There’s an Adam Mac song called All Dollars, No Sense.
And every time I hear it, I think about first-time home buyers.
Probably not what Adam had in mind when he wrote it.
But after years of sitting across from people who are finally ready to buy their first home — only to discover that the numbers don’t work — the song hits a little differently.
Because I’ve seen this story thousands of times.
Someone comes to me making good money.
Sometimes really good money.
They've got the job.
The car.
The trips.
The clothes.
The dinners out.
The concert tickets.
The latest phone.
Their Instagram looks like life is going pretty damn well.
Then we run the mortgage numbers.
And suddenly we're having a very different conversation.
They can't qualify for the house they thought they could afford.
Sometimes they can't qualify for anywhere near it.
Sometimes they can't qualify at all.
And almost inevitably comes the question:
“How? I make good money.”
That's the part nobody really talks about.
Sometimes earning good money and being financially ready for the next stage of your life are two completely different things.
We got really good at looking successful.
I don't think this is entirely a first-time buyer problem.
It's probably a modern-life problem.
We're surrounded by other people's highlight reels all day.
Someone bought a new SUV.
Someone's in Mexico again.
Someone got the handbag.
Someone renovated the kitchen.
Someone's at the Oilers game.
Someone just posted the restaurant bill from a place where apparently potatoes cost $27 now.
And whether we realize it or not, it's really easy to start measuring how we're doing by what everybody else appears to have.
Adam Mac's song takes a pretty funny swing at exactly that idea: looking like you've got everything together while the financial reality underneath tells a different story.
And then homeownership shows up.
Homeownership doesn't particularly care what everything looks like.
It cares about the math.
The $900 truck payment counts.
This is probably one of the conversations I hate having most.
Someone makes a great income.
They've worked hard.
They finally feel like they're making real money.
So they reward themselves.
There's a $900 vehicle payment.
Maybe another one for their partner.
There's a line of credit.
A few credit cards with balances.
Maybe financing for furniture.
Phones on payment plans.
Whatever.
Nothing feels outrageous on its own.
And they're making every payment.
So what's the problem?
The problem shows up when they decide they want a $550,000 house.
Because the lender doesn't look at the truck and think:
Nice truck.
The lender sees a $900 monthly obligation.
And that payment can take a surprisingly large bite out of what you qualify for.
That's when I sometimes have to explain that the truck sitting in the driveway may have effectively cost them a bedroom.
That's a hard conversation.
Not because buying the truck was morally wrong.
It wasn't.
It's because nobody asked:
What's coming next?
That's really the part I keep thinking about.
We're very good at asking:
Can I afford this today?
Can I afford the payment?
Can I afford the vacation?
Can I afford the new car?
Can I afford dinner tonight?
Can I put this on the card and pay it later?
But there's another question that gets asked a lot less:
What do I want my life to look like three years from now?
That's where things change.
Maybe you don't care about owning a home.
Completely fair.
Spend your money on the things that matter to you.
But I meet a lot of people who do want the house.
They've always wanted the house.
They just haven't been making financial decisions with that goal anywhere in the picture.
And then suddenly they're 32.
Or 35.
Or 40.
They're tired of renting.
Their friends are buying houses.
Maybe they're getting married.
Maybe they're thinking about kids.
Maybe they just want a dog and a yard and somewhere to paint the walls whatever colour they want.
Now the house matters.
But the decisions from the previous five years came along for the mortgage application too.
Your past payments don't disappear because your priorities changed.
That's one of the frustrating things about money.
You can change your mind instantly.
Your finances don't always catch up quite as quickly.
You can wake up tomorrow and decide:
I'm done screwing around. I'm buying a house.
Love it.
But the $28,000 car loan still exists.
The credit cards are still there.
The line of credit still has a balance.
The down payment you haven't started saving still needs to come from somewhere.
The lender doesn't get to approve the version of you who's decided to start making different choices tomorrow.
They're looking at the financial picture that exists today.
That's why I wish more people thought about buying a home long before Realtor.ca entered the chat.
Not because you need to stop having fun.
Not because your twenties have to be spent sitting at home eating generic Cheerios so one day a bank will deem you worthy.
And definitely not because buying a house is the only definition of success.
It's simpler than that.
I just want people to give Future Them a vote.
There's a difference between living your life and financing your lifestyle.
I think that's an important distinction.
Take the trip.
Buy something ridiculous once in a while.
Go to the concert.
Eat somewhere unnecessarily expensive.
Life is supposed to contain things you enjoy.
The issue I see isn't usually one great vacation.
It's when the entire lifestyle is being carried by monthly payments.
The car is financed.
The furniture is financed.
The phone is financed.
The cards carry balances.
The line of credit fills the gaps.
Then another paycheque arrives and most of it is already committed before Friday night.
Everything looks good.
But there isn't much room underneath.
That's the All Dollars, No Sense part.
Not spending money.
Spending tomorrow's money today without ever stopping to ask what tomorrow might need it for.
And then there's the down payment.
This is the other one.
I've sat with people earning incomes that should put homeownership comfortably within reach.
Except they've saved almost nothing.
Not because they couldn't.
Because saving for a house was always something Future Them was going to start doing.
Next month.
After Christmas.
After the trip.
Once the car was paid down.
After summer.
Once they got the raise.
Then suddenly they've found the house.
Now we need tens of thousands of dollars.
Pretty quickly.
And unfortunately, there isn't a mortgage product called:
“But I Swear I'm Really Serious About Saving Now.”
Believe me, I'd have clients for it.
None of this is meant to be a lecture.
I need to say that because I know exactly how this can sound.
Mortgage broker tells young people to stop buying coffee.
Hard pass.
That's not what I'm saying.
And I don't think avocado toast destroyed the Canadian housing market either.
What I am saying is that after seeing thousands of first-time buyers, I've noticed a pretty clear divide.
The people who have the easiest time buying aren't always the ones who earn the most.
They're often the ones who started thinking ahead.
They kept debt manageable.
They saved consistently.
They didn't automatically increase their lifestyle every time their income increased.
They gave themselves some breathing room.
And when the moment came that they wanted the house, they had options.
That's the word I keep coming back to.
Options.
Money should buy you options.
The whole point of earning more shouldn't simply be finding increasingly expensive things to make payments on.
More income can also buy freedom.
It can mean being able to change jobs.
Take parental leave.
Travel.
Invest.
Buy a home.
Work less someday.
Deal with an emergency without putting it on a credit card.
Say yes to something important.
Say no to something terrible.
That's financial success to me.
Not whether the vehicle has a giant bow on it in December.
So when should you start thinking about buying your first home?
Long before you're ready to buy it.
Maybe it's two years away.
Perfect.
That's actually an amazing time to talk to someone like me.
There's no pressure.
There's no offer to write.
There's no rush to get documents into a lender.
We can simply look at where things are today and where you want them to be.
Maybe you're completely on track.
Maybe there's one debt we should deal with first.
Maybe opening an FHSA makes sense.
Maybe you need to start building credit.
Maybe the $1,000-a-month vehicle you've been eyeing is worth reconsidering.
Maybe you're closer than you thought.
The point isn't to stop living your life so you can buy a house.
It's to make sure the life you're living today doesn't quietly take away choices from the life you want tomorrow.
All dollars. A little more sense.
I love Adam Mac's song because it's funny.
It's campy.
It's got some bite.
And underneath all of that, there's actually a pretty good financial lesson hiding in there.
Looking successful isn't the same as building something.
And the older I get — and the more mortgage applications I see — the more convinced I become that real financial success is actually pretty boring from the outside.
It's money left over.
It's manageable debt.
It's savings nobody sees.
It's saying no occasionally.
It's knowing you could buy something and deciding you don't need to.
It's being ready when the next stage of your life shows up.
Because eventually, for a lot of people, the party changes.
The thing you want isn't another weekend away.
It's the keys.
The backyard.
The extra bedroom.
The place that's yours.
And when that day comes, I want the numbers to say yes too.
Strategy Beats Rate — Every Time.