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Sure, your TFSA might not earn you tax benefits now, but it comes with huge tax benefits later: When you withdraw your money from a TFSA, you don’t pay any tax on the withdrawals, including any growth within the account. For 2019, you’ve got an extra $6,000 of contribution room (up from $5,500 last year) and if you don’t use it this year, you can use it any year in the future. You won’t be tied to a strict repayment plan if you withdraw your money, and on top of that, if you withdraw money from your TFSA this year, you can put that same amount back in next year on top of next year’s contribution room! Take the $10,000 you had in the previous example, and let’s say you invested in inside a TFSA with BMO SmartFolio instead of leaving it in a savings account, because it’s part of your retirement savings and you’re planning to leave it invested for 25 years.

And while I can’t give you final numbers or gorgeous after pictures yet, and probably won’t be able to for months, I’ve definitely learned a lot about how to save up for a kitchen in the past year. Unlike some financial bloggers, I’m not going to tell you there’s a right answer as to which choice to make there, but if you need to spend a few thousand dollars more, you do need to decide if that’s a priority for you. I’ll go a step further and say add 23%—10% for the inevitable things you forget you’ll need, like grout for your backsplash tiles or takeout while your oven lives in the living room like a houseguest who is entirely useless and won’t leave, and 13% for Ontario’s sales taxes. If you have a $15,000 budget for your new kitchen, you’ve got $5,000 saved already, and you can save $500 a month, you’ll need 20 months to save up $10,000.

If that’s what you’re thinking when you hear “multiple emergency funds,” you’re not alone—because I would have said the exact same thing when my only goal was keeping my one, solo emergency fund above the $1,000 mark. I saved up and fully funded my dog’s emergency fund literally years before I fully funded my personal “in case of job loss” emergency fund. How to set up your emergency funds As an OG multiple emergency fund user, here’s exactly what I’d recommend if you’re convinced and want to set up a few different accounts to stash your emergency cash. There are plenty of free account options available with Alterna Bank, even if you want something like a high-interest TFSA to stash your emergency cash—because every $5 you don’t pay in account fees every month is $5 closer to your savings goal.

Tracking your spending isn’t necessarily hard because of the skills and information you need to learn, or about the time you need to spend on it, but because of the feelings involved (I will never stop randomly telling people that money is about feelings, I really won’t). Buy a house no more than 3x your annual salary While the 30% rule for housing costs very much applies if you’re buying a house, there’s another rule of thumb you can use to keep your home-buying within reasonable and affordable limits. And no matter which strategy you use, being smart about your car spending by buying “less” car can save you over $100,000 over your lifetime. If instead of buying a $25,000 car, you spent $15,000 on your car (which you can often do by buying a slightly-used model of the same car) and you still bought one every 5 years, you’d save $100,000.