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Our Bill Pickle

real life with (very) real debt

The most important transaction I make each month

April 18, 2023

Every month, I pay $130 to talk to a therapist about my mental health for an hour.

We meet at the same time (mid-morning, mid-month), in the same way (virtually) and in roughly the same location (always her office, usually my kitchen).

We cover a lot of ground and it always surprises me how quickly the time passes.

The invoice arrives minutes after we disconnect. She doesn’t direct bill, so I pay the $130 out of pocket, then bill it back through insurance. Our coverage is excellent – $150 max per session with no cap on yearly spend so I get it all back a few days later.

It is the most important transaction I make every month.

It’s been a while since I’ve been present in this space. Scratch that. It’s been a while since I’ve been present in any online space. I didn’t intend to disappear — on the contrary, I thought 2022 would be the year I returned.

Here’s what happened instead.

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Posted by Tara 4 Comments
Filed Under: Lifestyle Tagged: mental health, motherhood, personal finance

Five personal finance confessions

April 27, 2022

Welcome to another edition of personal finance confessions — a totally irregular recap of how I'm managing my money lately.

Welcome to another edition of personal finance confessions — a totally irregular recap of how I’m managing my money lately.

This is my fourth confessions post. Here are the others: one | two | three.

This round features five confessions. Much like the first three posts, calling these confessions is likely a little dramatic.

Here we go.

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Filed Under: Lifestyle Tagged: confessions, debt-free journey, financial goals, intentional spending, personal finance, student loans

It feels like we’re moving backwards

January 27, 2022

Ever felt like you're moving backwards on your goals? In this post, I'm sharing my thoughts about going backwards on our financial journey.

Something was off, but it took time to figure it out.

I had a whole other post on the schedule for today. The idea was to talk about some of the ways I plan to take care of myself in 2022. I had the outline, the headings identified and a few sentences drafted.

The last part was my first clue something was wrong. Those sentences…man, they did not come easy.

Of course, writing isn’t always easy. I worked as a reporter at a daily newspaper for almost six years. I’m not stranger to writer’s block.

This was different.

Each day it felt like I made less progress than the day before. Eventually, it got to the point where I found myself avoiding the task altogether, as if doing so would somehow solve the problem I didn’t know how to define.

When I finally figured it out, I felt relieved…until I realized what it meant.

Writing a post about self-care felt disingenuous. Writing a post about…just about anything felt disingenuous. Because if I’m being completely honest: I’ve been struggling lately. And while I wish I could just ignore that fact, I’m finding it hard to move forward as a writer without acknowledging it.

So, in the interest of moving forward — and in keeping with my mission to keep it real in this space — I wanted to take a moment to share some of what’s been going on lately. I’m hopeful writing these things down will remove them from my brain and allow more space for other things.

So here we go.

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Posted by Tara 3 Comments
Filed Under: Lifestyle Tagged: debt-free journey, homeownership, life update, motherhood, personal finance, postpartum

Our number one financial priority

April 4, 2021

Our financial priorities are changing. Here's a look at how -- and why -- we're making adjustments to our financial plan.

I have to be honest: saying this post is about our financial priorities is a little misleading.

I mean, yes. Our financial priorities will be part of it — this is, after all, a personal finance blog.

But it’s only one element.

I have been working on this post for a while now. It was my intention to have it finished a few weeks ago, but things changed.

Almost four weeks later, they are still changing but things are starting to feel more manageable. So I wanted to pop in to give a bit of an explanation about what’s been going on.

You probably think I’m going to tell you I’m pregnant.

I’m not…anymore.

On March 14, Jeff and I welcomed our beautiful daughter into the world.

To say our lives — and our financial priorities — have changed would be an understatement.

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Posted by Tara 10 Comments
Filed Under: Lifestyle Tagged: blogging, personal finance, personal update

The Snowman’s Guide to Personal Finance: a review

February 23, 2021

Around this time last year, I won a copy of the Snowman’s Guide to Personal Finance by Steven Arnott (thanks Kari!).

This little book popped up on a couple Canadian personal finance blogs I enjoy in early 2020. I enjoyed Kari’s Q&A with the author and the other reviews I read, so I threw my name in the hat…and actually won!

The book arrived just as the snow melted and spring began. And even it’s a personal finance book, not a seasonal read, I couldn’t bring myself to pick up a book with snowman in the title after an east coast winter.

If you’re from here, you know what I’m saying.

Several months later, winter has come back around and it finally felt like the right time to pick up this book. A quick read, I finished it in a couple sittings and today, I wanted to share some of my thoughts.

Disclaimer: As mentioned right off the top, I won a copy of this book, so I didn’t pay for it. That being said, the decision to read and review the book here was my choice. A review was not requested and I’m not being compensated for writing one.

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Filed Under: Reviews Tagged: book review, Canadian personal finance, personal finance, review, the snowman's guide to personal finance

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Hi, I’m Tara!

Welcome to Our Bill Pickle, a Canadian personal finance blog. Here, we share the good, the bad and the ugly about real life with (very) real debt.

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