Exciting News To Share

As you can probably defer from the title of today’s post, we have some exciting news to share – duh!  Without any further ado let’s jump right to it!

Did we win the lotto?!? Nope, never played.

Did we double our portfolio thanks to putting everything down on Bitcoin?!?  Nope, I hope you know us better than that!  It took me months to finally put 1% into it.

Did we reach our FatFIRE figure of $1,200,000?!?  Nope! But we’re slowly marching towards it. (Future post coming out soon with our updated FIRE numbers.)

Did we adopt a puppy?!? Nope, we’re not ready to try to keep another life form alive besides humans.

Did we buy a plot of land to build a tiny house on it?!? Nope, but one can dream!

Did we sell our house and decide to be world nomads?!? Nope, but we may do something like this once we’re empty nesters.

Ok ok enough of the guessing game…

Surprise Time

Nic is pregnant with Baby #2 and babes should be making his/her debut in late June! 🙂 

And no, this isn’t an April Fools joke 😉

COVID put a bit of a damper on our plans last spring to try to start conceiving then.  While most people were joking about all the “COVID babies” due to lockdowns, those of us who require fertility treatments were in limbo waiting for the fertility clinics to open back up.  Thankfully there wasn’t too much of a delay.  Finn worked with IUI on the first try (super rare!) and baby 2 worked on IUI attempt 3.  We honestly were expecting to try IUI at least 6 times for each kid and then when that didn’t work, take a break, and decide if we wanted to keep trying with IUI or shift over to the more expensive IVF route.

We spent $3,177 while conceiving Finn between three vials of donor sperm (bulk of the cost of which we used 1 and saved 2 for hopeful baby 2), the IUI attempt at the fertility clinic, ovulation kits, pregnancy tests, and different medicines and vitamins.  We spent $5,286 while conceiving baby 2 between 3 more vials of donor sperm (again, the bulk of the cost – the 2 vials we saved after Finn didn’t work so we then ordered 3 more, of which we ended up with two extras which we will be donating to science), 3 IUI attempts, donor sperm storage for a few years, medicines, vitamins, ovulation kits, and pregnancy tests.

We decided to wait on the gender with Finn, which was very hard for the OCD planner that I am, but it truly was an amazing experience to be surprised like that.  We like to think of it as the only thing in life that you can’t Google these days.  We were honestly more shocked with her red hair when she came out (which is now blonde) then her gender (even though EVERYONE guessed we were having a boy)!  We decided to do the same with baby 2 so we will find out the gender once he/she is born.  Deciding on a name is by far the hardest part for me and having to come up with two names not knowing the gender is grueling!  We are still teetering on both the boy and girl names for babes 2 and we’re only a few months away!

What Does This Mean For The Blog?

I will be taking off of here for a bit to help keep two little humans alive.  I will start shifting to bi-weekly post vs my typical weekly posts here shortly and then once baby 2 does make its arrival I will be taking a break from the blog completely for a few months.  My goal is to be posting again in October but that likely is a pipe dream.  Maybe I get a random post out if it’s somehow quiet in my neck of the woods and I’m not 10000% drained.  Whenever I do resume, I plan to cut back to bi-weekly posts going forward.  Hope you all understand that our WHY to all of this is to be able to spend time together as a family and doubling responsibilities with two tiny tots means less time to focus my eyes on screens.

We do have quite a few FIRE Community Guest Interview Series in the backlog so I will continue to post those monthly as long as we have entries for that (currently lined up through December – thank you to all who have sent those over!).  I’ll try to continue to post our quarterly net worth updates (modified/shortened version) as well as the travel hacking posts so maybe you will see our name pop up in your inbox, who knows.

As long time readers know, I write these posts while at work, not at home.  As of now, I have decided to take the full 18 months of parental leave off (thank youuuu Canada!).  Well technically it’s 61 weeks max per parent of “extended benefits” with the birth parent able to also take an additional 15 weeks.  Since I am not the birth parent, 61 weeks is the max for me so that’s what I would take.  This would take us roughly from July 1, 2021 to September 1, 2022 on parental leave.  We would then assess our thoughts and our portfolio at that time.  Maybe I’ll be done for good or maybe I’ll go back to my part-time gig for a few months until March 2023 to add a little more padding to the portfolio (assuming a small bonus in March for the later months back in the office from 2022).  Maybe I’ll go back for a year or two, who knows.  This is all WAY too far out to know what we will decide on but these are our thoughts for now.

As much as I’d love to be off and we spend all summer at the cabin, I know that’s highly unlikely with a newborn with all the upcoming doctor visits and immunizations during the first few months.  We will head out to the cabin as much as possible though.  Maybe do a road trip out west a year from now in the Spring of 2022 and spend a month or two in Vancouver Island.  And then next summer baby 2 will be a year old and we plan to spend most, if not all, of our time from late-April/early-May through September at the cabin in 2022.  And then of course visits from various family members sprinkled in between (assuming COVID restrictions allow such visits).  Hopefully cross border travel opens back up so my family can come up and spend some time up here during both summers.

That’s it for now!  Did you guess the right surprise when you saw today’s post?  Or did you think it was something different?  Any baby name suggestions for us to add to our ever changing list?  For those with kids, did anyone else decide to wait to find out the gender until birth?  Did you any of you non-birth parents decide to take parental leave off?

We also wanted to congratulate our two winners of The Grumpy Accountant book giveaway we held this month!  David R and Chris I, congrats on winning this awesome giveaway!  I will be sending you both emails as well.  Cheers!  For those who did not win, please check to see if this book is available at your library, it’s definitely worth the read!

Support This Blog

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We believe in stacking up life hacks to keep your enjoyment levels to the max without depleting your bank account.  Here are some ways to further educate yourself and save thousands of dollars over your lifetime by making some simple adjustments:

• Investing Newbies: Check out our free Investing 101 Series.
• How much are you paying for your phone plan?  Canadians, learn more about Public Mobile, and see how we are paying $3/mo for our cell phone plan.
• How much are you paying for internet?  Canadians, learn more about the various Independent Service Providers out there to see who services your area so you can lower your monthly bills.
• How much are you paying for home insurance?  We were able to reduce our rates by 25% by switching over to Square One Insurance.  If you live in BC, AB, SK, MB, and ON, check out Square One for your home insurance, landlord insurance, and/or tenant insurance.  Use this link to receive an extra $15 off your quote.  (Note that you must use this link to start the process to get the $15 off even if you prefer to pay over the phone.)
• How much are you paying for your monthly utility bills?  See how you can likely save on this monthly expense

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