Quarterly Life & Spending Update: Q4 2022

Hey everyone!  It’s been awhile (read: blogging fatigue) but we’re back with another quarterly update. We’ll focus today’s post on a quick life & spending update this week and then net worth update next post.

What Happened in Q4 2022

• This quarter was all about colds and coaching! Since pre-school started up for Finn back in September, I feel like we have had revolving colds enter our lives for 3 months straight. And finding kids tylenol or advil… fuhgeddaboudit! Thankfully we’re all feeling good now but man that was rough!  She also is loving school now which is great to witness.
• I’m not sure how it happened, but I feel like I’ve been coaching non-stop lately! In my ideal world I coach 5-10 people a year however I ended up coaching 9 people in Q4 alone! I love being able to help others but boy I’m tired and ready for a break 🙂
• My mom came to visit for 2 weeks and unfortunately we passed one of our colds over to her and she was sick for the majority of her visit!  My brother and his girlfriend, now fiance woohoo!, also came up to visit for 2 weeks.  It’s always great to have family around and the kiddos love spending time with them.
• We made it out to the cabin for the holidays which was nice. Lots of skating and sledding which we all enjoy. I was actually super impressed with how easy Finn was able to fill up our couch with older toys to donate after we got back.  She definitely gave away more than she received which is more than fine with us!
• Finn’s obsession with the pool continues and we purchased our sports centre passes for 3 months.  (Rather than buy an annual pass, we only buy it for the months where we will get the most use out of it… aka winter.)
• Portugal, Portugal, Portugal!  Lot’s of planning going on over here.  We had quite a few hiccups to get sorted – mainly issues with a credit card company not issuing our correct status for 4th night free for hotel stays, getting the kiddos passports to book intra-Europe flights, and finding suitable renters.  Thankfully everything has be sorted and we have renters in place which will greatly offset our travel costs.
• I returned back on the ChooseFI podcast with Brad where we focused mainly on flexibility which I’m glad to see being discussed more.  Feel free to tune in here: ChooseFI Episode 401: Court from Modern FImily Returns.

Spending Report

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

• Our home insurance was up for renewal this quarter and we always pay the annual amount up front.  There goes $1,064 to Square One!  While this is definitely a good chunk of money to be handing over, it’s significantly lower than any other home insurance company we found when shopping around for rates a few years ago.  If you live in BC, AB, SK, MB, QC or 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. One of these days I’ll write a proper blog post dedicated solely to Square One!
• We spent $250 on car repairs this quarter.
• Nic ordered 2 pairs of her prescription glasses for $88.
• We spent about $100 on our annual Amazon purchases: a fanny pack for Portugal (I’m so excited for a fanny!), silicone mini muffin tins, a laptop charger, and a bidet.
• Nic and I ordered 2 pairs of Puma running shoes each when they had a sale going on that came out to $92 for 4 pairs ($23 each).
• Our furnace decided it wanted to kick out on us during a week of a crazy cold snap we had.  Great!  Thankfully it was just a system reset and $150 later we were on our merry way.
• Our sports centre pass costs $100/month for the family which we paid a prorated amount for October and then the full amount for November, December, and January.

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 “Q2” spending report is shaping up.

After adding everything up, we spent $6,245 this quarter.  This puts us at a total spend of $15,006 during our first 6 months of early retirement.  If we double this and then add in $5,000 for the kiddos RESPs, and another $4,500 for property taxes and car insurance which we will pay during the second half of the year, it’s actually quite eerie how close we are to an estimated spend of $40,000 for the year.

As for Portugal, all flights, Airbnbs, and car rentals have now been booked.  We will write a separate post with more details about our itinerary and costs so stay tuned for that.

I’m purposefully not including our income for the year in these quarterly updates.  At the end of the year (June 2023) I’ll tally not only our overall spend for the year but our overall income for the year as I’m quite interested to see how those final numbers look.

That does it for today! Any questions for us?

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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.)

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