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Category: Staff Picks

  • You Need a Budget

    Since my position was terminated due to COVID-19, my family’s income has felt the pinch. Thanks to the government, I was able to qualify for CERBs for a while, but it couldn’t last forever. During these uncertain times, having a budget is extremely important, especially if you have a family.

    My wife makes decent money, and so did I before the pandemic. Sadly, we haven’t always made good money. For most of our time together, only one of us would have a job (either her or I). There was one point where I had 8 jobs (at or near minimum wage), and still couldn’t piece together enough hours from them all to make a single full-time position. Add in moving across the country, twice, plus relocating to a new apartment every 1-2 years within province, and the expenses add up. That’s not even talking about student loans or the mortgage on our, extremely modest, house.

    Step 1: Tracking

    The first thing you really need to do, is track your expenses for a couple of months. Clip your receipts, get copies of your bank statements, whatever you need to do. I can pull up a couple years worth of transactions from my bank, but it doesn’t necessarily say what I bought. As a result, you may not be able to work backward too far.

    I’d suggest a basic spreadsheet to get you started. Something very simple. Include Date, Vendor, Category, Amount. Once you’ve input a month or two of transactions, you can figure out how much you spent per category, and it’ll give you an idea of your (current) expenses.

    Many people stop at this step, and call it a “budget.” But it’s really just tracking. In order to budget, you need to be able to predict your expenses & income in advance, and allocate money toward it.

    Step 2: Budget “Real” Expenses

    So you’ve tracked your spending for a month or two. That’s great. But it doesn’t really cover all of your expenses. You have Christmas Presents & the big meal that’ll pop up next month. There’s your Amazon Prime & Netflix Renewals. Maybe a Costco Membership? A professional license? A quarterly haircut?

    These are things you don’t necessarily spend money on every month, but they come around every year anyways. You’ll need to add those to your categories.

    As an example, here’s my list:

    • Disney+
    • OneSoccer
    • Netflix
    • Haircuts
    • Auto Maintenance
    • Home Maintenance
    • Vision
    • Dental
    • Medical & Pharmaceutical
    • Internet Hosting & Domain Renewals
    • Amazon Prime
    • Costco
    • Museum & Science Centre Memberships
    • Professional Memberships
    • Halloween Decor
    • Christmas Savings
    • Chinese New Year Savings
    • Veterinary Care
    You Need a Budget logo
    I use YNAB to track my expenses & budget for the future. Click & use my referral link to subscribe & we both get 1-month free.

    Once you’ve added your categories, you take the total amount that you would pay in a year for that category, and divide it by 12. Boom, you have your monthly cost for say, Christmas ($35/month = $420).

    By budgeting a little at a time for these things, it won’t suddenly destroy your pocketbook. It also keeps Christmas in your mind throughout the year, allowing you to pick up presents, using cash, when they come on sale.

    Step 3: Set Goals

    If you’re aiming to kill debt, that’s one thing. But if you know you’re going to need to renovate your bathroom in 3 years, that’s a whole different sport, and you’re going to need to start putting money aside sooner rather than later. Trust me, you do not want a big renovation to ride on a credit card.

    Let’s put that bathroom reno at $10k, and schedule it for 3-years (36 months). In order to be able to pay for it all in cash, you’re going to need to budget $278/month. Much like my annual expenses, I actually throw this money into a savings account. It’s great to see it build up, and there’s a little bit of interest that helps it grow while I’m saving.

    Step 4: Be Accountable to your Budget

    It’s important to keep budgeting forward, and to keep on top of tracking your expenses. When your category reads $0 left for the month, either move money from another category, or put whatever you’re looking to pick up back on the shelf.

    This can be pretty tricky for a lot of people. Although the spreadsheet I provided earlier was a good start, it can get pretty painful to manually enter your transactions. Once you actually start budgeting, I actually recommend using a great app that I’ve been using for years: You Need a Budget (YNAB).

    I first started using YNAB with version 3, and used YNAB 4 for a long time. These were not apps, but actual programs that you used on a computer. The current version of YNAB, is accessible both on a website, and on your phone (iOS or Android). You can link it directly to your bank and credit cards, which allows you to import & reconcile transactions. Additionally, it allows you to create the categories, set the budget, and have goals right in the program.

    Both the web & mobile apps have reports to help you see how you’re doing and where your money is going. Additionally, there are add-ons for the web app that can give you even more reports to further break down your performance. These are handy, and I’m sure I’ll get into the further another time.

    YNAB: The 4 Rules

    1. Give every dollar a job.
    2. Embrace your true expenses.
    3. Roll with the punches.
    4. Age your money.

    Essentially, it’s a lot of what I wrote about above. The key thing is to age your money, such that the money you spend today has been in your account for 3+ months. This may mean “overbudgeting” or “underspending” some of your expenses at the start, and watching a buffer form (my technique), or relying on whatever you budget for “savings” to grow the age of your money.

    I could talk a lot more about this program, and what my family has been able to accomplish with it, but I think I’ll leave that for future articles.

    Conclusion

    Beginning the begetting process is hard. You need to track your expenses, look at your true expenses, and create goals for the future. Even more importantly, you need to hold yourself accountable. All of this is tricky for anyone, with a couple of kids and only 1 real income, it’s vital.

    I’ll be doing a whole series on finance & budgeting. So be sure to come back often for useful tips, pointers, and ways to trim your expenses.

  • Laundry: The Never Ending Pile

    For the childless, laundry is weekly (or even bi-weekly) nuisance. You lug a basket or two to your washer & dryer (or laundromat), and in two or three hours, you’re done and everything is either put away, or ready to be put away.

    Those of us with small children experience a completely different beast. It’s like singing the Song that Never Ends or being stuck in the Never Ending Story. Laundry quickly becomes a daily, or even twice-daily occurrence. And even worse, the pile never really seems to get dented.

    Time-of-Use Restrictions

    I weep for those poor souls with kids that use the laundromat. Restrictive opening hours, and a reliance on coin use can cause havoc with a schedule. Add one or two kids running around, and it’s a recipe for disaster.

    For those of us with laundry in our homes, we have other restrictions. Primarily, this comes down to electricity rates.

    For those unaware, electricity is charged at a different amount based upon the time of day. This is called “Time-of-Use Billing.” During heavy usage times (typically work hours), the cost per kWH is almost double the evening (after 7:00pm) & weekend rate. There’s a “medium” usage period (roughly 7:00am – 10:00am & 4:00pm – 7:00pm), where the rate is roughly halfway between the two.

    As a Dad At Home, this means I can’t just throw the laundry on in the middle of the day. At least, not unless I really love a skyrocketing electric bill. Also, leveraging evening is one of my top-5 ways to better manage time.

    COVID-19 has resulted in a new “tiered billing”, which charges roughly the “medium” usage rate mentioned above for the first 1,000 kWH in a month. Every kWH above 1,000 is charged at the “high” usage rate. Although this would seem appealing, once you realize exactly how much laundry you need to do, this comes up quite a bit more expensive.

    Typical Laundry Week

    Your mileage may vary, but with 2 kids we get a lot of laundry in the house. One of our kids is starting to potty train overnight, and the other uses cloth diapers. I’ll do a cloth vs disposable comparison in a future article (as we’ve used both). Needless to say, with cloth diapers, there is substantially more laundry, and you’ll want to do them separate of the rest of your clothes.

    Number of Loads

    • Cloth Diapers – 1 load every 2 days (takes extra-long, see below)
    • Kids Clothes – 2-3/week
    • Adult Darks – 1 per week
    • Adult Colours – 1 per week
    • Medical Scrubs – 1 per week
    • Kids sheets – 1 per week (rotating), with typically 2-3 as needed due to training accidents
    • Adult sheets – 1 every 2 weeks
    • Adult whites – 1 every 2 weeks

    If you count that up, you’re looking at a minimum of 10 loads of laundry per week.

    The Schedule

    MondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFridaySaturdaySunday
    7:00 pm
    Scrubs    		7:00 pm
    Kids’ Clothes (1)    		7:00 pm
    Adult Darks    		7:00 pm
    Adult Colours    		7:00 pm
    Kids’ Clothes (2)    		6:00 am
    Adult Whites
    OR
    Adult Sheets    		6:00 am
    Kids’ Sheets

    11:00 am Kids’ Clothes (3)
    Cloth Diapers Every 2 days, typically at 8:00 pm

    Keeping Laundry Organized

    Laundry Baskets on Shelf - Keeps it tidy & organized
    Keeping organized is key to staying on top of the never ending laundry.

    Laundry finishes after 9:00pm (or midnight on diaper nights). As a result, you can’t fold the same day it’s washed. My spouse and I team up and typically fold laundry when we’re unwinding & watching television in the evening. As this is normally the next day, keeping clean laundry organized is vital.

    Thankfully, we only have a few items that need to be hung up immediately. So they’re taken care of the moment we pull them from the washer or dryer. Everything else we pull into baskets and set up on a shelf. Once folded, if we aren’t able to put it away immediately, the folded basket(s) are also put on the shelf. This makes it easy to see what’s good to go up in the morning, and what still needs to handled.

    Towels, sheets & blankets don’t typically need to be folded immediately. Save these for weekends.

    Important Dad Tip

    Cloth Diapers

    These are a special monster. Not only do you need to do a basic scrub right away, they take a lot of extra time & materials to wash out. Use vinegar in addition to the laundry detergent, as it kills bacteria. These diapers are going right next to your baby/toddler’s skin, so it’s important they’re sanitized in addition to washed out.

    I set the washer to a medium-load with “extra heavy” soil. I also set 2-hour soak in the vinegar/detergent mix, and an extra rinse & spin-out. It took a few weeks to come up with the right cycles to properly get the smell out, but this did the trick.

    I leave them in the dryer overnight and pull it out first thing in the morning. You don’t need to worry about wrinkles or folding.

    • 3 hours total in Washer
    • 1 hour in Dryer
    • 0 minutes Folding Time

    Conclusion

    There’s a lot of laundry, and there’s no way around it. But it isn’t (and shouldn’t) tackled all at once. Nor should the task fall solely on a Dad (or Mom) At Home. Do one or two loads a day, and share the work with your spouse. Many hands make light(er) work, and this is extremely important when it comes to the never ending pile of laundry.

  • Pumpkin Pie (Lactose-Free)

    Pumpkin Pie is definitely a fall favourite, especially around my house. However, it can be extremely sweet, extremely fattening, and with so much cream, it tends to not agree with a surprisingly large portion of the population (59% in Canada).

    I did a lot of the legwork, and really bit the bullet by cooking & eating a lot of pumpkin pie (such torture!). But, as a result, I’ve put together a low-sugar and lactose-free pumpkin pie recipe that tastes great.

    Skip to Recipe

    Get Your Kids Involved

    My eldest helped me mix the ingredients for Thanksgiving this year.

    Give almost any kid a whisk, and they’re good to go. In my son’s case, he also loves to dump the measured ingredients into the bowl. My oldest is only 4, so I handled the wet ingredients, but he’s happy to measure and pour in the dry ingredients.

    This particular recipe doesn’t really require a lot of solids, so it’s a good one to let kids measure out.

    Pumpkin Pie - DadAtHome.ca

    What Kind of Pumpkin?

    When making Pumpkin Pie, you do have several options for what kind of pumpkin you can use.

    Most people will aim for a small “pie pumpkin” or “cooking pumpkin.” These are ideal if you only want to make 1 batch. You won’t have much (if any) pumpkin left over, and may even be a little short of the 2 cups you need for this recipe.

    I much prefer a full-size pumpkin, much like the ones you would carve for a jack-o-lantern. These pumpkins aren’t as sweet as the small pie pumpkins, but you will pay substantially less and get a lot more puree once cooked.

    Canned pumpkin is an option if you can’t get anything. Just make sure it’s unsalted, or the whole recipe will be off.

    Cook & Puree

    PrepCookCool & PureeTotal
    20 minutes30-45 minutes20 minutes70-85 minutes

    There are a few ways this can be done.

    First, preheat your oven to 375 F (190 C).

    Some people will cut a pumpkin into chunks and cook it. Others will cook it whole and clean up the mess afterward.

    Personally, I prefer to cut my pumpkin in half and scoop out the guts (careful to keep the seeds, check back for a recipe later). Line a large, rimmed baking pan with aluminum foil. Pour 1-2 cups of water in the pan. Place the pumpkin halves open-end down on the foil.

    Pop the pumpkin in the oven on a lower rack for 30-45 minutes (depending on the size of your pumpkin).

    Carefully remove and allow to cool 10 minutes or until you can safely hold the pumpkin.

    Scoop cooked pumpkin off of skin and into a blender. Puree once full. Measure 2 cups for pies.

    Consider measuring additional 2-cup portions and freezing for future use (see our article on storing leftovers).

    Ingredients

    • 2 eggs
    • 2 cups pumpkin puree
    • 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp packed SPLENDA brown sugar blend
    • 3 tsp cinnamon
    • 1/2 tsp ginger
    • 1/2 tsp nutmeg
    • 1/4 tsp salt
    • 1/2 tsp allspice
    • 1 1/3 cup lactose-free 10% cream (may be labelled)
    • 2 pie crusts
    Pumpkin Pie - Unmixed Ingredients
    After beating the eggs, you can mix all the ingredients at once. It’s very easy!
    PrepCookTotal
    10 minutes60 minutes70 minutes
    Does not include Pumpkin Cooking & Puree Time (above)
    Recipe makes two pies. Enjoy!

    Step-by-Step

    1. Preheat oven to 450 F (233 C).
    2. Beat eggs.
    3. Add all other ingredients & whisk.
    4. Ladle the filling into pie crusts.
    5. Place in oven on centre-rack 15 minutes.
    6. Reduce temperature to 350 F (177 C) and bake 45 minutes.
    7. Let cool & serve with Lactose-Free Whipped Cream.

    Want to see more photos? Check out the gallery on Instagram!

  • Becoming Dad at Home

    I wasn’t always a stay-at-home Dad.

    Like many men my age, I had a full-time job that took me out of the house on a daily basis. I got up early, grabbed coffee, settled the kids with the sitter or loaded them into the car for day-care. Next, I dropped off the wife & kids, before my 9-5 work.

    I analyzed utilization trends for a company that had just been acquired by a larger umbrella corporation. I was on a good career path. My work was paying for some certification courses, and I was passing them with relative ease. There were, of course, some of the usual, cross-generational, differences about the office, but generally they were worked around and workflow was improving.

    So what happened?

    It was a double-whammy of trouble that rolled out.

    First, I had a tumour in my leg, and I needed surgery to have it removed. The diagnosis came in February, and I informed my employer like a good little worker. I received the usual platitudes, inquiries for surgery date (which I had yet to receive), and so on.

    COVID-19 hit by the end of the week, and we were all sent to work from home. Grandma handled childcare, as the daycare was now closed (even to those with parents in Healthcare), and we were expected to continue to work.

    Personally, that was awesome for me. It meant homemade espresso instead of Keurig. A daily commute became a thing of the past. And I would rarely be distracted by the telephone, office politics, overheard conversations, etc. My productivity ballooned.

    I quickly caught up on a backlog of work, prepared company newsletters both in advance and on the fly, and made some significant steps in other work projects that would make things smoother on whomever took over my position when I moved up.

    A month later my workplace eliminated my position due to “lack of work.”

    So I searched for new employment. Because of COVID, there wasn’t any.

    Becoming Dad at Home

    I no longer needed Grandma to take care of my kids, so I took over childcare full-time.

    My wife works in healthcare, and actually had her shifts increase from part-time to full-time plus OT. So her hours at home went from reasonable, to limited. Due to maternity leaves, retirement, and an unexpected death at her work, her hours have yet to return to a more normal level. We don’t anticipate it will happen anytime in the next two years.

    It’s spring, and my eldest wouldn’t go to school until fall. So, I focused on spending as much time with my kids as I could. After all, a surgery to remove my tumour could happen anytime.

    I took on most of the household duties. Not just cooking & dishes. I also handled most of the early learning, activity-running, event preparation, shopping, laundry, sweeping, mopping, and a myriad of other things that I didn’t realize was going to come with being at home. Add COVID-level safety precautions on top of it all, and it can become a mighty list.

    Economy & Schools Re-opening

    Months went by, and COVID restrictions began to lighten. I re-activated my teaching license, in the hopes of stepping back into a teaching role. I mean, they would surely decrease class sizes in order to keep COVID from becoming pandemic in the school population right?

    Wrong.

    Not only did classes sizes not decrease, but those that chose to no longer attend school in person, now get to watch their teacher’s blackboard from a webcam and hope they can keep up. They actually cut teaching positions, forcing some teachers to handle 2-3 online classes in addition to their class at school.

    Still, once things got underway, I figured something would come up.

    I didn’t really think it was going to be my surgery. Nor a three-week close-to-zero-movement recovery. Nor did I think it would be a continued search, without any realistic leads, for a position.

    Accepting the Future

    I had been a Dad at Home for a spring and summer. The school sent my kid home “sick” on the 2nd day of class. They also introduced the 14-day or 24 hrs after no symptoms & a negative COVID-test policy, so it quickly became apparent that both parents could not work the same way that we did pre-COVID.

    My wife makes good money. If we didn’t have debt, I’d say great money, but that’s how it falls. Since there’s no daycare bill, it’s actually cheaper for our family if I stay home. Soon-to-be-constant sick calls from cold & flu season in kindergarten already looms on the horizon.

    With all that in mind, it means I’m staying home for the foreseeable future. I’ll be taking care of the house daily. Tending my youngest all day. Watching my oldest when he’s home from school. And most importantly, making sure everything runs smoothly so my wife doesn’t have to worry about things while she works to keep the city healthy.

    I started to piece this together once I accepted I was going to be home on a more permanent basis. After all, there’s a lot more to being a dad at home than most people (myself included) realize.

    What to expect

    I’m going to piece this site together as I go. You can expect a lot of tips & tricks, links to sites with resources, some homemade materials of my own, and a heck of a lot more. I’m going to review some of the products we’ve experimented with as the kids have grown up, and I’ll compare them.

    This site is aimed at helping you make decisions about how to help your family, and how certain things affected my own.

    As with anything related to parenting, your mileage may vary. Not all kids & families react the same way, but if my experiences are useful to someone, that’s the goal.

    I’ll be releasing articles twice weekly. Other website updates may come in between, as I have something to add.

    Be sure to subscribe to my newsletter to receive updates and any sort of offers I may be able to pass along. You can also follow along on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest so you’ll know when I’ve some new material for your reading pleasure.

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