Browsed by
Category: Main Blog

This is the main Blog category. Will change it once we’ve decided what categories Tara wants.

Northwestern researchers discover new protein to prevent & reverse damage in UMNs

Northwestern researchers discover new protein to prevent & reverse damage in UMNs

The problem with having a rare disease is that almost no money goes towards research. With PLS it’s even more complicated by the fact that ALS – also a rare disease – tends to be the MND most likely to get research money. Of course, that is with good reason as ALS is a horrific disease that I would like to see cured as soon as possible. Unfortunately, even though it would be handy to have people with other UMN/LMN diseases grouped into ALS studies, rarely does that happen. I get it, but it is a bit demoralizing.

A group of researchers at Northwestern have done some research on UMNs leading to some interesting discoveries of late. One, they released a paper, Better understanding the neurobiology of primary lateral sclerosis which has a lot of great info about metabolism and mitochondria etc. The thing that really struck me though is that they posit that PLS is just ALS with some genetic or environmental thing preventing it from developing. I don’t know why that is really my important takeaway but it’s a question I get asked all the time.

Two, they released a second paper which has received a lot of hype (for good reason). Here is the Northwestern presser ALS neuron damage reversed with new compound. NU-9, a protein, seems to be well tolerated in mice models and will move forward with animal toxicology studies with human trials being about 1 – 2 years out. Still, Dr. Silverman – the man who engineered the compound – has started a drug company and hopefully there will be some movement soon.

The news is a welcome relief for many sufferers of MNDs and we are all super excited to see how quickly NU-9 can to human trials. As I joked on facebook, I will fly to Chicago every darn week if it means I can be included in them. Still, one of the researchers Dr. Hande Ozdinler cautions that the word “reverses” is a bit excessive. In their study the diseased neurons were still alive when they saw an improvement in them. So in that case the statement is correct. However, if the neurons are dead there is no evidence that this compound will bring them back to life. A better statement may be that it reverses the damage in diseased neurons, not dead ones. The mice studies also took place in a short period of time so there is no telling (yet!) how the compound works on subjects who have had an MND for a longer period of time. Also, probably people read the headlines and see “reverses” and they think that the compound “reverses” the disease itself. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that it cures the diseases themselves. It may very well be that this protein will be a drug you have to be on the rest of your life much like diabetics are on insulin.

Still, this is exciting news from the research community and I am looking forward to the further studies on NU-9. I am also curious if the “Right to Try” legislation will push the studies on this compound through a quicker process.
Here are two videos, the first one has Dr. Ozdinler discussing the research & the second is more of a snapshot social media promo video:

The best laid dental plans

The best laid dental plans

When you set a goal – especially a financial goal – you need to leave some room for the unseen. In November when we had planned to save enough money so Mr. Tucker could retire in 2023 there is no way that we could foresee every disaster. Furnaces fail, cars die, and sometimes dental surgery must be had.

We discovered earlier this month that Mr. Tucker needs $8500 worth of dental surgery which will happen in two appointments next month. Since we both have benefits we submitted a preapproval and it looks like the maximum we will get back is $3000 from both plans. This leaves us on the hook for $5500. The surgery isn’t really optional if he wants to keep his teeth so we are definitely rolling with it. While it’s a (literal?) kick in the teeth, I am grateful that we can at least afford to have the procedure done.

Sunday morning is all about coffee and chats here at The Mullet so we ended up discussing our financial goals this morning (spoiler: we discuss goals a lot – financial and otherwise). In the end, we always have pretty tight goals but we are also flexible enough to change them when the need arises. Some people will encounter a blip in their plans and just throw their hands up and give in but that doesn’t solve the problem. The correct way to look at it is to see goalsetting and your budget as flexible and to adjust when necessary. Even the best saver can’t account for every financial blindside that they will experience but they can just shrug their shoulders, adjust their course, take the detour and then continue on their way.

This surgery will probably set us back from reaching our goals by a month given our current trajectory. Of course, more things will happen as well – both positive and negative: we will get a tax credit from the surgery but we also may have our furnace die (it’s from 2003 so I’d be stupid if I said we didn’t see it coming). Given our timeline of 3 years, a lot can happen between now and then.

So after our chat this morning I took another look at our budget and adjusted our activities and hobbies spending. As depressing as it is to think about, there probably won’t be summer camps, dragon boat paddling, or roller derby next year so I can remove these items temporarily and funnel the money into the dental surgery fund. My hope is that people will be vaccinated by autumn and life may return to some semblance of normal (or new normal – life has changed, that is for sure). But I also have a sneaking suspicion that this is an overly-optimistic view. Still, we can use the money we are saving now on the surgery instead of hoping that activities will happen again soon. Of course, if things do go better than the current outlook, I can be flexible to adjust for that, too.

You can only control so many parameters in your life so you do have to be flexible in order to reach your goals. Sure, it may take longer and cost more than you anticipated. It’s important to realize that we are lucky to be in a position to be able to take a hit like this, and that comes from having good financial planning skills previously. I just keep telling myself that it is a marathon and not a sprint. Even though it may not go 100% as planned, it will eventually happen as long as we stay on the path.

Pandemic Positives: lunch at home

Pandemic Positives: lunch at home

Mr. Tucker has worked from home since the kids were little and back then I was a stay-at-home-parent. It used to be that I would take the kids to the YMCA when they were young, stick them in daycare for a couple of hours & then I would be able to work out and shower. Afterwards, I would take them to a drop in for pre-kindergarten kids that was run by the school board. All of this excitement and then we’d be home by noon where I would make lunch for everyone and then put the kids down for naptime.

Of course, when Sprout was around two I went back to work during the winter months. Bean was in kindergarten and Sprout went to a combo of nursery school/daycare until she hit kindergarten. So lunches together at home went to packed lunches* for the three of us while Mr. Tucker now made his own lunch. By the time they were 6 & 8 I was back at work all year round and that meant that brown back lunch was pretty much an every day thing.

One of the things that has been really great during the pandemic is home cooked lunches together every day. Sure, more often than not it is leftovers or soup & grilled cheese but it’s a nice change from what we used to do. I make the kids head out for a walk every day at lunch (rain or shine – and cold or snow) and while they are out, I whip up their lunch. Of course, at 10 & 12 they are more than capable of making their own food but I find it’s something I enjoy. When they come in we all sit at the table and chat while we eat.

Honestly, it’s just nice to break up the day this way. I want them to get a change of scenery (as small as it is) and have some structure instead of just sitting at their desks or staying inside all of the time. It’s also nice to have a mid-day chat to gauge how things are going at school. It reminds me of those busy days when I was mobile and the kids were young and how much time we used to spend together. It’s pretty nice.

Next year (vaccine willing) the Bean will be heading into a new school for her second year of junior high and will probably want more control over her lunches. The Sprout will also be heading into her last year of elementary school and it will be her last year as one of the oldest kids in the school. Teenagehood is approaching fast here and so even if everything has gone to hell in a handbasket in 2020 (and 2021 doesn’t look that great either) at least we do have a year of homecooked lunches together to look back on.

Honestly, we are heading into a year now and we are all cracking a bit at the seams. So looking at the little things that have positively come out of the pandemic keeps us all a little bit saner.

*Where I am there are no school lunch programs so everyone brown bags it. There is however, a breakfast program for kids who don’t get a nutritious breakfast at home. Bean came home one day and said, “I sure do love the free breakfast at school!” As it turns out she was eating Second Breakfast at school. I had to explain to her that she shouldn’t be taking that food and why they provide it.

Early spring cleaning

Early spring cleaning

When we moved in 2018 it was a chaotic rush. We found out in September that the house we were living in that we had agreed to buy wasn’t being sold to us for the price we had agreed upon. Instead of getting angry, we got focused & so we switched gears and started househunting. In the end we found the perfect house for us with a closing date of December.

During this time, it became clear that the surgery I had didn’t completely cure my mobility problems. My arms were tingling and my gait was still bad. My neurosurgeon ordered an MRI, discovered everything was fine with the surgical site and referred me back to the neurologist for more tests. Of course, we were packing, we both had stressful full-time jobs and two young children to take care of. It was a miserable time for us. Did I mention our closing date was less than two weeks before Christmas? So we just threw everything into boxes, shoved it into the rental container and when we moved it was just shoved it into the basement. We could deal with it at the new house when we had more time, right?

A month after we moved I received the startling diagnosis of Motor Neuron Disease – Primary Lateral Sclerosis. My life came to a sudden halt. Nothing seemed more important than traveling and spending time with my family. We focused on other things.

It’s been three years since we’ve moved though, I have stabilized and may have plateaued. The craziness of tests, doctor’s appointments, and paperwork for disability has passed. I am now medically retired and Mr. Tucker and I have a plan for the future. All’s well that…well, is at least stable.

Despite having a family room down in the basement the stairs are steep and difficult for me to navigate. Recently though, Mr. Tucker put up the second bannister so I could get up-and-down easier from the basement, so it made sense to make the effort to get down there more. As I went down to the workshop I noticed how disorganized it was and he admitted that this room gave him so much anxiety that he just ignored it. So we made a commitment to inventory the freezers & pantry items and go through some of the junk.

Sunday afternoon we grabbed the kids, headed downstairs and did just that.

As with most things, just starting it was half the battle. The floor was just covered in boxes, wrappers and other packaging from purchases and once we got rid of that, it came down to what we wanted to throw away, donate, or keep. We set up some space for gardening supplies, another space for household goods, and we tidied our boxes of baking supplies & gift wrap/bags. Everything now has a place and some items will go off to new homes. Our old party supplies gave us the gift of a multitude of napkins and paper plates from parties past that we will use at future get-togethers (I mean, no one said no to a piece of cake just because it was on a Tinkerbell plate). The mismatched paper napkins I brought upstairs & we can use them now.

In the end, it only took the four of us a couple of hours to tackle the space & I think Mr. Tucker was happy that he wasn’t the only one on the hook to clean it all. Of course, we have a small storage area for seasonal stuff and old baby clothes that I need to rummage through but that won’t take too long, either. It just needs to be started. Once we pull it all out, it shouldn’t take more than an hour or so.

I think what has saved us is that a> we’ve never been shoppers; and, b> we’ve never been hoarders. While I will admit that I am a notoriously disorganized person in my everyday life, I do tend to get it together a few times a year and clear out swaths of space. Having said that, I am no minimalist and I like a bit of messiness to my space. Mr. Tucker and I started off in a 530sq foot space, landed into a 1200sq foot space for the first 9 years of raising our family. We’ve never owned a lot of stuff and our last home was partially furnished so we had to actually buy a few things. Now our new home is a mid-century bungalow that has 1300sq feet – and a family room, office space, laundry and some storage in the basement. It’s partially finished so I would say it has another 600sq feet of livable space. While the family room is large, there is almost nothing in it. How much space is open? Well the Sprout uses it to roller skate every day, so enough space that she can do that.

Still, if you don’t keep on top of stuff it gets out of hand, especially if it is “out of sight, out of mind.” But I don’t want to be one of those people who dies and leaves their kids 1900sq feet of junk to haul out to the dump. I would rather sell/donate/trash items as we go along. As we are working on organizing our lives it only makes sense to start with the clutter. Better late than never!

Mid-winter inventory

Mid-winter inventory

My goal to write every day isn’t really happening but I don’t want to let perfect be the enemy of the good & give up completely. So I am going to try and keep up with the practice even though it may mean not posting everyday. C’est la vie!

Mr. Tucker and I ended up heading down to the basement to take stock of what we had in the freezers and on the shelves. This was partly an organizational exercise and partly a recon mission to figure out what we had to work with for future meals. Since the stay-at-home order we’re trying to spread out any trips we have to make & that means using what we have in meals instead of making extra trips. Meal planning is a good strategy but it only works if you know what you have.

I also want to see how things are going in terms of the things we canned from our garden and from local farms. Knowing what we eat in 6 months allows us to plan for next summer. We have to plan our garden for the spring soon and I would like to expand a bit. So hopefully this knowledge will help us figure out how to get the most bang for our buck.

For the freezers, my main goal is to see how much of our local meat we have go through. It looks like we will be getting a pig in March, which works because we are pretty low on the stock we had from last year. We already miscalculated our chickens which means that this summer we are going to have to double order. We bought too much beef last year and so we won’t have to buy more until the summer, so that’s a plus. My biggest regret was not buying more garlic from our CSA! I purchased 8lbs in September and if they last until the end of March, I will be surprised. Next year I am aiming to either buy 16lbs or see if growing them is feasible – maybe a combination of both! My garlic wasn’t fantastic this year but I could pay them more attention (aaaaaand I just learned I have to plant in fall. Oh well! I am happy to buy it!).

In the end, I have a lot more rice noodles and instant Pho bowls than I thought I had but very little in the way of Italian-style pasta. So until our next grocery pick-up it will be more Pad Thai and less pasta bake. We also have a ton of canned soup that my dad had brought us in the fall. So lunches will be a lot more soup and sandwich meals. Thankfully, my pickle canning endeavors were fruitful and our homemade pickles are not only amazing but we still have a lot, so those will go well with lunches.

In the end, I have three pages of inventory on my desk now and I can see at-a-glance what we have a lot of, what we have very little of, and what needs to last until we can replenish it. Whenever we make meals I update the inventory and that way we can get a variety of food in our diet without running out of things.

This weekend we will head down to our basement and tidy this storage room. It’s become pretty unwieldy as a junk room so between the four of us it should only take an hour or two to tidy, get rid of some things we don’t need & organize the rest. Poor Mr. Tucker is often in charge of managing our storage because I can’t get downstairs as easily. Now that he’s installed a second bannister I can head down and help.

Unboxing my work life

Unboxing my work life

Last week I was cleaning out my computer and I came across my resumes. “WELP,” I thought. “I guess I can discard these.” It shook me in the moment to think that I will never need them again. My entire career took 10 seconds to delete.

After I did that I realized that I still hadn’t opened the boxes of the contents of my office that work had sent me in fall of 2019. I had spent 8+ hours a day surrounded by this stuff and it was boxed off and sent off without ceremony. Unlike retirement, there is no grand party, no congratulations, no watch to mark your years of service. You are just canceled. They send you your work life by mail, and that is that.

After they arrived, they sat upstairs for over a month, untouched, when Mr. Tucker had taken them downstairs and out of the way. They sat there for over a year. I couldn’t bear to deal with unboxing my work life and putting it up all on a shelf. I guess I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

This weekend though, I bit the bullet and I had Mr. Tucker bring up the boxes. I have a couple of pairs of Fluevog high heel shoes that I (obviously) can’t wear anymore so I made the decision to sell them & put the money towards some stuff the girls want for their birthdays. It made sense to just open them up and go through it.

In the end, it was less traumatizing to go through it than I realized. On one hand, I was missing my favourite San Francisco mug (SNIF) which I am not surprised was taken. I also had a giant soup bowl that had disappeared. On the other hand I got an iPod classic and some stress ball swag? The shoes were all there so that was what I really wanted. You win some, you lose some.

I needed time to process, I suppose. I think I needed to realize that maybe that was the end of one life but the beginning of another. Honestly, life is all about moving from one aspect to life to another. From elementary school to high school, from high school to university, from university to my first office job, from job to job…it’s always in flux and it’s always changing. For sure I needed to mourn my old life – I didn’t choose this change – but it doesn’t mean that every aspect of it needs to be negative. Having a motor neuron disease is absolutely awful but the flip side is that I am able to have less stress in my life. If I focus on the positive things, there are a lot of positives.

So good bye, old work life. I enjoyed our time together. I am now going to live a new life.

Monthly budget review – January

Monthly budget review – January

The last weekday of the month is payday for Mr. Tucker and so it’s a good time to review our spreadsheet and make sure we’re on track. It’s also a good time to move money into categories that I didn’t use the previous month.

I budget pretty tightly and I can see now that our grocery bill is a lot higher now and that I’ve actually budgeted too low for groceries. One of the things about eating at home all the time is that we prefer not to scrimp on food. However, it does look like one of my medications has gone generic so I may be saving significantly there. That’s a huge win for me because one of my drugs is really expensive even after my benefits. I am going to call to make sure that I can make the switch. That should mitigate the food budget.

It’s also a new tax year so that means Mr. Tucker has EI and CPP contributions again until July. That ate a larger chunk of the pie than I had thought, so I need to make a small adjustment there. EI and CPP have gone up a lot in 2021 with the new maximums being 884.54 and $3166.45, respectively. Once August comes around though, Mr. Tucker will be all paid up and that will mean $220ish will be added to our budget.

Gas and pocket money are down because there is a stay-at-home order so we don’t go anywhere or do anything. Our alcohol budget was up in 2020 but since we quit drinking in November & we’re not eating out at all (even takeout) we really don’t have anywhere to spend it. Wow, we sound really sad! But I guarantee you that we’ve been enjoying doing music, playing games with the kids, reading library books & Zoom chats with family and friends!

My benefits aren’t covering the Bean’s braces as much as they were, so instead of having to pay $87.50, we are now paying $100. Thankfully, we can add those receipts to our taxes & come November she will be all done with braces! Probably just in time for her sister to need braces but it is what it is.

One of the things we’re still debating is whether or not to borrow from our Line of Credit to bring Mr. Tucker down a tax bracket. On one hand, a $4400 contribution will net us another $2000 in tax refunds. On the other hand, just using the cash we have will still net us a significant refund. I am leaning towards not borrowing the money as even though it is a low interest rate, I hate the idea of $4k sitting on my LoC for two months or more. Ehhhh. This is one of the times where the emotional choice isn’t the logical choice. Sometimes you have to make the decision that helps you sleep at night.

With the new covid variant being more virulent, we are also considering limiting our big shop at Costco to every two months instead of once-a-month. Right now we hit Costco once, the fruit & veggie place twice a month, and then get a curbside pickup for anything else we may need. I also try and time our library book pickup for those times but it doesn’t always work out. Our city’s infection rate is 0.8% (anything under 1 is supposedly manageable) but if it goes up, we may have to switch our plans. With schools opening Monday, we’ll see how it goes.

That’s pretty much it: some minor changes this month but we also were able to add some extra money to savings so I am calling it a win.

The routine that saved us

The routine that saved us

Since March break 2020 I think I have been outside of the house less than 15 times (full disclosure: twice was to go to a rental cottage). We made the decision to keep the kids home in remote school because a> I am compromised, so getting covid would be potentially devastating or me; b> I figured in-person school would shut down & that it would be worse to have to transition the kids a back-and-forth. Sure enough, that happened.

In the spring online schooling was a mishmash of trials and errors to figure things out. The day flowed in the same way that a regular school day would and it was a super long day for the kids. In the fall they re-did their online learning and it turned out to be amazing:
– first synchronous session 9-11:00
– 40 minute break – 11:45 – 1:30
– second synchronous session until 1:30
– asynchronous learning with the teachers available to help kids with their work until 2:30+
– In the Bean’s class they even have an art program at 2pm on Tuesdays

This allowed the kids to have the same lunch at 11-11:45 so I send them out for a 20 minute walk while I prep lunch. It’s a pretty good system, really! The kids miss their friends & have had to make due with socially distanced walks (pre- stay-at-home order) and online chats where they play games or just hangout but overall, it is working well. We play a lot of games in the evening to sort of fill in around the edges for social time & we do mandate offline time where they engage in analog activities.

Unfortunately, when the in-school kids were sent home at Christmas they stuck to the same full school day they had when it was in-person. YIKES. That is a really long day staring at a screen as the school day typically runs 6 hours or so. No wonder kids and parents alike have been struggling. Today we learned that those kids will return to school on Monday.

Overall though, what I think has saved us is our routine. Sure, the school day builds in some routines naturally but we’ve also had to carve out routines for the whole family. We all roll out of bed between 7:30 and 8, eat breakfast, get dressed & brushed. While the girls eat breakfast and get ready, Mr. Tucker and I sip our coffees and chat before he gets ready for work. So while the girls eat breakfast and get ready, Mr. Tucker and I sip our coffees and chat.

In the fall, I bought the girls Big Life Journals so that they would have a prompt for their feelings and a place to write them. So they start and also end the day with journaling to write down any challenges they face. I mean sure, we do discuss their lives but sometimes you need a private place to put your thoughts (and full disclosure: I am an avid diarist & find it super helpful). If they get all of that done they are allowed to have access to their phones to chat with friends until school starts (they are pretty good at getting things done because of this!).

After school they have what we refer to as CHAMP: chores, homework and music practice. They are each supposed to practice their respective instruments for 20 minutes a day and chores can be anything from doing the dishes (they alternate) to checking the mail. Since we get weekly updates from the teachers on what assignments are due, we always know what is happening. Although, they’re pretty great at getting their projects done. After their CHAMP is all done, they have free reign until dinner with their phones to chat with their friends although the Sprout is more likely to be found listening to music and rollerskating in the basement.

Mr. Tucker and I make dinner after he gets off of work & we always eat dinner together (no devices). After dinner cleanup we usually sit down and play games together until bedtime or the odd occasion we will watch movies or shows.

That pretty much sums up our weekdays! Our weekends are more of a free-for-all as the kids have access to devices and generally spend it playing video games and on calls with their friends. We do almost always eat dinner together & we try and do a movie night.

Before the pandemic our schedule was similar but more lackadaisical. It was easier when we could visit friends, go out to restaurants and shop whenever we wanted. But since we are doing all our cooking at home but are minimizing grocery trips we’ve become better at planning. If we run out of eggs, we just eat something else until the next planned trip. We also had a no-devices-on-weekdays rule but since they don’t see their friends as often, we had to bend the rules but still maintain some offline time. But having a schedule that was more rigid in some ways but looser in others demarcates the week so we don’t all lost the plot and spend all of out time watching Netflix.

I think in terms of how we are faring mental health-wise, the routine has helped because at least we know what to expect, and when. We are also talking a lot more and discussing more mature topics than we would have had we not been stuck together more often than not. Of course, we’re still facing challenges and the picture isn’t always rosy but given the current state of the world, we’re pretty ok. Hopefully when the world gets back to normal (or a new normal) we can keep some of the positives we’ve learned such as the importance of building a good routine.

Honey whole wheat

Honey whole wheat

We source our flour from a local farm so we do a lot of baking at home. We still have to buy organic white flour from a bulk store. We’ve had great luck with sourdough, ciabatta, baguette and focaccia but I’ve never found a whole wheat my family has LOVED. Until now! They absolutely love this whole wheat loaf and I think that is because the honey keeps it moist and gives it a bit of sweetness that works just as well with sandwiches as it does with jam. I find one batch a week works for a family of four.

Makes 2 large loaves

Part I: the sponge
• 
3 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
• 
2 TB yeast
• ¼ C cup honey
• 
5 cups white flour

Part II: the dough
• 
1/4 cup honey
• 
1 tablespoon salt
• 
3 -4 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted

Using the stand mixer with the dough hook attachment I mix all the ingredients from part I and then let it sit for ½ hour until bubbly. I then add all the ingredients from part II and mix it until it’s combined and let it sit for a few minutes until the water is absorbed into the flour. Then I run the machine for 10 minutes to knead the dough.

After 10 minutes I then remove the bowl from the mixer, cover, and let rise for 2 hours at room temperature until it has doubles in size. Grab two bread pans and line each pan with a piece of parchment that you’ve crunched up into a ball & then rinse the parchment under water so that it’s moist. Remove the dough to a clean, dry surface and cut in half. Take a half and grab a small piece, stretch it (without breaking it) & then fold it over to the middle. I find that this video on shaping sourdough is the best method that works for me. I shape the dough into a more oblong loaf for the bread pans.

Once the dough is in the pans, cover and let rise until doubled again, about 1-2 hours. At this point I usually prefer to pop the bread pans into the fridge to proof overnight but you can do it either way.

Preheat the oven to 350F & if you’d like, you can place a small metal bowl at the bottom of the oven to create steam. Once the oven is at temperature, I add about a cup of water to the bowl right before I insert the pans to help the loaves expand. Bake for 30 minutes (start checking at 25 minutes) or until the bread is nicely browned and sounds hollow. This recipe makes two large loaves and will keep for about a week at room temperature. If you don’t eat this much bread in a week, you can freeze one loaf for later. Never put bread in the fridge as it makes it taste stale

A short history of my personal FI success

A short history of my personal FI success

My foray into personal finance started when I was 18 and dirt poor & living on my own. In the 90s buying clubs like Columbia House (hah! Remember them?) and Book of the Month Club were all the rage and like a fool, I was a member of both of them. But as fate would have it, one of the books that I received was The Tightwad Gazette (TWG) II. When I got it I read it cover-to-cover and then I read it again. Despite the fact that these mail order clubs were pretty awful, I probably have benefited more financially from stumbling across that book than from anything else that has happened. It lead me down a road of seeing that there was a different way of living and it gave me the power to understand that I had control over my money. Eventually I bought both TWG I & III as well as Your Money or Your Life (YMOYL), which is the book that had the most impact on me during my 20s and 30s.

Before the FIRE (Financial Independence/Retire Early) movement with its stoicism and side hustles by tech-based workers & other high-income adherents, there was Joe and Vicky. Their vision of the for financial independence (FI) movement was one of simple living and community. Their ideas were about resource management not just for the accumulation of cash but also concerned the environment & leaving the planet a better place. It was a vision for a better world and it spoke to me. Although I have enjoyed some of the FIRE blogs over the past 10 years, I have been embedded into the YMOYL vision of FI and have found that the bootstrapping, solitary goal of accumulating money of most FIRE bloggers has struck me as mostly empty. Of course, there are those who have a larger vision but they don’t seem to be the ones screaming the loudest.

Of course, you may be thinking, “Well Tucker, learning about all of this by 20 certainly didn’t help you to retire early! You worked until 3 years ago!” While that is true, it is also missing the larger picture, which is the one of independence, or having the freedom to make different choices. By learning to be good with my money it has given me the option to make decisions that I may not have been able to make had a lot of debt or lived a large lifestyle. Here are some things that FI knowledge has given me:

– After being laid off from my well-paying corporate job I was able to join a government-sponsored small business training program that lead me to owning an eco-friendly cleaning business in my early 30s.
– After listening to my mother, I bought a condo downtown for $115k when I was 24 years old with a $5000 inheritance I received (full disclosure she co-signed the mortgage). After a couple of years I was able to remortgage & used the money to pay off my student loans (the difference was 6.5% a year!).
– After I became a parent, being frugal allowed me to stay home with my kids until they were 2 & 4 years old.
– I went back to work when it looked like Mr. Tucker’s job situation looked tenuous. But we were still able to live off of one salary.
– When I went back to work I was able to take contracts from September – May and stay home with my kids over the summer (I would have worked but student programs generally filled those jobs during those months).
– Going back to work allowed us to spend a month in Puerto Rico in 2014 & not have debt long-term.
– Saving up a huge down payment for our house allowed us to take on a smaller mortgage than we would have. We are now looking to pay this off by 2023.
– When I was diagnosed with Primary Lateral Sclerosis the waiting period for sickness benefits with Employment Insurance was a month & only lasted 12 weeks. The waiting period for my Disability Insurance to kick in was 13 weeks! Having savings & having an emergency budget for when money got tight helped us not use credit to see us through.
– Being disabled can be expensive: having a doctor fill out my forms just to apply for my benefits was $45 each time. I have great medical insurance but it only pays a portion of my mobility device costs.
– Because we wanted to travel when the kids could be pulled out of school and my mobility was still good, we are frugal in our daily lives but have visited many countries, were able to go to Disney (twice!) and Universal and are able to rent cottages with friends in the summer.

All in all, my FI knowledge, ability to switch into a tight budget, and our savings rate have all contributed to our lifestyle. Between graduating from university & my diagnosis I have worked full-time only about 10 years & the rest were part-time or were the years I was a stay-at-home-parent. We don’t have a basement full of stuff (but if you enjoy that kind of thing, more power to you), we only got a car when the eldest was around 1, we cloth diapered, we reused everything, ate a lot of beans, and didn’t buy a lot of things we didn’t need. But we did want to travel, our kid’s university savings accounts are well-funded and our retirement accounts are doing well. We also have a ton of friends in our community and the kids and the adults all have hobbies that they enjoy doing.

Overall, this is the definition of FI success to me. We don’t live life on autopilot but instead make concentrated decisions of how we want to spend our time & money to live the life we want. It’s part luck, part good choices but also making great friends, having the support of our families, and having fun hobbies to sustain us. We have even loftier goals for the next three years but more on that later!