🤣

And George Michael can’t even weigh in. His estate should be ashamed. 😤

Have you seen it before? It’s wonderful.

Given the current drought situation, I can’t imagine next year is going to be great for rebuilding herds here either.

No worries though… A bitumen pipeline will fix everything! 🫠

I enjoy the new content because I can share it with my kids. They enjoy it, I enjoy them enjoying it, I find a bit of entertainment it, we’re together.

Watching stuff with my kids makes things enjoyable AND I watch stuff that I probably wouldn’t. (Like Invincible, with my teens)

There’s many couples or single parents out there without the good fortune we had and have, who work longer hours, with less help. And I honestly don’t know how many, many people do it.

Something has to change.

Start to generate some serious combined income in a 2 adult household.

Anyways. If you made it this far, I hope you take something away from it. But if anything, know this. We are a responsible, thoughtful, hard working couple and we made it, but barely at times. I know…

They hope for an inheritance windfall, or get lucky some other way. But you can’t earn your way to wealth in today’s world working and making less than 120k per year combined. And even if you make it above that point, you’re catching up due to the years spent below that line unless you really …

If your family is making less than 120k gross per year (120 because heathcare is “free” here for now), you, we, are just the working poor. The discipline it takes to plan for the future at that level of income and lower is punishing or near impossible. Most people probably don’t plan at all. Mabye…

Vehicle last week (EV yo!) with a relatively affordable payment once all things are considered. For the first time I feel like we don’t needed to go without. But the income we needed to be here now is WAAAY more that I ever would have though 15 years ago.

The author of that substack above is right…

I have been able to, with my 2 siblings, take a bonus at year end. Enough that we can cushion the costs of the upcoming year and not have to worry about money as much. We completed the self renovation of our bathroom earlier this year without extra debt, and I put a down payment on a new…

bungalow. As of last week the combined age of our 2 vehicles was 34.

Up to that point, the years at the welding shop (oil field) had been pretty well flat in terms of profit for years. There wasn’t extra to take. Which leads me to the point of this stream of consciousness.

The last 2 years…

Making Progress. But it didn’t feel like that. Our income had grown, along with the size of our kids, but life was and is still so expensive.

A few notes. We have life insurance. We have some money saved for kids’ education, we have some meager retirement investments. We live in an 1100 sq ft…

Keeping the family moving and preparing to go back to work. In the spring of 2022 she was hired to a position at a public institution and began taking a regular income not from watching other people’s kids.

Things have gotten better income wise for her so since then it should feel like we were…

Made it out in the shape we did.

Covid was honestly a beautiful break. Life slowed down, expenses dropped and we took a breath. The world was fucked, but we had our big family and we love each other. The dayhome ended sooner than Jess had planned because of Covid and she spent the next 2 years…

Without much extra comfort. Vacation was done in the summer at what was a family lake lot where we could escape for 2 weeks every summer until 2019, and afterwards 2 weeks in a rental in BC which my generous in-laws always paid for. But without the government money I don’t think we would have…

Additionally the GST rebates. We were probably, gross income, at around $115k per year. An affordable mortgage, 1 car payment, 5 kids, a day home, Jiu jitsu for the kids, volunteer commitments, and some help from the government. We made it work.

But for 10 years we had to scrimp and save and go…

Done it without all four.

A big saving grace for us came in the form of Prime Minister Trudeau instituting the CCB. Because we had 5 under 18 it made a hugh difference. The little money we had left at the end of the month was buffered with ~$1500 a month from the government CCB and…