Chasing the Fionist Dream

Pssst. Guess what? Everyone makes mistakes. Even us.

We are not perfect. Just like anyone else, we make mistakes often – and learn from them. Sometimes we don’t communicate properly. At times, we regret the way we handled a parenting situation. And just like anyone else, even we have made financial mistakes. We like to be honest in our blog posts, and share both the good and the bad.

Before we dive in, we list many common financial mistakes here and here. Make sure to check those posts out.

And now – here we go!

1. We didn’t budget or track our spending. In the early years of our marriage, despite earning just over minimum wage. We went out to eat at sit-down restaurants almost every week. We went to South Africa for our (belated) honeymoon and spent rand like Monopoly money. Upon our return, we realized that we had spent many thousands of shekels more than we had intended. That is when we started to track our spending. We only started to actively budget more when we became parents, and had to find a way to stretch our meager salaries to cover daycare and other baby expenses.
   
   
2. We liquidated a keren hishtalmut. To go on a trip to Europe with our toddler daughter – that we could have otherwise saved up for and afforded. The six years were up and we saw it as free money. Yes, we know it’s a HUGE no-no and we’ll never do it again. A keren hishtalmut is one of the best investment vehicles in Israel as it is tax-free and can be a great addition to your retirement pension. Had we not pulled this fund, it would have continued to compound and would have been worth considerably more today – and significantly more come retirement.
   
   
3. We froze our mortgage. For three months in 2020. Soon after the world shut down that March, Finn was put on furlough and our bank offered us the opportunity to stop our mortgage payments for a few months. We impulsively jumped on it. The world was in an unprecedented crisis and we were worried about not being able to pay our bills. In retrospect, we shouldn’t have done it. By then we had an emergency fund, and Finn ended up getting paid unemployment, so we would have been okay without it. As a result of taking a break for three months, our monthly payments are now higher for the duration of our mortgage. Since then, we’ve been more careful to refrain from impulsive decisions. Just because the bank offers you something, it definitely does not mean its in your best interest (pun intended 😏).
   
   
4. We didn’t know our rights. After being laid off from her first full-time grown-up job after university – which she had held for three years, Fiona had no idea she was eligible for unemployment. So she never applied. So she never got the money. And that was that. More recently, in Finn’s previous job, it turned out that his employer hadn’t bothered to pay several months of pension deposits. Years later – after he had left the job, Finn took the time to look over his past pension statements, and discovered the error. He contacted his past employer and politely requested they pay up. And they did. Experiences like these are what made us become so passionate about educating people about their employee rights. Knowledge is power.
   
   
5. We paid sky-high management fees. For years. At the bank, on our credit cards, on our investments, our pension plans and kranot hishtalmut – pretty much everywhere. Once we realized this, we made the following changes, and now save over 2,000 shekels in management fees per year:
   
   • We moved our investments out of the bank and into a brokerage with MUCH lower fees.
   • We joined a recognized no-fees track at our bank.
   • We cancelled our bank-issued credit cards after the bank refused to waive the fees and replaced them with other credit cards with no monthly fees.
   • We moved our pensions and kranot hishtalmut to investment houses with much lower management fees – and made sure all of them were in stock-based tracks while were at it.

Everyone makes mistakes, but what you do afterward is what counts. We hope that we can inspire you to see mistakes as a learning opportunity and an incentive to make different choices going forward. You can still build yourself a vibrant financial future. Aim for the stars. We believe in you.⭐

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