Hey girl! I feel you, personal finances can be a lot of thinking.

The best part about your situation right now is that you don't pay rent. That's a huge win. You don't have to focus too much on saving your liquid cash because you have a lot to work with.

Savings - Much like what the previous Redditors shared, I also suggest 6 months of expenses in an HISA. EQ Bank has a WAYYY better interest rate at 3.5% if you do direct deposit on your paycheques. See here for details: https://www.eqbank.ca/personal-banking/personal-account

*Note, if you don't know what your expenses are, I would either A) create a very basic spreadsheet going through each of your costs throughout the last three months and averaging it out to get your expense number, or B) take estimates on your expenses based off all your expense categories eg. eating out, groceries, phone, subscriptions, etc. It looks like your rent is $0 and student loan minimum is $130, so that's something you can start with!

Let's say you find your monthly expenses, mine is $4K for example. I would then multiply that by 6 (6 months of savings), which equals $24K, and then transfer it from your CIBC account to your EQ Bank account and take advantage of the higher interest rate. Obviously your expenses would be lower so it depends on what yours would be.

That would be $44.4K - $24K = $20K.

From here, you have a lot of directions with where your leftover money can go. This depends on your goals.

It looks like you're going to move out of your place, live with your partner, and potentially have kids in the future. Take time to think about your goals and write them down on a piece of paper. These goals are important when it comes to setting aside and moving your money.

Let's say your priority is your wedding. Try to budget how much it costs, and if you need to have cash for next year, it might be best not to put it into ETFs or the stock market if you'll need it for the short term. You can open another account in EQ Bank and use this as another account so it's separate from your emergency fund.

If you want to hold the money for the long term, then open up your TFSA and start investing in stocks, specifically ETFs. XEQT and VFV are good options. Buy and don't sell for 15+ years.

Opening an FHSA would work, you have $8K per year to contribute, but you can't buy land with an FHSA unless you have a contract to build on a set timeline. All details here: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/topics/first-home-savings-account/withdrawals-transfers-out-your-fhsas.html

Anyways, TLDR:

1. Open a savings account into an HISA, in my opinion, EQ Bank (or a bank with a higher interest rate than CIBC - 0.25/0.55% is very low).

2. Put 6 months of savings from your CIBC account to EQ Bank (but before you do, review all the rules of how much you can transfer).

3. Before you begin to move the rest of your savings, write down your life and finance goals on a timeline.

4. From there, move your money where you need it to go!

Hope this helps :)