Busy Weekend - Busy Month

G made it home last Thursday, no issues or delays. I was able to move my lunch around at work to go pick him up from the airport. Although his work will pay for his car to be parked at the airport, three weeks seemed like a lot of time for his car to be parked there, especially with some of the hail storms we’ve been having. I’m lucky that my work is flexible, even during quarter end reporting crunch.

We didn’t have much time to ourselves as we hosted some friends from out of town on Saturday and Sunday. My work had Roughrider tickets (CFL) they were giving away and I was able to snag 4 of them! So we were able to treat them to a game & in turn, our friends treated us to dinner out, which was completely unexpected and very generous. We did a bit of shopping to have some special items for breakfast, snacks, and non-alcoholic drinks (the one friend is pregnant). Then some BBQ items for after the game, but all those will come out of our hosting sinking fund. Game was fun: Saskatchewan won, but it was ungodly hot. Like heat I haven’t experienced since moving out to Saskatchewan. I couldn’t even finish my cider, I just kept chugging water. We were in the shade, but I honestly don’t know how my pregnant friend did it because I was dying lol.

In classic us fashion we overbought and prepared way too much food (we always do this when hosting, but I’d rather make too much than not enough) - so we’ve been having hot dogs and hamburgers all week. We just finished the last of them today. I had made a mediterranean dip, which we have a lot of left over, so I took out some chicken to marinate in it tomorrow during the day and then we can have that for dinner. There is a lot of lettuce in the garden currently, so I may make a salad to go with.

Saturday we head out to a friend’s house a few hours away to celebrate their daughter’s 1st birthday. They offered to let us stay the night so we may take them up on that offer. Next weekend another friend is going to be in the city, so we are hosting them for dinner. Planning on making some homemade burgers and a pasta salad with our homemade pesto or possibly some pesto-lemon rice. I’ll see what I’m inspired to make. I love summer for all the socializing, especially because summer is so short in Saskatchewan. However, we are pretty lucky that our group of friends gets together often and even as their families expand, they still make getting together a priority. This is also why it’s important for us to have a hosting fund, lol.

Tomorrow is my payday. I looked at our credit card balances, upcoming bills and how much G will get paid next week and feel comfortable we can pay all the bills/credit cards with his pay cheque alone so I will allocate my entire pay to our B.C. trip fund. I’ll move $1,900: leaving us with a balance of $370 to save. I have a preauth of $200 already baked into the budget, so we only have to save $170. This is a three paycheque month for me, so saving the rest of this will be no issue. Glad to have this chunk of money saved before we go on vacation! There’s no better freedom than actually enjoying your vacation without any worry.

- M

Hosting & Money Moves

Yesterday was the first day in over a week that we didn’t have some sort of rain or thunderstorm. In the morning I went out to the yard after my morning coffee to see how things are looking. The plants loved all the rain because things were popping off. I was able to get a second harvest of parsley & a huge amount of arugula. The parsley I cleaned and froze. Later this week I’ll run them thru our freeze drier to store in our pantry for the winter. Today I picked my first round of basil and made pesto. I freeze pesto in ice cube trays and have pesto blocks I can easily grab from the freezer. I’m near the end of my pesto stores from last year so this is perfect to replenish. My tomatoes, zucchini, herbs, peas & beans are all doing extremely well this year. My peppers: not so much. Last year we had an amazing pepper harvest though, so we did scale back the amount of plants - but I’m wondering if they were stunted early in the season with some cooler nights. I’ll keep watching and see what happens. G makes his own hot sauces with these, so I’m hoping we can get a few peppers at least.

As mentioned in my last post, last night I hosted a girls evening which turned into a girls early early morning by the time everyone went home, lol. With G gone it was nice to have people over and enjoy the nice evening outside on the deck. You know you are in good company when someone looks at the clock on the wall and realizes how late it is. For appetizers I made a garlic focaccia bread: Link and black lentil ‘caviar’: Link. All ingredients I had on hand, just required planning ahead in the case of the focaccia. My neighbour made a Mediterranean dip: which was delicious!

I was paid on Friday, and after looking at our finances, what we had still in our chequing account and what was upcoming this week, I was able to move the entire amount into our vacation fund for B.C.: $3,130 in total. This paycheque was much higher than usual because I was able to negotiate a signing bonus with a recent promotion I took. I’m interested to see what my regular pay cheques will be going forward now. I’ll find out later this month.

G calculated roughly how much his expense refund will be when he gets back from Vancouver: $2,900ish. We’ve been paying his credit card as charges have been applied and still been able to keep up with our other bills, so this amount can be completely directed towards saving goals. There is also the question regarding how much overtime he was able to work during the deployment - so at some point that will get paid out as he cannot bank those hours. Although sometimes the delay on these payouts can be months, so we’ve learnt to not count on these.

For dinner I made a batch of Vietnamese-Style meatballs. The recipe (link) calls for half pork, half ground beef - but we have so much ground beef in the freezer I opted to use all beef. Everything else for the recipe I had on hand in the pantry. Very easy prep and I will absolutely make these again. I had pairs them with some veggie potstickers from in the freezer and made a bowl with edamame, cucumbers, pickled onions, shredded carrots and sesame sauce drizzled on top.

Count down until G comes home: 4 days.

July Goals

1. Groceries under $250 - while G’s been gone to Vancouver I inventoried our freezers and pantry. I have everything on a printed out list and cross things off as I’ve used them. It’s extremely easy to reference the list and come up with meal ideas or figure out what ingredients I want to use and look for a recipe that uses those things. Wednesday I made chicken fajitas (using up chicken breast, onions, two bell peppers, fajita spice was mixed from pantry spices, wraps, cheddar cheese, and black bean soup (homemade from freezer). I was able to portion these out into 4 different meals. I’m hosting some neighbours and friends from the city over for drinks Saturday evening, so I’ll make some sort of appetizer getting creative with what we have on hand.
2. Save 80% of the cost for British Columbia trip - we are currently 30% of the way there and I don’t think the 80% will be an issue. Stretch goal is to fund this completely.
3. Fully fund Christmas sinking fund - I just want this finished.
4. One date night - Normally I would try to make this two, but we have a few social things planned this month. I would love to see the Odyssey!
5. Read three books from my physical TBR.
6. Continue to track macros - Specifically watching my fibre and protein.
7. Finish TFSA spreadsheets - This is for keeping track of our contribution room (I reference my spreadsheet to the CRA to ensure things are reporting correctly) and year end market values to keep track of gains (not only for the year, but for the entire time we’ve been contributing). It’s easy to narrow your field of vision and see how well your portfolio is doing during the good years but I have fond memories when the markets weren’t doing too hot.
8. Finish Networth spreadsheet - I have all our networth numbers spread across multiple journals, budget spreadsheets, notebooks. I want to consolidate these into a single excel spreadsheet.
9. Call life insurance company - I just need to call to update our address. I don’t know why I keep putting this off. This is my not so fun task this month lol.
10. Book a massage - I haven’t used any of my massage benefits at work this year.

Me Again

Long time no post. 

I’m not even sure if anyone still reads blogs but I’ve missed it. To be honest, this isn’t about who is reading these posts or gaining an audience, it’s about capturing all the frantic thoughts that are going on in my head. I’m of the generation who had LiveJournal during my angsty teenage years, and I love looking back to see how in my feelings I was, lol. It’s similar to this blog, reading my earlier posts about just starting our investing journey, couponing, excitedly seeing our net worth grow slowly. I’m proud of us and how far we’ve come. It’s also kind of weird, because when I think about it all it doesn’t seem like that long ago.

Anyways, cole’s notes from the last few years:

G & I are still together and celebrated our 19 year together (14 of marriage). G had another transfer a few years ago, so we sold our house and moved to a small town just outside a large city in Saskatchewan (yes - I’m still Saskatchewan Savings! :) ). We looked at moving into the city but my heart just loves the small town vibes where neighbours actually talk to one another and have get togethers often. We love it here, it’s been a really good move for us. 

With that also came a big change in my job. The Credit Union I worked for didn’t offer remote work, so as soon as we had our transfer notice I let them know I had to move and if we could work something out, let me know - if not, no hard feelings. Turns out, they wanted to keep me! And they pushed thru an entirely brand new remote work policy for me, and have since rolled it out to other employees as well. I’m such a trend setter ;)  Our new house has enough bedrooms that I have a dedicated office space set up and only have to go into head office 10% of my working days annually. Oh, and they put me in an entirely new department: finance! I LOVE this job, it’s super changing but rewarding. Seeing how the back end of the Credit Union works is fascinating. The team I work with is great as well, I’m learning a lot. It is extremely busy at work at the moment which has bled into my personal life. It’s is honestly why I think I’ve missed journaling… It’s just nice to get all my crazy thoughts down and process.

Something else I should mentioned is G and I had a very sudden loss of someone very close. This was completely unexpected and it’s been a bit to process. I’m sure I’ll discuss it some point down the line if I continue writing but if I publish our net worth numbers again I don’t want anyone trying to play the comparison game. This was someone’s retirement, a nest egg they had worked their entire lives for, and they passed away before they could enjoy any of it. And we were just gifted a sum of money… it’s complicated. Not in the estate processing, that was straight forward, but just how we feel about the funds. I don’t know. It’s weird and I’m still trying to process my thoughts. Maybe someone in the comments will just tell me I’m a lucky bitch and stop whining or I just tell myself that thru these posts. I don’t know.

Although I haven’t been blogging our finances are on autopilot. We are a lot more intentional with savings for experiences and we actually made a point this year to spend MORE on restaurants and entertainment. We are currently savings for a trip to Vancouver this summer. We looked at flights, got pissed off at how much flying is within Canada, then started to plan a road trip. Although, I’m sure we will spend just as much on gas and food as we would have for flights, we are much more excited to spend the money on a good road trip. We are tent/camping along highway 99 until we get to Vancouver, where we splurged on a hotel room right downtown. G is currently in Vancouver for work so he’s been able to scope out somethings for us to do. I’ve never been, so looking forward to seeing the west coast of Canada!

- M

Meal Prep Weekend & Grocery Spending

The weekend of the 9th was the prefect storm for doing some batch cooking at home. We literally had rain storms on and off all day so it was the amazing day to stay inside. G switched to nights at the beginning of the week and then we left for a camping trip so I wanted easy meal starters to have in our fridge. Basically all the prep work is done we just have to throw together a meal we are craving!

I quickly made up this super simple Buffalo Chicken Salad in our food processor for a few lunches during the week. I love serving this on a Tomato & Basil Rice Cake with cucumbers on the side. The nice thing about this recipe is it’s one that taste way better the next day! Next time I go to make this I’m going to make a double batch - which should get me thru the entire work week. 

I also roasted a chicken like I mentioned in my last post. I was able to pick off 1lb 7oz of chicken, which we will have with lunches or dinners. We didn’t get thru all the meat before we left so I froze some of the meat for meal ideas later.

My sister sent my a Reddit link that showed someone making Roasted Butternut Squash and Cauliflower tacos. I happened to have both butternut squash and cauliflower at home so I figured this was meant to be! If you are looking for a way to go meatless for a meal I would HIGHLY recommend this recipe. I made everything except the avocado mash (Irony: my $10.00 avocados did not ripen in time) nor did I pickle my onions (personal preference). I also knew I needed to prune my basil pot, so I was brain storming some ideas and looking for some recipes when I stumbled across this roasted corn, rice and pesto salad. I figured it would be a great side or on the tacos themselves. Again: I was blown away with how good this turned out. I didn’t have any fresh corn so I actually rehydrated some dehydrated corn (I do this myself) and roasted that on a cookie sheet. This recipe makes a lot of salad but again, it was amazing to have during the week. 

We had two trips to the store last week: $20.53 & $137.46. The bigger shopping trip was G picking up items for our camping trip last weekend. We went with some friends and each of us was in charge of different meals. If you can’t tell with our list, we were in charge of pizza bush pies. We definitely over estimated the amounts we needed but we have been using the meats as snacks and froze an entire loaf of bread.

I had the worst migraine Wednesday night that lasted into Thursday, so G had picked me up some Mr Noodles because I was severely dehydrated from throwing up. He also bought the Epson Salts so I could take a bath and try to relax. He did a really good job at the store and got so many items on sale! 

• Produce
•    
• Diary
• Coffee Creamer - $3.84
• Sour Cream - $5.69
• Margarine - $3.49 - We cannot take butter camping, it gets too cold in the cooler, so camping is the only time we eat margarine
• Shredded Mozzarella - $5.99 (sale)
• Shredder Cheddar Mozzarella - $5.99 (sale)
• Cheese Curds - $5.99 (sale)
• Meat
• Salami - $10.99
• 2 Pepperoni Packages - $9.98 (sale)
• Pepperoni Sticks - $9.29
• Ham Slices - $6.49
• Breads/Baked Goods
• 2 loaves Wonder Breads - $6.00 (sale)
• Hot Dog Buns - $3.00 (sale)
• Burger Buns - $3.00 (sale)
• Pantry
• 4 Rice Cakes Packages - $11.00 (sale) - I eat these with cottage cheese for lunch most days
• 4 cans of red kidney beans - $5.96 (sale)
• 4 cans of black beans - $5.96 (sale)
• Hazelnut Spread - $4.99 (sale) - This is a treat for G when we go camping, he likes making dessert bush pies with hazelnut spread and bananas 
• Canada Dry Tonic Bottles - $6.26 (sale) - Another camping must have for G, Gin and Tonic’s is his drink of choice
• Canada Dry Ginger Beer Bottles - $6.26 (sale) - Moscow mules are my drink of choice right now so this was a camping must have for me!
• San Pellegrino Lemon Cans - $8.51 
• 2 Pizza Sauces (squeeze bottles) - $5.98
• Fibre1 Bars - $4.99
• 3 Mr Noodles - $6.27
• Misc
• Epson Salts - $8.99
• Household

On Monday we were in the city for a medical appointment and we did a big shop at Costco. We stocked up on a lot of items we were running out of. I’ll go over our spending for this week in a later post but we are trying really hard not to go grocery shopping for the rest of the month. Finger’s crossed that we can eat from our stock pile!

- M

Grocery Spending & Reduced Food Waste

As a way to be a bit more accountable and to keep better track of my grocery budget, I’m going to try to have an update every week with any grocery spending. This week we spend $38.91:

Produce

    5 pound bag of carrots - $2.50 (sale)

    1 red onion - $1.67 (sale)

    2 lemons - $1.98

    1 bunch celery - $3.99

    3 organic avocados - $10.47 (… yeah, all the store had was organic - thinking about this now I should     

        have seen how much the pre made guacamole was…)

Diary

    Vanilla bean gelato- $9.99

Meat

Pantry 

Misc

    Romaine lettuce seeds - $2.09

    One of those microwave lunches - $5.99 (I needed to eat something quickly before my dentist     

        appointment so I grab one of these that day)

Household  

I’m excited to see how the rest of the year will play out for us in this area of our budget! It’s the area I feel I can definitely improve and be more mindful - but also an area I feel personal in control. Even with rising food prices and inflation (out of my control), I can choose to be a different consumer (great example above being the avocados and not looking how much the guacamole is). I don’t like assuming anything so I want this data!

A huge focus for us is reducing our food waste. Yesterday, we were invited to a friends for dinner. I made a Skillet Mixed Berry Cobbler  for bring for dessert. The past month or so, whenever we purchase any berries, while I’m cleaning and prepping, I sort my berries. I used to throw out the berries that were subpar or starting to go bad. Now, instead of throwing them out (with some exceptions) I freeze those berries instead. Two weeks ago, G and I had forgotten about some strawberries in the fridge and we had a ton of other fruit to eat up. So I diced up the strawberries and added them to the bag I already had going. Obviously, we try to eat this all fresh but sometimes it doesn’t happen. I feel much better repurposing in a different way than throwing it out. It’s similar to my bag of veggie scraps I have frozen to make stock. Anyways, so I was able to use up all that fruit in the freezer to make the cobbler. The only thing I had to purchase was the gelato!  

A few weeks ago G made a baked spinach artichoke dip. He purchase a giant bag of spinach and didn’t need all of it. We mixed some in for our salad during the week but we still had too much to use. I dehydrated 6 trays of spinach to grind into spinach powder. I’m excited to use this to colour pasta next time we do a big batch! G has also been mixing some into his smoothies. 

Today I roasted a chicken for this weeks lunches and dinners and saved the carcass/skins to make stock later!

I’m lucky I have a lot of space in the freezer to keep all these items for later use but I love getting creative :)

Any tips you want to share about food waste let me know!

- M

Budget Update & Wheat Berries

I was able to update my budget spreadsheet with our spending for June. This gave us 6 months of data to see how we are doing so far this year.

The biggest item I wanted to really watch this year was our grocery budget. Last year we spend roughly $600.00/month and I think I wanted to try to reduce this to $500.00/month for 2022. So far we are averaging $716.42/month… Yikes. I’m hoping as the year progresses the 1/4 beef purchase of $850.00 we made in January continues to average out. I’m also going to start being a bit more accountable on my blog - writing down our weekly purchases. This might be interesting to look back on later, to see how prices are changing (or not changing) where we live. 

One grocery item we won’t have to worry about purchasing for a while is flour! G and I have been researching and being a bit more conscious about the foods we have been eating. We have been trying to reduce G’s cholesterol naturally thru diet and exercise after a surprising blood test at the beginning of the year. After losing his father to a heart attack last year - we didn’t want to mess around. Being conscious of what we’ve been eating has been great. I personally track everything on MyFitnessPal as a way to keep an eye on my macro’s and making me aware of what I’ve been doing good with, but also not so good with. For example: my fibre intake is not good, but I also learned I don’t consume any trans-fats! So I’m trying to adjust and find snacks, meals, etc that I can start to incorporate. I’ve lost over 5 pounds just by adjusting my diet! 

Anyways: back to the flour! G and I had been researching wheat berries and how to grind our own flour. Wheat berries have amazing health benefits since they are a whole grain (literally). They are a great source a fibre, help reduce bad cholesterol and really high in protein. One great thing about living where we do is I know a lot of farmers. ;) I was talking to a coworker during coffee and he said he can give G and I a 5 gallon bucket full of Hard Red Wheat Berries grown last year! He had cleaned the seed last year but didn’t plant all of it this year. Since last year was (unfortunately) a bad drought year, this specific wheat was really high in protein (over 15% when he got it tested at the elevators). The coworker didn’t want anything for the grain; but G and I are going to throw together a thank you basket & bring him and his family a loaf of bread once we’ve mastered baking with fresh flour (it is a bit of a learning curve). 

In all, he gave us a little under 40lbs of wheat berries and one nice thing if stored correctly, these will last forever. 1 cups of wheat berries makes about 1 1/2 - 2 cups of flour. If you cannot tell, I’m extremely excited about this, lol. 

Although, this will save us money in the long term, I did invest in a grain mill. I purchase the NutriMill Classic on Amazon, which cost me $532.79. BIG investment, but I did pay for this out of my personal spending money - not the house funds. I figured this was a luxury kitchen gadget and I had extra spending money.

I’m hoping the grain mill will arrive next week so I can try to bake a loaf or two this month. I’ll keep this blog updated with the successes (or failures)! Enough farm talk for today :) 

- M 

Lots of Recipes

Last week was full of good food wins - lots of items used up and getting a bit creative/ trying new recipes.

Of course it started out with a good organize of the freezers. We have one big chest freezer downstairs and then our regular freezer drawer upstairs in our kitchen. I like to keep upstairs minimal with only a few fruits, veggies, frozen herbs and any items I know I’ll use up during the week. I took a mental inventory as I was cleaning and have some meal ideas for the future. We have used up all our homemade pre-made meals, except for one veggie soup portion I have frozen still.

Last Saturday I took three large ziplock bags of frozen vegetable straps (1 bags each of: carrot peels and ends; celery ends and leaves; and onion skins) and made 28 cups of veggie stock! I let it simmer all morning and then started to process of slowly freezing it all. I have a silicon ice cube tray that has marks for 1/2 cup and 1 cup portions so I was able to freeze a few different combos to have handy. 

On Saturday I also roasted my first whole chicken which I had gotten on sale at NoFrills a few weeks ago. I looked up a few recipes but this one (linked below) was highly rating but also a very simple recipe. I’m not going to lie: I thought the recipe was too good to be true. The chicken is only stuffed with celery then seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic powder and onion powder and cooked for 1 hour 15 minutes (with a 30 minute rest time). Best chicken ever! Will definitely make the recipe again. We used it in a few different recipes during the weekend and week, G even made a buffalo chicken pizza on a flatbread that turned out really good.   

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/83557/juicy-roasted-chicken/

During my freezer organizing, I was reminded of the many many pounds of ground beef we own. So we used 8 pounds, making two different recipes. We made 4 pounds of kabobs to have for lunches during the week and 4 pounds of sundries tomato burgers, which we also had for lunches and meals throughout the week.

G had a few days off during the week so smoked a chuck roast (also from the freezer) which turned out amazing! I guess they call chuck roast the “poor mans brisket”, and it did remind me of a nicely smoked brisket. I’ll have to compare the prices next time we are in the city to see what the price different really is. 

We were also in the mood to bake this week. Monday evening I made a blueberry/cranberry skillet cake (recipe below). It was good, not too sweet, but I might add some nuts or granola next time to add a different texture. This used up frozen blueberries and a bit of the frozen cranberries I had in our freezer. It was a nice ‘healthy’ treat to have with my coffee each morning.

https://snack-girl.com/snack/blueberry-skillet-cake/

G had to feed our sour dough starter and made 9 loaves of bread with the discard and some of the starter. Most of these loaves will be frozen for later eating, which helps restock our freezer because we had no loaves left in there. 

- M 

Productive Weekend

Last weekend was super productive for us. It was beautiful weather: sunny, hot and hardly any wind! I focused on yard work while G plugged away at organizing his dad’s items in the garage. 

I got all the yard furniture and planters out of our storage shed. Gave everything a good wash. And then planted all the flowers I had purchased in the city last weekend. My regular flower bed has all my perennials - so I focus mostly on planters around my deck and patio. This is perfect because if we need to move before fall, I’m able to pick the planters up and move them to the new house. 

I also planted my small garden (again - in raised beds/planters from Costco so I’m able to move them). We decided to plant a few more peppers this year - 3 different verities to try out. I planted my usual combo of lettuce and spinach, but also am trying a bit of kale to see how that does. Another planter is full of snow peas, and I’m really hoping these do well because we love snacking on them! We are also trying to grow pickling cucumbers for the first time this year. I do have these planted in the ground so I only purchased three plants to grow up the trellis behind my flower bed. I’m hoping we can get a few harvests out of them before we would have to move. We’ve never canned pickles before and it’s something we want to get more into as G loves pickles! 

Besides those traditional garden plants - I made a small herb garden. We finally used up the last of our frozen rosemary from 2020 over the winter so I need to stock up the supply again if possible. I only have one rosemary plant so far but I hope it’ll do well. *fingers crossed*

That evening we had friends over for our first real fire of the year. I had purchased some smokies to cook over the fire and made a quick pasta salad. Our friends brought some potato salad and scones to have for dessert. It was a good thing she brought something sweet because we forgot to stock up on marshmallows! We had none in the house (not even any stale ones from last year, lol). Definitely on the grocery list now.

Last Saturday was the perfect day - I hadn’t realized how much I missed sitting around the fire until the late hours of the evening. It made me excited for summer!

- M 

Playing Catch Up

What a month and a half! 

Last time I had a chance to write it was all about my personal triumphs and finally, at the age of 31, learning how to drive stick shift. I won’t lie: although I love my SUV’s comfy ride, it has been nice being able to take the Mazda if it works out better. For instance, G had to replace the rear camera on the KIA (part ordered online and he did the work himself), and he was able to do that on one of his day’s off during the week instead of waiting for me to get home and rushing thru it in the evening. He also replaced the breaks, changed the winter tires, etc. My car has definitely had some nice maintenance lately! The only thing left for the next little bit will be some new winter tires come November. We have the money saved for that in our flex account so once we see a good deal in the Fall we can purchase them.

In other big news: our house is officially on the market! I’m glad we waited to start all the relocation madness until after our company left because it felt like our house was turned upside down. Kids are busy, lol. The exact day G drove them to the city to catch their flight, I came home and was in cleaning mode. That weekend we met with our real estate agent, signed the listing agreement, had our official relocation meeting later in the week and then scheduled a home appraisal. Good news is that the market in our small town looks WAY different than when we purchased and our home appraisal came back $45,000.00 more than when we purchased in 2016. We had quite a few showings so far but no offers. Seeding is in full swing in Saskatchewan so I’m hoping we will get even more action once the farmers wrap up.

We also learned from our relocation meeting that RCMP moves work a bit differently now. Most of our expenses will be covered, however, we need to pay up front and then get reimbursed. Last time we moved they dealt with payments and invoices directly. I’m glad I’ve been hoarding money once we knew this transfer was happening, that buffer will help with some of these costs.

My life is a little chaotic right now, we just got back from a two week visit back home. We flew into Ontario and then drove a Uhaul back to Saskatchewan. Luckily, we cut down our driving time by going thru the US. We took the scenting route thru Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (the UP) and indulged in pasties! My family would vacation in this area every summer and G has joined us on a few trips when we first started dating so it was nice to enjoy an area that bring back so many good memories.

The reason we brought a Uhaul was because we were clearing out G’s dad’s garage. He passed away very suddenly last summer, and G’s step mom sold their house and is downsizing. G took a lot of his dad’s tools, work benches, smoker, BBQ, etc. So that is currently all dumped into our garage waiting to be sorted.

That will be our goals this weekend: starting to organize and sort, I want to plant my flowers and garden, clean the windows, and organize our finances from after our trip. 

It looks like it’ll be a beautiful weekend for outdoor tasks, as long as the wind dies down here!

- M 

New Skills

At the end of 2019 G bought his dream car. A beautiful, Mazda 3 Hatchback - super sporty looking. Only one issue (for me): it’s a manual. G specifically wanted a manual vehicle and it was hard to find one he liked. He was frustrated that companies are going away from these sort of cars, opting to only have automatic for a lot of their lines. I, on the other hand, completely understand. When he first got the car I had a few short lessons around our little town. Stalled a lot, got frustrated at the car (it’s the car’s fault after all) and got the car home, parking outside and not in the garage.

Flash forward to last week when we are organizing ourselves for friends who are coming to visit with their two little ones. G needs to take the automatic SUV to the city to pick them up from the airport but I need to go to work (which is a 30 min drive in the opposite direction). The leaves me two options: 1. Get a ride to work or 2. Learn to drive the Mazda.

This weekend I had two lessons. There was lots of stalling, lots of “your too fast off the clutch” or “your too slow off the clutch” and I learned terms like “blip” when I go to downshift. Yeah, my anxiety was thru the roof all weekend because I already said I would drive myself to work on Monday.

This morning I woke up way before my alarm and couldn’t sleep anymore. I got ready, made sure G had his phone off silent (he’s coming off night shifts) in case I needed rescue, reviewed my notes (yes I made myself notes) and left for work. 

And guess what: I didn’t stall once! My first downshift was a bit jerky but my second one went better. I was nervous around a Stop sign at a railroad crossing, so there is a bit of a hill, and although I almost stalled there I caught it before it happened. (If you can’t tell my big issue is with the lower gears, 3-6th gears I’m good). 

I’m hoping my way home tonight will go just as well, and although I’m still a little nervous, I can feel my confidence building. 

Wish me luck & pray I don’t ruin G’s dream car, lol

- M 

House Declutter Weekend Extravaganza

This post’s title is exactly what I had in our shared family calendar for this weekend. And extravaganza it was! 

We spent +12 hours Saturday and Sunday organizing, decluttering, deep cleaning, packing up (some) of our house. G and I went room by room and decluttered all the little odds and ends we had gathered. Dusted really good, put a few select items back. We edited down each room A LOT, trying to take away personal things and items we didn’t want displayed when we show our house. G had picked up some nice stacking bins from Canadian Tire when he was in the city for an appointment, so we utilized those to put the items we were keeping away for now. The house seems very minimal right now, lol. But I know some of those loved items are just being stored for safekeeping and can be displayed again once we sell our house. 

We gave the house a really good clean too: dusting, washing walls and baseboards. Everything looks so clean! Sunday night after dinner we tackled the garage. Putting away items that had gathered/not put away properly over winter. I wiped down all the work table tops and swept the floors. G had gotten these really giant bins on wheels that were perfect for camping supplies so that was nice to organize. Our label maker got a workout, labeling the outside of the bins as we put things away. 

Overall, we had two boxes of shredding, quite a few items to donate and a few trips to the garbage dump to finish off this week. I’ll stage the house properly next weekend and we can take listing photos. G biggest pet peeve with real estate listings is when they have shitty smudged lens photos, so he always prefers to take the photos himself, lol. 

We are a little ahead of the game here but mid-April we have company from Ontario coming to visit so the house will look a little different temporarily, so it’s this weekend or not until the end of the month. Hopefully during the two weeks our company is here we can meet with our relocation rep, the appraiser, real estate agent and (fingers crossed) have the house listed for the end of the April. We ourselves are going back home to Ontario for two weeks in May, so that would be ideal to show the house. I hope everything falls perfectly into place - haha yeah right… 

- M

Sunday Happenings

Today was a super productive day. 

G is doing a mid-shift switch from working days yesterday to working nights. We had a detachment get together last night where we played 5 pin glow-bowling, then went to someone’s house afterwards for appetizers. It was a lot of fun, but my butt is sore today, lol. Definitely not used to bowling!

I let G sleep in, and had my coffee quietly in the living room while I wrote my post, read some blogs, and searched for recipes. When G woke up, we made a nice breakfast and regrouped on what we wanted to accomplish. 

1 of the big to do items was to redo the caulking in our kitchen. It’s been cracking just with normal wear and tear, and although it never really bothered us we thought it might be nice to redo. G had redone the caulking in our bathroom a few weeks ago, so he was able to use up that bottle (which would have gone to waste otherwise). We removed everything from countertops, which allowed me to clean them really well, and then G removed the old caulking.

While G was doing that, I was getting dinner prepared. With a possible/probably move on the horizon, we need to start focusing (again) on cleaning out our freezer. As you know, our 1/4 beef purchase left us with A LOT of ground beef. Ground beef we haven’t really touch. I found a recipe this morning for Gyro Meat, which included lamb and ground beef. Although the lamb would have been amazing, we didn’t have any, nor is that something our local Co-op would carry. So I just used ground beef instead. The recipe turned out amazing, G and I were really impressed! We had some mini cucumbers in the fridge, so I made our own Tzatziki sauce - although we didn’t have Greek yogurt, I used sour cream and it turned out just fine. We didn’t have any tomatoes either, but we did have sun dried tomatoes which also worked out alright. This meal was completely last minute, and with a lot of substituted ingredients, but it used up items we had on hand and was delicious! 

In between steps with the kitchen work, G did some paint touch ups around the house and I got out the magic eraser to buff out some marks on the inside of our cabinets. I also decluttered our kitchen and reorganized some areas so they look more presentable when potential buyers come snooping. G was able to finish the caulking just in time for dinner, which he got done right before he had to leave for work. 

My organizing continued after G left, when I tackled my closet and drawers. I added a few more items to the donate pile and a few more items to the packing pile downstairs. 

G and I have next weekend off together and we have deemed it “House Declutter Extravaganza” weekend! We started a shared To Do list of things we want to get done (some of which we were able to check off today). At least we can focus our energy together next weekend and hopefully get our house to a ‘Buy Me’ state.

Although all this clean up and decluttering is nice for buyers, it’s nice for us too. By no means is our house dirty, but this is sort of like a spring deep clean that makes everything fresh again. The looming move is also making us focus on using what we have, since we don’t want to worry about moving it.

- M 

Transfer

We figured it was coming, but I didn’t realize how soon! G was offered (and accepted) a transfer to a specialized unit in Regina. I am beyond excited for him - he worked so hard over the last year to make a good impression and study (and pass) for his certifications. I feel so much better knowing he won’t be taking regular calls anymore - but working in a lab setting with the occasional field support.

It also feels weird to think we are going to be living in a city again. It’s been 10 years this November when we came to Saskatchewan. 10 years of living in a small towns with populations no greater than 1500, no stop lights, 1 grocery store, PO Boxes, knowing a lot of people by first name , random people you’ve never met before knowing your entire life story because everyone loves to talk, lol. 

G and I never found small town living isolating or inconvenient. It’s allowed us to live comfortably and grow to become independent. It allowed us to slowly get our feet under us. I remember when we bought our house during the first move in 2012 and $107,000.00 seemed like such a big mortgage amount. And for us, at the time, it really was because we had no idea what the hell we were doing. We had a negative net worth, no money skills, no savings, and I had no job. We slowly started to grow up and take responsibility for our finances - soon we found a balance that worked for us and put everything on autopilot.

It’s been that foundation we were slowly piecing together back then (much of which I documented on this blog) that has allowed us to live more comfortably now and make bigger leaps. I’m not saying this doesn’t cause me some anxiety, because it does but it also has me reflecting how far we have come since our journey began. I guess this might be more emotional than I thought, haha.

Anyways, we aren’t moving yet. If you read any of my posts from our move in 2016 you know there are a lot of moving parts to this entire process. The biggest thing being we need to sell our house and as you know we live in a small town, so it might take a bit. I took the day yesterday so start decluttering some of our living spaces. These aren’t things I’m going to get rid of permanently, but we also don’t need them on display. I have them all chucked in the spare bedroom for now until I can find some good boxes. 

G has done a few projects around the house, not realizing he was going to get the transfer offer this week, so that was definitely good timing. He has next weekend off with me so I think we will tackle the bigger areas then. Although we are at the extreme early stages of this transfer offer, I don’t want to be caught off guard if Relocation tells us they have an appraiser coming tomorrow or the real estate agent is coming to take photos. The more ahead of the game, the better for my stress.

Are you ready to take this wild ride with me again? Let’s hope it goes as smooth as last time! *fingers crossed*

- M 

February Wrap Up

Today was the perfect day to complete our February budget wrap up and update/balance my budget spreadsheet. We had a snow storm all day yesterday and it continued on this morning - I’m not sure how much ended up falling but it’s definitely over a foot. The drive home from work yesterday was okay, but I take a secondary highway to and from work so they don’t alway get to clearing it right away. After that really bad blizzard a few weeks ago I feel like I can drive thru anything.

So onto the numbers:

Grocery budget was over what I had planned (but as I expected). We finished the month at $574.94. This included two big shopping trips with a lot of fruit and veggies. As I spoke about in my last post, G wasn’t feeling well so I tried to focus on improving what we ate. G is feeling better now, the doctor noted that his body was fighting an infection (not sure if this is lingering from Covid or not) - but also noted G’s cholesterol is higher than normal. So our focus has been to try to reduce this naturally. G has been eating oatmeal for breakfast (instead of just skipping it), eating more fruits (grapes, bananas, apples, oranges - we have a fruit bowl right in the middle of our kitchen), and incorporating more fish. He goes for a check up and follow up testing in about a month so we can see if these actions have been helping. An interesting side effect of these eating habit is both G and I have lost weight! Just 3 pounds each, but it’s still a nice surprise. 

Our fuel costs were surprisingly low, at $310.00, but we were in isolation for 5 days and didn’t go anywhere.

Looking at our numbers year to date, we are saving 56% of our income! And this number doesn’t include pension contributions as they come out of our payroll automatically. I’ll be curious to continue watching this number thru out the year as things even out but if we can end the year with our highest percentage category being savings: I feel like that would be a win. 

- M 

Sick & Low Key Weekend

This weekend was really low key for us. G hasn’t been feeling well - not sure if it’s just the flu or lingering effects of COVID. He went to work on Monday and Tuesday has been out sick since Wednesday. He had a doctor’s appointment on Friday. The doctor ordered a bunch of tests wanting to get a baseline and have something to compare it to in a month. Yesterday he did mention he felt he had a bit more energy, which is a good sign.

I left work early on Friday for a therapist appointment in a near-by city. I’m not sure if I mentioned I started seeing a therapist or not? It’s been tremendous help and I’m not sure why it took me so long to finally reach out for help. Oh well - I’m in a better place now and in control of my anxiety/stress once again. Because I was in the ‘city’, I was able to go to No Frills and stock up on groceries. I picked up so many fruits and vegetables - surprising myself a bit with the checkout amount. That shopping trip might have put us over our grocery budget for the month (I haven’t updated my spreadsheet yet) but I do think it’s been beneficial for G (and me) to have those snacks in the house. When I got home on Friday, I did a big meal prep, washing and cutting all the vegetables and fruit. Then made a giant batch of veggie soup which we have been enjoying all weekend and will be my lunches for the week.

Like I said, the rest of the weekend was low key but still productive. I did my normal cleaning routine and then washed the bedding/laundry. 8 loads later, I never wanted to fold another piece of laundry again, lol. I finished the book I was reading, MinaLima’s illustrated Harry Potter books. G got me the first two books for Valentine’s Day and they are so beautiful. If you are a Harry Potter fan or know someone who is - definitely look into these books! Like I said, they are colour illustrated and have some interactive pages as well. They are such a cherished gift. I finished the first book and now I’m starting on the second.

I got paid yesterday and was able to chunk $1,500.00 into our general savings. We have $3,000.00 saved we can use towards one of our goals, but I would like to see how tax season and a few other upcoming items play out. There’s a lot of unknowns coming up and when it’s like this I start hoarding cash.

I need to get on actually committing to our goals for the year though… I think that might help focus me a lot better. What an original idea ;) 

- M 

Tax Pre-Planning

So we have a bit of tax planning to do - how much fun!

G works for the RCMP, who - many years ago - voted in favour to unionize.Years after that after the union reps were chosen, they started negotiating. Many months after that, the union members were presented with the contract, and asked to vote. Many months after that vote passed, the members are now seeing 5 years of retro pay on their paycheques. 5 years of raises… split between a few pay cheques… yeah… haha (Disclaimer: not an official timeline but this did all started in 2015).

G has received a little under $19,000.00 in retro payments so far - but that is not what is hitting our bank account of course. This is going to put him into a unique tax situation for 2022. His income is going to be inflated so we were brain storming a few ways to help and came up with three main no brainer solutions:

1. RRSP deposit - Didn’t see that one coming, did you? Still trying to figure out the exact amount, but we are lucky we can monitor this into next year (2023) before the RRSP deadline. We did complete an RRSP purchase of $5,000.00 which will help to get us started and then we can start fine tuning it closer to year end.

2. Banking of overtime - This was G’s idea and I think it’s a really good option! He has the ability to bank any overtime he works. This can either be used for time off or he can request for these amounts to get paid out at a later time. This is nice flexibility either way.

3. Charitable donations - This was already a goal of ours for 2022 but it will help in reducing G’s taxable income. I have this worked into our budget monthly and try to choose a new local/Saskatchewan based organization to support (but also researching some International organizations given certain world events currently unfolding…) 

The RRSP is going to be our biggest focus - our normal pre-authorized contributions are $100.00 biweekly, which is still going to be on autopilot. Once we have all our slips for this year I’ll see if we can get away with delaying the RRSP contributions from 2021, to use them for 2022 instead. But I’ll play around with the tax software once we have all the information available!

- M

Isolation Day 5

Today is my last day of isolation! G, however, is allowed to go out into the world for us - his isolation ended today. Our symptoms have stayed mild - my headaches were only the first two days and I didn’t have any other issues other than off and on fatigue. G lost his smell for a bit but it’s back. 

We tried to be as productive as possible while locked in the house, lol. Every afternoon I deep cleaned a room - dusting, wiping down base boards and wall, reorganizing some areas that have been neglected. It didn’t take me long but it was something to accomplish. We also went thru our hiking/camping first aid kit to restock after the summer season ended - yeah that task has been on our To Do list since September… 

G has been tinkering a lot too. We have a toaster oven that the on/off switch doesn’t always like to work. Eventually, after many times of pressing it, it does eventually go but we have known something was off. G looked into it and I guess the switches are prone to corrosion over time. G loves to take things apart and isn’t afraid to rebuild if necessary. He reminds me a lot of my dad. I have this vivid memory as a child of my dad sitting on our kitchen island with a soldering gun, fixing something we thought was broken. In this case, G went online and found a pack of 20 switches for $2.60. I looked to see what a new oven would cost us if we do need to purchase a replacement if the button stops working entirely: $320.00 at Canadian Tire. I will gladly pay the $2.60 if that small replacement will save us $317.40. I think G was also going to email Breville to see if it would be covered under warranty (although we’ve had this oven for a few years already) - but it doesn’t hurt to try! 

Other than that, I spend a lot of my day memory planning and reading, G would play computer games and mess around with his 3D printer. 

When the pandemic first started, the government closed down libraries so I had no way to borrow physical books. I went online to see if there were other ways to borrow, and sure enough I was able to find the Libby app and sign up via my library card. I didn’t enjoy reading eBooks at first but I didn’t have a choice - I got used to it quite quickly. I was using our extremely old iPad 2, and Libby was one of the only apps still supported on that old of a version. One day back in October the Libby app finally stopped for good and my poor little iPad was aged out of any function. :( Although I’m miffed that the iPad still works, I didn’t mind getting an upgrade either. We bought an iPad Air and I use this thing for everything! We have a keyboard I can connect it too so I wrote all my posts, read my library books, use it for recipes, browsing, streaming - worth every penny! I have no idea what to do with my ‘retired’ electronics though. 

G went off to the Co-op to pick up groceries for the week. Our fridge was looking a bit bare but these 5 days were defiantly not difficult. This morning I celebrated the upcoming grocery shopping with a latte, I was hoarding the last little bit of milk just in case we needed it for a recipe. 

Waiting for groceries! & yes, our sour dough starter is named Joan of Starch 

Here the meal plan for the week:

Tonight: Pizza, G and I have both been craving pizza. We are using sauce from the freezer and G is making the dough fresh.

Monday: It’s Family Day, so I have the day off but G has to work. I’m making a Balsamic Braised Pot Roast, slow cooked in the oven with potatoes and carrots

Tuesday: Leftovers

Wednesday: Salmon with salad

Thursday: Lasagna from the freezer

Friday: Freezer meal Friday (G is working nights so whatever we are individually craving we can cook up)

- M

TFSA Funding

One of our main goals in 2021 was replacing money we had taken out of our TFSA’s.

It started with two withdrawals we did in 2017 & 2018 when both my grandma and grandpa passed away and we needed to book last minute plane tickets and car rental (and in the case of my grandma, book a hotel).

Then it was a 2016 withdrawal that we took out to pay down our line of credit after completing a basement remodel.

The last was a 2015 withdrawal we did to pay off our car loan we had sitting on our line of credit. At that time we just had the TFSA’s in a daily interest savings account so it really wasn’t making us money. Which is how we justified the transfer.

In total, between both our TFSA’s, we needed to pay ourselves back $22,361.47. Last week after our bills had been paid I transferred the last amount owing of $2,854.35 to our TFSA’s to complete this goal!

It feels great to pay back what we borrowed from ourselves, even nearly 8 years ago for some amounts. It feels weird because it’s all our money but even with our budget the money in our joint chequing account the “House Money” as if it’s this separate entity we need to bow down too, lol.

We still have over $100,000.00 of contribution room between both our TFSA’s, but that is not a priority for us right now. We still have our automatic monthly and biweekly contributions on autopilot and I’m happy with the chunk of money that is growing tax free for us right now!

- M 

Covid +

Well after nearly two years and some very very close contacts - G & I finally caught Covid.

It started Sunday for him when he came home from work early. He wasn’t feeling well and thought it might be better to come home just in case, as most of his coworkers were out or just getting over Covid themselves. We just took it easy Sunday afternoon and evening. I made the cheeseburger soup and already had a bread going in the bread maker. 

Monday, I went to work feeling fine but G stayed home again, definitely feeling off. Again, we took it easy Monday night, left over soup and bread for dinner - I tested G, but he showed up negative. I ended up going to sleep a little after 8pm - completely exhausted. 

Tuesday, I woke up with a killer headache, but thought it was from sleeping so much. I went to work, caffeine and Advil not touching my headache during the day. G texted me shortly after lunch saying his test came back positive. He woke up feeling a lot more congested and sore throat, but minor symptoms. I tested myself that night when I got home from work, but still negative. Again, went to bed early, but I still had my headache and just wanted to go lay down in the dark. 

Yesterday morning I woke up, headache even worse, sore throat and a fever. G tested me and my test was positive nearly right away. Fever went away after some Tylenol, but the headache was still there for most of the day. My symptoms, like G’s, are mild. This morning I’m a lot more congested, headache but no fever. 

I didn’t go to the grocery store Tuesday after work to ‘stock up’ as it felt a tad irresponsible - even though I was expected to keep working that day. So our meals the next few days are going to be interesting. 

Yesterday we took out Porterhouse steaks and grilled those on the BBQ, with some Caesar salad. I found some onion soup mixes in the pantry, and mixed up one packet up with some sour cream to make a dip with cut up celery to go with it. Today we are going to have oven short ribs, we have all the ingredients except fresh onions - so I might try to mix in one of those soup mixes (honestly, I don’t know how we ended up with so many onion soup packets lol). I’m also going to try to make a beef roast one night and toss together some Mac and cheese with the left over Velveeta cheese from the cheeseburger soup. G was feeling good yesterday after a very long nap, so he fed our sour dough starter, and mixed up some bread with the discard. It’s been proofing overnight in the fridge, so we will bake them up today. While I’m waiting for G to wake up, I might take out croissants out of the freezer to quick proof to have for breakfast this morning. I found an orange in the fridge crisper, so we can share that this morning too!

This experience is definitely forcing us to use what we have and find alternatives when possible - I love it!

- M