Week 13: October Check-Up

October starts tomorrow, so I thought it would be a good time to check in on the Fall Focal Points situation. I wrote that post just about 2 months ago, in eager anticipation of gaining my weekend hours back, and as of yesterday, our basement project is 100% complete. Big sigh of relief.

To say this is the biggest renovation we’ve ever tackled would be an understatement. Before this, we had limited ourselves to one room at a time, and as of right now, none of them have actually been completed. They’re mostly done, and after a surprisingly short amount of time, you barely notice things like missing trim or unpainted ceilings. We are pretty good at getting to the point where the majority of the project is complete and the room is totally functional, then we lose interest. I know this isn’t an uncommon problem, but both of us work at jobs that are very much about producing finished work so you’d think we’d be able to get our act together. As it turns out, we can, as long as there is a financial reward.

In this case, we decided that we wanted to build a suite in our basement to replace the weirdly laid out maze of rooms that had become a grungy storage area for things we didn’t really need. Huge waste of space was what it was. We had been planning to do this for years, but it was an overwhelming task to think about, as it meant getting rid of almost everything down there, completely deconstructing the existing layout, and moving/redesigning our heating system before we could even begin.

Once we got started though, there was really no going back because every cent we paid to move forward was wasted money unless the end result was rental income. The entire process took about a year and a half, though it was really only the last 8 months or so that involved us spending all our weekends physically working on the construction. As an interior designer, I loved planning everything and I think my professional knowledge probably helped us avoid a lot of bumps along the way, but actually doing the work? Not my favourite.

You may (or may not) wonder what, after so many years of living in our house, made us decide to finally take this on. For me, it was definitely influenced by the reading I had been doing on financial independence and early retirement (known as the FIRE movement, if you want to look it up.)

I referenced this, but didn’t really go into detail, in my Life Energy Valuation post. I’m not going to go into detail here either, but the basic premise of the FIRE movement is to maximize your savings and reduce your expenses, with the goal of not having to work for a living as soon as possible. The part about not working is something I have always desired; I just had no idea that there was an attainable way to achieve it, aside from marrying an elderly millionaire or winning the lottery, neither of which are things I could really see happening in my life.

From a FIRE standpoint, the basement suite hits a lot of marks:

• Rental income – This is, of course, an obvious one, but I do want to point out that instead of using the money to buy more or fancier stuff, we intend to save it for the future.
• Optimization of space – We have now taken something that we were not using, and turned it into a comfortable home for another person; we were lucky enough to buy our house before prices skyrocketed, but that means that if we wanted to downsize to just the right amount of space for us, there would likely be no financial gain, just a lot of hassle. Plus we love our neighbourhood and want to stay right where we are.
• Purging excess stuff – We sold or gave away as much as we could of the miscellaneous items that had amassed over the years, though sadly quite a lot of stuff ended up in the landfill too – we are making a conscious effort to limit purchases going forward. (There’s still a lot of stuff in this house that doesn’t spark joy, but it’s an ongoing process.)
• Retirement income – Further down the road, the suite income could cover a portion of our living expenses, and potentially, it could also be turned into a short term rental when we have more time to be involved in managing it.

Building the suite was a big step in optimizing our finances, but once you’ve optimized as much as you can, unless you can also drastically increase your income, the blazing excitement of FIRE kind of settles down to hot coals and it just becomes a waiting game. This brings me back to my initial intent of this post, which is to re-assess my Fall Focal Points, because I don’t want to just wait around for retirement, I want to live it during the free time that I’ve worked so hard to create.

When I wrote my FFP post, I was anticipating (optimistically) getting started in September. I am about a month behind, so I really haven’t actually started yet, however; in the past couple of months, I have had some thoughts and additional ideas about my plans:

Writing:

• Weekly blog – still going strong!
• Children’s book – no progress
• E-publishing/ self-publishing – this is a topic I want to look into; it seems to open the door to a wide range of endeavours but I haven’t done any research on it yet

Swing Dancing:

• No progress on watching or practicing the content from all our video recaps yet. I think we will need to choose a specific move or technique to focus on during a particular time frame in order to make progress; we need structure or we don’t do anything at all.
• We have branched out into Blues dancing by taking some lessons and attending one social dance (so far). We are also registered for a workshop next month. We are really enjoying it and I think it will be beneficial to our swing dancing progress as well.
• I am thinking about starting a monthly Balboa practice group, but haven’t worked out the logistics yet. It’s an idea that has been percolating for a while and now that I have some free time again, I would like to get it going
• Video of myself dancing – this idea is somewhat horrifying to think about, but I know it would be useful in order to understand what I want/need to work on…

Stained Glass:

• No progress here, though I do have another design I want to work on, in addition to the one I did during the summer
• Until I clean up what’s left of our basement, I don’t really have a work space for this so it might have to wait until spring. In the meantime, I might continue to work on some new designs whenever the mood strikes.

Secret Design Project:

• No progress here, but I have a few items on my checklist that I plan to compete by the end of the year.

These focal points should be more than enough to keep me enjoyably busy for the next season or two*, but still allow me to be flexible about how I want to spend my weekends and Mondays. I’m already looking forward to next weekend when the only thing I have on my schedule is Sunday jazz.

*I have given myself permission to not think about any house-related projects for 6 months and just bask in the glory of achievement. I would like to complete all those 90% finished projects, just not right now.