Our Journey to Another Land: The Flight

I have 5 more days to go before I start work (I’ll be sharing my experience in another post) and with a lot of things to share, I am using whatever free time I have left to write.

April 17, 2016 is our flight date, we’re flying with Philippine Airlines bound for Toronto with a technical stopover in Vancouver. We stayed in a hotel near the airport for easy and hassle free ride to the airport. But yeah, hassle happens.

Our flight tickets indicate that our departure port is at the Main Terminal and all along we assumed that it is NAIA Terminal 1. After saying our goodbyes to our family, we rode an Uber to the “Main Terminal” 4.5 hours before the flight. Since we have a lot of time, we tried to relax and enjoy our last few hours in Manila.

We are about to enter Terminal 1 when the guard who asked for our tickets told us that we are at the wrong terminal and that we are supposed to be in Terminal 2. After I did some verifications (through the information section and of course the internet), we are indeed leaving through Terminal 2 (PAL’s Main Terminal). With 3 hours to go, we arrived at Terminal 2.

Unfortunately, there were many passengers at that time and we have to queue for 30 minutes just to enter the terminal. Here you’ll see people bribing airport employees just so they can enter the terminal instantly. This is one of the reasons why you’ll want to leave the Philippines.

We are supposed to do a web check-in  and since PAL’s online applications are so reliable, we were not able do a web check-in and have to do it the old fashion way. After another 45 minutes, we were able to secure our boarding passes. Note that you need to pay travel taxes for all the people who will be travelling with you. You can look up the rates here http://tieza.gov.ph/travel-tax/. We paid a total of PHP 4250 for two adults and one minor.

After securing our boarding passes, we went to the immigration officer. Here, they will ask for your passports. You have to tell them that you will be migrating. They will then validate your PDOS sticker, your visa, as well as your passport details. It usually takes around 5 minutes if there’s no problem. After an agonising 3.5 hours we arrived at our gate. We boarded at round 3PM and due to some circumstances, we flew at around 430PM (1.5 hours delayed).

The seats that were provided to us were very comfortable with excellent leg room. We were transferred to a better Choice Seat. This is our first long haul flight and it was a good experience (at least the inflight experience with PAL is good). We arrived in Vancouver after 12 hours. Some passengers alighted here while Toronto-bound passengers stayed on the plane. After an hour, the plane continued its flight to Toronto for another 4.5 hours. We arrived at around 9PM Toronto time, 25 minutes earlier than the estimated arrival.

Be sure to fill-out the arrival card (one per family, be sure to declare monetary instruments that are more than CAD 10,000) provided by the flight attendants that will be presented to the Canadian immigration officer. After presenting your passports to the immigration officer, they will ask you to queue to another room where they process new residents. Here, you will present your Certificate of Permanent Residency (COPR), passports and other documents for after around 45 minutes. Then, they will welcome you to Canada and will tell you that your PR Card will be sent to your indicated address in 4-6 weeks. They will also give you an instruction sheet on how to update your address if ever you will be changing your address.

You will now collect your luggages and will proceed to customs. Here you will declare monetary instruments exceeding CAD 10,000 and if the customs officer deemed necessary, a detailed list of all belonging accompanying you and those that are to follow. The officer only asked for the E677 – CROSS-BORDER CURRENCY OR MONETARY INSTRUMENTS REPORT form and after that, we were able to exit the airport. We were welcomed by my cousin and a brother in The Feast.

It has been a week and three days since we’ve arrived and we are still adjusting to the time difference and of course, the cold weather. This post ends this section. I’ll be starting a new section soon where I will share all our experiences here as new permanent residents. Until next post.

Our Journey to Another Land: Things to Bring

Before flying, we made a checklist on what to bring. This will ensure that we have all the needed documents before we move out of the country. It’s actually not so hard to research since most web sites and blogs have a section on “things to do/bring before landing”.

My favorite sites for these kind of research are either canadavisa.com forum or settlement.org. Be sure to bring whatever you think you’ll be needing since it will be hard for you to get these documents/things once you’ve landed.

To Bring	Description
Passports	Must not be expiring within 6 months
Confirmation of Permanent Residence Form	This document should be included when they give you your visa, one for you and one per individual coming with you.
B4E – Personal Effects Accounting Documents (Accompanying items) B4A – Personal Effects Accounting Documents (Items to follow)	All items listed here will be tax free. Downloaded here: B4E: http://www.cbsa.gc.ca/publications/forms-formulaires/b4-eng.pdf B4A: http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/publications/forms-formulaires/bsf186a.pdf
E677 – CROSS-BORDER CURRENCY OR MONETARY INSTRUMENTS REPORT	If you are bringing more than CAD 10,000 (cash and any other monetary instruments) you need to declare this with the Canadian customs. http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/publications/forms-formulaires/e677.pdf
Foreign Currency and Other Foreign Exchange-Denominated Bearer Monetary Instruments Declaration Form	This is the counterpart of form E677 in the Philippines. http://www.bsp.gov.ph/publications/tables/2012_11/news-11132012a1.pdf
Birth Certificates	Bring at least two copies per person. This can be ordered online now through this site: https://www.ecensus.com.ph/Default.aspx
Marriage Certificates	Bring at least two copies. This can be ordered online now through this site: https://www.ecensus.com.ph/Default.aspx
Medical Records	Bring all medical records, including the one you’ve submitted during your medical exam. This should be typewritten.
Dental Records	Ask your dentist for your dental records. Our dentist used the form from the Philippine Dental Association.
Children’s Vaccination Form	If you have children coming with you, be sure to have their pediatrician list down all the vaccines administered to your children. The form should also be included in your Visa pack but, if it’s missing, you can download it here: http://www.chinacanada.ca/ss/down/immunization.pdf
IELTS	Bring your original IELTS results
ECA	Bring your original Education Credential Assessment document
Transcript of Records	Bring at least two original or certified true copies of Transcript of Records coming from your school
Diploma	Bring the original diploma
COE	Bring original certificates of employment from all the companies that you and your wife worked for
Drivers License	Bring driver’s license and receipt
LTO Certification with Red Ribbon	Bring original document. Note this document has a 6-month expiry.
Bank Draft and Canadian Dollars	Bring all monetary instruments with you, you must declare if more than 10,000
Medicines	Bring medicines, especially if you have maintenance meds

In filling out the personal effects accounting documents, you need not list down everything per piece (although this one is advisable). You can lump it into logical groups such as clothes, gadgets, shoes, food, etc. In our case, the customs officer didn’t ask for this form and told us that the goods to follow form is what matters.

We still have jet lag, thus this post at 6 in the morning EST. Until next post.

Our Journey to Another Land: Getting your DFA Certified LTO Certification (Red Ribbon)

A week before our landing, after much pondering, I decided to get an LTO Certification with Ribbon so I can drive in Canada under G2 license without having to undergo G1 (Student License) training and examination (http://settlement.org/ontario/daily-life/transportation/driver-s-licence/i-have-a-driver-s-licence-from-another-country-how-do-i-get-an-ontario-driver-s-licence/)

Surprisingly, this process is not too tedious. Overall, even  though I’m dealing with two Philippine government agencies, it just took me a total of 35 minutes, which by Philippine government service standards is extremely rare. Anyway, below are the steps you need to do:

LTO Main Office (5-10 minutes to complete)

1. Photocopy your Driver’s License and License OR (do bring the original document)
2. Go to LTO Main Office located on East Ave, Quezon City
3. Go to Window 10, you can ask the security guards, it is within the vicinity of the chapel
4. Usually, there’s no line so just approach the officer and tell him/her that you’ll be applying for a DFA certified LTO Certification. Give them the photocopy of your license and OR.
5. The officer will give you a stub and will ask you to pay in Window 3.
6. Return to window 10 with the receipt, the officer will give you a claim stub that you will use when claiming the LTO certification from DFA Aseana after 5 business days (claim date is indicated in the stub)

DFA Aseana (30-40 minutes to complete)

1. Go to Gate 2 then drop your claim stub in window 4 (Be sure to check the claim date in the stub to ensure that your LTO has already forwarded your certification to DFA.) then wait for your name to be called either from window 5 or window 7.
2. Once your name is called, the officer will give you a payment slip that you need to bring to window 9 (Be sure to remove the stapled payment slip from the other documents to avoid delay). The cashier will give you a receipt.
3. Bring the receipt together with all the documents given to you in window 7 or 5 to window 9 and write your name in the claimant registration form. Sit down and wait for your name to be called again.
4. Once your name is called (either from window 5,6 or 7), line up and get your DFA Certified (red ribbon) documents. Ensure that you have two documents (the DFA certification and The LTO certification) and that the details are correct.

Although the process is quite fast, I believe they can make it faster. Maybe by having a DFA processor in LTO or the other way around.

I’m lagging behind on my blog posts, as of writing, I’m already in Canada and I’m writing this entry at 3AM due to jet lag. The next post will be about our departure and arrival.

Our Journey to Another Land: Securing the Pre-Departure Orientation Seminar (PDOS) Sticker

We’re almost ready to fly to Canada in two weeks time, but before that, we need to secure a Pre-Departure Orientation Seminar (PDOS) sticker from the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO). Immigration officers need to see this attached to your passport before they put a stamp during your departure from the Philippines (note that if you’ll be travelling from any country other than the Philippines to Canada, you may not attend the seminar, but this is not recommended.)

So what is PDOS and why do you have to secure one? PDOS is a free country-specific seminar conducted by CFO for people immigrating to different countries, note that this seminar is different from the one being conducted by POEA which is specifically for Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW). In this seminar, they will tell you  high-level information about the pre-departure processes and information, departure and landing processes, what to do as soon as you arrive in Canada, how to maintain your PR and how to get Citizenship to name a few. Personally, I find this seminar really helpful and yes, I recommend my fellow countrymen to attend this seminar.

Fortunately, starting April 11, 2016, they will be implementing the online registration fully for CFO Manila office and no walk-ins will be accepted anymore. This means that you can now select the date and time of the seminar that is most convenient for you. They conduct seminars from Mondays to Fridays at 930AM-12Noon for Canada bound immigrants. You can visit https://cfo.ph/PDOS_Reservation/ for reference.

You’ll be needing the following documents on the day of your seminar:

• Original and photocopy of passport (must be valid about six months before date of travel)
• Original and photocopy of visa
• Original and photocopy of Confirmation of Permanent Residence for Canada-bound emigrant (must not be torn or signed before departure).
• One (1) 2×2 or passport-size photograph
• One (1) valid identification card with photograph (eg., SSS ID, GSIS E-card, PRC ID, driver’s license, postal ID, ARC, etc.)
• Payment of Php 400.00 registration fee
• Photocopy of employment contract (for immigrant workers)

The filling-out of forms is really tiring. Ensure that you are entering the correct details. Although your COPR document states that your dependents are also primary applicants, during the registration you have to ensure that you tag them as dependents. This error cost us an additional two hours of waiting and queueing (once you have a correction, they have to encode it again, which doesn’t make sense). Also, note that although children 12 years old and below are exempted from attending the seminar, you still need to register them in the system and pass the requirements indicated above to CFO.

Now that we’ve completed the last requirement for pre-departure, all that’s left for us is to fly. I’ll be sharing this experience in my next post.

Our Journey to Another Land: Bringing Funds to Canada

As our flight date is nearing, we are now busy with the preparations for our departure. One of this is preparing our funds that we will be bringing to Canada. Of course, it will be a lot easier if you will be bringing in cash in CAD but due to security concerns, we looked at other ways to bring in our Funds during our landing.

Of course the fun part of this journey is doing research; this time, on how we can bring in money to Canada. As per settlement.org’s site (http://settlement.org/ontario/immigration-citizenship/landing-and-leaving/landing-in-canada/how-do-i-bring-money-into-canada-proof-of-funds/) , you can bring in money in the following forms:

• Cash
• Securities in bearer form (for example, stocks, bonds, debentures, treasury bills)
• Negotiable instruments in bearer form (for example, bank drafts, cheques, travellers’ cheques, money orders)
• Transfer of funds between your bank and a Canadian bank

Cash is the easiest to carry so we are bringing in funds partly cash, and partly bank draft. Why did we opt for this option? First, we can’t be bringing a minimum of $18,617 (Which is the required proof of fund for a family of 3, and take note that any amount exceeding $10,000 should be declared)in the form of cash; this will definitely be dangerous, so we decided to bring at least $4000 cash for our immediate needs because drafts will take 2-3 weeks clearing, then the rest of the amount needed as a draft.

We also explored other options such as opening an account in Canada and eventually wire transferring our funds there before landing; however, this is only available to HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank’s priority clients. Another option is to get a statement of account (preferably at a date near your departure date) from the bank where your funds are currently stored and show it to the immigration officer in Canada, this is not a fool proof solution and it’s too risky so we didn’t proceed with this one.

Once we have decided to use bank draft and cash, we look at how we can maximize the funds that we have. Since I’m working in Singapore, most of the funds that we have are in SGD. Doing a little bit of forex (not an expert) computation, we have the following options:

• Convert SGD to PHP then buy the draft in USD from the Philippines
• Buy USD Draft
• Buy SGD Draft
• Buy CAD Draft

The best choice is to buy a CAD Draft in Singapore. We did some computations, if we are to convert SGD to PHP then buy USD draft (the only draft available for my bank in the Philippines), we will be losing at least PHP 15,000. Buying USD and SGD drafts, then depositing it to a bank in Canada will also result to lesser CAD overall so we also ditched these options.

Now that we know that what we need is a CAD draft purchased in Singapore, I need to ensure that banks like TD, RBC, Scotia Bank (some of the major banks in Canada) accepts draft coming from banks in Singapore so I messaged each bank one by one through Facebook /Twitter (yes, they answer questions through Facebook/Twitter) and fortunately they do and informed me about the fees and the clearing time it takes which is something we have expected.

I started looking for banks in Singapore that offers Canadian dollar drafts. Surprisingly, only Standard Chartered is offering this service. I went ahead and opened an account with them, then purchased the draft putting my name as the recipient. I will deposit this draft to my chosen bank once I’m in Canada.

In a few days, we will be flying back to the Philippines to spend time with our families and secure the remaining documents before flying to Canada mid-April. I’m getting nervous now, but excited at the same time.

God bless everyone. Until the next post.

Our Journey to Another Land: Booking a Temporary Home and The Thought of Living in a Basement Apartment

While we are waiting for our flight date, we started looking for a temporary home. Having close to zero relatives in Canada made this activity a little bit harder since we basically have to do it on our own. Our main concern in looking for a house is proximity to the airport since we will be arriving in Canada at 9.30PM and will be finished with the immigration process by around 12mn. Aside from the location, we also considered the proximity to the government offices, public transportation system and proximity to supermarkets.

Searching google will give you a lot of results such as units advertised on www.kijiji.ca, roomarama.com and www.airbnb.com. It will be hard to reserve and pay the down payment for the listings in kijiji if you are not in Canada. Room rates as well as the booking fee in roomarama.com are too expensive  so we opted to use AirBNB because of their affordable prices, more choices and the security they provide to both the renter and the host in terms of payment and cancellation.

I’ve been living in Singapore for almost a year now and quite frankly, room rates here are also very expensive. I rent a common room including utilities for SGD 900 which roughly amounts to Php 29,000 a month and looking at the rates in AirBNB (even in kijiji) it’s almost the same for a room.

We started searching for rooms at CAD 900. Although it yielded great results, a room seems not enough for a family of three. So we upped the search from CAD 1200 to 1500 and filtered the search as entire apartment. The result was overwhelming, although quite a few passed our standards. The hardest part is to choose. Renting an entire apartment at CAD 1500 is actually tough unless it’s a basement apartment, so yeah, we’ll be renting a basement apartment for 28 days.

We started trimming down the list into three. We communicated to the three hosts through the AirBNB messaging facility, inquiring about the location and bringing up our criteria in the discussion. Note that you can also bargain for discounts through a special offer, but only if the host agrees (There are other ways to get discounts in AirBNB, try searching the web). Two of the hosts actually gave us a discount but we ended up with the host which we feel can help us (though he didn’t give us a discount) with our first month in Canada. He was also an immigrant in Canada and promised to help us based on his experience. The apartment is quite neat. It has its own entrance, bathroom, queen-sized bed, living room and kitchen. It basically has all that we need to live comfortably for 28 days.

Then there’s this thought of living in someone else’s basement far away from home where you used to have your own car and condominium. The thought of throwing everything away for a chance of a better life in the future, even if you have to start again from zero. I know this feeling will either get worse or better depending on our economic condition after a few days or months. I will be going there without a job, with only a handful amount of cash that will last for six months may be less depending on our needs. I haven’t been thinking about these thoughts up until now. Going back to the reason (My child/children’s future) why we are doing this in the first place somehow gives me the excitement and the reason to push through.

As per our future host, “This (Canada) is a good country for hard working people” and that’s another motivation to make this life changing journey a success story.

Our Journey to Another Land: Booking Our Flight

And so our journey continues. We just purchased our plane tickets from Manila to Toronto from Philippine Airlines after 14 tries! Imagine filling-out the forms for 5 to 10 minutes, but when you try paying through credit/debit card, site will tell you that there’s an error. I did it 14 times; you can imagine how long it took me to book this flight.

We haven’t experienced being in any long haul flights so I really have no idea what it feels like to be inside a plane for 18 hours straight, so again, we have to research to find the best experience at the best (cheapest) price possible.

There are a lot of considerations when choosing your airline; first the duration of the flight (we have our baby with us so this is on top of our list), leg room, the number of stops (transfers), rebooking fee and of course the total price. Since we will be coming from Manila, we limited our search to some of the most prominent airlines within Asia. We narrowed it down to Philippine Airlines, Korean Airlines, ANA, Cathay Pacific and EVA air based on reviews and recommendations by friends. These carriers have almost the same cost ranging from USD1800 to USD2600 and baggage conditions on the day of our flight, so we’re just left with the duration of the flight, leg room and number of stops.

Duration of the flight and the number of stopovers can be viewed from each of the carriers’ online booking platform. Duration of flight ranges from 19 to 22 hours and number of stops from 1 to 3 stops. The Philippine Airlines flight will have a one hour technical stopover in Vancouver. The other airlines have a stopover in their home airports before proceeding directly to Toronto except for ANA which have a stopover in Los Angeles.

For estimating the leg room we used http://www.seatguru.com/ to check the details of the seat pitch and seat width as well as the best seats per plane and carrier based on reviews. In estimating the legroom, we used the seat pitch which is the distance from any point on one seat to the exact same point on the seat in front or behind it. So the rule is the higher the seat pitch, the better. Note though that this doesn’t represent the leg room at all but this could be a basis.

There are other considerations such as stopover/layover time, miles accumulation (most of the airlines have this offering for free, so it will be good to have an account for miles) and food. These factors were not our main concerns so we skipped looking through them.

We ended up with Philippine Airlines although Korean Airlines based on reviews is a really good candidate. We chose PAL because it has the shortest travel time, least number of stopovers and a not so bad seat pitch. We also purchase Choice seats for more legroom since our infant will be sitting on our laps and insurance. Total cost is USD2028 for a one-way ticket.

Below is the comparison table that we created so we can compare the airlines easier.

Flights Comparison

With this, all that’s left is to pack our things; secure documents that will be needed in Canada (birth certificates, TOR, diploma, wedding certificates) attend PDOS and land. Do let me know if you have questions and I’ll try to answer it.

Until next post.

Our Journey to Another Land: Timeline and ECAS

I would like to share our timeline. Hope this helps:

December 2014
December 15 – Applied and submitted requirements Education Credential Assessment (ECA)
December 30 – Result Available Online ECA

January 2015
January 10 – IELTS Exam (Primary applicant)
January 23 – IELTS Result
January 23 – Created MyCIC profile with 451 points

February 2015
February 28 –IELTS Exam (Spouse)

March 2015
March 13 – IELTS Result (Spouse)
March 13 – Updated MyCIC profile adding spouse IELTS result, 471 points
March 28 – Invitation to Apply (ITA)

April 2015
April 17 – Medical
April 24 – Submitted Requirements (online)
April 24 – Acknowledgement of Receipt (AOR) from CIC
April 25 – Medical Review in Progress

June 2015
June 12 – Medical Passed
June 19 – Re-test of blood for medical (primary applicant)

July 2015
July 9 – Right to Permanent Resident Fee (RPRF) payment request
July 9 – CIC Requested for my updated address in Singapore
July 17 – Initial Passport Request (PPR) from Ottawa
July 17 – Request to change Visa Office (VO)
July 18 – PPR from Manila and Singapore visa office

August 2015
August 7 – Submitted Passport through VFS Manila (wife and daughter)
August 11 – Submitted Passport through VFS Singapore (Primary applicant)
August 21 – Wife and daughter got their passport with visa
August 31 – I got my passport with visa

??? 2016
?????? – Landed in Canada

Once you have submitted your application (after ITA) you can check your application status either through MyCIC and E-Client Application Status (ECAS) through this site (https://services3.cic.gc.ca/ecas/authenticate.do?app=ecas). Note that you can only access this once you have your application number (available only after you have created your MyCIC profile) and will only be activated if you already have an ITA and have submitted your requirements (assumption based on what I’ve read in the forums).

Feel free to ask questions in the comment section, I’ll try my best to answer your inquiries.

Till next post!

Our Journey to Another Land – Passport Request

If all goes well and the visa officer handling your application has no further questions or requests, they will issue a passport request. This is the second to the last process in acquiring an immigrant status (PR), the last being able to land in Canada and securing a PR card.

By default, passport requests come from the Ottawa visa office (VO). The letter that you will receive, in both your personal mail and MyCIC mail will instruct you to send your passport/s (including your dependents) to Canada. This is not the case for applicants outside Canada. They initially send a template mail, which may not be applicable to all applicants. You should email CPC-CTD-Ottawa@cic.gc.ca that you are requesting to change the visa office that will issue your visa. For instance, if you live in the Philippines, you should request the Ottawa office to change the visa issuer to the Manila visa office. I work in Singapore and my dependents live in the Philippines, so my request was for me to have the visa issued here in Singapore and my dependents in Manila. They responded within the day. You’ll know that your visa office has changed when you get another Passport Request Letter from the visa office that you requested to be transferred to.

Now that you have the letter, you only have 30 days to submit your passport. If you’re VO is from Singapore and Manila, you cannot submit the passport directly to the visa office, you need to pass it through the VFS (http://www.vfsglobal.ca/Canada/Philippines/, http://www.vfsglobal.ca/Canada/Singapore/). They are the only accredited passport transport service by the Canadian embassy.

Since I was in Manila during the first week of August, I was the one who submitted my wife and daughter’s passports in VFS Manila. Note that each VFS offices have a specific time on when you can submit and collect the passports (you can check it on their website). We have to learn it the hard way when we came in at 3:01 PM and the cutoff was 3:00 PM. Well, we were not allowed to enter so I need to come back the next day.

Be sure to bring the following:

• At least two copies of the Passport Request Letter
• The passports that you will be submitting; and
• The photos that conform to the standards suggested in the Passport Request Letter (bring the letter to a reputable photography studio for the instructions on photo size).

I suggest not bringing any other stuff (including phones) as these are not allowed inside the center. You may rent a temporary bin though for PHP 100. Staffs were very polite and helpful. You can opt to have your passports delivered for a fee of course, or you can collect them. We chose to have it delivered. Total cost was PHP 1730 for my wife’s and daughter’s passports, including the delivery charge.

As soon as I was in Singapore, I passed my passport in VFS Singapore. They are not so strict here as bags and mobile phones were allowed inside the center. Manila and Singapore centers have almost the same process except that there is no option to have your passports delivered (not so sure about this since the staff that I talked to didn’t offer me this service). The cost here in Singapore is SGD 33.20.

After two weeks, my wife and daughter got their passports already, mine was available for pick-up after three weeks. You will receive your passport with visa as well as the Confirmation of Permanent Residence (COPR) document that you will need to present to an immigration officer in a Canadian port where you will be landing.

So, after 220 days (plus ECA and IELTS review and result), we have acquired our visa. We have been really lucky to be able to have acquired a visa in less than a year. Previously, it will take year. Take this as a testament that Express Entry works. It may be a new system, but the Canadian government is working hard to continuously improve it. You can’t discount the help given by the forums, blogs and online guides since these are true stories, stories and experiences that are unique to each applicant, but if you’ll search hard enough and invest time in researching, you’ll have a greater understanding of the process.

What’s left for us is to plan our moving date, buy plane tickets and pack our things. All of which will entail lots of work.

I’ll keep everyone posted.

Our Journey to Another Land: FSW Express Entry (2015) Application Expenses

For those of you wondering how much it costs to migrate to Canada through FSW Express Entry (2015) program from the Philippines (a bit from Singapore), see breakdown below:

FSW Express Entry 2015 Expenses

Yes, it’s not so cheap but we’re hoping that this investment is worth it for our family’s future. Hope you’ll find this helpful in your own journey. Do let me know if you have questions (use the comments section), I’ll try to answer everything to the best of my ability.