u/No_Cartoonist_9649

Hello,

I apologize if there is a FAQ somewhere that I may have missed, or whether this post is redundant. But basically, as the title implies, I am looking to learn as much as I can about investing, and start small. I have always been curious, but also averse, to investing, likely because of my background: grew up rather resource-crunched in a low-income country. I am starting late...I'm almost 30 in a little over a year, moved to Canada when I was 26 to pursue my graduate studies.

I always thought investing isn't for me, and in fact even think this, because I simply don't have the money. I have just graduated from my degree, and it is in the Humanities...with that said, I do not have a mortgage and/or any debt, I worked throughout my degree to be able to pay off most of my Costs Of Living and the crazy international tuition...

While I am currently job hunting, I still want to learn as much as I can so that I know what I must do when I have some more money. What should I be doing? Reading Couch Potato, opening a TFSA (with my bank, or WS?), enrolling in personal finance courses? I am open to suggestions, and would be grateful for any assistance/hand-holding even. I am not the most financially literate, and though I feel very bad about that + my age (especially when I see under 30 millionaires...)/being left behind, I am willing to learn...

A bit of a rant but not much because I am honestly too tired of everything, including typing

International grad student, convocation coming in less than a month. In my third month of unemployment, have no PhD prospects (maybe I just wasn't competitive). Did everything I was "supposed" to do, and more: perfect grades, extra classes, even learned French up to intermediate level, did on-campus work for straight up two years, and now even Dollarama will not hire me. Applying to jobs every day, don't want to work because of last semester deeply burning me out, but "need" to work to eat/rent.

Yeah yeah, humanities masters (so cue the gender studies/Starbucks barista jokes I guess) and all that but I was good at it, enjoyed it, but always felt like academia did not want me despite how hard I tried. Always the same peers, often white and citizens, moving up no matter how I outworked and networked past them (not to take anything away from them). I also tried very hard to sustain friendships and meaningful connections, lowk always being the one to text, initiate, but you see someone once at a McGill social event, exchange numbers, and never talk again. Campus is a maze so you quite literally never run into them again. Grad students are awkward and always whining about age (despite being pretty young, and even if not it doesn't matter. I am no exception to the whining btw.) God bless PGSS for trying its best to get us to socialize.

I am exiting grad school almost 30 (in more than a year and a half), with lowkey nothing to show. Family cannot come to convocation (visa, distance, costs), and for even teaching in a college (I am qualified with my decently numerous TA experience + degree) Quebec requires some arcane verification of documents to create an equivalence education eval or some BS. I dunno dawg, no one is coming to save me. I will say its okay to do grad school for the love of the game/academia but have an exit plan. I don't know what it is I did over these two years, but I feel even more hollow than before I started. Anyway, sorry to be morose, just putting this out here in case others feel this way.