I can’t believe it’s 2023. There is less than two months remaining before I head back to work. I am excited to start making money again but also nervous for our new routine of taking Baby to daycare. We are fortunate we found daycare for her as it is a nightmare finding daycare in our area for kids, especially those under 2.5 years old. Unfortunately, as you’ll see below, the daycare we got into is probably the most expensive one in town. Thankfully I make decent money so it is still worth it for us but I can see why many women choose not to return to work. We haven’t actually started taking her to daycare but we had to pay for first and last month in order to secure her spot. We technically start paying for February but we won’t be bringing her in until March.

How did we spend our $$…

Daycare: As mentioned, this is first and last months payment. They also make you pay a higher rate for the last month because government amounts are always changing so you have to pay the non-government supported amount and you’ll be reimbursed the difference at the time you leave the daycare. Our true monthly daycare amount is $1,200.

Food: This category includes ALL food costs – restaurants, groceries, coffee shops, alcohol. We spent approx $260 on restaurants in January, $1,185 on groceries and the remainder on weekend coffee outings.

Kid Stuff: We bought a compact travel stroller for our trip next month as well as some items needed like toys, sippy cups etc.

Gym: We’ve been spending approx $25 a month for Obe Fitness – which I highly recommend if you workout at home. However they had a promo to pay for the entire year for $100 USD so we did that (but also got charged the monthly amount in January).

Our Net Worth (FIRE Assets) got a bump in January thanks to the market but also because we decided to bump up the value of our rental condo by $30K. We’ve conservatively kept the value at $500K when calculating our Net Worth for the last few years but feel we would be able to get more now if we were to sell. However we will lower it back down if we see that change based on what is selling in the building.

A while back I decided to start tracking our FIRE or Retirement Assets number as opposed to Net Worth. The only difference between the two is that I don’t take into consideration the equity or value of our home when calculating Retirement Assets. I do however take into account the mortgage owing. The reason for this is because while having equity in our home is great, it doesn’t help us retire. We can’t live off of the value in our home and even if we sell one day, we’d likely buy something else. Our Retirement Assets number is calculated as: Cash + Condo Value + Investments Value – Mortgages – Credit Card Balance.

The balance at the end of January 2023 was just below $0 at ($2,360).