Really well said. I love love love remote working but everything you said is on point. Forming important relationships early in your career is much harder (not impossible) working remotely. Your 20s can be a very important time to explore jobs, people, places, living situations and learn about yourself - everyone is different but most of us can’t get a detailed understand of who we are and what we want out of life by staying too comfortable at home or remote working.

That was my first thought too - giving up that much freedom and the extra costs may or may not be worth it for the income increase, but every salary raise sets the expectation for future salary raises. If OP has more than 5-10 working years left (which seems likely, since they’re living with their parents), this $18k/year raise will likely translate to hundreds of thousands in higher lifetime earnings.

This is really well said. Obviously saving is better than wasting but there’s definitely a grey area where you we are denying ourselves things we would enjoy when the additional savings have little marginal benefit. It’s important to have financial flexibility and emergency funds and all of that but also important to live your life. The balance of that is so very personal - depends on your priorities, health, kids, job, goals and a million other things.

For me, it took having someone in my life who was somewhat fiscally irresponsible for me to see how much I was hoarding, and how I was avoiding spending on things I’d actually enjoy a lot and had relatively minimal costs. So I’m glad OP asked this question because if you’re eating ramen because you’re paying down a 5-figure credit card that’s good, but if you’re eating ramen while having fully funded lifestyle, retirement savings, emergency fund, health insurance, outside investments, etc…well it’s worth taking a closer look at your priorities and financial targets. (Unless you just love ramen of course)

Americans need a passport to go to Canada or Mexico, or any other country. Normal exceptions apply, like for deployed military.

Doing it for no reason is a bad idea. But if you believe doing it may get you an apartment that you may otherwise not get, it is a fairly cheap and easy way to potentially get a big benefit.

Two main issues:

• will doing it actually help your application? Maybe - hard for any of us to say. That’s more personal opinion than strictly a finance question.
• does prepaying hurt your negotiating position if something goes wrong? Certainly possible, though if you’re paying no more than the current year in advance (quarterly would be even better), you probably aren’t hurting yourself much in case of disputes.

This was a long time ago so hopefully he’s learned a bit of humanity but definitely be prepared to pretend that he’s a foreign dignitary. Oh, and make sure it’s not at all obvious that the only reason he is involved is his corporate money and he hasn’t actually earned anything himself…he doesn’t like those jokes.

I have met quite a few of the Sobey family through various personal and work things, and it’s amazing how different even closely related people are. Some are pretty awesome and some are just absolute tools. Not surprisingly, the most senior ones running the grocery business are the worst. I remember Rob Sobey showed up to an award show late, so had his limo driver (no one else had a limo because it’s Halifax for fucks sake) idle in front of the venue in the middle of downtown for 2 hours. And while basicallg all the other award winners RSVP’ed a +1 for a spouse, he didn’t RSVP at all, but brought two personal assistants. To an award show. Oh, and neither sat with him at his table, both had to loiter outside the room, in case he needed them I guess? We had to sneak them off one at a time to eat because it was 8pm and both looked like they were going to pass out (both were under-25 and could’ve been models) and told us they were expected not to eat on duty, one admitted she hadn’t eaten all day.

At the end of the night he walked out with his arms around both of them like he was pimping them, and handed his award to one of the staff to ‘hold for him’ because he was going out. (Apparently neither he nor his personal assistants could hold on to a small statue for 5 minutes until they got to his car?) Last I heard, the award was still in storage because he never got someone to pick it up or responded to emails as to where he’d like it delivered.

I read them both a long time ago, and agree with the fully. I, Claudius was one of the most engaging books I can remember reading. Seems weird to cal it a ‘page turner’ considering the topic but I couldn’t put it down. Claudius the God was a bit of a slog, and could’ve been several hundred pages shorter.