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Emergencies are easier with money

Emergencies are easier with money


If you haven’t watched Big Mouth, do yourself a solid and get on it STAT!

We knew that our car needed a new battery. Mr. Tucker was told this in the fall when we had the winter tires put on. He had planned to do it at the end of January when we were due to get the oil changed (this is what they call “foreshadowing”). So neither of us were shocked when it hit -35c this past weekend and the battery died on the car. Of course, we figured this out when Mr. Tucker headed out to warm up the car before taking The Youngest to roller derby but at least it gave him enough time to call a cab and get her there.

As he sat in the gym with a lukewarm coffee and his kindle, I suggested that since he was in the south end anyway that he should just rent a car from the airport (pro tip: in general, airports always have the cheapest prices on rentals). So he did just that and then ran the errands he wanted to while he waited for derby to be finished.

Renting the car meant that we could get The Youngest to her snowboarding job the next morning as well as get The Eldest and I to our skiing (her volunteering and me participating) commitment on Sunday. Without even blinking, I just thought, “throw money at the problem.”

You know what’s nice? Being able to throw money at the problem. I remember that there was a time in my life where a dead battery would have been devastating for me. Not only could I not afford to rent a car but I also probably would have not had the money to spend on fixing the battery. I would have just thrown it on credit and paid a premium to do so. Instead, we dropped The Eldest and her friend off on Monday morning at school (it’s exams this week), jumped the car with our rechargeable car battery jumper (everyone should have one of these), brought the car in, and then Mr. Tucker and I hit a diner for a hot breakfast date. As luck would have it, the car was done within the hour and so we nabbed it and dropped the rental off, swinging by on our way back to The Eldest’s school as she was finished writing her exam. It was all serendipitous timing and we were home by noon.

I am just so grateful that we are in a place in our lives where we don’t even have to think twice about spending money to make our lives easier. It’s so freeing to not have to live on the edge and worry about how you are going to get everyone to the places they need to be. I just wanted to take a hot minute and be thankful for this and I never want to not be grateful that we’re in this place in our lives.

No resolutions in January. Theme of 2026? Scholarship

No resolutions in January. Theme of 2026? Scholarship


Ganked from Austin Kleon

One of the creators whose content I adore is by the writer/artist Austin Kleon[1]. He posted the gem above last week and it blew my mind. It just is an absolutely sensical way to go gently into the new year. It also gives people (especially parents who need to start school/activities again and get back on schedule!) a wee break and time to consider what they want to focus on in the new year after the chaos of the holidays. Also, if I remember correctly, there is often a steep drop-off in interest after the first month for the more popular resolutions, which may make it easier to stick to if you aren’t elbow-to-elbow with people at the gym or if you can get into the classes you’d like to take.

Also, check out how February lines up into four perfect weeks:


Starts on Sunday and ends on Saturday. Perfection!

You say there’s gonna be a resolution, weh-hell, you know…

I don’t really have a resolution set for 2026. I do have a theme though, and that is the theme of scholarship. Basically, I want to do a deep dive into a variety of topics that I have always meant to learn more about.

After a year of re-calibrating the brain meats by staying off most social media (or social media, mostly – as it were) I realize that most of my problems stemmed from the fact that I’d find myself in a comment spiral. I was addicted to the conversations on social media which gave me a hollowed out version of two things I love: being social and debating. I would get dopamine hits from having rousing debates with friends online – especially during the years when my kids were young and I couldn’t get out as much. But I also came to terms with the fact that it also brought too many negatives: arguments between friends-of-friends, the nonstop highlight reel of negativity, the hours I spent glued to a platform that was serving up less content that I wanted to see and more slop and ads.

I read a lot in 2025 and now in 2026 I want to hone in and learn more about *specific* topics. Delving into Celtic history is high on that list. I also want to continue to work on my drawing and watercolour skills, which I think is just me doing more practice. Part of this is also setting up a well-lit workspace to be able to work in which is separate from my computer space in the shared office. I want to reduce the friction of working on my analog projects and increase the friction of just flopping down and reading/watching internet content all day.

Of course, I really ramped up the social events in 2025 and I plan to absolutely continue that into 2026.

Budgety

It feels weird to just…coast? To not have any financial goals or to have to think about money?

Mr. Tucker and I sat down and discussed how weird it was to have achieved everything we set out to achieve: our house & our car are paid, the kids have enough in their RESPs to each do a 4 year undergraduate degree, we have savings and investments, we’ve pre-planned our funerals, we gave my stepson some money to help him get his financial house in order as he turns 30 this month, and we basically are content with what we have. So what next?

We decided to use the money from Mr. Tucker’s work to save up for a cruise around the world. Of course, it wouldn’t happen until The Youngest is 18 and off to post-secondary, which gives us two years to save and figure out a game plan. We also would probably only want to leave for 4 months or less because that’s as much time as I can see me being away from home. We’ve only done a couple of 1 month trips so it would be a big leap for us. So essentially, the plan is to see the world over a few years – in 4 month increments at a time.

Milestones

It is a big year for our entire family:
My Stepson turns 30
The Eldest turns 18
The Youngest turns 16
Mr. Tucker and I will celebrate our 20 year wedding anniversary

I suspect we will spend a lot of our time celebrating our children and not celebrating our anniversary but that’s ok. We celebrate our marriage every day, really. But our kids will only get these big milestones once. My Stepson will be moving in with his girlfriend and opening a new restaurant, The Eldest is graduating high school and off to university in the fall, and The Youngest will be celebrating her Sweet 16 and getting her driver’s license in the spring. So it will be a busy year full of life events. I am excited.

I guess that is part of the reason why I am not really leaning into a lot of personal change right now: because life will be full of changes this year anyway. To be honest, I am so proud of all of our children and what amazing people they are that even though I am a bit sad and nostalgic, I am glad they are growing up and starting to live their own lives, seperate from us. This is, after all, the goal of successful parenting.

[1] I won’t ever spend money on Substack because a> they platform nazis, b> their payment tiers are ridiculous, c> no social media company is gonna save us – and have we not learned this lesson? But if you don’t have the same reservations, then I highly recommend his content! Also, you can just do what I did and buy his books. Here is a handy dandy link to his stuff on Bookshop.org.

Kitchen reno results!

Kitchen reno results!


A very unimpressed Cooper

Well, it’s done! While I said in my last post that it would probably cost less than 4 replacement cabinet doors, it was closer to 11. Oh well! I guess a potential career as an estimator is off the table. We also didn’t end up using the handyman. Mr. Tucker managed all of the tiling himself.

We only put the finishing touches on the kitchen early this week and although it took a little over three weeks to finish, that is mostly because we have other things on the go as well. We went to Kingston overnight on Thanksgiving weekend & our kid’s activities have started up again so between meals and work and activities and social stuff, we have eked out a kitchen refresh as well. I am terribly impressed with ourselves, if I do say so myself.


Chaos reigns!

The majority of the kudos belongs to Mr. Tucker who removed the metal peel-and-stick tile (which was glued on – LOLSOB!) and then pre-prepped the wall for filler/patching, base coat and sanding. He then tiled 25 square feet of wall, painted all of the other walls multiple times (including the stairs to the basement and part of the hallway), built the island and put up new light fixtures. Meanwhile, the kids and I took the cabinet doors outside and sanded and painted them. I am making it sound so easy but quite frankly, it was a ton of work and Mr. Tucker spent most of his non-working, non-family care time working on it. But on a positive note: the cabinet doors don’t hit the light fixtures now!

We also purged and organized a lot of the stuff we had in the kitchen, relegating some stuff downstairs (holiday items like cookie tins, mason jars and a pan large enough to fit a turkey), selling some higher-end items and putting some stuff up on our local Buy Nothing group. I still need to do a few things such as sell the Ikea Kallax storage we had in the kitchen but overall we have set things up to be way more efficient than it had been.

With new closed storage of the island, we now are able to hide things that once looked like it was overflowing from baskets and piled on surfaces. We also bought some Ikea organizing pieces – such as a few knife holders for a drawer and shelves so we could store mugs and dishes on two levels within a cupboard. I will also admit that we splurged on plants, plant pots and some hanging acrylic shelving for the windows. I also received a free fern and a free palm tree from people in the neighbourhood.

The challenge is that if it were up to me, we would have a bright & colourful quirky kitchen with green or yellow cabinets. If it were up to Mr. Tucker, we would have a cold, modern and dark industrial kitchen. These are two fundamentally opposite styles so we decided to settle on a classic white look: something not too trendy so that it doesn’t look dated in a few years but also something we can jazz up with pockets of colour and personalized decorative bits. It looks pretty sterile now but I am sure as the days go on and we bring more herbs inside and find hangers for our dish towels & put up some art, it will warm up a bit.

At the end of the day, this is what we spent:

To be honest, we had to compensate for some lack of knowledge with money. Because the walls were in bad shape, when Mr. Tucker tried to prime them they bubbled up. So he ended up running out and buying a special sealer to rectify that. We probably could have found an alternative (we did watch some videos that suggested diluted white glue) but we are always pushing the boundaries of time/money/life so I consider that a learning tax. Overall, the paint and tiles make up the largest category at 42.4%, the new lights and the island were about 34.2% of the cost, and the decorative items were 23.4%. As the kids say: I’m not mad about it. Considering we got a quote for $9000 for a small (2×5) backsplash and to replace two countertops (bathroom and kitchen, less than 5 ft each) last year in the condo – and that guy wanted to tile over the backsplash tiles that were already there – I consider this a solid deal. Besides, we got to learn new skills and have the satisfaction of finishing a DIY project.

The one thing I did not factor into the costs was out Tool Library Membership. I suppose for accuracy’s sake we could toss on a little over 1/3 of that cost for $100 adding to the total here. But honestly, we get an OTL membership every year and it is difficult to price out the value of it because it depends on what we borrow and how many classes we take there. So I decided to leave it out. We feel that the OTL is a super important resource for our community so even if we didn’t use it at all one year, we would still pay for it.

In the end, I am pleased as punch with how it turned out. I had never noticed how reluctant I was to spend any time in that dark gray kitchen. But the kids love the new island and sit at the bar stools (Ikea – $20 each!) and chat with us when we are making dinner. Behold, the glory of the new kitchen:


(Yeah, I could have maybe tidied and staged it better for the final photos but this is real life, not instagram)

Labour for Labour Day

Labour for Labour Day


UGH. Dark, dirty, cluttered and unusable

My friend Cory says that the real New Year is actually the first day of school. I am not going to lie: the first day after Labour Day does have fresh start vibes. I think it also helps that in Canada it often feels like fall comes in suddenly between that last week of August and the first week of September. For sure it also has a lot to do with the fact that we spend 14 years in school and even more if you head off to post-secondary school. With every new September, I loved the feeling of the fresh start with every school year. So when I joined the work world and was trudging off to work, I would see all of the kids during Frosh week & made me nostalgic and a bit sad. It felt like that fun time of my life was over and that all I had to look forward to was 40 years of drudgery in the form of a full time job. (SPOILER: thankfully, it didn’t end up like that though!)

When we moved into our house in December 2017, a month later in January 2018 I was diagnosed with PLS. So then came the most chaotic two years of us figuring out disability, managing emotions around disability, figuring out my work situation, dealing with a child who was upset with the move and the urge to TRAVEL RIGHT NOW TO ALL OF THE PLACES BEFORE YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING ANYMORE. We did some travelling over the next two years and then found ourselves home-bound – much like the rest of the world – in 2020. Of course, that had its own challenges and while we gardened and had family activities to replace the ones we lost, we never quite unpacked or went through our things like we should have. Our new home had a ton of storage and when the kids outgrew things, we just stuffed it into a box in the back room.

Then this year, for some strange reason, I decided a week before our community garage sale that we would finally, FINALLY go through all of the junk we had stored for the past 6 years. Enlisting the children to help by bribing them, we went through all of the boxes. We sorted, we washed, we donated and we tossed a lot of stuff over that week and in the end we joined in the garage sale, it went well and the children made some pocket cash.

Un(fortunate?)ly, we also discovered that the seal on our toilet had failed and that the toilet had started leaking through the floor. I am glad we caught it when we did because it ended up being a cheap fix but it meant that we had to keep all of the storage out in the main rec room area of the basement while everything dried…and then – in true Tucker fashion – we just left it there.

Then a few stars aligned: the city decided that they would impose a 3-item max on garbage as of September 30th and at some point the amount of crap the kids would just toss around the basement became out of control. The laundry started seeping out of the laundry room into the main rec area and it was becoming clear that we had lost a lot of things to the giant pile that was growing beside the Eldest’s room. Enough was enough: something needed to be done.

That something came in the form of me, going downstairs. Stairs are typically difficult for me so I don’t usually head down to the basement despite the fact that we had installed a second railing and set up a small home gym last year. I kinda abandoned the home gym though because the lighting was so dark and with the black floors and dark brown walls it was just too depressing to go down there.

So it was clear that we needed to make a more inviting space. The Eldest is having a lot more sleepovers and it was embarrassing to watch them all sneak into her room and shut the door because the rest of the basement was so cluttered. Since we have a projector down there and some couches, I figured it would be nicer if the kids had their own little space to play video games or watch movies.

If we were going to do something with that space, it needed to be before school started and before the garbage restriction – so Labour Day weekend it was!

Last week the Eldest had stopped working and the Youngest was out of camps so we buckled down and sorted through the boxes. In the evening, Mr. Tucker organized them and put what we were keeping back in storage. On Thursday night we headed out and did errands managing to kill many birds with one stone (or one circular trip, as it were): we got school supplies, bought paint, porch dropped some things that I had put up on Buy Nothing, and the rest got dropped off at the charity store (for which we got a 20% off coupon for our next purchase!) all within 1.5 hours! It was glorious to finally see the hard work come to fruition. A couple of hundred dollars more would get us some floor lamps, couch covers and a Chromecast & then we were set: a basement we could use again!

The cost? (all prices in CAD)
$115.24 Couch covers
$158.15 Daylight mimicking lamps
$193.78 Paint & supplies (we could have made this cheaper but I consider the quality combined with the short window of opportunity to be worth just going for it)
$0 Chromecast (paid with a gift card that Mr. Tucker had but originally $39.99+tax)
—-
$467.17 total

But what is really great is being able to use our space again! I am no longer embarrassed to have the Eldest’s friends over and Mr. Tucker are going to design our workout schedule going forward.

Sure, I could have done it for less money and waited for sales on a variety of things. But there is a reason why we have the saying, “strike while the iron is hot.” In most of our days we struggle balancing having the time, energy and space to get larger projects accomplished. So when the stars align and we have able bodies and a 3-day weekend, I am going to eat the cost and have the goal accomplished. It makes no sense for me to wait it out to save $100 if in the end that means 5 more months (or more) of having an unusable space.


BEHOLD! A useable, bright amazing space!

Frugal: the new F word

Frugal: the new F word

What I’m reading
Some stores are scrapping self-checkouts.

Only 10% of US workers have the “optimal” characteristics to to save well for retirement.

“We frequently overestimate just how much happiness money can buy.” The pay raise people say they need to be happy.

Ranking streaming services by cost increase.

What I am thinking
I find many things come down to the fact that words can have different definitions. For example, I have discussed how people who dislike the term FIRE often choose to focus on the early retirement piece and not the financial independence piece. Same goes with people who say there is no such thing as “dividend investing.” Well, the term has been defined by the people who use it, so of course there is.

From what I can see, no word has been more maligned in the personal finance community than the word frugal. Let’s check out some history:

frugal (adj.)
“economical in use,” 1590s, from French frugal, from Latin frugalis, from undeclined adjective frugi “useful, proper, worthy, honest; temperate, economical,” originally dative of frux (plural fruges) “fruit, produce,” figuratively “value, result, success,” from PIE root *bhrug- “to enjoy,” with derivatives referring to agricultural products. Sense evolved in Latin from “useful” to “profitable” to “economical.” Related: Frugally.

PHEW. There is a LOT going on in there! What’s interesting is that on that page there is no mention of the word frugal being aligned with the word cheap but yet, it’s what frugality has come to mean to a lot of people. I think we’ve done the word frugal dirty and I am done with it!

Clearly, I consider myself a frugal person but I don’t consider myself cheap. To me, spending judiciously is what I think of when I think of the word frugal. I also think the word applies to more than just money: I want to get the maximum enjoyment out of things I spend time and energy on as well. I don’t watch a lot of movies or tv shows because I get very little value out of them. It isn’t a judgment on whether or not movies/tv are a good use of time, it’s about how I want to spend my time. I have a friend who loves movies and gets a ton of value from hitting up a theatre a few times a month. She loves it. She also loathes cooking, so she spends as few hours as possible in the kitchen. I love to cook, so I spend a lot more time cooking from scratch. We are both using our time on the things we love. That’s being frugal with our time and energy.

The same goes for your financial picture: spend money consciously on the things you love and you will get great value out of spending that money. Conversely, reaching for that credit card mindlessly every time your brain decides to have a dopamine hit for funsies and you end up broke with no money to spend on things that truly bring you joy.

Of course, people will say that frugal people focus too much on small things and ignore the larger things eating into their budgets. In some cases, that is for sure a fair assessment. For example, the easiest way for me to set up a Registered Disability Savings Plan (RDSP) was to set it up via a brick and mortar bank that had limited investment options (mostly high-fee mutual funds). It fills me with dread to know that I am paying management fees out the wazoo because of this limitation. But, the Canadian government matches my contribution 100% and those amounts grow tax free. So even with the high MER, I am still ahead. Unfortunately, many online banks don’t even offer the RDSP because there aren’t enough clients for them to deal with the hassle. Next year will be the last year that I will be eligible for the matching grant and while I hope online banks (*cough* I am talking to you Wealthsimple!) get into the game, if that doesn’t happen I will intensely research options to switch banks so I can whittle away at those crazy fees. The big things DO matter a lot – especially compounded. Large purchases such as cars, using a financial planner who takes a % of your investment, buying a home, the career you choose etc. can mean big gains and losses over a lifetime. It makes complete sense to focus on these things first.

I would argue though that making frugal choices in your everyday life also builds up your frugal muscle. Frugality becomes a habit and it contributes to your overall financial health. I am not saying that you should drive 20km to save .20cents on OJ – by definition that isn’t frugal at all! But if you shop at the grocery store near your house it takes a few short minutes to take a look at the sale items and think about buying those things and incorporating them into meals this week. It’s way better to plan ahead than end up buying a bunch of food you bought when you went to the grocery store with good intentions (or worse! Hungry!) and it ends up rotting in your fridge.

Also, most of us start our lives not making a whole lot of money. What we do have we have to use wisely if we want to balance getting our bills paid with being able to, say, have a social life. When you have less, you need to plan your money as carefully as possible. Because all the big things in your life are probably already as low as they can go you need to start cutting ruthlessly in other areas. The same goes for people who have lower incomes: telling them to not sweat about the small stuff is terrible advice when the small stuff is contributing to their inability to manage their finances and is increasing their debt. These people need to learn the skills of blackbelt scrimping until they can breathe again.

I spent years being ultra-frugal and making cutthroat decisions in how to spend. Those years allowed me to start a small business – and then to subsequently give up that business to stay at home with my kids. We rarely ate out, we mostly did the free activities available around the city and we had a YMCA membership that gave us access to fun sports classes for the kids. Most of those things were also walking or biking distance from our house. We had a really good life because we were able to access a lot of low-cost, fun stuff.

That frugality also came in handy when I decided to go back to work. Being able to live off one salary allowed me to wait and take contracts for work that I enjoyed and that were at a higher salary. I didn’t have to take the first job that came along because I knew that while the money was nice we didn’t need it to survive. I doubled my salary and went from a low-level admin position to heading up a team in a high-level position in under 5 years. I was free from the constraints of having to scramble for work to keep our family afloat. That kind of freedom to pursue the type of work you want to do is worth a lot more than eating out and shopping a lot.

Our house is paid off and our incomes is more than enough to spend well beyond what we need. But with my diagnosis it has been abundantly clear how precious time is. So while we could be buying up everything our little heart’s desire, we are choosing instead to invest Mr. Tucker’s salary to buy him an early retirement. Thankfully, my disability income is more than enough to support our family – if we spend judiciously. Buying his time back is the most frugal thing we can do right now.

In the end, frugality is a skill that never leaves you. You can also administer it as much or as less as you want to depending on your circumstances. If you have little money, you will have to tighten your belt. If you have a lot of money, you can loosen the belt if you’d like. But it’s exactly like riding a bike: you never forget how to use it.

Credit cards and teenagers

Credit cards and teenagers

What I am reading
This is strangely sad: Aardman studios – makers of Shawn the Sheep, Chicken Run & Wallace and Gromit – is apparently running out of clay. EDIT: apparently it is transitioning to another supplier. PHEW!

“I wanted to understand: what kind of human spends their days exploiting our dumbest impulses for traffic and profit? Who the hell are these people making money off of everyone else’s misery?” Did SEO experts ruin the internet, or did google?

Wages are high. Jobs are plentiful. Nobody’s happy.

The case for inviting everyone to everything. I often dream of having a GIANT pool party and inviting everyone I know. Why not get to know each other before my funeral?

Morgan Housel on the full reset. I have been doing our budget for the same way for years so maybe Mr. Tucker can take a stab at a new one for 2024?

What I’m thinking about
I am letting the kids go shopping for winter clothes tonight. They are going to meet at the mall and go shopping together. The Eldest needs a winter coat and The Youngest needs new boots. I set down a few rules around budget and type (ie: they have to be waterproof winter boots with a lining, the coat must be for winter) but they are free to get the style they want. In order to do this, The Eldest will pay on her credit card.

I got The Eldest her own credit card when the kids went on an oversees trip with a relative. I was scared that they would end up getting stuck somewhere without money. It’s also been handy because it’s allowed her to make her own purchases (that we’ve agreed to) for things like back-to-school shopping and the odd lunch at school when she forgets hers. Next year when The Youngest turns 14, they too will get their own credit card. (I also want to set them up with an Uber Family profile for the exact same reason but unfortunately I haven’t been able to get that to work yet.)

To be honest: I can’t say if this is a good idea or a bad idea long term for teaching them about credit cards. I just know that as a mom with two kids (who will be in two different high schools who will go out with friends and who may ended up stranded somewhere) it makes me feel better to know that they have something to pay to get them home.

What I have done is that when The Eldest wants to spend money before she’s earned it, I let her use the credit card – with a catch. On Saturday she decided at the last minute to hit the mall with her friends and asked me if she could spend the money she would have earned on Sunday doing the housecleaning & just use the credit card. I said yes – but that she would have to “pay interest” by taking a lower amount of money than what she would get if she waited until after the work was done (payday loan style – but less aggressive). She agreed to the lower amount and happily went off to spend the rest at the mall with her friends.

Now some of you are thinking that this is horrible, some of you think it’s great and the rest of you think I probably should have made the amount higher if she so readily agreed. Overall though, I am pleased with giving her the options and allowing her to make the choice. I haven’t figured out how to navigate the actual management of a credit card as she transitions into adulthood and needs to manage her own budget. What I do know is that I plan to get her there before she encounters the predatory credit card offers with the “free gifts” that are ubiquitous all over student commons’ everywhere (if she even chooses to go to post-secondary).

She did ask me if they could buy dinner at the mall, to which I said no (we’ve eaten out too much this month) because we have food at home – the rallying cry of mothers everywhere! But I did agree that they could get a bubble tea when they were done shopping, as a little treat (hah, the irony is not lost on me).

People like good news about their bad decisions

People like good news about their bad decisions

Links
• I absolutely adore Katherine May’s books and have bought myself a copy of Wintering to re-read during the dark days ahead. Her newsletter is a lovely read about how to feel grounded in turbulent times.

• I’ve long been a big fan of alternative housing which is funny for someone for whom accessibility is a top concern. Still, this is a good piece about living on a boat. I wish it was more of a choice for many people

• Which cities have bubble risk in their property markets?

• A dollar is a medium of exchange, not a store of value. Some great points here!

• A great non-fiction-ish short story on the real costs of inflation in business and life.

People love good news about their bad decisions
This is why things like Girl Math and Little Treat culture gain traction on TikTok and other social media sites. It feels good to get confirmation that your decisions are in line with the decisions of others. We are, after all, a tribal species.

Unfortunately though, all of these videos and commentary from influencers has very little application to your own personal situation. As the adage goes in personal finance: the only person who cares about your money is you. It doesn’t matter how many videos you watch extoling the virtues of getting a “little treat” in the form of an $8 latte a day if you are miserable because you are sinking in debt – and you don’t even enjoy the latte that much. You need to take a look at your own situation and decide whether or not certain things have value and make you happy. Ignore the noise from the internet telling you that you can ignore any purchase under $5. It’s just “girl math!” What they aren’t telling you is that $5 once a day is $150 a month.

I think the challenge is when a treat becomes, over time, a habit. No one can decide that line for you but if you truly enjoy eating lunch out every day to the tune of $15 a day, then that is probably something you can decide to keep. But if it means you’re upset that can’t afford to go to a fancy dinner with friends because you’ve blown all of your spending money, then maybe review that habit. It’s on you to make those choices and no one else can make them for you.

Yes, there are systemic challenges that are happening and we should all be pushing for change. There is a housing crisis, a recession looming, pensions have gone the way of the Dodo and it can be easy to throw up your hands and say, “screw it, I am going to make myself happy today.” If you choose to do that, who am I to stop you? It’s your life. I am not going to judge. In fact, I don’t care at all. The only person who cares about your money is you.

I see so many people bemoaning standard personal finance advice,

“That wouldn’t work for me!”
“I don’t want to give up my lifestyle!”
“I need X!”
“That sounds like deprivation to me!”
“We need two cars!”
“I can’t eat leftovers!”
“I deserve this for working so hard!”
“Why bother saving, I’ll never be able to afford to buy a house/go on vacation/retire.”

You know what? You are absolutely right. Please carry on.

Do you think Dave Bach or Suze Orman give two shits about what you do with your money? No. They’re busy rolling around in the piles of cash because they’ve been on the personal finance scene for forever and a day spitting out books, getting speaking gigs, plying their trade. All your criticism of typical advice to get your financial affairs in order doesn’t matter one bit. The truth is, it’s very basic and it works. The info they’re peddling isn’t even new or revelational: they are saying the same stuff that you can read on the internet for free any day of the week.

Pay off your debt.
Live below your means.
Save the rest.
Have money in the bank for emergencies.
Save money and invest it long term.

You can bitch and moan all you want that it’s hard, or that you feel judged or that it doesn’t leave you much room for fun things but all it is, is information. You can ignore this information, or you can use it as a springboard to change your life. No one else cares.

Money lessons, learned?

Money lessons, learned?

As a parent, as you raise your kids you just have to cross your fingers and hope that they got the lessons and will apply the teachings to their lives. You know that not everything will stick and you also know that some things have to be experienced, not just told to you. It’s a lot of work for not knowing the outcome.

Since the eldest has started her first job, we’ve done our best to give her financial advice in a way that isn’t too finger-wagging but that still encourages her to plan for saving and future spending. She luckily was given three permanent guaranteed shifts, three days a week, or 25 hours. It’s a perfect way to start your first job, in my opinion. Since she’s started though, she’s realized that she can also pick up MORE shifts and that MORE shifts means MORE money. So she got out a calculator to figure out how many shifts a week she could reasonably work. Bless her heart!

Also, because the city has had such a hard time hiring and retaining staff, they’ve also changed their NO OVERTIME policy and are allowing the wading pool attendants to get time and a half for every hour worked over 44 hours. So the eldest got her calculator out again and figured out how much she could make in a week.


Off to her first day of work

Of course, I don’t want my 15-year-old to work over 44 hours a week but I think the process is valuable. It makes her calculate – and evaluate – how much time she wants to trade for money. I think she also thought that her friends would be around much more than they have been this summer. Many of them have cottages or have gone on trips so her off time is generally spent playing video games & staying home. I think that is what has prompted her to pick up as many shifts as she can: she really wants to save enough to spend during the school year, when her friends are around and they want to go out and do things.

I would be lying if it didn’t warm my cold, goth heart when she called me into her room to tell me about the financial plan she had worked out based on a theoretical amount of shifts she can pick up over the next 5 weeks. She had stuck to my 50% long term savings, 25% short term savings for the school year and the 25% spend now plan! I was super proud of her even though I only said she had to put X amount into long term savings – she decided on her own to save more!

Of course, I did tell her that she should take her first pay and spend it all, as a treat for getting her first job. She ended up getting paid and taking her sister to the mall with her so she could pick up a few things. Sure, she spent money on things that I thought were useless but we all spend in ways that other people wouldn’t! She also kindly bought her sister a cute sweater.

What I found telling though is that the eldest also decided to buy them both lunch at the food court while they were there. When she got home with her spoils she confided in her dad and I, “I wish I hadn’t bought the fast food. It was $30 – two hours of work – and it wasn’t even that good! Oh well.”

Lesson learned, indeed.

My kid got her first job

My kid got her first job

Mr. Tucker and I both had pretty shitty first jobs. He worked in a camp for a stipend (which is really a volunteer position) when he was a teen but his first “real job” was in fast food. My first job was at 13 at a downtown restaurant with a takeout counter. When I was 14 I switched to working as an overnight busser on weekends. It was one of the two only restaurants that were open 24 hours so since I worked the weekends it was…not ok. Although the late 80s and early 90s were a different time, looking back on it an underage kid should not have been exposed to so many drunk people and their inability to keep their hands to themselves. Mr. Tucker also worked in a west-end fast food place after the bars closed and it was challenging in similar ways, mostly fights.

While I truly believe that everyone should work a shitty, low-paying job at least once in their life, I don’t necessarily think that should be your first job out of the gate. In fact, I think my most hated job (next to the ONE day I did telemarketing) was in a big box craft store* (yes, that one).

So when it came to the eldest, I decided to stack the deck in her favour. Because she loves skiing so much and has aged out of the lessons, she took her first ski instructor course this winter – and passed! So now she is a certified Level I Ski Instructor and she hopes to get hired at a local hill next season. I had also heard that the city was looking to fill a bunch of lifeguarding jobs, so she started down that path last fall. At 15, she now has her Bronze Medallion and Standard First Aid with CPR-C. This got her an interview – and a subsequent job offer – to work for the city this summer! Although I saw that you didn’t need experience in anything, it did recommend that you have some lifeguarding training and SFA/CPR was a requirement.

The eldest is blasé when it comes to continuing lifeguarding courses but at the very least what she does have has helped her get a job where she gets to spend all day out in the fresh air all summer. It’s also a job where there aren’t early mornings/late nights and it is more family-oriented (which doesn’t mean NO challenges but certainly reduces the potential to be around drunk, handsy people). She will also be placed in our general area of the city, which means she can probably bike to work which will also be great exercise.

My goal for both of the children is to get them to 16, pay for Driver’s Ed, pay for them to get their driver’s license and then set them freeeeeeeeeeeeeee to pay for the things they want after that**, by which I mean no more allowance.

I did sit the eldest down and drew her this fine sketch:


Behold! My incredible art skills make charts come to life!

I then told her that her first week of pay should be one of celebration: celebrate getting your first job and spend a week’s worth of earnings on buying things that she wants. But after that, it’s time to buckle down. I suggested that she budget:

50% to long term savings: this amount will go into a high-interest savings account for when she is unemployed or if she is in university and needs money to go out, buy herself things etc. Also, she knows that we have enough for a local school but if she chooses to go away for university she will probably have to chip in.

25% to long term spending: this is the money she can put in a savings account for the fall when she is in between jobs but still wants to go out and hang out with friends. Essentially, she will need to spread this amount over 4 months from September to December until she is working again in the winter. It’s basically teaching her to budget & monitor her spending so that she doesn’t run out of money.

25% to short term spending: this is the amount that she can spend free and clear every pay without having to worry.

In this example, I gave the example of a $500 paycheque to illustrate how she would divvy it up.

Do I anticipate that this will go 100% smoothly? I do not. BUT she at least has a game plan in mind and a goal to try and achieve when the stakes are relatively low. I feel like teenagers are kind of the perfect audience for this kind of budget teaching: they will test the waters and (most likely) find themselves coming up short. But they will learn the lesson and take it with them all through their financial journey. Like anyone, they will need to actually experience the highs and lows of money management until they figure what works for them. All you can do as a parent is teach the lesson, give them encouragement and support (not judgement) and hope that remember the lesson when they need it the most – when the stakes are higher.

She is eager to work as many hours as she can this summer but we will see what happens. Either way, it’s another milestone on the way to adulthood!


Filling out the ubiquitous onboarding forms – get used to this, kid


*I should have known that they’d be awful when “training” consisted of watching an anti-union video. They consistently understaffed and overworked people and the final straw for me was when they scheduled me at the same time that I had requested off to take a university exam. I walked out.

**Clearly we will still pay for clothes, food, shelter, education etc.