Where I’ve been (and where I’m heading) – a life update

How does one even begin writing a life update covering a six-month span where their life completely changed?

Hello. It’s been a while — certainly longer than I intended.

When I hit publish on my last post, I did not anticipate it would take me so long to get back to this space. If you go by that date, it’s been more like five months, but most of that post was written in advance. Realistically, it’s been closer to six months since I actually sat down to write.

That’s wild to me considering I kept a pretty consistent twice-weekly schedule for almost two years.

But a lot has changed. Life today looks very different than it did at the beginning of 2021.

And while I am hopeful things will be a little less chaotic coming into the end of the year, some of the events are going to continue impacting my life and this blog.

Here’s a glimpse at where I’ve been and where I’m heading.

Life update: where have I been for the last six months?

In April, I shared about my husband and I becoming parents. Our daughter, who will be known as Baby J, arrived mid-March. If you want to know more, check out this post.

At the end of that post, I said I hoped to be back in May.

Ha ha ha.

What changed?

The short answer: even though I have worked with children of various ages in various capacities for most of my life, I underestimated how much of my energy taking care of an infant every day would involve.

I’m still in the thick of things. If I had to pick a word to describe the transition to motherhood so far, I would go with relentless. It’s been challenging. And while I expected some of those challenges (like the lack of sleep), others really caught me off guard, including just how little time I’ve had for myself since the baby arrived.

Six months in, those things are still challenges but there are signs of improvement. The baby only has one night feed most nights, as opposed to two or three. And she is going to bed earlier so we’re starting to get our evenings back — something that’s important for me since independent naps remain a work in progress. It has taken some time (and some counselling) to accept and be OK with the fact that the self I desperately wanted to feel like again after becoming a mother…well, she doesn’t exist anymore.

That sounds grim, but I swear it’s not. It’s a sign of change and growth. It’s a good thing.

While I have made decisions regarding how much I intend to share of our daughter online (very little), I’m still working out how I want to show up as a mother online. It’s obviously an important part of my life now, but I have always said I don’t want “mom” to be my entire identity. I anticipate this will take time to sort out so…please be patient with me? This is all still very new.

But while adjusting to parenthood has obviously been a big transition, it’s not the only thing that changed over the last six months.

Which brings me to my next update…

We bought a house

That’s right. In July, we bought and moved into our first house.

This was planned.

Kind of.

If you’ve been reading for a while, you know we have always been happy renters. Homeownership was a goal for both of us, but for many years, we didn’t feel any pressure to buy. I would go as far as to say our decision to rent for as long as we did played a big part in helping us reduce our debt so quickly.

So why did we go from content to rent to buying a house in a span of about four months?

Two reasons.

• We had a baby

And as much as we liked our apartment, we realized very quickly we needed more space.

For context, we were renting a two-bedroom basement apartment. This was a fine arrangement for two adults and two cats. It was even OK with Jeff working from home.

But once the baby arrived…it stopped working for us. And it stopped working for us quickly.

We felt like we were on top of each other all the time. It was hard to keep things the right level of quiet so the baby could sleep. And while it did not bother me before, the lack of natural light was awful for my mental health in the early postpartum days.

We needed to find something bigger. And we needed to find it sooner as opposed to later.

• We realized we could get priced out if we waited too long

Our little city has been no exception to the housing market insanity of the last year. In particular, our region has seen an influx of people from other parts of the country looking too relocate…and, in most cases, bringing a lot more money to the table.

During our search, we made offers on four houses. Two of the four offers were significantly above asking…and we were outbid both times. All the houses we offered on were on the market less than a week before they sold way above asking.

The exception: the house we ended up buying. It was on the market for more than 40 days and we ended up getting it for a mere $1k above asking.

I’ll share more about how that happened later. For now, I’ll say luck and our ability see the potential of the space helped us a great deal. The house we bought isn’t a fixer-upper, but it will need some work. But yeah, that’s a different post for a different time.

The best of the rest

Obviously the whole having a baby and buying a house thing were the biggest changes in our lives over the last six months but where this is a personal finance blog, I wanted to share a couple other notes.

• Our emergency fund is sitting at about $7K

In preparation for maternity leave, I set out to save $10K for our emergency fund. I achieved this goal — and it’s a good thing I did because we actually have had to use some of that cash on a semi-significant car repair and replacing a major appliance. It’s currently sitting at about $7K and we’ll be working to get it back to its $10K glory.

• We opened an RESP and started making contributions

One of the first things I did for Baby J is open a Registered Education Savings Plan at Wealthsimple.*

Student loans suck and I have no reason to believe post-secondary education will become more affordable in the future. We use a portion of our Canada Child Benefit to fund this account and we are on track to put in the $2,500 required to get the maximum Canada Education Savings Grant for 2021!

(*Disclosure: link is a referral link. If you sign up using my link, I receive a bonus — in this case, $10K managed for free for 12 months — at no cost to you. I only share links for products and services I use and love. Thanks for the support!)

• Speaking of student loans…we’re still only doing minimum payments

This should come as no surprise. I’ll be on maternity leave until March 2022, which takes a significant bite out of our income. There’s simply not much money left for extra debt payments at the end of the day right now.

That being said, even if there was, I’m not sure I would send it there right now. The federal portion is interest free until 2023 and the provincial interest rate is only 2.45 per cent. Don’t get me wrong: I want these loans gone. But with rates that low, it does not feel as urgent.

• I finally bought my iPad!

And between the baby and the move, it took me like, four months to take it out of the box!

I ended up getting it refurbished through Apple, which saved me about $150. Not too shabby! Excited to use it more when things eventually calm down more.

What’s next for Our Bill Pickle?

While I would love to say I’m ready to dive right back into my old rhythm (posting two times a week, commenting on other blogs I read and love consistently, actually using my Instagram, etc.), that’s not the case.

I’m starting to get some of my time back, which is great. But it’s still a fraction of the time I used to have available to me. I’ve accepted this is the reality of the season we are in.

So what does that mean for the blog?

Content-wise, one nice thing about spending six months doing a lot of hardcore adulting is I feel like I have a lot to say! I just don’t have as much time to say it right now. For the final quarter of 2021, it is my intention to have something new to share every second Thursday. It’s a far cry from my old schedule, but that’s what feels realistic right now. The plan is to revisit this schedule toward the end of the year to determine what makes sense for 2022.

As far as the rest of it goes…it will continue to be sporadic for now. I’d love to be in a place where I’m able to keep up with all my favourite blogs and be consistent with Instagram but that’s not where I’m at right now. I’m hoping to get back there someday but for now, I’m just going to focus on doing my best.

Hopefully you’ll stick around.

Final Thoughts

This life update covered a lot of ground but it’s still more of a snapshot of the last six months than anything.

The life we are living today looks very different than it did in March 2021 and while change has not always been easy to navigate, I would say it has been for the better.

I won’t lie, though: I’m hoping the last quarter of 2021 is a little calmer.

How are things going for you? Tell me something that happened over the last six months in your world!

Photo by Adrien Olichon from Burst