The last few months have been hectic. We went on a vacation to California at the end of February before my Maternity leave ended. My parents snowbird so we stayed with them except for a couple of nights when we stayed in a Hotel in a different city. The kid started daycare in mid-March and I went back to work as well. We came back from California with mild colds, probably from the airplane, and for the last couple of months it has been non-stop sicknesses as we’re all adjusting to daycare diseases. I don’t think there has been a week for the last two months where all 3 of us were healthy. There have been countless colds, strep throat and the stomach flu. It has made the return to work challenging for both me and the husband. I think I’ve taken 1-2 sick days every single week since returning. Thankfully I have a super understanding boss who has 2 little kids and said this is exactly what she expected and not to worry. I definitely expected some sicknesses but I can’t say I expected them to be quite this back to back to back. It’s been fairly miserable to be honest. It has also made me realize I shouldn’t have taken for granted the last few years of health from lockdowns and isolation. I think I had one mild mild cold in the last 3 years prior to this. It’s crazy to think about.
How did we spend our $$…
Mortgage: March is higher because we’re on an accelerated biweekly payment plan. This means we get hit with 3 mortgage payments two months of the year. By choosing an accelerated mortgage we’re saving on interest by essentially paying an extra month each year.
Vacation & Travels: In February these are our vacation costs for our 10 day trip to California (not including flights as those were paid for last year. The amount in April is for a local-ish vacation we are planning in September.
Food: This category includes ALL food costs – restaurants, groceries, coffee shops, alcohol. When we’re on vacation, I record all of our food purchases under Vacation which is why February’s is lower than usual. We went a little nuts on take-out in April due to adjusting to being back at work and from constantly being sick so we spent $415.05 on restaurants. Temperatures are also warming up which means the alcohol spend is increasing. It was $0 in Feb and March but $170 in April. That’s also just for my husband and entertaining, I’m not drinking much at all these days.
Office: Oh yeah, we’re paying for an office now. We are both remote employees so this is not something we necessarily need, however, our child’s daycare is connected to a coworking space and priority daycare spots are given to those who also want to rent an office. It was basically our only chance of getting a daycare spot. Hopefully we don’t have to rent it for too long but we also don’t want to risk losing our daycare spot. I’ve only worked out of there a handful of times but the husband loves using it so far.
House Stuff: This is made up of anything house-related that is not Mortgage payments or Utilities. Maintenance, Home Improvement, furniture etc. In April we had to spend quite a bit of $$ on yard stuff – irrigation, soil, fertilizer, dead tree removal etc. We also bought a new dishwasher which also ends up in this category.
Vehicle: This also went up in April. We actually put down a $500 deposit on a new car. And because the car market is so awful and crazy we’ll be waiting 3-4 months for the car. I’ll discuss this later. I’m excited, but also nervous. We haven’t had a car payment in years and I’m not looking forward to it. But I am looking forward to a safer and more comfortable car for the winters here.
Cellphones: Our cellphone bill is higher in March due to some roaming charges from our vacation because Canadian wireless companies are absolutely criminal and charge TWELVE dollars a day for roaming. We tried to have roaming off as much as we could but there were a few days we needed to turn it on.
Daycare: No charge in February because we actually paid for it in January. March is high due to some stupid issues with the government subsidy. We’ll be reimbursed for this one day, not any time soon unfortunately. And we weren’t charged in April because they were still trying to figure out the government subsidy so we paid in early May instead, and we’ll likely be charged twice in May.
