Compensation

One of the main stressors in my life these last few months has been my job.

There were some changes at the beginning of 2021 that resulted in some key staff members leaving, putting a lot of stress in the office. Because of my background I was able to fill in and help out in certain areas. This was WONDERFUL. I was completely in my prime and had a lot of enjoyment. Every day was a new challenge and our General Manager seen how much I thrived with new responsibilities so added even more to my plate! Although, things were stressful, I had an amazing support system and was also compensated for my added tasks. I told G he wasn’t allowed to take a transfer for his job because I was finally feeling really happy in my career. 

Now fast forward to a few months. We are under new management, with new job roles. I had to take a pay cut effective January 1st 2022, however they haven’t caught up with switching job duties around so I’m still expected to do the same work for less pay until they figure out the transition. Not to mention the lack of communication… I had to ask if we were on probation once our new contract kick in - turns out we are, they just forgot to tell us (PS: it’s also not in the contract I signed but I didn’t tell them that). We have a staff fund that comes out of our paycheque, but they didn’t tell us how much that would be until I asked to see the policy they were wanting me to sign off on… Just the entire process has been extremely disappointing and frustrating. 

One nice thing about my reduction of salary is they offered me a one time payment of $7,078.00 - which reflects my difference in pay. We had the option to put all (or some) of that amount into an RRSP or get paid out. I choose the RRSP route which reflected on my paycheque today. Although I didn’t have to pay income tax on that amount, I did need to pay CPP, EI & Pension Adjustment. This resulted in a paycheque of $450.00… I was a bit shocked this morning, but that would be my own fault not thinking about that deductions. Luckily - we have some money left in our chequing account from G’s pay and all our automated payments have been taken out. So this next week and half is going to be very frugal! Good thing this week is starting off with a snow storm - so I definitely won’t be going far.

- M 

Saturday Happenings

I have been looking forward to the weekend ever since Monday! We have been seriously short staffed at work (new positions since the merger, replacement positions not yet hired, sickness and appointments). All week we have been trying to gather information for our annual audits. It’s one of those things where if I had an hour where I could focus on nothing but these requests, I can easily get them all done, but because we have been down half our staff all week, we are struggling to even get the basics done.

At the end of the day on Friday, my manager and me were at the point where all we could do was laugh - we were trying to cheer each other up because we were so stressed that if we didn’t laugh we might cry, lol. I’m hoping next week is MUCH better. My manager has already said: 1. We can only do what we can do with the resources given and 2. If sickness has worked it’s way thru the office she will have me focusing on the deadline items and only the deadline items. Finger’s crossed!

After such an exhausting week, I came home from work (late) on Friday to all the chores completed - G even had a candle burning in the kitchen for me. Small little actions like that are the best, I don’t think I could have hugged him harder, lol. We had our friends, C & D (plus their two chocolate labs) over for dinner and a game night on Friday as well. It was the perfect way to unwind and start the weekend.

This morning G & I slept in a bit and had a nice breakfast of sour dough biscuits (G makes these with sour dough starter discard after feeding), eggs, and left overs from yesterday’s dinner. We went to the grocery store (see haul below), the community thrift store for some camping blankets, and then gave my car a much needed wash. I’m having a coffee and writing this post and G is downstairs setting up a cutting board stand he designed to print on his 3D printer. I’ll try to remember to take a photo once it’s done.

$47.02 worth of groceries (not pictured: $10.79 pack of toilet paper)

- M

Food Investment

G picked up our beef today and we had just enough room the in freezer (thank goodness)!

Long story short: a friend of ours is on a curling team with a local beef farmer and he was processing a cow but didn’t need the entire beef. So our friend said they would take a quarter and asked us if we wanted the other quarter. I am no stranger to the difference in quality that properly raised beef has - so when we had this opportunity come up G and I agreed right away. 

It was a slight investment…. but we also received A TON of beef. Like I said: our freezer is packed! The cost: $850.00 but that includes all the processing, wrapping and packaging. 

Here is a rough inventory of everything we received:

- 62 pounds ground beef (all individual wrapped in 1 pound packages)

- 8 packages of soup bones

- 6 sirloin steaks

- 2 fillets 

- 4 porter house

- 2 wing steaks 

- 4 T-bones

- 4 ribeyes

- 4 packages of boneless chuck

- 1 12inch brisket 

- 5 rump roasts

- 2 sirloin tips

- 1 eye of round

- 1 package back ribs 

- 2 packages short ribs 

Processing the entire beef averaged around $4/lbs. Looking at flyers: the sale price at the Superstore for ground beef is $4.49/lbs - but since we don’t live anywhere close to a Superstore - we would need to make a special trip to the city. Our local Co-op, which is the only grocery store in our small town, doesn’t have ground beef in the flyer this week but does have eye of round for $4.99/lbs (limit of 1). 

Regardless if it’s a good deal or not, I am happy with everything we got! While we were playing freezer Tetris this evening, G and I deemed February should be ‘Freezer February’, since we still have a bit of room to make. 

Looking forward to the meals we cook up!

- M

Networth - December 2021

Assets:

Liquid - $23,451.85
This is anything we can easily liquidate with no penalties given a real emergency. I used to include our TFSA's in here but I need to get out of that mindset that we can use those accounts for emergencies. Instead focusing on setting up a buffer account and a proper emergency fund.

Retirement - $425,860.69
G’s pension is a defined benefit pension at his work. For this calculation we take the cash value of the pension he would receive if he were to quit. This also includes my pension and RRSP’s. Also includes our TFSA's.

Hard Assets - $251,000.00
House value and car private sale amounts. The car values I update yearly in December.

Liabilities

Mortgage - $121,424.87

Consumer - $13,521.74
The only consumer loan we have right now is a car loan.

Networth: $565,365.93

I would love to see our retirement hit $500,000.00 by the end of this year and I feel like in a perfect world, with no major market corrections (haha), we can do it. But we do have some major RRSP contributions coming up that will put a big dent in that $75,000.00 goal but we will see how everything plays out. We have our retirement savings on autopilot, and have been chunking money at our TFSA's when we have a good month.

Using our 2021 budget, I'm going to run our average numbers and calculate how realistic our $15,000.00 emergency fund is. So depending on what I find we might focus on beefing that account up. 

- M

Long Time No Post 2.0

Okay, I swear we aren’t going to keep meeting like this (famous last words).

Things with G and I are still kicking along but I'll spare you the recap until it comes up in a post.

We have been making some leaps and bounds when it comes to our NetWorth. Last year we had some unfortunate situations happen but after putting it off for waaaaayyy too long I decided to prioritize my mental health and have begun to see a therapist. Funny enough: when I wasn't doing well and things were spinning out of control, I found sitting down and budgeting the best thing to do in order to relax. I'm pretty sure I've reach a new level of pathetic, haha. 

I finalize our 2021 budget spreadsheet last week and a big goal I want to focus on this year is getting our grocery budget under control. We averaged $600.00/month last year - I would like to get that lower but not 100% sure what a reasonable number goal would be. We have deemed January - use it up month - aka the month we get creative with what is in our freezer and pantry. We have ¼ beef coming from a local farmer that might be processed next week, so we really really need that freezer space! So far we used up $249.34 of our $400.00 grocery budget and I feel positive we can keep that number under $350.00 this month.

On the weekend I made a lentil soup, which used up all the lentils we had in the pantry and made a rosemary and sun-dried tomato focaccia to go with it (frozen rosemary was from the garden and sun-dried tomatoes were in the fridge). Yesterday, G made some mici (Romanian sausage) from the freezer and I cut that up to make a salad. Today we are having some minestrone soup (again from the freezer). So, we are defiantly eating well!

This weekend we are testing out some new camping equipment for the first time. In December, we treated ourselves to a hot tent - basically a canvas tent with a stove inside to keep you nice and toasty warm. We decided since we our winters are so long in Saskatchewan we might as well take advantage of it! Since it's our first time winter camping we are just tenting in our backyard (that way we can bail if things go horribly wrong, lol). I will report back and let you if we survive! ;) 

- M