by Elizabeth S.
Howdy from the bus, on which I am journeying to the hospital for my surgery. It’s a quick bus ride for me and I have to Uber home (Mike is meeting me at the hospital), so I thought I’d save money one way. I’m a bit nervous, and this is a welcome distraction. Like Hope’s post earlier, this is a bit of a personal update from me. This is composed on the WordPress mobile app, so I’ll take a look later to see that the formatting is ok!
City Blues
Anxiety has plagued me since the moment I pulled out of the driveway at the cottage. I’m not a city person. I had to deal with a work “emergency” yesterday, which annoyed me. Why bother even taking vacation time? I dread checking email, dread going to the office, dread new requests piling on to my crazy workload. I. Am. Done. My job is generous and I knew what I was signing up for, but family and spending time outside are just so much more important to me. I am now working on a concrete plan to be out of Toronto in the next two to three years. It’s going to be tough, because my salary is almost certainly going to drop, potentially significantly.
At a bare minimum, I need to do the following before I go:
- Eliminate consumer debt and student loan (I’m not worried about my car loan for now, but if I can pay it off early, I will)
- Figure out if I’m going to try and stay in tech. There are hardly any jobs in my field outside of Toronto. I would struggle in Vancouver or Montreal, let alone in the country where I’d like to be. Software is done in Toronto and Waterloo, Ontario, for the most part.
- Save for a down payment for a house
That’s a tall order but I am happy that I’m beginning to figure this all out. I’m not used to having a plan. It’s funny, as soon as I started making a list, my anxiety started to wane.
Speaking of Plans…
Hope has me thinking about the holidays. I don’t buy anyone fancy gifts, but I do like to show up with wine and homemade goods for people as I’m visiting or hosting friends from near and far. There is no savings allocation for this in my budget, and I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.
Another worrisome upcoming expense is pet-related. My 15 year old cat has pretty bad breath, and I think he’s due for some extractions. The vet noted the bad teeth about four years ago and said we can leave it until it affects his ability to eat. We aren’t there yet, but I don’t want my little old man cat to be in pain. His teeth are brown and gnarly, but otherwise he’s playful as ever. He fetches, pounces on bugs, and bullies the dog all day. Euthanasia doesn’t seem like a great option when extracting all his teeth would be about $700, and could prolong his life for a few years. He hasn’t been to the vet since 2015. He’s an easygoing kitty.
For many readers, both of the above items are discretionary and could be avoided. To me, they greatly impact my well-being. Something has to give in my budget, because I can’t see myself having any boarders or rover gigs for the next couple months. Well, maybe a boarder but definitely not a rover gig while I’m healing from hand surgery.
I understand the need for a proper, specific, 100% allocated budget to account for these items. I can’t move forward with debt reduction and savings goals unless I commit to doing the work of figuring out exactly where my money goes. Money is such a mental hurdle for me.
Time for Surgery!
Thanks for the distraction, readers. It’s time for me to head in. I’ll post an update Monday to let you all know how it went, but I’ll check comments here over the weekend as well.
Elizabeth is a single woman in her early 30s, working as a manager at a software company and living in the most expensive city in Canada. She hopes to blog about her journey to eliminate debt and build savings for home ownership someday. Whenever she has taken two financial steps forward, she’s always taken a step back with a bad credit card purchase (we’re looking at you, unnecessary iPhone of May 2019). Elizabeth lives alone with her fur kids, a dog and cat, and when she’s not in front of the computer, she enjoys running, camping, reading, and baseball.
The reality is that it all comes down to priorities and time. You can undoubtably save up for a down payment, but it’s a huge difference in how you go about it if you plan on doing it in 3 years or 10 years.
There is always going to be a sacrifice in “quality of life” when prioritizing. In my case, to save the down payment (which also included knocking out our debt), we lived in a 400 sq ft apartment for 4 years, including a baby for the last two of those years. That was on paper a negative for “quality of life” but in the moment and looking back, those days were wonderful.
Another way to look at it and the reason why we knocked out the debt aggressively is that money is necessary and sufficient for many goals. And debt costs money. Even at 0% interest, you pay for the opportunity cost of investing in things that pay off over long periods of time (like a business, or IRAs).
That’s why I and many commenters express so much “urgency” even while acknowledging it takes time to make progress.
I think you’re right. I have this mindset that I want to do everything in the next few years, but I’m not being aggressive enough about downsizing my current lifestyle.
Hope your surgery goes well.
I hope your surgery went well.
I would never, ever, tell a person to forego vet care for a pet. Pets are a major responsibility, and if you can’t afford that care you shouldn’t get a pet. But once you have that pet, you are morally (and sometimes legally) bound to give them appropriate medical care. If the vet says that the removal is the appropriate course of action, there are other considerations, but cost is not one of them.
Other considerations are things are like quality of life issues. Basically does the benefit outweigh the risks?
There are times when cost may be an issue—like I have senior cats with digestive disease. It can progress to cancer, and incredibly expensive chemo is an option. But would I want to put a cat through an expensive, and tough treatment, just to maybe get a few more months? So the cost is a concern, but not the primary one.