Holy crap, the year is flying by!  Already the spring sports are winding down, there are only a few weeks left of school for the kids, and our summer plans are firming up (it’s shaping up to be epic!!).  On that note, here’s another update!!

  • $12,500 in RESP contributions – Every month, $900 automatically goes into our kids’ RESP.  Of that, $400 is paid monthly, and $250 is paid bi-weekly on my paydays.  Most months, that means 2 payments of $250 (hence the total amount of $900), but because I get paid bi-weekly, there are 2 months a year that are 3-payday months.  May was one of them, so $1,150 automatically went into the RESP this past month.  On top of that, we put in an additional $260.  Total for May was $1,410, bringing my year-to-date total to $7,680.  Definitely on track.
  • Increase automatic investment amounts ($500/month excluding pension contributions at Jan 1) – Still $900/month, so mission accomplished.
  • Annual spend under $80K – Our May spend was $6,596.88, which given the comments below, I’m pretty happy with.  And our year-to-date spend is $31,436.58, so we’re still on track here.
    • This included 3 mortgage payments instead of the usual 2 (because our mortgage payments also come out of my account every payday).
    • On the other hand, it does NOT include 3 extra mortgage payments made this past month (we’re using a bonus I received in late-April to double up our mortgage payments for May and June).  There are 2 reasons I’m not including these: i) we’re not obliged to make these extra payments, and so I don’t want to artificially skew our expense figures by including these extra voluntary payments, and ii) similarly, I want to make as many extra payments as possible without worrying about failing to meet my goal of keeping our annual spend under $80K.  If I included these extra payments in my expenses, that would actually dissuade me from making these payments, which is counter-productive.  I’m not sure if this approach is correct accounting-wise (actually, I’m pretty sure it isn’t), but quite frankly, I don’t care.  It makes sense to me and that’s all I care about.
    • It includes a one-time expense of $380 for trees for our yard.
    • It includes almost $600 of dental expenses for our daughter, most of which will get reimbursed by our dental insurance plans.
  • Increase our saving % (20% at Jan 1) – Given all the extra payments we’ve been making towards the RESP, this percentage has crept up another few points, to 28%, so mission accomplished.  Just to clarify, this is based on our gross income – the percentage would be even higher (over 40%) if I based it on our take-home pay (maybe I should – 40% sounds waaaaaay more impressive!).
  • NOT incur any consumer debt – None incurred. On track.
  • Declutter at least 2 things a day – I’ve still been pretty lax about this goal, but I did manage to declutter 38 items of clothing, 2 books, and 2 home decor items, totaling 42 items for the month of May.  My year-to-date total is 377 items though, so I’m still on track.

Happy summer all!

LS