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Montreal and Back in Under Two Days

Are you the kind of person who likes to have everything arranged well ahead of time? Do you like to know where, when, why, and how-much-will-this-cost when traveling? I am starting to see how that might be nice — particularly when traveling with children. Packing for a family is so much more involved than packing for yourself it turns out. You need clothes and toiletries and lots and lots of underwear/diapers. You need lots of games and toys for them to throw onto the floor of the car, never to be retrieved. You need snacks. You need pillows and blankets and a playpen and special snuggly blankets and the where-the-hell-is-it soother. And always, always you need a contingency plan.

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Breaking the Family Budget

Budgeting is a relatively new revelation for me. I got sick of feeling like I was constantly depriving myself and yet never getting ahead. Any and every purchase was tinged with the guilt of “I can’t afford this.” I felt like I barely spent anything and couldn’t figure out where the money went. For years my husband I withdrew however much money we needed from our joint chequing account (neither of us exactly sure how much the other was spending) and barely made rent. The last week of every month was painfully lean as we tried to cobble together enough to keep a roof over our heads.

So last fall I drew up a budget. Well, first I bought the Pocket Idiots Guide: Living On A Budgetbecause I didn’t know quite where to start. It is pretty straightforward, but sometimes you just want somebody — some writer — to say “Start here.” We’re still not doing everything exactly by the book, so to speak. We have some debt to tackle rather than putting aside a rainy day fund, for example. We also have some needs to be met that cannot really wait for us to strictly be able to afford them. Like we couldn’t wait to pay off our debt before purchasing a car, a dishwasher and an air conditioner. (Trust me. The second baby plus trying to find the time to work from home made those things pretty damn necessary.) But the real miracle is that we found a way to pay for them. Knowing how much money we have left to spend after all the necessities are accounted for actually makes me feel richer. It’s okay for us to go out for dinner because I know that the essentials are taken care of. By putting most of my spending money on my credit card I get to pay down my balance when I come under budget, too. So I’m spending more freely and saving money — unreal.

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The Impromptu Day Trip

Once a week I like to recommend something fun for the family to do. I’m not picky. I’ll write about a good song or a crazy vacation, as long as I’ve tried it and liked it. There’s really no shortage of things to do for kicks. Still, every so often, I come up dry. So does everybody, right? Sometimes you want to get out of the house and do something, but you can’t for the life of you figure out what you feel like doing. Guess what? That’s okay, too.