Holy mackerel, we're rich!!! I still can't really believe it myself, but we are... We finally sold our house and the savings from our mortgage thus became available to us as well. Technically speaking, it is not that big a load of cash, but for me it feels as if we have become millionaires overnight!
And so a period of our life seems to have come to an end. A way of life we not necessarily have to cling to anymore. Well, at least not for the coming months, at least ;-) The lifestyle of the let's-see-how-we-can-make-ends-meet-this-time.
Don't get me wrong, we have never been poor. But we have experienced a rather prolonged period of life in a state of not-having-enough-money. And while it may sound as if I am looking for some form of pity, I actually want to share with you some of the lessons I learned from being on a budget. Lessons I learned with the help of Menno, who, aside from being an amazing husband, also is a pretty steadfast financial conscience. True, I have called him stingy in the past, but let's face it, if it had been left up to me, we probably would be knee-deep in debt right now. So thank you! Plus, his budgeting and my creativity inspired us to do things that we normally would never have done. Or even considered a possibility!
Let's start at where our financial situation started to slope downhill. January 17th, 2011. The day we arrived at YVR airport in Vancouver. With only 2 children and no more than 7 suitcases (and 4 hand luggage trolleys, let's be fair) we were ready to start our new life at the other side of the globe. We had briefly considered shipping our furniture and belongings from The Netherlands, but even with my meagre grasp of math I was able to figure out that the added value of our belongings was less than how much it would cost us to ship it.
So, that first night, we came into our empty apartment, unrolled our thermarest mats and slept on the floor. The next few days we spent collecting the basic necessities of furniture, because we had a rental car for a week. It was during our search that we already met with the kindness of strangers. For people on a budget, the kindness of strangers is like your christmas bonus at work. Out of nowhere, people can make you so happy with what they have to share. In our case, we picked up a super cute, second hand, wooden toddler bed from a house in Coquitlam. Of course Jura and Nori, heavily jet lagged at that time, wanted to come into the house with me. While Menno lugged the bed to our car, I chatted with the lady who sold us the bed. Upon hearing that we had just moved to Canada and had only few toys for the girls, she gave us some very nice things for free! I felt bad accepting it, because, well, I had never been in the situation where somebody had felt the need to give me things for free...but seeing how happy Jura was to have another chalkboard to replace the one she had had to leave behind in the Netherlands, I decided to swallow my pride.
And that, right there, is the first lesson I learned. Having less money than you would like to have, places you in a strange position. All of a sudden, you become aware of what is considered "the norm" for spending money on. Like buying a coffee when going to the playground. Or having a car. Or bringing presents to your child's friend's birthday party. Or, heck, handing out goodie bags at your child's birthday party. It takes some courage, or at least, it took me some courage, to navigate those particular waters. To realize that it is ok not to have the things that society somehow thinks you should have in order to be successful. Now, I am not talking about the big things like buying a house or a fancy car. But even in the small things, you can feel the sting of the have's vs. the have-nots. If you are susceptible to that feeling, that is. You have to learn to take pride in living on a budget (because nobody else will applaud you for it ;-) ) while at the same time swallowing a different kind of pride and allow people to help you where they want to help you. Accept what is given, because it will make your life a lot easier!
When it comes to learning life on a budget, I am still eternally grateful that I got to go to the University of British Columbia. Living on campus taught me basically everything I needed to know, with a little extra help from my dear Dutch friend who lived 70km away from me. On campus, everybody was struggling. Life in Vancouver is insanely expensive, the cost of living is ridiculously high. You may think upon reading this that it is prosaic exaggeration, but let me tell you, this is the regular way to talk about life expenses in Vancouver. To exaggerate would be to say that nobody can afford to live there. That only being an exaggeration, because obviously people still do. Live there, I mean.
Add to that, that as a family from another country, you are dealing with the common money-slurping shenanigans of immigration bureaucracy. You do not move oversees because it makes your life easier, or less expensive, that's for sure. By leaving the Netherlands, we said goodbye to the child support we received there and were not eligible for child support in Canada until we had lived there for 18 months. Those kinds of rules and regulations held for every international family that lived in the UBC student-family or faculty-and-staff-housing. Those from Canada were also far away from family and support networks, so there was a general atmosphere of helping each other out.
My dear friend M. and I have spent many happy days collecting second hand furniture, or even dumpster furniture, to build ourselves a house worthy of Martha Stewart (just kidding, M ;-) ). She would call me whenever she had seen something nice, and later when I met my friend S who lived off campus, she would do the same! The first year I decorated, and re-decorated, our apartment with furniture found at the side of the street. More often than not, Menno would come back home from work and would see something was different, but would not be able right away to put his finger on what it was... Which was always kind of funny, because it gave me the feeling of what it would be like to have gone to the hairdresser and Menno not noticing. Of course, we had no money for me to actually go to the hairdresser, so this was a good second ;-)
Life on a budget also meant we did not have a car. Luckily, the public transportation system is excellent in Vancouver. One of my fondest memories of our first year in Vancouver, though, is our first christmas eve. Our dear friend M had lent us our car, because they were visiting family in Toronto for christmas. On christmas eve, after dinner, we put Jura and Nori in the car with a sippy cup filled with hot chocolate. With Cookie (Eluin's working title while I was pregnant with her) doing summersaults in my tummy, we drove around the neighbourhoods surrounding the UBC campus. The girls were completely mesmerized by the insanely beautiful christmas decorations. In fact, that drive around town became one of our christmas traditions in Vancouver.
Still, I felt we had to invest in some form of transportation. So first we bough a bike for me with a double bike trailer. Later on, while pregnant with Cookie, we bought a Phil and Teds stroller. Second hand of course, from someone in Surrey. The girls thought the trip on the skytrain to Surrey was the best trip they had ever had (all credits go to the bag of snacks that I had brought with me on that trip ;-) ) and I arrived home with 2 kids sound asleep in the new double stroller.
That double stroller was such a life-saver, that it inspired me to the most ambitious holiday I have ever organized. Going camping. By public transport. Yup, you read that right. Our family (Menno, Roos, Jura (5), Nori (3) and Eluin (4 months)) decided to go camping on Vancouver Island and to travel there by bus and ferry. We made so many good memories!
In preparation for this trip, I went to the Canadian Tire to stock up on some camping gear. Of course, I brought the Phil and Teds stroller, because that was basically going to be our tent trailer. I spent quite some time in the aisles fitting all the necessary items (double air mattress, new tent, sleeping bags, etc.) in the stroller. Feeling like the queen of Tetris, I finally found all the things to fit into the stroller, with room to spare for a child to sit in the stroller. Happy as a clam, I took my loot to the check out. The lady behind the register asked me if I needed help getting it to the car. This is the conversation that followed:
C(heckout lady): "Are you sure? We really don't mind and it looks like you have your hands full..."
R(oos): "Thank you, but it's ok...I came here by bus."
C (surprised): "You came here by bus? But how are you going to take it back?"
R (feeling proud): "Well, I just spent some time trying how everything would fit in my stroller"
C (impressed): "Wow, smart thinking if you have to take it home by bus."
R: "Well...actually...we don't own a car. So I bought this camping gear for a camping trip to Nanaimo and we will travel there by public transport"
C (incredulous): "What? Are you taking 3 kids camping by bus? Wow...that is kind of, well, ambitious... Can I call my manager? He definitely needs to see this!!!"
:-)
So now, fast forward about 3 years. In the meantime we had moved from our place on campus to a place off campus. Menno had been awarded a prestigious research grant that gave us a lot more financial leeway. We were actually able to save some money!
And then we got to move overseas again...
Really, there is no thing that makes you lose your money as quickly as a trans-continental move. Maybe we are playing this particular game the wrong way, but as much as we tried to prevent history from repeating itself, we found ourselves in Norway in a uncomfortably similar situation as how we had started in Canada.
First off, this time we did decide to ship our stuff. Because, frankly, we had more that we wanted to keep from our time in Canada than we did moving out of the Netherlands. In part because we left most of our life locked away in our families' various attics before moving to Canada. With our stuff on the way, Menno made his way to Norway and me and the girls travelled to Holland to sell our house. I left Holland after three months with a signed preliminary buying agreement in my pocket...only to see that fall through at the last moment, because the buyers were unable to secure a mortgage. Bummer.
Not only did this mean we had to find some way to sell our house while already overseas (thank you, parents-in-law!), it also meant double rents and financial insecurity. Our savings from Canada were mostly usurped by the deposit for our rental home here (a whopping 5.000 euros) and an exorbitantly high storage fee for our goods at the port in Oslo.
So there we were again... Trying to build our house on no money. Lending money from our parents. With more stuff, that's true, because we have a much bigger house here in Norway than we ever had in Canada. And the comfort of having our "own" material rubble around us (toys, books, plates and cutlery) from the start, rather than having to forage for an inventory, does make a lot of difference. But starting up a new life is expensive, it always is. And I have felt so bad about not being able to be as generous as I want to be for all these years and then starting anew with the stingy scurmudgeon lifestyle, that I have to admit that I have felt lost sometimes during our first months here...
But all that is a thing from the past now! We are out of the deep and murky waters. And I am so grateful for that. Because having learned my lessons in appreciating health, family, friends, love, laughter, traditions, food, kindness, volunteer work, crazy plans and shoestring holidays above material wealth, the money we have now feels like something that gives us opportunities, rather than something we need to make us happy in life.
And on that note: I realize that although we may not have been wealthy in the traditional sense of the word for the past years, I truly recognize my wealth in how lucky we are to be alive. I can't believe how little misfortune we have had over the years. Even my grandmother, who I anticipated to pass away during our time in Canada is still alive!!!
So please, if anyone anywhere is in charge of making us pay our dues for outstanding debts in the bad things of life, whether it be karma, God, Allah or the Flying Spaghetti Monster... I know we have been lucky these past few years, but could you please hold off your payments for a couple of months? So we can relish in this new found financial peace? Much appreciated! :-)
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