My MoneySense

By MoneySense Editors on March 27, 2025
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

By MoneySense Editors on March 27, 2025
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

The senior vice president of retail and wealth at Meridian shares the importance of budgeting and investing in your company’s pension plan, if you have one.

Dilys D’Cruz didn’t grow up around open discussions about money. But now, she found a career in finance as the senior vice president of retail and wealth at Meridian Credit Union. She found that understanding and talking about money enables her to do what she loves, like travelling the world. With over 35 years of experience in the financial industry, D’Cruz now works with her own financial advisor to guide her with her budgeting, planning and financial goals. Here she shares her money heroes, her early memories about money, lessons and mistakes and more.

Likely a combination of many. Warren Buffett is the obvious guru of investing, but I admire people who come from nothing; people with tremendous hardships, who work hard to achieve their wealth and, most of all, are good people. They care about humankind. I like Oprah Winfrey and Tina Turner.

Doing Pilates and hot yoga classes. I just took up line dancing, so I’m having some fun with that. And I’m going to my personal trainer twice per week, although I can’t say I like to do that.

I’d have a place on the beach in Bali or Thailand, and I’d volunteer to work with elephants in Thailand or Africa. I’d also eat my way through Italy, Portugal and Spain.

We were a first-generation immigrant family in Canada. My mom was a stay-at-home mom, and my father worked two jobs to support the family. Although money was tight, he always found ways to provide us kids with the opportunity to participate in activities they were interested in. For example, I took up figure skating, painting........

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