Another month down in 2020. This year feels like it's flying by. If someone had of told me at the start of the year that we'd see a world pandemic, see the stock market nearly collapse and then rally to the same high we saw in October '19 like nothing has happened, and every other crazy world event, I would have never believed them. In fact, I think someone needs to try putting 2020 in rice and see what happens.
With all the craziness and hatred sweeping the world throughout April and May it can be hard to stay positive and upbeat all the time. Especially when you're isolated from your friends and family and traveling is still a no-no. But it is nearly summer here and warm days mean more time spent outside and doing activities with the kids.
Speaking of outside, our eldest Callum has new found love for mowing the lawns. He gave it a go a few times last year but was a bit standoff-ish. Now that he's grown what feels like half a foot taller, he attacks it with gusto!
He mows the whole back lawn by himself and even does a bit of the front (it's a bit of a steeper slope). Some of the directions he goes are a bit wild, but hey, he's getting it done. I stick to the whipper-snipper while he attacks with the mower. It's a huge help.
It's hard to beat the smell of a freshly cut lawn, don't you think? Ours has a few pesky dandelions that grow like wildfire but they look nice and neat after a mow. Addison hates the thought of us destroying "such cute little flowers" so she chooses not to watch most times.
Given that there isn't too much to do at times we thought we'd splurge on a $17 slip-and-slide that the kids were begging us for. They actually came up to our room one day with around $30 in multiple currencies asking if they had enough to buy one themselves. So off we went to Walmart where they paid for their very own slip-and-slide for the backyard. Add a bit of dish soap and a splash of water and you've got entertainment for hours.
SAVINGS UPDATE
May was another good month for us. We achieved our savings target even while going slightly over our overall budget. The main categories we went over on were Shopping (multiple birthdays we forgot to plan for) and Misc Expenses. Oh yeah, and alcohol. We spent more than we planned on booze. Who doesn't like a crisp cold Corona on the deck on a sunny afternoon? Maybe we got a bit carried away...
We managed to save 47% of our net take home pay which was slightly ahead of plan. We had a $400-ish benefit paid to us by the Canadian government for the child rebate so that went straight into our High Interest Savings account. We use EQ Bank for our savings. If you're Canadian I'd highly recommend them. They're the only online bank I can find still with 2.00%.
So far we have achieved 57% of our goal for the year. We do have a few larger purchases coming up like a vacuum cleaner and carpet shampoo/soaker/cleaner thingy, but we should have enough buffer for that.
For your visual learners, see the chart below for our savings progress year to date. We're trending steadily above the target line so far.
NET WORTH SNAPSHOT
I shared an update of our net worth status in a recent post to give you guys an idea of what makes up our assets and what we owe. If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend you do and calculate your own net worth number. It's an important metric to know and track on your wealth building journey.
Net worth snapshot end of May. Slowly growing our cash reserves!
Coming Soon
In a future post we'll go over the importance of creating "sinking funds" for larger planned expenses that don't normally fit in your monthly budget. We have spoken about the importance of building an emergency fund back in Feb, which is a fund used for unplanned major expenses. Sinking funds are used for larger planned expenses such as Christmas, house reno's, vacations, etc. More on that to come.
Blake - FIRE with a family