Birthday Camping Trip!

We're heading camping for the next four days to go camping and celebrate our birthday's.  Both mom, Jordan and I are all July babies.

It's actually the first birthday I can remember working in a very long time...but as soon as the clock strikes five I'll be out the door and driving to BC to meet up with the family.

Hope you all enjoy your weekends!

J&J

Budgeting for Baby

You know that Jordan and I have decided to hold off of buying a home in BC just yet, but I'm not sure if I've shared that we're also holding on selling our home in Alberta.  This is for a couple of reasons, but the largest is that it's not a good time to sell with the current oil prices/economy in AB.

There's a few more things there, but I'm not quite ready to share all of that yet.  I am though, ready to share our draft baby budget.  This is with carrying our home in Alberta, and living in BC with family.

I would really appreciate any thoughts or advice you have!

Income is income.. I'll be eligible for the maximum EI benefit and the UCCB payment which just increased from $100, to $160/month for care givers of children under 6 years old.


Onto monthly expenses - these are our normal expenses for maintaining our house in Airdrie.  I've reduced the utilities slightly, but not a lot just in case.  It will be winter, and while the house won't need to be heated to 20, it will need to stay at 10 Celsius so pipes don't freeze.

We'll still have cell phones, though our contracts are up for renewal in November so there will hopefully be a smaller bill by the end of the year.

We still have the car payment, mortgage, and our LOC payments.  I'm leaving our monthly spending at $1,700 (what it is now) because while we'll spend less on gas etc. with me at home, I'm assuming their will be baby expenses that will balance that out.

My employer will keep all my benefits going, I just have to pay for my Long Term Disability premium (which I'm happy to do).

We're able to keep doing some of our planned saving/spending, but at a much lower rate.

For the first 15 weeks of my maternity leave, my employer 'tops up' my EI to 70% of my salary.  That means that we'll have approximately an additional $900/bi-weekly during that time.  My plan is to bank all of that money - but maybe it would be better to drop that all on the LOC (~$6750 total) or maybe to add to our vacation or emergency funds?

What do you think?

Free Things

After writing June's spend update post, I wanted to share with you one of the free things that we do just about every weekend...and that's taking the dogs on a new adventure.  Here's a couple pictures from the last couple of weekends.

This first one is playing in a creek.  We go to this place just about every weekend for a hike. The dogs love playing in the water!

This is Aries (brown) and my mom's dog Rider (black).  Baxter is on the shore for this one, he doesn't like getting his belly wet.










And this second picture is all the dogs in the back of the Escape...all half asleep tired from all the playing!

Baby Spend - So Far

Stroller - UppaBaby Vista 2015 - $855 As most of you know, Jordan and I have been saving up for baby for years...little bits at a time.  We're now at that place where we can spend on baby things, and we are completely prepared for that in our budget, woohoo!  We had put away $10,000 over threeish years for both pre-baby, and post-baby.

Here's where we're at so far....and while we've been saving for a long time, that doesn't mean we want to spend money we don't need to - just about everything we've gotten on sale.

• The Crib was regularly $229.99 - saved $30
• The Dresser was it's regular price, but came with the change table top
• The Stroller was regularly $925 - saved $70
• Car Seat Adapter (not pictured) was regularly $75 - saved $5.60 

The last big thing will be the mattress for the crib which I'm planning on getting from Costco for about $130 (best price I've found for the mattress I want).  After that, we'll wait and see what we need after the baby shower :)

The Crib! $299

The Dresser/Change Table - $379

Chicco Key Fit 30 - $220

June Spend Report

Wow...it's July already?  I'm not entirely sure how that happened.  We've already celebrated Jordan's birthday and have both mine and my mom's coming up soon too.

Here's June's spend numbers.

Gas, eating, and groceries all continue to trend high.  This is expected given our travel right now.  I'm driving to BC at least 3 or 4 times a month right now.  It's hard to buy groceries for one person, that won't spoil when you're only at the house for four full days out of the week.  We're also of course contributing to groceries and other items at my moms while we're working out our living situation.

Alcohol stays low with baby on the way, though entertainment creeped higher in June.  This was a couple of date-night, movie nights, the craft fair, and a few other things.  We try to pack in a lot of fun on the weekends when Jordan and I get to see each other.

Pets spiked because Aries and Baxter had their annual checkups in June.

Clothes were from maternity wear...it was time...nothing fit, now I have things that do!

Home Maintenance is odds and ends from both houses - it was a Costco trip that might have also had some groceries in it...by might of, I mean I'm sure it at least had a couple bags of dog food and coffee but I didn't keep the receipt.

Vacation was my mom and my trip to Winnipeg to visit my brother and his partner.  I had already got the flights with miles a few months back, so that would have been on a previous spend report.  Mom and I trade each year who buys flights and who buys hotel - points are totally aloud (mom did flights on points last year).

Reimbursables are just that - from work and from family.

Last but certainly not least is baby! This was the rest of our Crib/Dresser (had already but a down payment down to get them ordered).

phew!

That's it for another month.

New House - Not Yet

So unfortunately, Jordan and I had to let the house go that we had put an offer on.  The list was for $250,000 which was our offer but to get the house where it needed to be would have been about $90,000 in renovations (with a LOT of sweat equity).  After doing an appraisal, we found out that it would only add about $20,000 worth of market value.

 

We didn't think it would be 100% of the reno, but it needed to be at least 50% to make it worthwhile.

So...we move on.

Jordan has two houses lined up for us to look at on Sunday.

Spend Report Update

It's been a few months since I've posted a spend report update - mostly because there was a new line item 'baby' which we weren't quite ready to share yet.

Now that we have, I can get back to posting these regularly.

Gas is fluctuating quite a bit right now, because either Jordan or I are driving to BC (or Alberta) each weekend to visit each other.  When I drive it costs a bit less because of the vehicles we're using right now.

Groceries is trending a bit high because we're buying groceries for both our house, and my moms (as much as we can) to help contribute to her house while Jordan's staying there.

Eating out sky-rocketed in May.  Yup, it did.  Lots of eating out on the weekends when we're visiting each other, plus road food, plus with all this driving back and forth it's hard to meal plan/buy groceries that are just going to go bad.  Only a few months left of this before I join Jordan in BC.

Alcohol is obviously wayyyyy less now that I'm preggo.  No, it's not because I was the big drinker and Jordan's always abstained, it's because during my pregnancy Jordan's being super awesome about not indulging very often when I can't.

Pets in May was high - this was both dogs annual vaccinations and checkups.

Clothes/Shoes/Hair - I'm starting to need some maternity clothes - not many, but some items here and there so this will go up for a while.

Home Maintenance has included things around our house (getting it ready to sell) and my mom's (chipping in when we can).  Just this past weekend, we cleaned out and painted my mom's two spare bedrooms as she's getting new carpeting put in (fun!).  This also includes a general trip to Costco which had stuff for both households on it and $600 for a home inspection for the new place in BC.

Reimbursables - this was stuff for a recent work trip to Ontario and Costco runs for my grandma and aunts.

Last but not least...BABY! The new category!

April was a few onesies and some other odds and ends.  May was a Stroller, and 25% down on a crib and dresser so it could be ordered (remember my $10,000 baby fund - we've been saving for a while...don't worry, we had the cash for this).

phew!  That's it for now.