Retirement one year later...........money

(I AM NOT A FINANCIAL EXPERT, PLEASE SEEK ADVISE OF A PROFESSIONAL, THIS IS WHAT HAS WORKED FOR US)

First up money.  

This is the major issue when retiring.  Will you or won't you have enough to live on; especially when you have no idea how long you are going to live.  Financial planners now use the age of 90 as your expected life expectancy.

You've worked all your life and have had a regular income.  Now you're relying on government pensions (if you're lucky) and what ever savings or private pensions you have been paying into.

We/I have been planning hubby's retirement for years.  I haven't worked in years, so we knew 95% of money in retirement was going to be coming in via hubby's income rather than mine.  We were okay with this.....obviously we discussed it prior and this is what worked for us.

One thing we did and anyone can do this, whether they are ten years away from retiring or just one year.  Write down your monthly outgoing's/bills, so you can work out how much you need to cover everything to survive.  I did it all on an Excel spreadsheet, but writing it down in a notebook will work as well.  This is a good habit to get into, and I still do it, just to see where we are each month.

Our spreadsheet, includes all utilities, car/house/life insurances, credit card bills, house/property taxes. Make sure you include cash you take out of the bank each week; with that I multiplied 52 weeks worth of cash divided by 12 to make the monthly amount.  If you have rent/mortgage/car loans etc. include those.  Anything you pay out each month.  Some things like our water/sewage bill comes in bi-monthly don't forget those types of bills.

This helped out a great deal with working things out.

What also helped us was getting forecast's from the government and any private pension companies showing us what we should expect in payments from them when retired.  Both the Canadian and the UK government did this for us no problem.

We have tax free savings accounts here in Canada, use them!!!  They come in handy.  Until you start getting regular payments you may have to dip into your savings accounts to supplement your pensions.

When applying for pensions do it at least six months ahead of time.  Our local library had free sessions with the people from the government pension department.  They were super helpful; as all the forms you have to fill in can be quite complicated; especially if you were born in a different country!  We found the most complicated forms to complete were for the Old Age Security, which is not a huge amount each year.  We were thinking we would have to give them our first born child with the amount of questions they asked!!

Oh and one country talks to another country, so in our case the Canadian government does know where you are receiving other pensions from....LOL  Everyone will take their piece of the pie!

If you were born in another country, you need a lot of info from your birth country, including your citizenship and immigration papers.  Thankfully we were organized and had kept everything from when we lived in the UK and when we moved to Canada.  We also told our kids what they needed and gave them their paperwork, and kept photo copies ourself, as they are 25 years away from retiring.

It did take us a few months to get used to receiving money at different times of the month and we did have one or two glitches along the way.  We receive a monthly amount once per month from a RRIF.  The first month we were to receive it, they forgot to put it through 😠Luckily I had moved money into our savings account as a plan B just in case something like this happened.  The bank and our financial advisor apologized but it was an inconvenience.  (LESSON HERE, HAVE A BACK UP PLAN!)

All our Canadian income/pensions, have between 20 to 30% tax taken off at source, so we do not get dinged with a big tax bill at the end of the year.  All foreign income comes in without tax taken off at source.  We won't know until March 2026 to see if all our calculations were correct when we file our taxes.

Hubby stopped receiving a pay cheque from his employer at the end of 2024.  So technically we have been receiving just pensions since the beginning of 2025.  So far so good, we have managed just fine.  Everyone said we wouldn't need as much money.  I can't say for sure that's the case, but I am guessing the more we slow down and do not do as much that will be true.

We have a window of probably 10 years where we will be fit enough to travel.  So we know that money will be flowing a bit more during the next ten years.    Do we have enough to live off until we are 90; as per the financial advisor and our accountant son, yes we do; but who knows?

If anyone else has any tips or hints for retiring and managing money  please add yours in the comments.

Should we try again

I am the worst blogger out there, really.  What is my problem?  It's a new year so like a lot of you out there I guess I'll make a belated New Year's resolution and start blogging again.  I think my problem is that I have a pretty boring mundane life, and who on earth would want to read about it?  I do though have a few things in the works though and over the next few months I will begin to share with you what's going on.

The one thing I will share with you today though, is that we are going to be grandparents again TWICE this year in the space of a week or two.  Our Little Princess and Our Little Man are getting a brother or sister at the end of May and Our Little Munchkin will be getting a brother or sister a week or two later.

So as you can imagine, quilting and knitting are high on my to-do list this year.  However I also have a number of other things on my to-do list for the year.  I wonder of I make a list, it will help me achieve them?  I guess it won't hurt?

1. Prepare for two new grand babies.
2. Knitting a pair of socks - it has been on my to-do list since I started knitting.
3. Prepare "stock" for a table at a Christmas Sale in November/December - I'll talk about that at a later date.
4. Finish the basement, or get as much done as possible to the carpeting stage, so in Spring of 2017 all we have to do is put the carpet down there.  This situation is all down to money.
5. Put plans in motion for dh to retire in the next couple of years - this is something I would like to explore more in depth and will do in many posts over the year.
6. Explore more ways to save money and share with you all, what works and what doesn't.
7. Be more organized.  I know I do have that "A" type personality, but I have been letting things slip recently, so need to be more on top of things.
8. Get the rest of the main floor decorated - another big chunk will be done by the end of the month.
9. Try and go away on vacation later in the year.
10. Menu plan - this is a hard one for me, but if I do it I feel more organized.
11. Come up with ways to save money when grocery shopping, as believe me the price of food is rising by the day.

If there is a subject you would like me to explore please let me know.

And finally, just because, here is my first knitting for one of the new babies to be.  It's one of the baby gnomes, customized by me.  He or she is less than six inches in height.

That is the phone next to it, and I made a matching baby hat.  The books on the side are ones I have to review, so keep an eye out for those reviews.  Fingers crossed I can manage a post for tomorrow!!

It always amazes me how much money can flow through my fingers in a short time

On Wednesday I decided to run some errands in town.  I try and bunch a number of things together so not to waste gas and time. 

The first order of business was the bank; had a cheque to deposit and get the cash out for the week.  Next popped into the corner store to pick up dh's Lotto Max ticket for him.  He gets one every week and this past week won a huge, whopping $2, so that "only" cost me $4.

Next went to the Post Office, as I wanted them to hold our mail while we are on vacation.  That cost me $22.50 (or there abouts) plus I decided to buy a 6 pack of international stamps, which came to around $12.50.  So, so far I have spent $39.

I call in at the gas station and fill up the 25 litre gas tank for the lawn tractor and put gas in my car.  Got gas at $1.263 a litre and spent $50 there.  Now up to $89.

Call into the grocery store to pick up a couple of things, including ice cream, as dh loves his ice cream.  Ended up spending $35 there???

On the way home I called into the coffee shop as I needed something sweet and picked up an orange cruller (click link for recipe) so that cost $1.

So all in all in less than an hour I ended up spending $125 just like that and have very little to show for it (SIGH)

By the time I give dh some money for the week and put my money in the jars, I am left with $65 to last me until a week on Friday ((SIGH))  Guess I am going to have to try and be thrifty this week!!

Thinking back on the month of April..........

Financially it was a flipping expensive month what with a new car, and a new driveway, plus nearly $1,400 spent on car repair bills, plus we had to fill up the furnace oil tank.


I am hoping May is a cheap month for us, mind you I am touching wood as I write that!!!   A couple of good things money wise, I did manage to stay under budget with my grocery totals for the month of April.  I spent $298.99 for the month with $78.12 in savings.  There is a good deal on until Thursday for free milk at some of the Loblaws chain of stores.  Milk is on for $1 a carton and here is a link for a $1 off coupon, making it free.  I am in for $300 total again in groceries, paper products, cleaning products and personal products for the month of May.


I achieved another mini goal with Swagbucks.  I cashed in enough points for $25 in Amazon e-cards, and have enough swagbucks as of the end of April for six $5 Amazon e-cards.  As of the end of April I have enough swagbucks for 6 $5 Amazon e-cards, but can only cash in 5 per month.  I am stocking up on Swagbucks so that when I get too busy I will still have enough to cash in for 5 $5 e-cards per month.


I was able to order my soil for the garden using the money I had saved up in my loonie and toonie pot.  Still putting money into our sealed pot, can't wait until December to see how much we managed to save.


I managed to get some more gardening and grass cutting down on Monday before it started raining.  We have a couple of Willow Trees in the garden and they are so messy always dropping their branches.  So I had to clear all those before I could cut more grass.  The end result though looks not too bad:

I am hoping to get some more weeding done this morning, weather permitting.


How are you getting on with your garden?

All about money...............

Good news first I guess.

Went grocery shopping and only spent $42.22 and had coupon and discount savings of $11.78, bringing my monthly grocery spending up to $47.74, with savings of $17.52.  There were no cleaning or toiletries bought though this week, that was all food and included some ground flax seed for Molly.

However did get fresh meat, veggies, fruit and milk, plus numerous other items.  I am going to have a baking and cooking session on Sunday and will do my meal planning for the week then.  My best deal for the week was picking up 2 x Special K cereal and a package of Special K Fruit Crisps, which are a cereal bar and actually very yummy, all for $2.99, thanks to a FPC for one cereal, a FPC for the bars when you buy a Special K cereal and a $1 off coupon for the actual cereal.  I was a little surprised they took all coupons?  While I was in No Frills yesterday a woman in front of me gave me another coupon for another FPC for the bars when I buy more cereal.  In return I let her take all the diaper coupons from my P & G brand coupon flyer I had with me.

My sealed jar is filling up nicely seen as I have dh on board with that, he is putting his silver in there.  My other pot for the loonies and twoonies isn't doing as well, as I haven't had any in my change this week.  So I think that only grew by around a dollar or two.

Put my money in my birthday, Christmas and whatever pots.  I only have two more weeks and will have saved enough up in my whatever pot for the wedding gift in February.  So that will be another thing out of the way.

Got the oil tank filled, first time in two months which is a surprise as this time a year we normally fill every month.  Anyhow, it cost just over $400 for the past two months worth of oil which is really, really good.  It helped also that the price of oil had gone down by 3 cents per litre from last time I bought it.  It is certainly paying off all the work we did to insulate this house.

My no spend days though were practically non existent this week, as despite me not leaving the house a couple of days, I still managed to pay bills online.  I think I ended up with having two no spend days, Tuesday and Thursday.

I did however earn money as I worked on Thursday, so will get paid at some point for that.

All in all though not too bad a week.  Money was put in the savings, mortgage payment increased.  Came in well under for my grocery total.  Paid bills that were due, and put all the money in my pots.  Plus we had hot meals on the table and a warm house to live in, all in all life isn't bad!!

How was your week money wise?

***FPC = Free Product Coupon

Flipping heck.............

Credit cards are a great thing to have, as you can get lots of free things when you use them.  However the key to credit cards is to pay off the balance at the end of the month, otherwise you end up paying extremely high interest rates.  It's something I have drilled into the kids and anyone else who will listen too me; PAY OFF YOUR BALANCE AT THE END OF THE MONTH!!!

So on Friday in the mail arrives my credit card bill.  Last month's bill was due on July 30th.  I was super busy at the end of last month, and although I paid off part of the bill as soon as I got the bill, I wanted to pay off the remainder on the due date of July 30th.  As I said I was busy, and totally forgot about paying the bill.  I paid it the next day, but as that was Saturday it wouldn't go through until the next business day.  However, add to all that Monday was a holiday, so it wouldn't be processed until the Tuesday.  The payment went through on August 3rd. 

That error cost me over $25!!!  $25 flipping dollars in interest, can you believe that?  How on earth do people afford to carry a balance on credit cards?  It must be so depressing having to pay all that interest?

We bought a new ceiling fan/light for the spare bedroom.  It's one of these Hunter 5 Minute Fans  However that claim of theirs that it only takes five minutes to install is a total crock (lie).  It took dh over five minutes just to read all the instructions!!  Remember dh is an electrician, so installing a light is a simple job for him.  However, the fan/light is nice, though different from the ones in the link, I couldn't see a picture of ours.

I got a bit more of the grass cut on Friday, but it is growing at a rate of knots.  So it's all to start to cut again!!!  It's a never ending job cutting the grass.  I haven't done much in the bedroom, I will get a bit more done on Saturday, in between all the other jobs I have to do.

It's going to be another super humid weekend this weekend, with temperatures in the 40's (100 oF) joy oh joy!!  Roll on Fall when the temperatures may cool off a little.

Enjoy your weekend.

Gill

I think we are cursed.............

So on Thursday I take Molly to the vet, as its just getting ridiculous with her scratching etc.

The vet was super and explained everything.

Anyhoo.......we have a spray for her toes and her vulva area, Molly wasn't impressed when I sprayed her there....LOL She gave me THE look!

We have drops for her ears and if I want I can rub it into the vulva area as well..........I said "I don't think so!!"

More shampoo to bathe her twice a week.

Also Omega 3 oil to put on her food once a day.

Vet bill around $175 and we are not to give her food that has beef, chicken or lamb in it, so bought a small bag of vegetarian dog food to see if that will help (over $21 ).

If none of this helps then we go to Plan B, not quite sure what that involves, but it will mean another visit to the vets........{SIGH}

So I spend a very uncomfortable night and my poor knee is very, very sore and swollen. So after we take Molly to the vet, dh takes me to the emergency department at our local hospital. It's a lovely little hospital and we were in and out in less than two hours.

So the gist of the situation is I have sprained/strained my knee ligaments in my left knee. Its all swollen up and if its no better in a week I have to go to my own family doctor to get more testing done to see if I have torn the ligaments, I hope not. Meanwhile she gave me some anti-inflammatories and told me to keep off my feet, easier said than done. I have to say it's very, very painful, and even laying down on a night is uncomfortable. It's also very annoying as I am pooped just doing the simplest of things as it takes me so long to do stuff {{SIGH}}

Then the roof is leaking {{{SIGH}}} so that is going to cost another $600 to fix, and the guy can't come for another three weeks!!!

I swear it's one thing after another at the moment.

Spending more money!!

So on Sunday morning we headed into town as the local Home Hardware was having a garage sale. We picked up a couple of things, and then discovered they had pink insulation bundles on sale for $25, normally $33+ and drywall. Well we came home and couldn't decide on the drywall, as we don't have anywhere to store it. However we decided to purchase 35 bundles of the insulation. With delivery just over $1,000, which is saving us over $200.

Dd and boyfriend came up for lunch and a visit. She downloaded some new songs on my I-Pod, thank you dd!! After they went we decided to go to Richters , its a Herb nursery. Now I will tell you it's very close to Uxbridge for those of you who live in Southern Ontario, and honestly its a long drive for what there is there. I think the best time to go would be Spring. However I did very well and got what I wanted. I also put my name down for a 2010 Catalogue which you can get for free. So in future I think I will order directly from the catalogue.

I picked up the following three Echinacea's on sale from $15 each to $5 each. From left to right are Coconut Lime, Mac & Cheese and Tomato Soup.
I picked up five scented geraniums, unfortunately though I picked up three without labels. I can tell you though the back right one is Frensham Lemon, and the front right one is Apple. One should be an Orange one, one I think was Lime, and the other was a Rose scented one. I think they were $4 each, and this is what I drove out there for.


I got the one Lavender called Provence. I may grow more lavender next year, this will get me started though.

This container of herbs, parsley, rosemary, thyme and sage was on clearance for $10 and will be handy to keep on the window sill in the kitchen.
I also got these three books for free. I was most interested in the 10 herbs for happy healthy dogs.


On the way home we stopped off at Schomberg to have supper at a fish and chip store, called Crossroads and it was really good. So all in all we had a restful day, which is just as well as dh's shoulder is playing up again.

Hot and Humid..

It's been awfully hot and humid these past couple of days. That is two "H" words I dislike.........HOT and HUMID. The humidity just wears you down and although I don't mind a little bit of hot weather, this is too much for me. I prefer the cool Fall/Autumn days, and those cool nights. Thankfully dh installed a ceiling fan in our bedroom, so that has helped a lot.

I survived my first day at work. It's funny it's been over a year since I have worked there, but I managed to pick things up without too many problems. Did have an issue with the credit card machine, but the customer knew what was what and walked me through it...LOL

The commute was a heck of a lot better than I thought it would be, only 55 minutes, and the way I went, for the first two thirds of it, through some really beautiful countryside. There are a lot of horse farms in one area, and there are some lovely properties on them........if only I had that type of money!!! For the last third of the journey, city driving with city properties, and city driving {{{{SIGH}}}}

We had some nasty thunderstorms on Sunday and early Monday morning, which resulted in more leaks in the roof {{{{{another big SIGH}}}}} So on the phone to "K" and he will get the roofing guy to pop over and take a look, so no doubt MORE MONEY {{{{{{and an even bigger SIGH}}}}}}

Molly was good, no accidents, and she was very pleased to see us both when we came home. Dh got home before me, as I called in at Shopper's Drug Mart on the way home, to spend my $25 for the referral event. I also treated myself to a bar of Cadburys mint chocolate, I love the combination of mint and chocoloate, also orange and chocolate. It has to be milk chocolate though, no dark chocolate for me, it gives me migraines.

Must say though as I am writing this on Monday night I'm tired, I'm sure its the heat; not the fact that I worked today ;0)

I had my first encounter with a snake!!!

First let me say I am terrified of snakes. When we go to the zoo, I like to go to the reptile area, just to make sure the snakes and spiders are all locked up!!! So on Wednesday I was cutting the field AGAIN, and there it was slithering in the grass and I am guessing it must have been fifty feet long.........okay maybe two feet if that, but in my minds eye it looked like fifty feet long!!! I let out a squeal, and put my foot on the gas on the lawn tractor and got the heck out of there!!!! It gives me the shivers just thinking about it.

I was frozen today cutting the grass, as the wind was really nippy. I had to put my coat on with my hood up and had to find a pair of mitts to wear. Which is strange as I am "hot flash Annie," but it truly was cool out. Now Kamikaze Hill is still to cut, but that will have to wait until the weekend, when dh has time, as it's going to rain for the next three days, so no doubt the bloody grass will all be ready to cut again by the weekend!

Oh, remember we bought the new fridge/freezer with the ice and water? Well since dh hooked up the water, it has had a drip at the water dispenser. So Sears came in today to fix it. The guy put a new valve in it, and said as we are on well water with low pressure, that these fridges sometimes do drip and there is nothing I can do about it. So sure enough its back to dripping again. So I am going to get back on the phone to Sears to see if they can figure out something else, as I have to put a cup under the drip to catch the water.

Got a quote today for the fireplace insert, $3,861.90 Yes I did have a shocked expression on my face, and asked them to see if they could do a better price. I haven't heard back from them yet!! I was hoping to pay around $3,500, taxes included, but as I have chosen a brushed nickel trim, and they are having to does some cutting inside of the fireplace, that has bumped the price up........Add to that at least $900 for three bush cords of wood, and that's another $5,000 spent there...........I really do need to find that ruddy money tree and soon!!

As I was cutting the grass, I noticed a white car in the driveway and so went over on the tractor to see who it was. It was a guy who worked for a company that takes aerial photos of your property, and they had taken a shot last September and did we want to buy it. I said no, but must say it was pretty neat to look at the photo. They do this every five or six years, so maybe next time they do it, I will buy one..........as hopefully by then we will have found that money tree!!

How Financially Fit are you?

I was over at the Money Saving Mom blog and she was talking about this quiz on how financially fit are you.

Its interesting and I of course took the quiz. We scored 96% and received an A grade. Which I thought wasn't bad. A couple of places where we scored low was on our credit rating, I have no idea what our credit rating is, and lost points there. Its not something I have really thought about, as we pay all our bills on time etc, so I am assuming we have a great credit score, am I assuming too much here?

We have worked hard over the years though and cut back here and there so that we are debt free, other than our mortgage. However there is always room for improvement.

Why don't you take the quiz and see how you do and see if there are areas where you need to improve? Let me know how you do?

One way of Saving Money....

Christmas stresses me out to the limit. One reason is money, I always worry we won't be able to afford everything for Christmas. So I came up with a solution that takes all the worry of not having enough money to cover everything at Christmas. I call it my savings pots.

C got a set of boxes given one year and never used them. So I took them and labeled then. I have one for Christmas, which I put $20 a week in there. So that means I put $1,040 a year in there to spend on Christmas. I take money out of there whenever I buy something for Christmas. It also helps that I shop year round for Christmas.

I then set up a Birthday pot. Again I put $20 a week in there. Now this pot takes a lot longer to work, as we have certain months of the year that have more birthdays in it than others. So for the first little while, I had to keep adding to the pot to cover the months when there were more birthdays then others. However two years later, I am finding that I always have money in that pot to cover every birthday.

I also have a special occasion pot where I put $10 a week into that. We have had a few special birthdays over the past couple of years, so this money was used for that.

I also put money into our ING account each week for our vacation fund.

Now this works for me, and its the first thing I do when I withdraw money from the bank each week, is put money into these pots. If you find those figures too high, why not start with $5 a week? To my mind even saving $100 towards Christmas is worthwhile.

My first ever post........

It's funny, I have been thinking about creating my very own blog for ages now, but have been putting it off, and putting it off. I am not sure why, maybe it has something to do with that reserved British side of me, do I want everyone knowing everything about me. Well the solution to that I suppose, is only post what I am comfortable with everyone in the world knowing about. Pretty simple solution when you think about it, don't know why I took so long to figure that one out.

Then there is the technical side of things, how do I post photos, how do I set a blog up, and how do I set it out so that people can read it. Then of course, do I actually have anything interesting to say to people? What may interest one person, may bore the living daylights out of another?

Anyhow I have decided what the heck, I am going to give it a go. I don't think I will stick to one subject, I will post about all sorts. I have a number of interests. One thing I have a great interest in is saving money. I have read so many blogs and visited so many sites and gained so much information that I would love to spread the word on saving money.

Another of my loves is cooking, I have a lot of great recipes that I have collected and modified over the years that would be a great for other people to try.

Gardening is something I really enjoy, and hope to share photos with you all of my garden, the success's, which I hope there are a lot, and my failures, which I would love to think will be none, but that is wishful thinking.

I started to quilt just over a year ago and that has been fun, I'll never be a master quilter, but I do love what I have done so far. I am also starting to scrapbook, but honestly the whole thing is scaring me to death, as I have tons and tons of photos with no dates on them in a big pile. I can see there will be plenty of posts on my progress, or even lack of progress in that department.

So there you go, my first ever post, fingers crossed I'll figure all the technical stuff out!!!