I am procrastinating painting my basement. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy decorating and painting - I just don't enjoy moving heavy boxes that are currently in the room into the next room so that I can get to the prepping (dry wall mudding, sanding, etc. etc.) before painting (ok, I really dislike prepping also - way too dusty for me). So, here I am creating a blog instead! I have many friends who are veterans in blogging. I just learned today that the word "blog" is a short form for web log. Huh, who knew? Well, now that I am a semi-retired stay at home mom who only does Visual Manufacturing software consulting on the side, I am starting to find that I have many more options for the time I have.
When I was in the rat race, my hubby and I would get up at 7 a.m., get our kids ready and bring them to the sitters, go to work till 6 or 7 p.m., pick up the babies, get home, fix dinner (most often consisted of something from the freezer or cans), eat dinner, help kiddies with homework, bathe the kiddies, put them to bed, clean up, (on some nights rush off to church for mid-week service), many nights we would roll into bed past midnight and the routine started back up, the next day. Only time we had to clean the house, do grocery shopping and do laundry was on the weekends. There wasn't a whole lot of time for building friendshiops. Any spare time we had would be taken up by nightmare tennants. There was a tennant who ran a dog kennel in the basement infesting the house with fleas. Another tennant tore up the house, many did not want to pay rent on time, well, I think if I had time to blog back then about all these, hollywood would have wanted our story for a horror flick!
We were pulling in six figures as a household even way back then, but we would constantly be in the red, with lots of help from our Overdraft protection. This was because we did not have the time to pay attention to the financial details. Writing about life back then is getting me stressed! I would never want to go back to that life.
2 years ago, I was laid off from my Software Consulting position. I had been working since I graduated University as an Engineer, when I was 22. Oh, so young back then. I had gone through many downsizing without getting hit. Then in my early forties, I get my first lay-off. Let me rewind this story a bit. A year prior to the lay-off, I was starting to get the sense that I needed to get out of debt and work towards being a stay at home mom. (My personal belief is, it was God telling me to do this - you may not agree with me on God being able to communicate with us, but that's a discussion for another blog). My goal was to be able to live on one income. The reason for that was, my kids were getting older and I felt that they now really need their mom to be home to help them navigate pre-teen years. I wanted my kids to have home cooked meals that are healthy and be able to teach them the things that the school did not teach them, like piano, typing, biblical principles of living, sewing, cooking, etc. When you make $100K a year, it is very difficult to give it up. I was way too chicken to quit! So, I was dragging my feet when it came to quiting however, I was starting to put things into motion (remember, I heard from God :-)) to get ready for quiting.
So, when I was laid off, we had already sold off one rental property and our principal residence was already on the market. The plan was to sell the principal residence and move into another rental property to fix it up. We had already given our tennant notice 2 months before the lay-off. By selling the principal residence and moving into the rental property, we were able to reduce the capital gains tax on the investment property when we are ready to sell it. Here in Canada, you can reduce your capital gains tax if you moved into your investment property first. The amount of taxes you pay is dependent on how long you stay in the property.
We made $90,000 in the sale of our house. We paid off all our debts. Put some money towards the mortgage of the investment/rental property and invested the rest. We did not put a whole lot onto the mortgage of the investment property because the interest rate was 0.5% at that time. We have our mortgage with TD Canada Trust. We had one of those Prime minus 1% rate. We were told that we would probably never see that rate again because sub-prime is out the window. It's like free money!
We then pulled our kids out of expensive private schools and put them in public schools. We cancelled cable tv and re-jigged the budget for one income. I still do some consulting on the side. This is to keep my brains active so that I don't become a blob. It also helps supplement my hubby's income as a supply teacher, till he gets that full time contract position.
My days now consist of having breakfast with the ladies once a week, volunteering as a Treasurer for the School Council, reading novels (my most favourite hobby since I was 8), talking with friends on the phone, going to exercise classes at the gym, watching cooking demonstrations on the internet, teaching my kids piano, cooking, I do only one cleaning chore per day (eg. sweep the floor, or dusting, or bathrooms). I have trained my kids (9 and 12) to do their own laundry so I only have my hubby's and my own laundry to do (so, that happens once every 2 weeks). I also really enjoy trading on the stock market and reading up on finance news. Oh yes, I still do a bit of Visual Manufacturing consulting - about 1 to 2 hours a day on average. Life is so much less stressful. Grocery shopping during a weekday morning sure beats the stampede on a Saturday! Helping the kids with their homework without being rushed - that is such a blessing. I call this living the Good Life. One of my favourite verses in the Bible is, "Jesus has come to give life and life more abundantly". John 10:10. This is indeed abundant living.
Let's see how long this new blogging "hobby" lasts for...
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