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It’s a cruel, cruel summer

It’s a cruel, cruel summer

This year we didn’t go away in winter, instead we saved our money in order to pay off our house (which we will do in September). So naturally, I spent most of the winter looking forward to the summer when I could spend most of my days in our gorgeous backyard swimming, gardening and enjoying the sun. I was also looking forward to getting back into Dragon Boat as I hadn’t been back since the pandemic.

Man plans, god laughs

The youngest child also joined a Dragon Boat team this year and we both spent Saturday of the Dragon Boat Festival racing, enjoying the company of our friends, cheering on other teams and eating fun food. We went home Saturday night and had a lovely sleep after a big day with an early start.

Sunday morning was already looking dicey with the wildfires but we headed off in a friend’s car under the glowing red ball that was the sun. I am kicking myself in retrospect but instead of changing into a pair of sneakers, I just kept my slide-on Crocs on. I should have taken the 2 minutes to change but I was eager to get to the tent and grab a coffee. We walked in the gates & I started towards the beach. Unfortunately, the grass/sand mixture was horribly uneven and I managed to clip my foot on a tree root and despite trying to catch myself, I managed to seriously hurt my foot, which started to swell immediately.

My teammates witnessed this, rushed over, got me a chair and an ice pack and a friend headed over to the first aid tent to grab one of the First Aid volunteers from the ski patrol. He came, determined there was nothing he could do and soon after I found myself whisked off to the hospital.

Poor Mr. Tucker: with the youngest and I off to the ODBF and the eldest off at a sleepover, he was really looking forward to a day to himself doing music and playing video games. Sadly, he had just sat down with a cup of coffee when I texted him to meet me at the hospital. I felt terrible.

Thankfully, we didn’t wait long to be seen and an x-ray, a CT scan and a stand-up x-ray later (REALLY? That was just mean). It was determined that I had a hairline fracture in my foot so it’s an air cast and 5-6 weeks off of my feet. A follow-up appointment with orthopedics the Wednesday of that week also saw a hairline fracture in my fibula. “You’re really great at breaking things,” said the orthopedic doc. Oh am I ever! The advice was the same for both fractures: stay off it for a bit over a month.

Teetering on the edge

The next morning Mr. Tucker went out and rented me a wheelchair which I have now essentially lived in for a month as I gaze longingly at my pool from inside the house. I would be lying if I said it has been an easy month of healing and binge watching bad tv. Instead, Mr. Tucker has now had to ferry the kids around to work and camps as well as manage day-to-day things such as meals and helping me in/out from the wheelchair. He had originally booked off two weeks in July so that we could get a bunch of house stuff done but that has been significantly railroaded by my injury.

He was cranky, I was cranky, we both feel cheated out of the summer we were looking forward to.

Going with the flow

As a distraction from all of the absolute CARP that descended upon us, I tried distracting myself in the following ways, all of which are working in some capacity:

Booking a winter trip: I contacted a local travel agent that specializes in accessible travel and started looking at a trip for March break. My life is a constant battle against the kid’s school schedules, money limitations and how my mobility is going. We’ve decided to splurge and just go on an all-inclusive trip this winter. We are still ironing out the details but it’s been a lovely distraction from having my summer being taken away from me by my injury.

Mr. Tucker and I sat down and did a financial plan – together: usually I create the plan and we sit down and discuss it. But I felt like a lot of it didn’t feel real to him and were just a bunch of numbers on a page. So we sat down with a clean spreadsheet and worked through our numbers together. It was a great exercise for him to actually help create the plan and see for himself how we can plot things for his retirement. He told me that this process made him feel a lot better about all of the bad luck. We also are both really excited about our goals!

Mr. Tucker finished the vacation chores: because things were absolutely bonkers, tasks that should have been organized and done on his vacation did not get done and he was feeling overwhelmed. So he enlisted the children and pretty much got almost all of the outdoor chores done, which allowed him to relax for the second week of his vacation.

I gave myself time and space to make a decision: …about dragon boat. In the end, I gave my seat in the boat up to a friend who is an amazing paddler and I switched myself to being a spare, if needed. I just needed someone who could commit to the team for the next festival and even if I did the full 6 weeks, it would only be two practices before I had to compete. It’s not great for the team so it just made more sense to give up my spot.

I discovered Task Master: which is a hilarious show where comedians compete against each other by doing silly things for dumb prizes. If you need to sink yourself into something hilarious and low stakes, I highly recommend it.

It’s still just horrible luck and I have another week or two until I can walk with any regularity. BUT on a positive note, I will still have a lot of August to enjoy the pool and the garden is producing quite well right now. I will still probably be able to get a couple of paddles in, and Mr. Tucker and I have been buoyed by our new goals. Life throws you curveballs and it can be super difficult to navigate them sometimes but eventually good things will happen, just wait and see.

The shocking realization you’ve reached your goals

The shocking realization you’ve reached your goals

Tax season brought us a huge refund which we will use to payoff the mortgage

I realized this week that some personal finance adages are true. I suppose that I always knew this intellectually but I managed to say this out loud (and by “out loud” I really mean, “in a Signal chat”) this week and once I said it, the weight of what I had accomplished came into sharp focus.

So let’s start at the beginning.

Mr. Tucker’s work was recently acquired by another company. This required him to sign a whole new slew of legal documents, some of which were a bit unclear. Fortunately for me though, I have a friend who is an incredibly brilliant employment lawyer who is licensed to practice in Ontario AND in California. Those are two very challenging jurisdictions to get licensed in (and she has a ton of experience with tech companies) so clearly, the woman is a GD genius. Luckily for me, she is also a lovely friend who read all of Mr. Tucker’s new documents before he signed them.

When all was said and done, she asked me about how things were looking for him at work, personally…and that’s when I took stock and realized that … IT DOESN’T MATTER! We are finally at a point in our lives that while it would be shitty, a layoff wouldn’t decimate our finances.

Having her ask that question made me go through our accounts and made me realize the following:

– Our mortgage will be paid off by July (two months before schedule!). The house is currently worth high 6 figures.
– Mr. Tucker’s retirement accounts will meet our target by the end of 2023.
– Any layoff would result in a severance enough to carry us through to the end of the year.
– The kid’s RESPs are currently funded enough to get them a 4-year undergrad degree + books at a local university. We’re still funding it but even if we stopped putting money in it today, they’d still be fine!
– We are currently mostly living off my income, which is private disability insurance indexed to inflation until I am 65.
– I have a small pension + lifetime benefits (Mr. Tucker would get half of it should I die as well as half of my CPP and the kids would get an orphan’s benefit as well until they are out of school).
– On top of regular tax shelters, I also have an RDSP which gives me 100% return on investment via government grants until I am 49 (and can grow tax-free in investments until I am 59).
– Should either of us pass away, we have sufficient life insurance and investments to carry the surviving spouse and the children.
– We have a secondary property that is currently rented to a family member at-cost but that has a mortgage on it at around 1/3rd of its value.

When I wrote all of this in a message I realized quickly that even though I had spent some time worrying about the company acquisition, there really is nothing to worry about. While we wouldn’t be living high on the hog, the decisions we made have been good ones.


We do a monthly game night with friends but for Easter we decorated eggs

So, those true adages? Consistency does beat intensity AND time in the market beats market timing. Let’s look at one example, our kid’s education savings accounts:

Consistency beats intensity
I didn’t end up opening an RESP until my eldest was around 3 (12 years ago). Up until 2020 we could only afford to fund it to the tune of $80 a month ($40 each) because we had a pretty high child support payment and I stayed at home with the kids until the eldest was 4.

But what we did do when they were younger was that we asked family members to give us money for their RESPs instead of buying gifts for various holidays. So for about 5 or 6 years (until they wanted to spend their birthday & Christmas money), we were able to throw in an extra $150 twice a year for their education.

Time in the market beats timing the market
When I go back and look at what we put in vs what we actually have, we see an almost 40% increase over the last 12ish years (investments + grants – so 20% each) in the original accounts (we do still fund these with the same $80 monthly).

Conversely, we also started a new RESP in 2020 using a Robo-advisor because we wanted to play catchup on our contributions and get the grants for previous years. In those 40 months we have seen a 24.6% return in that account – 20% of which is grants, so really we have only made 4.62% on our money since 2020. Not bad (but not great) considering how awful it’s been.

So even though we have been putting more away every month the long game has paid off in spades when you look at the return. We also aren’t done yet, I will continue to put money into the account until we run out of grants available to each kid AND it will also compound for at least another 3 years.

No matter what the market does, we just continue to fund our registered accounts. Dip in the market? Fund it monthly. Market overvalued? Fund it monthly. I just cannot be bothered to think about these things and even through it may or may not be the most perfect way, dollar cost averaging has often been my long term strategy. I used this strategy because it was easier to set up our budget and make savings come out of our accounts every month like a bill rather than have to constantly think about it.


Spring chorin’ has begun

Hoisted by my own petard
I was saying to Mr. Tucker the other night that while we intellectually know that we make good money and have assets, we sometimes feel a bit like money is tight. The reality is though is that we have structured our budget to feed money into two kinds of goals. Regular goals such as putting money away to buy a car with cash every 10 years, education savings, emergency savings etc. Then we also have stretch goals, which is basically saving almost everything Mr. Tucker makes into vacations, retirement accounts and paying off our house early.

So we feel poor sometimes when I have to say, “No, sorry, we are out of pocket money this month so we can’t have take out.” Because really, we live off of a bit over what a median household income is in Canada. But we don’t actually ever have to make really hard decisions, so it’s all in our heads and is guided by our goals. The things we end up denying ourselves is junk food, more subscription services or weird baubles at the dollar store. We don’t deny ourselves the things we really enjoy, such as travel and going to concerts. The kids also have all sorts of cool lessons and activities. But this is self-restriction for a higher goal. We’re actively making choices to deny ourselves shit we don’t really need in order to reach…well, apparently we’ve pretty much reached it…OUR LONG TERM GOALS.

It’s just absolutely wild to me that we can see the finish line after years of just putting in the effort. Of course, Mr. Tucker still wants to work until the end of 2024 but it is nice to know that we have a backup plan should things go south.

It’s so funny that one little question from my friend would lead to such a heavy weight being lifted off of me. But here we are!


Another fine book club was had

Resolution, dream, goal or plan? Maybe all of the above

Resolution, dream, goal or plan? Maybe all of the above

In 2020 we had found ourselves suddenly homeschooling and stuck at home. Like most people, we also found ourselves drinking a wee bit more alcohol than we usually did. By October it was clear that not only were we spending scads of coin on booze, we also felt like shit and the consumption of alcohol was severely affecting our mood. So on October 31, 2020 the last alcoholic beverage for the next 365 days was consumed.

I won’t lie and say that it was an easy year, there were many times where one or both of us wanted to celebrate with a glass of something stronger than club soda. But we stuck to it and found that not only did we lose some weight, we also saved a pile of cash. In October 31st, 2021 we went to a friend’s outdoor (belated) birthday party and toasted her with some spiked punch.

Since then, we haven’t really consumed alcohol like we used to. Aside from the fact that we are old and more prone to hangovers, alcohol also makes me incredibly spastic the next day. More and more we found that we don’t like losing the next day to recuperating so while we drank often we didn’t find ourselves going too crazy. We also discovered that we prefer more higher-end brands as well, so when we did drink alcohol it could often get really expensive. So when we mulled it over, alcohol consumption – while fun in the moment – was incongruent with our long term health and financial goals. So we decided that 2023 would be an alcohol-free year for us.

When I mentioned our sober year goals to a friend, I mentioned that one of the reasons was to help us pay off our house in 2023. She replied with, “It’s can’t make that much of a difference, can it?” So I ran the numbers and in Beer and Liquor store purchases alone (not cash, not bars/restaurants, not gifts) we spent $5500 on our credit card*. Of course, alcohol in this province is super expensive but actually running the numbers was pretty shocking to me because looking back it didn’t even seem like we drank that much last year. What an eye-opener!

Resolution #1 – a sober 2023

As mentioned above, our mortgage is up for renewal later this year and we want to just pay the entire thing off completely. We had already planned to do that before the prime rate had climbed to dizzying heights but now I am doubly glad that we had it in the hopper for 2023! We don’t have much further to go so if we tighten our belts we will be mortgage free by the end of the year.

Resolution #2 – pay off the mortgage on the house

We are also aiming to have an ultra frugal year. Generally speaking my budget style is to make categories and just try and spend within the categories. I don’t typically budget down to the cent or make an effort to track every penny. As long as we stay in the green, meet our goals and don’t carry debt, I generally just have an idea of where everything is going.

But as inflation increases and a recession looms as workers are getting laid off, it seemed like a good time to experiment with living off of one salary – my disability income. With Mr. Tucker’s work salary we plan to save it for retirement, use it to pay off the house, save for our road trips next fall and put some away to purchase local food. When the house is paid off, these last two things will then come out of my disability income, freeing up every cent he makes to put towards early retirement.

This is the one goal for 2023 that I am apprehensive about. Since we’ve always had low expenses, a good savings rate and still have been able to do the things we’ve wanted to do, having to check ourselves may be a steep learning curve. Still, 10 years ago we had an incredibly tight budget because I was a SAHM and we had a large child support payment when Mr. Tucker made about half of what he makes today. Of course, prices have gone up and two t(w)eens in the house make everything more expensive. But I am 100% sure that this will be achievable with some work. Much like 10 years ago, I am going to track our spending carefully and look for ways we could be more efficient with our money.

Resolution #3 – Live off of one salary and track all of our spending

If there is one regret I had about 2022 it’s that Mr. Tucker and I didn’t get out for walks as much as we would have liked to. Sure, I spent a ton of time swimming in the pool during the summer months but we always had planned to walk while the kids were in school and with his new job it never seemed to happen.

Worse, we actually purchased some cardio equipment last year on sale and while we started off strong, eventually the machines sat unused as life got busy in the spring between Puerto Rico and school drama.

I have no crazy exercise goals except: move. Any sort of movement is better than no movement so I am just going to try and get outside, get some fresh air and walk/trike. On days where it is too dangerous to go outside due to snow & ice, I can use the equipment. Mr. Tucker and I really need to prioritize any exercise over the nothing we’re doing now. Once we’ve made it a habit again, we can increase and add to our routine. Hopefully by the summer we will have some weight training and flexibility training incorporated into our routine.

Resolution #4 – Move more

A part of these goals is to start living in a way that supports our health and get us used to habits that Mr. Tucker can take with him into early retirement. We need to make space for ourselves over the next year and live our life as less focused around his job as we can. Of course, he still has to work and there will often be challenges to being life-focused vs. work-focused but after a year into his new gig he has a better handle on the job and its expectations.

I think overall 2023 will be characterized as a year where we make conscious decisions and really focus on the life we want to lead. Not just this year but going forward as well. The world is constantly chaotic and these past couple of years have felt so heavy between the pandemic, economic changes and war. Hopefully 2023 will be a little calmer, the kids will continue to thrive, we’ll see our friends and family a lot more than we have these past few years and if all goes well, we’ll meet our goals.

Happy New Year!

*we get extra Aeroplan points for using the card, which makes it also easier to track our spending on alcohol because we tend to always use the card

**Mr. Tucker will need to listen for alerts on his phone due to work but there is no reason it needs to be right beside him

When you’re a saver, it’s hard to be a spender

When you’re a saver, it’s hard to be a spender

We have a lovely older couple who live across the street from us and who have lived in this neighbourhood since the 1970s. Our neighbour, let’s call him Bill, is almost 80 and is the caretaker of his developmentally disabled daughter and his wife, who has dementia. Bill is an absolute treasure and unlike so many people his age, he has a positive outlook on life. One of the things he always says is, “I see every day I am here as a gift!” His life isn’t easy but he is grateful for everything he has and he’s a real inspiration to us youngins’.

Bill doesn’t have a cell phone and will often just pop in for a coffee. Today he dropped in and the conversation turned to how expensive everything is with inflation. He laughed because his last pair of “good” shoes were 30 years old and they had fallen apart. He said that the last time he went to buy shoes they had cost him $29.99 and looking at a recent flyer that came in the mail, it looks like now he’ll have to pay $80 for a similar pair.

He then went on to tell us that he had spent his entire life saving money for a good retirement only to discover he couldn’t spend it. “I have enough for all of us to spend and live comfortably for a long time but there is nothing I want to buy,” he said. Bill lives a really good life, too. He doesn’t deny himself, he takes the odd trip with the family, and spends money to maintain his house and yard (with pool). “My wife used to buy all of my clothes but honestly, I haven’t needed to shop much for clothes for years because they have lasted.” Bill isn’t a miser, either. He often buys my children little gifts like backpacks for school, and flower kits you can grow indoors. He’s just discovered that he doesn’t need – or want – to spend money.

The New York Times recently wrote that research suggests that this is common.“As people age, they report less satisfaction from travel, as well as from new cars, clothes and appliances. The decline is strongest in people who say their health is poor. People who say they’re in excellent health say their enjoyment from travel and leisure is actually greater than it was six years earlier. People in excellent health also report more satisfaction from giving financial support, which goes against the notion that those who expect to live a lot longer are worried about running out of money.” I would also say that after years of saving and learning how to get the things you want on a reduced budget that you just continue this even when you retire. Bill is a retired teacher with a pension, his house is paid off, his car is paid off and he has enough for a really good life for the three of them. So his savings keeps growing while his lifestyle stays similar to what it has always been.

This got me thinking about our own budget. We currently save a huge chunk of our income for our house prepayment, retirement, and our children’s education – not including “planned spending” items like buying a new car every 10 years, which is more “saving to spend.” Our life is a really solid middle class life: roof over our heads, food on the table, bills are paid and there is money for extras. We also have a category for leisure and travel that is well-funded. But I do know from my calculations that once our mortgage is paid off next year, we will be able to easily live off of just the money I bring in.

According to research, we’re also in our peak budget years as the kids are t(w)eens. They will also be here for at least 5-7 years (more if they go to post-secondary in the city). That means our expenses are relatively high. We pay for very pricey activities and save a huge amount towards their RESPs – not to mention the basic costs of feeding and clothing them. We are so used to having this money go to them that when (and if!) they leave home, I wonder if we will feel like Bill. Having everything for a good life already, will we want to spend more?

Despite our current moratorium on air travel, we probably would like to travel a bit more in the future (PLS willing!). I suspect that over time we will find ourselves like the people in the above NYT article: unwilling to travel due to disability. We will also find room in our budget to help the kids as they try and build an adult life for themselves. Still, our coffee with Bill reminded me that having spent a long time saving for the future, we probably will find ourselves in the same position: having enough.

Milestones – Registered Education Savings Program

Milestones – Registered Education Savings Program

I really try and not look at our investments in this bear market because it doesn’t change any of our savings behaviours and it won’t make a lick of difference to stress myself out like that. HOWEVER, I got to thinking about the things we save for and I wondered, “what does tuition at a local university look like now?” Some quick googling later and I realized that we have enough education savings for both kids to each do a four year degree at a local university (even with our market losses).

What is really interesting is how the savings is divided. Half of that half of that savings happened in the past 3 years when we had more money to put away. The other half of it was mostly all done in the 9 years previous to that! When the Sprout was born we opened an RESP at a bank and started saving $80 a month – $40 for each child. It wasn’t a lot but it was all we had. On top of that, we asked family to contribute to the RESP for birthdays and Christmas. The kids were young, probably wouldn’t remember anything that they bought them but we figured that they would appreciate being able to go to post-secondary without debt. So for years we added all the cash they got to their savings – until they were older and wanted to use the money for other things, of course.

We still aren’t finished saving for them as they are only 12 and 14 now. It is nice to know that tiny amounts saved over long periods have got us to the point where they won’t have to worry about student loans for at least an undergraduate degree.

So if you are a young family and thinking of saving in an RESP but are worried that you don’t have a lot to contribute, remember that $40 a month + gifts from family essentially added up to half of a degree for her by the time my eldest was 14. Of course, as soon as we made more we invested more and that covered the other two years. The takeaway here is that small amounts invested over long periods add up to big gains. The difference between taking a student loan for two years vs. four years is also huge in terms of time it will take to pay it back. If they get scholarships, great – you have enough to help with grad school! If they decide to not go to post-secondary, great – it can be rolled into an RRSP (contribution room willing).

To learn more about the RESP, check out the Government of Canada website.

Sobriety

Sobriety

It happens as it usually does: a period of time where Mr. Tucker and I find ourselves drinking a lot of alcohol but enjoying it less and less. Our solution to that is usually a month of sobering up followed by some grandiose “falling off the wagon” as a holiday hits, friends come over, or it’s Friday. Rinse, repeat.

The pandemic has brought with it exploding alcohol sales. In the spring drinking just brought me anxiety but once the summer hit I was kicking back poolside, drink in hand. The seasons turned once again and by the fall I couldn’t get any sleep unless I had a drink or two. It wasn’t until October that Mr. Tucker and I realized that we were just drinking because it was habit and that neither of us was enjoying it all that much. So one day I turned to him and said, “Do you think we could quit drinking for an entire year?”

So on November 1st we completely stopped drinking alcohol for one entire year.

As creatures of habit I knew what our patterns were and I wanted to break them. I chose a year because it is probably the longest either of us has gone without a drink since we met (even pregnancy is only 9 months!). We also aren’t used to denying ourselves. Mr. Tucker and I are so incredibly compatible but that’s a bad thing if you are heading in the wrong direction. Also, Mr. Tucker is the worst at being the bad guy. Having a supportive partner is amazing but it also means that he sometimes enables my bad behaviour. For example, we will set a goal and say, try to not spend money because we are saving for something. Mr. Tucker will be great at not spending but as soon as I want to spend he takes it as his cue to go all-in and suddenly we are both spending and no closer to our shared goal.

With alcohol though, we have particular triggers. It’s as if you took the game of LIFE and made it into a drinking game. Rough day at work? DRINK! First day of spring? DRINK! Zoom call with friends? DRINK! But when you don’t have a plan aside from the very vague, “we’re not drinking right now,” cracking open a bottle of wine doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. So we crack open a bottle of wine and then a couple of days later we’re drinking two bottles…We’re stuck inside our old pattern again. So making a concrete goal and determining that we want to make it to a year made sense. It’s not open-ended so it’s harder to give in.

I will admit that quitting alcohol was not the only goal. Alcohol is also ridiculously expensive. In our youth we could drink whatever $5 special landed into our little hands but as you get older your tastes generally swing to more expensive brands. Our go-to wine was a regional wine that was on the low-end at $17 and even drinking one of these a night is a $119 a week. Where we live in Canada, there is no decent-tasting “two buck chuck” so you are looking at $400 a month. $400 that could be better spent somewhere else.

The other thing that really convinced me to give a long period of temperance a go is my health. I have often given up alcohol, done a lot of stretching, exercise & meditation, and made sure I my diet was well constructed. But I’ve never done all three at the same time. So I wanted to see if it would improve my mobility if I combined all of the healthy habits. As much as I never wanted to admit it: alcohol increases my spasticity & makes my balance worse. Not just in the “ha ha I am tipsy and can’t walk a straight line” way but in a way that lasts for days even after I’ve not had a drink for awhile. So that was my primary motivator.

Finally, I just didn’t want the kids seeing us drink everyday. Mr.Tucker and I have a saying and it’s, “we’re not moderation kind of people.” I can’t tell you how many times I have turned down “just one drink” at parties because I am driving. I know myself and I can’t just have one drink. It’s much easier for me to stay sober. So while I don’t want to make it sound like we were hammered every night (we weren’t) we did drink most nights of the week. Now that the kids are entering their tween years it seems even more pressing to model spending our evenings doing other things besides drinking (and spending time online but that’s another post).

So how has it gone? Pretty well, actually. We are two months in and neither of us think about it too much. Christmas was a bit difficult because of old habits but it helped that we weren’t hosting a large dinner this year. Being in a pandemic year helped a bit in that respect. For me the difficulty will lie in when the first really warm day of spring happens and when we open the pool this summer. I also feel like it will be easier by that time as well with 6 months behind us.

It helps that we are doing this for myriad reasons: health, money, parenting and life goals. When you look at the choice objectively it makes a lot of sense for our life to make this one change. I will say though, both Mr. Tucker and I – while constant drinkers – aren’t alcoholics. Obviously I don’t want to suggest that quitting alcohol is in any way easy if you have an addiction. If you do, please seek out professional help instead of trying to quit on your own. I know one person who passed away from complications due to alcohol addiction and it is a real, dangerous way to quit. Call your doctor or check out aa.org for more info.