Wow I am so sorry I didn’t see this earlier, I apologize for the delay! We have been very fortunate to have found so many free kids clothes through the VarageSale App. If you haven’t heard of it, I’d definitely recommend it! In addition to tons of free items, we’ve also been able to score some amazing lots (~70 items for ~$25). They also have tons of other items listed too of course which has helped us to keep our overall child costs down. Our neighbours have 2 boys and they also have given us some hand me downs once their little guys have outgrown some items (and we don’t care if our little girl wears boy clothes – she’s obsessed with puppies and dinos which seem to be classified as “boys” for whatever reason).

Thanks for the note Thomas and glad you found us. We will be spending less from our current travel expenses in the summers as we will be spending less gas to and from the cabin which helps with the net annual travel expenses to account for the overall $300/year difference. Some years we may go down to Florida where we have lots of friends and family where we wouldn’t need to pay for any housing. So it’s just a general amount as some years we may spend $600 more some we may do more local travel and spend less than we currently spend. We’ve traveled for weeks at a time in the past for a very low cost thanks to travel hacking flights and hotel, using public transit, eating at local markets, going for lots of walks, and either camping for finding very affordable places. There are websites like trustedhousitters.com for example where you can stay at a home for free. This is just one example, there are quite a few similar sites out there if you search for them. Our friends over at alloptionsconsidered.com have done many free house sits during their long term travels. Essentially the home owners like the peace of mind knowing someone is looking after their home. Maybe they need you to pick up the newspaper, or feed/walk their pets if they have them, etc and in return they let you stay at their place for free. It’s an incredible concept if you ask me!

One section I have questions about is travel:
“The main increase (albeit a small increase of $300/year) is due to our thoughts of heading somewhere warm for 4-6 weeks in the dead of winter each year. ”
Even with a LOT of travel points, I can’t imagine a $7-10 per day vacation. Even our fairly frugal travel style to the cheapest of destinations budgets at least 5x as much not including flights.

Also, where are these “free homestays”? I’ve found a few for under $20 a night, but why would someone let you live with them for free?
Looking forward to a travel hacking post!

We too see and understand mathematically why paying off our mortgage so fast likely doesn’t make the most sense financially but we tried to show our logic behind why we are doing it (to align with our FIRE date) which you now understand 🥰 We will continue to max out the RESP to the grant max and include that in our FIRE calcs. And once the RESP contributions are done we figure that $2500/year will go towards visiting our kid in school for those years and then extra vacations for us down the road. As for grants, we get the CESG and CLB but as far as I know, there are no additional AB grants out there? There was the Alberta Centennial Education Savings (ACES) but that closed back on March 2015. Are you aware of some other education account for Albertans I should dig into? I’m in a pickle with my TFSA being dual and I’ve been maxing out my RRSP but my wife still has a bit of room in each of hers so now our extra savings will be going towards topping up her TFSA first and then we will decide about RRSP. (I’ve been delaying hoping for a market correction, I know I know, I’m being silly thinking that way!) I don’t like that there are no penalty-free ways to withdraw from your RRSP early – unless you know of a workaround?