Quarterly Life & Spending Update: Q2 2023

Hey everyone! We’re back with another quarterly update. We’ll focus today’s post on a life & spending update this week and then a net worth update next post.

What Happened in Q2 2023

• Tax Season
  • Ahh my favourite… not!  Thankfully, after discovering Expatfile for my US taxes as an expat, it’s really streamlined the process with the IRS. Nothing like paying $312 CAD to continually owe Uncle Sam $0 grrr. Filing our Canadian taxes with the CRA continues to be a breeze thanks to Wealthsimple Tax.
• Coaching
  • I’ve continued to receive a steady stream of coaching clients and have decided to cap it to a manageable 2 clients per month which seems to be my happy spot.  I’ve also realized I’ve never changed my pricing from when I originally started coaching years ago and compared to other fee-only coaches out there, I definitely am undercharging myself.  I’ve decided to bump up my prices from $300 for the two 1.5 hour sessions to $400.  I realize this is a bit abrupt, so I’ve also decided to keep the $300 pricing in place for the first 5 people reading who have been on the fence about coaching and ask for the $300 rate in their note over.  The only caveat is that both sessions must be completed in 2023.  I can’t believe it but 2 people have noticed my change in pricing from making the change on the coaching page vs sending this post out (ha, love it) so 2 of the discounted spots are already claimed but there are 3 more up for grabs.
• The New Gig
  • This is nothing new to faithful readers as there’s a whole post on the topic, but I tested my hand out with a new gig and decided working for “the man” is not in the cards anytime soon. This little test was a reminder that even a gig that may sound pretty ideal on paper is still “work” and I am not looking for anything like that anytime soon.  I’m so thankful for the power of FI to be able to test this out and walk away whenever I want.
• Podcast Recording
  • My fellow Albertan FIRE friend Wendy recently launched her new podcast and we had a good chat!  I really love how easy it is to listen to Wendy and I’m excited to have her on over here as part of our FIRE Community Guest Interview Series.  As always, you can find all our previous recordings on our Guest Appearances page.  You can check it out here (or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream):
  • FIRE Yourself First: Episode 15: Modern Family with Court Brown
• Family Visits
  • My mom flew up to Canada for 10 days with plans for us all to fly down to Colorado together to spend 11 days with my brother and his fiancé.   Well, 3 days into my moms visit she ended up in the hospital and stayed there for 12 days.  That clearly altered our plans and we’ve been dealing with insurance claims for her health coverage, calling airlines to cancel flights, and contacting our credit card companies to get reimbursed for the flights due to an emergency medical delay.  Thankfully we had my mom purchase travel medical insurance and her primary insurance from the States covers worldwide emergency services so no out of pocket expenses there, our credit card will reimburse all flights, and her travel insurance will pay for her newly booked flight home.  It was tough heading into the hospital daily to be with her while leaving Nic solo with the kids but we did it.  Just glad she’s out and feeling better.
• Loss of a Loved One
  • Around this time last year we lost one of Nic’s best friends to a ski accident.  This year we lost another close friend.  He was married to a very good friend of mine and they have a 3 month old little boy.  He was killed in a car accident driving home from work – the night before his first Father’s Day.  He was 35.  It was obviously a shock to all and nearly 700 people have donated to their Go Fund Me page.  This again highlights the desire to retire early – you never really know how much time you have.  Seeing how many lives he’s impacted also highlights the importance of building relationships and fostering a strong community.
• Kiddo Birthdays
  • Both kiddos have their birthdays in Q2.  I can’t believe how many friends Finn has, it makes my heart happy.  We had a low key little park party with some friends in town.  Our 65 year old neighbours came as did our former librarian who’s one of Finn’s buds as well as our FIRE friend who Finn insists is HER friend, not ours (hi Cassandra!).  Love how there was so much variety to the ages on the invite list.
  • Parker sadly doesn’t have nearly as many friends as he gets dragged to many of Finn’s activities as his “out of the house time”.  Thankfully our lovely neighbours have kids similar ages to ours that we hang out with a lot (hi Kat and Dave!).  My goal for the next year or two is to be more mindful about making more little buddies for him.
• Pre-School Finished
  • Our free 2 day a week pre-school classes wrapped up in June.  Finn lovedddd these classes and was quite sad when it all ended.  We absolutely loved that she enjoyed it there and we were very impressed with her teachers. We couldn’t get over the ratios – 4 teachers to a max of 12 kids (depending on who’s missing class with a cold, out of town, etc).  Every time we’d pick her up we’d ask how the class ranked on a score of 1 to 10 and she’d respond with something like “195!” 🙂
  • We still are grappling over the public vs homeschool debate for next year.  We see so many pros and cons to both.  In an ideal world, we’d have this pre-school type set up going forward where school is only a few days a week for a few hours a day and the teacher:student ratios are low.  And free.  Where does such a unicorn program exist for elementary?!
• Potty Training
  • This may not seem like big news to people without littles… but Parker is doing so good with potty training! He’s fully trained during awake times at home and we’re moving in the right direction when out of the house – we’re accident free about 90% of the time out of the house.  Thankfully we only go through 2 diapers a day now (nap and bedtime) and the occasional pull-up if we know we are going to be out the house and not near a bathroom for awhile (ie car trip).  He still has the occasional accident but we’re so proud of this little guy!

Spending Report

Here are the larger one-off expenses we encountered this quarter:

• We fixed the weatherstripping along our front door
• We installed a new battery in our car
• We ordered new kitchen island stools
• We filed our US and Canadian taxes
• We ordered a new Mac laptop
• We swapped out our tires which came with an extra expense as one of the bolts was stripped
• We had an electrician come out to fix the outlet for the hot tub which suddenly stopped working
• We had a mechanic come fix some heating issues we had in our basement
• We signed Finn up for summer swimming lessons
• We purchased supplies to refinish our deck (again!)
• Alllllll of the above happened in April – ouch! Thankfully May and June didn’t have as many larger one-offs:
• We bought a new railing for our front steps to install
• We bought tickets to a Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra kids program for the winter
• We donated to a loved ones Go Fund Me page who just lost her husband in a car accident (noted above)
• Our annual car insurance was up for renewal
• Our annual property tax bill comes out in June

Overall Spending

Since June 2021 was when I first started parental leave we decided that July 1st – June 30th will be how we tally up our spending in our post-FIRE world. So let’s see how our “Q4” spending report has shaped up and what our overall spend for the year looks like.

After adding everything up, we spent $14,375 this quarter.  As Finn would say… “Yikeys”! Granted, ~1/3 of our spend for this quarter came from two unavoidable annual costs (car insurance and property taxes).  If we strip those out, we spent an average of $3,361/month which is around $461/mo higher than our average. So still a high spend quarter no matter what way we look at it.

This puts us at a total spend of $45,145 during our first year of early retirement.  Ta-da!

We will do a whole post with a bit more of a breakdown into our annual expenses now that we have our first year of expenses wrapped up.  Back in Q2 2022 our liquid portfolio was sitting at $1,146,309 which would lead to a $45,825 using the 4% rule so we were actually right on track.

But… how much did we actually withdraw from our portfolio for the year?  That’s another question and again a whole separate post.  I’m purposefully not including our income for the year in these quarterly updates.  Now that we have our overall spend for the year tallied, stay tuned for a future post digging into our annual expenses, the income side of things, and our “true” withdrawal rate.

That does it for today! Any questions for us?

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