Maternity / Parental Leave Planning

After my announcement that we are expecting a baby in March, I don’t want this blog to turn in to a mommy-blog (it may be a slight inevitability that things will move that direction, but I will resist as long as possible), but there are some financial things that should be worked out before the baby comes, and that is definitely something that I think fits in with this blog, so I will write about that…

In the ideal world, I would love to take a year (or more) off from my traditional job and take on the full time role of mum, but that’s probably not the best option for us.  (And please don’t take that the wrong way, I don’t think that being a stay-at-home mum is an easy job, it sounds quite tough, but from what I’ve heard it can be one of the most rewarding “jobs” there is.)

My income accounts for about 75-80% of our household income right now.  This hasn’t always been the case, but because my husband is currently doing some training to get the necessary certificates for the next step in his dream career, his income has definitely taken a hit lately.  I foresee his income eventually being equal to mine, or at least very close, but until then, we have to plan as if we are in the current income scenario.  I think that’s called worst case planning or something…

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1-Year Mortgage Anniversary

It has been 1 year since we re-financed our mortgage.  At the time, I posted two posts about it; the first was going over my to-do list for the renewal, and the second was all the details of our new mortgage.

While I am still waiting for the renovations to be actually completed, I am happy with our decision to use money out of the equity in our home for that purpose, even if it goes against a lot of traditional personal finance advice.  And, I am still happy with our decision to not make paying off the mortgage a priority at this point, since we have a nice low fixed rate of 2.34% for four more years.  Since rates have already started to increase, we will have to revisit that decision when we go to renew in four years, but until then we will probably just let it go on auto-pilot.  That being said, I wouldn’t be a personal finance geek if I didn’t play with numbers in a spreadsheet… And so, of course, I have done that with our mortgage… 

November 2017 – Financial Update

This post was supposed to go up yesterday… But, well, I wasn’t that organized… Oh well.

Time is just flying by… Can you believe that there are only 2 months left of 2017?!?

With the ever-present chaos in our house, I’m still struggling to get all the data required for these updates, but let’s just see what we can do with what we have and take a quick look at how we are doing on my financial goals for 2017.

October 2017 – Financial Update

So, let’s not talk about how I fell off the blogging wagon… again… Let’s just move on, shall we?

Unfortunately, because of the chaos in our house with the renovations, the computer that I have stored my normal spreadsheet with all my financial stuff is packed away in a dark corner of my basement, so I’m going to only be able to give you a partial update here…

Anyway, let’s just get on with it… Here’s a quick partial update on my financial goals for 2017.

Baby Step 3, or 4, or Both?

When I started this blog, I sort of thought I’d be more in the personal finance genre, but, honestly, I don’t think I ever really fit that mould, and, if I had to classify my blog, I guess I’d put it in more of a lifestyle category… But only my lifestyle… not a stylish lifestyle… So maybe it really is just a personal blog… I don’t really know…

Anyway, the point being, I don’t really write about much personal finance other than my monthly financial update posts.  I do, however, read and follow loads of personal finance and FIRE (financial independence & retire early) blogs.  In the personal finance world, most people are familiar with Dave Ramsey.  While I have never actually read any of his books or attended any seminars or anything of the like, I have read lots of blog posts about his methods, and have visited his website a few times…

The other day I read a post (can’t remember where now, sorry!) about his 7 baby steps and decided to take a look at them for myself and see where I stand… So, here’s my take on our status with respect to Dave Ramsey’s steps:

September 2017 – Financial Update

I’ve got my work cut out for me this month in keeping up with my blogging promise that I made in my last post.  Luckily the first one is an easy one, but I realize I am a day late according to my schedule… I blame the long weekend… It messes with your perception of time… Anyway… here we go… another quick update on my financial goals for 2017.

August 2017 – Financial Update

I’ve been neglecting the blogging world lately, but since my financial update posts are always the easiest to write, I figure I can pop in today and do this update, even if I haven’t got any other content going at the moment… so here we go… another quick update on my financial goals for 2017.

July 2017 Financial Update

Happy Canada Day to my Canadian friends, and Happy Independence Day to my American neighbours.  Canada Day always indicated the beginning of summer to me growing up, and while I don’t have summers off anymore, I do feel like it’s the start of all the fun summer activities, like camping and swimming in the lake.  And in terms of the blog here, it means that another month has passed and it is once again time to do a quick update on my financial goals for 2017.

June Financial Update

One of the amazing views from a recent work trip.

Another month has passed again… So it is once again time to do a quick update on my financial goals for 2017.  I will admit now that I didn’t actually do this exactly at month end, so my values might be a little off… No big deal.

#1 – Emergency Fund

A good month for the emergency funds…  The first stage of the human fund is done, so now to concentrate on the pet fund a bit, before trying for the second stage of the human fund…

Human Emergency Fund = $10,000 (+$3260)

Pet Emergency Fund = $2230 (+$905)

April & May 2017 Financial Update

I’m still working on catching up on life… But I figured I couldn’t go two months without doing an update on my financial goals for 2017…

(Want to know a random fact? Last year I missed my April financial update too! Crazy, eh?)

So… Let’s get started…

#1 – Emergency Fund

If I’d done this update at the beginning of April, instead of the beginning of May, I’m sure the status of these funds would be a different story, but because I worked loads of overtime in April, we had a big extra to add to our savings goals, so both of my emergency funds are on the way up.  If I’m being completely honest, my “pet emergency fund” is also where I take money for buying pet food and routine vet visits, so there is a possibility that it will go down before the month is up, but hopefully we will keep up the months where we contribute more than we take out…

Human Emergency Fund = $6740 (+$1540)

Pet Emergency Fund = $1325 (+$1275)