It's crazy to think that half the year has gone by already! It feels like we just celebrated New Year's yesterday.
A lot has happened in the world over the last 6 months. We're still feeling the effects of lockdown due to Coronavirus, with restaurants only just starting to serve outdoors for sit down dining. Being a border town (USA joined to Canada), a lot of the general tourist traffic has stopped completely and who knows when it will go back to "normal".
For us, we've been trying to keep entertained and get outdoors where we can. The weather is hovering around 30 degrees Celsius right now and it doesn't last long over here so we try to enjoy it whenever we get the chance.
The kids have a trampoline for the summer (which they love!) thanks to our lovely friend Ginger. Ginger's daughter is testing herself to see if she'd be ok giving up her trampoline for good, and us borrowing it helps her with that test. Bloody score I say!
On any given day the kids spend at least two or 3 times outside bouncing on the trampoline. They often beg me to come out and bounce them because they go "way higher!" when I bounce them. I don't know who has more fun, me or them!
Apart from the trampoline time in our own backyard, we've been lucky enough to have been invited to a friends campground where they have their own camper permanently set up. It's a beautiful spot only 2 and a bit hours from us, right on the water.
You couldn't ask for a nicer community there too, the locals are great. Super friendly and always up for a chat or a beer. Plenty to do there for the kids too. A huge open field to kick a ball around or jump in the boat and head out for a fish for a few hours. Not a bad way to spend a weekend if you ask me.
Our travel plans for the rest of the summer are geared towards camping, which we just kitted ourselves out with all the gear a few weeks ago. We bought an inflatable bed, 2 stretcher cot things for the kids, a camp stove and a few other bits and bobs. Allanah's family had gifted us a huge tent for Christmas so we can't wait to undertake our first adventure in the 3rd week of July. We might try it out in the backyard first just to make sure we don't look like total newbs when we arrive.
SAVINGS UPDATE
As far as savings went for the month, we're still ahead of our overall goal, but we didn't save as much as originally planned for one pay period. This was a conscious decision as we decided to purchase a carpet cleaner, a new vacuum, and the camping gear all in the same month.
We had put up with a crappy battery powered Dyson for way too long so it was time to invest in a new vacuum that actually sucked! Did i mention we also got it on sale for 50% off?! How good!
Our original plan showed we could have saved 50% or our income for June, but due to those purchases we ended up with 38%. It's our lowest saving month since January and knocked our year to date average down to 45%, but still not a bad effort.
There were some corrections made to our budget and savings tracker so the below snapshot will look slightly different to the previous month, particularly the percentages. We're still on track to meet our overall target. Even with the purchases we managed to creep forward another 3% toward our goal. As at the end June we are 59% of the way there!
NET WORTH SNAPSHOT
What we noticed was our net worth has actually decreased from last month, $304k to $286k. Two reasons for this.
I actually logged into my Australian Super account (that was a bit of a drama to try and do, but we got there!) and therefore got an actual value rather than an estimate.
I found a more reliable source online in which to value our car.
My super account had taken a hit over the Covid period but not as much as I would have thought. I'd estimated I had $122K in there and when I logged in I found it had dropped to $115k, which isn't too bad in my opinion.
We'd also been valuing the car at it's purchase price of around $68k. The website we were previously using said this is still what the car is "worth" for a trade-in, but we knew this was unrealistic so we found a more reliable online source that spat out a value of $50k.
The percentages have only slightly shifted from last month so it's hard to actually notice a difference. Let me know if you guys would like to see our net worth over time. We track it that way as well and it might give you a better picture of what's actually changing each month.
Blake - FIRE with a family