Oscoey’s three year anniversary passed in March and as much as I wanted to write a post about it we were dealing with Covid-19 and still adjusting to working from home, teaching our kids and being home together all the time. Oscoey was something I started when I was home with the kids as a way to stay home and maybe make some income off of it. To date I have made exactly zero dollars off of the blog but that is ok. Writing the blog and joining the personal finance community on Twitter has been a fabulous learning experience. I have met so many people and grown from where I was at with blogging when I first started. There were so many mistakes (paid advertising with minimal blog posts out much?). So, so many. Below is my first blog post and looking back it seems as though in an effort to maybe bolster how many posts I had I posted three posts my first day! Wow. Looking back I probably should have split those up a bit but hey, we all have to start somewhere.
My posting has been somewhat sporadic and since I am now a working parent time is very limited so that probably won’t change much. Working from home has given me back the 3-4 hours I was commuting but my workload has significantly increased which makes for longer work days. I am now regularly 9-10 hour days which includes some fabulous overtime. I have also been happily turning the extra time and money into outside/gardening time with the kids as often as I can and our garden is looking great! I would love to do the blog full time without working a traditional job but unfortunately that is not possible at the moment. I have run our numbers many many times and in order for us to feel “safe” with only one of us working (Mr. Oscoey isn’t ready to leave the workforce any time soon) we need to continue to both work and save as much of our income as we can. My kids are happy at their school and my job is pretty good with excellent benefits so that makes things much easier.
2019 was a really rough year for our family and we strayed quite a bit from our Financial Independence path by taking on some debt and keeping a blurry and somewhat blind eye on our budget. Honestly though, our family needed that break from the grind and most of our extra spending was in the travel department which I 100% do not regret. We were not able to take a vacation for many years due partially to a strict budget but mostly the difficulty of doing anything with a high needs child so once we discovered said child could actually travel a little bit with some accommodations we went a little wild. We made so many memories last year. Our kids love travel now and are pretty bummed that everything closed down this spring. Our last trip was in December when we went to our beloved Butchart Gardens in Victoria, B.C.. We saw the lights, we went ice skating and we walked around the harbor checking out the sites. We were scheduled to go back this weekend but it looks like the earliest we will be going will be next winter so we will miss out on all of the flowers.
One thing 2019 taught me is that we need to set aside a larger portion of our budget for travel expenses and another is that it is perfectly fine to drop the ball sometimes. Last year I dropped the ball with our budget but this year I have come back with more determination to bulk up our savings, increase our investments, pay down some debt and set aside larger amounts for travel. So far we have been pretty successful in this department. We have significantly increased our savings, paid down a large chunk of our debt and I am maintaining our investment amounts through the end of the year. I am hoping that by this time next year we will be at our increased Emergency Fund goal, have paid down the two debt items I am focusing on and will be ready to shuffle that extra money into our investment accounts. Part of our savings currently is set aside for travel but maybe, if things are looking better with Covid infection rates in our area we will cashflow a smaller trip at the end of the summer and/or a trip to Victoria in December. For now we are trying to be content with travel consisting of rotating from the front to the back yard and exploring our neighborhood during our daily walks.
Hawaii has been repeatedly requested over the past couple of years as a travel destination but the thought of flying that far with a child with a narrow comfort window and the inability to express themselves fully filled me with a sense of doom. We were however able to successfully fly to San Francisco and made one of our trips to Canada successfully without massive sickness at the border so I have some hope. I am tentatively planning on going to Hawaii in early 2021 but it depends on where we are at with a cure/vaccine for the Corona virus. Ideally we would go to San Francisco again first since it is a smaller flight just to get the kids used to flying a little bit more but I am not sure if that will happen. I would also like to travel somewhere new next year but I am not sure where that would be.
The last three years (and counting) of blogging have been great and even though I don’t have a regular post schedule I am going to keep up with it. Writing is a good outlet for me and I love to talk about personal finance, our vacations and what is going on in our garden. I have ideas for a few more posts so you might see me around more in the near future, especially since working from home allows me more free time. I would love to regularly update the “Fabric Crafts” section of my blog but I have not been super motivated to stitch and my sewing machine is currently on loan to the oldest. In the mean time please enjoy some of my top posts.
Dried banana chips are one of my son’s favorite foods. I have some in the dehydrator as I am writing this! This recipe is super simple and you can make as many or as little as you want.
My grandma’s fruit salad recipe is by far my most popular post, even with not so great photos. My grandma passed away last year and every time I check my post stats seeing this recipe up there reminds me of her.
For some reason this post always pops up in my top posts for the week even though it is pretty old and outdated. We did pay off my student loans that year and increase both our savings and investments which is great.
