me something that caught my attention. “I don’t pay any fees. It’s a family friend who manages everything.” 🚩 I asked if he had the fund documents. Sure enough, after a quick gmail search he pulls up the fund prospectus. on page two: 🚩Total expense ratio: 2.23% I discussed briefly Trading expenses, management expenses, etc. Then we did the math together. His Portfolio: $408,000 💸 The MER: 2.23% 💀 Annual cost last 12months : $9,098😵 avg Monthly cost: $758😵 He was shocked. He told me I was wrong: he showed me the email where the broker reiterated that the handling fees were waived.. I told him that paying an expense of any kind was the same as a fee, so technically that was bullshit but perhaps legally true- Also, I told him that paying for a product isn’t horrible, and told him I would gladly pay a high MER for spectacular returns. So I asked to see his account performance. 😵YTD: +6% 😵1 Year (TTM): +9% He was paying about $9,100 per year while trailing broad-market index ETFs like $XEQTover the same period. In fact, he had not seen double digit returns apart from the first COVID bubble. WTF This talk wasn’t about convincing him to switch to index investing, or become a stock picker. It was about making sure he understood THAT& WHAT he was paying, because his “family friend” certainly didn’t appear to be within industry’s expected ethics on fee transparency though @smallbird.financial or others can perhaps speak to openness requirements for financial folks more than I. In this scenario, the advisor might genuinely mean, “I don’t bill you separately.” But many clients hear, “This costs me nothing.” Those are very different messages, so I’m not blaming the advisor completely… YET. This is now the fourth person I’ve spoken to who genuinely believed they paid no fees, almost always thru “a friend of a friend/ family). This false belief is shattered when they discover they were paying a substantial MER (all have been in mutual, via investment agencies with the big banks) after we looked at the product. One stayed with the mutual due to switching and admin (time) costs, two left, and this friend is in the works of figuring out how he wants to play it. the issue here isn’t necessarily high fees. It’s that many investors don’t even realize they’re paying them, and that is a failure of the advisor and the client, though only one of those is bound by regulatory standards…. Curious to hear your thoughts, and shout out to @25andinvested for reminding me of this convo via his post ( https://link.blossomsocial.com/7uYa/08pokpui) this AM. I’ve added screenshots of the prospectus from a Fund in the same series as his- might be slightly different series but nearly identical. read more
