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Reflections on 2025

Reflections on 2025


Happy Thule rack season to all who celebrate!

Last year I did do some goal setting so I supposed I should follow up on those before I speak about what is in store for 2026.

The condo and work: we said goodbye to our tenant in August (he paid up until the end of his lease) and then sold the condo 9 days after his lease expired. We then bought some new real estate which we will pay for (interest-free!) until November of this year.

Mr. Tucker lost another coworker to restructuring last month, which is infuriating but the writing is on the wall for this company, it seems. He continues to stick it out until the bitter end. With the condo gone, and our savings/emergency/retirement accounts at a good amount, we are less concerned about what the future holds.

Personal Renaissance (formerly known as the mid-life crisis): My medication is still helping me exponentially but I can see myself switching it up, maybe later this year. I still have continued to spend more on personal care than I ever have in my entire life but you know what? It’s nice! My skin and nails feel so much nicer and I like how much I have changed in the last year.

In July I had this reoccurring stomach pain that I just couldn’t shake. One day at the beginning of August I got up and showered and it made me so tired and weak that I found myself in the emergency room. As it turns out, I had kidney stones blocking my ureter and my kidney was mondo inflamed. I got there at noon (I had a fever of 107F!), saw a doctor by 1:30pm, had a CT scan at 2pm, saw the Urologist by 2:30pm and was in surgery for a stent at 3:30pm. The Urologist told me that had the stones actually managed to lodge themselves in my ureter and scrape the sides, I probably would have had full body sepsis. So they put in a stent and kept me in the hospital for FIVE days as they tried to get the fever down. Once they cultured and figured out what bacteria I had, they could target it with specific antibiotics. Meanwhile, I lay in bed covered in ice packs and the only thing that would even touch my fever was 1000mg of Tylenol (why they don’t just say 1g, I will never know). It was a weird time as I was never truly awake or asleep. I think it was also scary to think that it took so long to fight the infection. It was a real wake-up call for me as I came to terms with the fact that as a person turning 50 that year, my body would take a lot longer to heal. I am still reckoning with that knowledge. At any rate, all is well that ends well and once the infection cleared, I had another procedure to break up and remove the stones and I go back this month for another CT scan to make sure all is clear.

Just as a side note, I have often heard of folks saying kidney stones were the worst pain they’ve ever had. But honestly, pre-hysterectomy (warning: graphic descriptions of a medical procedure) I lived through hellacious pain every month for 2-3 days where sometimes I barely could get out of bed. Compared to menstrual cramps, kidney stones were a walk in the park. I think this is also why I didn’t think they were kidney stones? Because the pain was at a level I had considered manageable comparatively, it just didn’t track in my head as a possibility.

This year I also turned 50 and threw myself a banger of a party!

Budgety 2025: What no one really talks about is how just out of sorts you feel when you’ve achieved all of your goals. I have spent most of my life setting goals, vacillating in and out of the spend/save cycle and managing finances that when we finally “made it,” all I could think of was, “well what now?” I still look in our accounts periodically as a metaphorical way of pinching myself to make sure that yes, we really do have savings and investments and I didn’t just dream it. Even if we didn’t save another penny we could just coast to 65 and have enough to support our simple little life.

I will pay the last instalment on The Youngest’s RESP this month to get the maximum grant from the government, so that is a line item off of our budget.

We also paid for The Youngest to get her CASI Level 1 training to become a snowboard instructor, which she passed! She has also been hired by a local company to teach snowboarding one day a week.

The Eldest passed her driving test and can now drive on her own – a fact that she is taking full advantage of! Her insurance as third driver is more than the insurance for both Mr. Tucker *and* I! I only make her pay $30 a month though, mostly to get her used to paying a bill. She also pays her own gas.

The Eldest also got into university and will be heading off to a co-op program in the fall – and she will be staying in residence. Mr. Tucker and I are shocked at how hard this has hit us even though we were the ones who encouraged her to go to residence for the first year! I feel like the kids who lived through Covid probably use the boost of living on campus and managing their lives. So even though she could live at home, I think she will benefit hugely from having the full university experience.

You have to kick at the darkness… Man, what a year politically, eh? I have to say: giving up facebook[1] and instagram is the gift that keeps on giving. I have no regrets about leaving social media at all. I am as informed and as outraged as I want to be, thanks – and in fact, being less informed and less outraged would be even better but WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY, I guess.

I managed to do more trivia nights and more craft nights with friends. We played cards more as a family after dinner and I read more books than I have in a long time. I took an art class and liked it a lot and we did a bunch of one-off, learn-a-new-craft evenings various art businesses in the area. We saw friends for dinner – some friends we hadn’t even seen in years (& it is definitely something I want to do more of!). Also, since 3 people in my friend’s group turned 50 there were also more parties this year – and I am not mad about it! I just did more *social* stuff in general this year and plan to continue this trend into 2026.

Overall it feels like our kids are old enough and mature enough now that we can bring back some more social events into our lives, it’s a giant sigh of relief as we feel like we have more breathing room and more space to pay attention to our friends – and even work on building new friendships. Also, one of my oldest and dearest friends is moving here from the US and the start of 2026 is going to focus a lot on getting her set up and feeling loved and supported in her new home.

I guess the next post will be more about what my goals are for 2026!

[1] I still have an account as I do like having access to community groups, Buy Nothing groups and Marketplace but I legit check it for 5 minutes and my main feed is all slop so nothing encourages me to be there.

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