As you may have read, we moved back to Canada to be closer to family in June 2023, largely for mental health and support reasons after the pandemic took a major toll on my state of mind. That decision has still firmly been the best decision for our family for this chapter of our lives.

I’m so enjoying the connectedness and community we’ve found here. We’ve reconnected with old friends and even made new ones. I’m loving being surrounded by nature and we’re adapting to remote country life. It’s also nice having 4 distinct seasons again. Not to mention the main reason for moving back, so much more time with family.

Work

I started back to work in Dec 2023 after having been off for almost 18 months. I managed to find a way to continue working for the Irish company I had been working for remotely so it’s been really nice getting to work with my colleagues and friends I’ve built up over the last 10 years of working there.

The time difference actually works out really well, in that I have meetings pretty much back to back each morning until about noon and then everyone logs off in Irish time and I have my whole afternoon uninterrupted to focus and get things done. When the team logs on again, they have my outputs waiting for them.

I’m still on a 4-day work week which gives me the balance I need to manage my energy and allows Mr. MH and I to have a day a week to ourselves while Little MH is in school.

Just this week I started a new role in the same company, which I’m quite looking forward to.

Travel

In the year and a half since moving back, we’ve done a good bit of travel, including 3 weeks in France, 2 trips back to Ireland totalling 2.5 months, 1 month in Portugal and 2 weeks in Madeira. I worked through the vast majority of these trips which were a trial run to see what that was like and if it’s something we’d like to do more of.

Some Irish Pics

Some Madeira Pics

Time-off

This summer, I took all of August off and went down to a 3-day week for June and September. The time off consisted of lazy days, reading books, making puzzles, listening to podcasts, catching up with friends and family, walks in the countryside, activities with our son and many trips to paddle board on the lake. I even went white water rafting!

House hunt

We’ve actively been exploring housing options, which have ranged from applying for planning permission to sever a piece of land from my parent’s farm to build, to looking at sites to buy and build, to buying a fixer upper, to buying move in ready homes. We looked at building with a builder as well as at pre-fabricated/modular homes. I filled out applications, met with municipal teams, builders and pre-fab reps, drew up floor plans and so on. We’ve now gotten mortgage approval in place so we can be ready to move on something if the right home comes up. We have our eyes on one so will keep you posted if that goes ahead.

Health

Health-wise, I’m still very much on a healing journey, consuming massive amounts of content and attending virtual summits on neurodivergence, perimenopause, parenting and general healing. Most of my reading results in implementing new tools or ideas and trying new therapies which can be draining before they yield results. Mentally, I’m in a really good place but still have deeper work to do to heal from past trauma and continue to find effective coping mechanisms for the neurodivergent traits I continue to struggle with.

Sleep wins

I’ve made massive progress on my biggest struggle which was quality sleep. This is a huge win. It took lots of trial and error but I have finally found a reliable solution that has resulted in a huge increase in the amount of quality and deep sleep I am getting. In addition to all the other good sleep habits I had to put in place, melatonin has been the game changer.

Studies have shown that autistic people can have low levels of melatonin or have melatonin that’s released at the wrong time of the day and after reading that I felt more comfortable trying it out to see if it helped. It has helped more than all the other things I tried combined. That is until perimenopause kicked in with a nice dose of insomnia and night sweats, though hoping to get treatment for this soon too.

With the melatonin I went from 0-15 minutes of deep sleep a night and an average of 5 hours quality sleep a night to 1.5-4 hours of deep sleep a night and an average of 7.5 hours quality sleep a night.

I also tried an alternative sound therapy, specifically targeted at exercising the vagus nerve and engaging the “rest and digest” parasympathetic nervous system which is particularly frayed in neurodivergent people. This involved listening to 30 minutes of filtered music per day for 10 days with guidance from a therapist. From day 1, my sleep was as good if not better than with the melatonin, and I awoke feeling consistently rested, probably for the first time in my life. Unfortunately, I also started having other side-effects like nausea, headaches and tinnitus which have continued since I did it. Part of me thinks these are my body’s way of processing stuck emotions/trauma and I have to push through to come out the other side, similar to how you get sick as soon as you stop working after a busy period, you’re body feels safe to let it’s guard down. So I may do another round at a slower pace to see if it makes a difference. On the other hand, these are also symptoms of perimenopause so it’s hard to determine which is which.

The increase in quality sleep didn’t result in any massive energy changes for me but I do have more capacity for things throughout the day, I have more stamina and get drained less quickly than before and I largely stopped needing a nap to get me through the day. It also stopped the extreme exhaustion I would get in the 3 days coming up to the end of my cycle. So all in all a win I think.

Portfolio

Portfolio performance wise, we couldn’t have asked for a better year, with the portfolio closing out at 30% growth between Jan-Dec. This meant that the portfolio earned more than I did this year. Blue line is contributions (we didn’t make any additional contributions in 2024), green is growth.

Family news

Also this year we had a family wedding and my immediate family will soon all be within a 35-minute drive from each other which I’m super excited about.

Onwards and upwards for 2025.

In my usual hyperfocus mode – I’ve devoured a decent amount of content that I’d like to summarise including what perimenopause is, its symptoms and things you can do in your 30s to reduce effects, live longer and increase vitality. I am obviously not a doctor and am just compiling a summary of what I’ve read (sources below) – please consult a relevant professional before implementing anything. This 20-minute read consolidates the key take-aways from a number of hours of content so hopefully it’s of use.

To put a financial independence spin on it, studies show that 1 in 5 women will quit their jobs because of menopause symptoms. That’s a staggering number with a huge economic impact on the women themselves, their families and the companies they work for. I also think that striving for financial independence at a younger age will allow for the time needed to implement the various strategies to reduce the symptoms of menopause before they occur.

Definitions:

Menopause:

Menopause is currently defined as one day, exactly one year after your last period. It represents the end of ovarian function. Women are born with all their eggs (1-2 million at birth), by 30 we are down to 10%, by 40, 3% and the quality is declining. Menopause is when no eggs are left. No or very little sex hormone production will come from the ovaries, and estradiol levels decline to about 50% or less of your healthiest years.

Perimenopause:

The time leading up to menopause. Hormones wildly fluctuate causing psychological and physical changes to occur, including the length of time between periods.

Postmenopause:

This starts the same day as reaching menopause. Despite no longer having periods, varying degrees of symptoms still occur. Hormonal swings settle down and some symptoms may improve. However, with the absence of estrogen, women face increased risks for heart disease, osteoporosis (bone loss) and dementia. Because of increased life expectancy, women can expect to spend 40% of their lives post-menopause. Keep reading to see what you can do to reduce these risks.

When can it start:

The average age of menopause is 51-52 but can range from 45-55.

Perimenopause starts 7-10 years before the last period – or 8-11 years before you reach menopause since menopause is 1 year after your last period.

So you could well be 34 when you start to experience perimenopause symptoms.

What’s really going on:

Before getting into the symptoms, this is the science bit about what is actually happening in endocrinology in the body.

A normal healthy menstrual cycle before menopause has a reproducible monthly rise and fall of estrogen, progesterone and brain hormones LH (a chemical in your body that triggers important processes in your reproductive system), FSH (a hormone your pituitary gland makes and releases that plays a role in sexual development and reproduction) and GnRH (the key regulator of the reproductive axis).

The hypothalamus in the brain has a sensor looking for estradiol levels and when they get low it sends GnRH down to the pituitary which sends out pulses of LH and FSH which tells the ovaries to ovulate. The process of ovulation drives estrogen levels back up.

When we reach perimenopause, the egg supply is low and the signals don’t work as well. We start becoming resistant to the LH and FSH surges so the brain sends more FSH and the ovary eventually gets the egg out but sometimes it’s delayed so the timing of the previously predictable cycle gets out of whack. Sometimes they are closer together, sometimes further apart.

Estrogen and progesterone levels start changing dramatically. Estrogen surges are much higher than before and lows are lower than before.

Hormonal chaos.

This is why there is no reliable blood test to diagnose menopause. Most are diagnosed through symptoms.

In regards to hot flashes (vaso motor symptom), these are caused by a dysregulation of the thermoregulatory centre in the hypothalamus, the thermostat gets reset and causes vassal dilation. It starts in the core somewhere in the chest/neck area and goes up into the neck and out into the extremities, then you start sweating profusely from all the blood vessels dilating which can last minutes. For some women, it’s preceded by palpitations or intense feelings of dysphoria/ sadness.

Symptoms:

Symptoms vary from person to person both in the symptom itself, the duration and the severity of it.

Approximately 85% of women experience menopausal symptoms. 25% of women experience severe symptoms, 25% find symptoms to be mild and the remainder are somewhere in between.

That said, before you get too discouraged, there are actions you can take both before you get there and when you’ve reached perimenopause to better manage and even reduce these symptoms. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

As you will see by the list below, menopause can mimic other ailments/diseases so it’s important to rule those out first so you’re addressing the correct root cause. To help your doctor, it’s important to track symptoms over a period of time to see trends and cyclical activities.

The biggest early indicator is mental health changes. The brain does not like the chaos of the hormonal swings. Neurotransmitters are very sensitive to estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. These swings can result in deviations from normal levels of serotonin (influences learning, memory, and happiness as well as regulating body temperature, sleep, sexual behaviour and hunger), norepinephrine (mobilizes the brain and body for action) and dopamine (motivation, feel-good hormone). As the hormone swings become chaotic there is an increase of at least 40% of mental health disorders.

Changes can look like: suddenly feeling less optimistic, increased anxiety/panic attacks, loss of executive functioning/ADHD-like symptoms (brain fog, loss of words, difficulty concentrating, not being able to do calculations) which result in a lack of confidence at work (see stat about women leaving the workforce above).

Other symptoms can include:

• Acid reflux/GERD worsening
• Acne
• Allergies (new, different)
• Atrophic vaginitis/genitourinary syndrome of menopause GSM (or vaginal atrophy, drying and thinning of the vaginal walls)
• Balance issues
• Bloating
• Body odour (changes)
• Body aches (random come/go)
• Breast soreness
• Brittle hair and nails
• Burning mouth (decreased saliva)
• Cold flashes (more common at night)
• Depression
• Digestive problems (IBS, bloat, gas)
• Dizziness (vertigo)
• Dryness (skin, mouth and eyes)
• Exaggerated PMS symptoms (bloating, breast pain, cramps)
• Fatigue
• Gum/dental problems
• Hairloss
• Headaches
• Heart racing/palpitations (irregular heartbeat)
• Hot flashes
• Increased cortisol levels (slows digestion/contributes to constipation)
• Increased hair growth on other areas of the body (face, neck, chest)
• Increased tendon and ligament injury
• Intolerance to some foods (changing tastes)
• Irregular periods (missed periods, longer/shorter, heavier/lighter, flooding, spotting, clotting, dark/different coloured blood)
• Itchiness (overall skin, also links to paresthesia)
• Low/decreased libido
• Memory lapses (brain fog, forgetfulness)
• Migraines
• Mood swings (crying jags/sadness, anger/rage)
• Muscular skeletal issues: hip pain, joint pain (stiffness, frozen shoulder, increased inflammation), back pain with no related injury
• Muscle tension
• Muscle mass loss (sarcopenia)
• Nausea
• Night sweats
• Osteoporosis (reduced bone density)
• Reduced ability to process alcohol, drastically impacts sleep
• Restless Leg Syndrome
• Sense of smell changes
• Skin crawling (feeling something crawling on your skin)
• Sleep disruption (lack of sleep)
• Spatial awareness changes (proprioception, more clumsy)
• Stress incontinence
• Swelling of hands/feet
• Thyroid changes
• Tingling extremities
• Tinnitus
• Unexplained irritability
• Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs)
• Weight gain (low estrogen levels promote fat storage in the belly area as visceral fat)

In addition, if you have any existing conditions like IBS/GERD, arthritis, inflammatory diseases, ADHD, autism or bipolar, the symptoms of those conditions can also be further aggravated/worsened.

A lot of neurodivergent women are getting diagnosed for the first time in perimenopause as symptoms are so exaggerated and the coping mechanisms they’ve cobbled together over the years are no longer effective.

Other Important Notes:

Estrogen is protective.

Loss of estrogen accelerates the path to cardiometabolic diseases. Risk of heart disease, osteoporosis and stroke increase post menopause due to loss of estrogen.

Estrogen is neuroprotective

The longer your body is exposed to estrogen (natural or otherwise), the higher your cognition scores and the healthier the brain. The decline in estrogen is correlated with neurodegeneration.

The older you are when you go through menopause, the healthier you are for cardiometabolic disease.

Certain factors can cause you to go through menopause sooner including:

• If you smoke
• If you don’t have children (more ovulation runs through supply faster)
• If you have a hysterectomy without removing ovaries, you lose 4 years off the life of your ovaries
• If you have tubal ligation, you lose a year and a half
• If you’re African-American, you can go through a year and a half sooner
• If you have chemotherapy
• If you have surgery
• If you have any inflammatory process in the abdomen (irritable bowel or endometriosis) you will lose some of the life of the ovary

On the flip side, you may go through menopause later if you:

• Are Asian (1-2 years later)
• Have taken birth control that stops ovulation for 5 years or more (can push out by about 9 months) – that said there are many other considerations around the pill that should be considered.

Body composition changes in perimenopause without changes in diet or exercise.

Pre-menopause, about 8% of your fat is visceral (fat around your internal organs), after the transition it shifts to 23% without changes in diet or exercise. Visceral fat is a harbinger of chronic disease. We also lose muscle. The muscular-skeletal system (bone and muscle) works together, muscle controls our basal metabolic rate which determines resistance to insulin so muscle loss causes all kinds of issues.

Visceral fat is hard to lose.

It’s possible to lose but it’s hard work. The more you can reduce this BEFORE you go into perimenopause, the better your outcomes will be.

There are scanners that can identify how much visceral fat you have but a rudimentary method is to measure your waist-to-hip ratio. Take the measurement of your waist and divide it by the measurement of your hips. If it’s less than 0.7 then your chance of having clinically significant deviations in visceral fat are low. If greater than 1, you likely have higher levels of visceral fat.

Hormone replacement is better than anti-depressants to treat menopause-related depression.

Currently, SSRI use doubles across the menopause transition, however, data is now showing that hormone replacement therapy lowers the onset of depression and is a better treatment than SSRIs if depression has occurred as it treats the root cause which is a drop in estrogen.

Research into perimenopause is lacking.

If you go to PubMed – a source of 37 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books – and type in pregnancy, 1.1 million articles come up, menopause brings up 97,000 and perimenopause brings up 6,400.

Women are living longer than men but 20-25% of that is in poor health.

The higher your protein intake, the less likely you will be frail in old age.

When your mother or aunts went through menopause and any medical conditions they experienced are a big indicator of when and how you will experience menopause.

Loss of sex hormones in menopause changes the gut biome from a typical female microbiome to that of a male.

Changes in the gut microbiome can result in result in all kinds of changes. You could be eating the same foods as before but your gut is not handling them as it used to. More bloating, insensitivities etc.

Intermittent fasting can make it hard to intake the volume of protein we need to maintain muscle mass.

Metabolizing protein is its own work so it’s best to spread it out throughout the day. It’s best to break protein intake into nuggets throughout the day. Don’t just have a big protein portion at dinner. Have bits at breakfast and lunch too. Fasting can make it hard to do that.

50% of women will have an osteoporotic fracture before they die

Men are about half that.

If you break a hip over the age of 65 you have a 30% chance of death in 1 year with surgical repair, and a 79% chance without surgery.

Reduce this risk by strengthening muscles and bones. Do resistance training 3 times a week. Eat more protein. Take collagen and creatine supplements.

Any women at any point in the menopause journey has a 50% sexual dysfunction rate.

Meaning she is not happy with whatever is going on. This can be delayed orgasms, lower orgasm peaks, loss of elasticity in the skin resulting in painful sex, lack of arousal symptoms, relationship disorder (don’t love your partner or don’t feel supported), low libido etc. See solutions below.

Solutions:

In general, the healthier you are going into perimenopause, the better the course is going to be for you.

Here are some of the things you can do, both before and during perimenopause to reduce symptoms.

• Nutrition
  • in particular a Mediterranean, anti-inflammatory diet, estrogen is an anti-inflammatory hormone, so in perimenopause, that declines and we lose that protection, diet is one of the most important things that determines your level of inflammation
  • most of your food should be unprocessed/minimally processed which allows you to get plenty of vitamins, minerals, probiotics and micronutrients that we all need for physical and mental health
  • more fibre (fruits, veggies, whole grains, beans and legumes): most women are getting 10-12 grams a day, we need at least 25. Fibre feeds the gut microbiome slowing down glucose absorption, pulls more water into the gut and all kinds of other health benefits. A good guide is to eat as many different plants in as many colours as you can as often as you can. Here are some tips on how to get 25g of fibre a day
  • more probiotics: prebiotics (fibre) + probiotics (fermented foods/yogurt) = postbiotics (health-inducing compounds produced by gut microbes). The probiotics introduce healthy bacteria for our gut microbiome, the fibre acts as a fuel to feed those healthy gut bugs and together they create a healthy gut microbiome which has all kinds of health benefits including reduction in menopausal symptoms. Although you can take probiotic supplements, the best and most effective will be what you eat. Probiotics can be found in things like sauerkraut, kimchi, miso, yogurt, unpasteurised fermented pickles etc.
  • more protein: as above, we need to maintain our muscle mass. Protein helps build muscle. Women are generally getting 50-60 grams a day. We likely need 80-120 depending on body composition or 1g per pound of body weight. Here are some tips on how to get there
• Sleep (good sleep hygiene/routine)
  • If you have a good sleep hygiene and routine already established going into perimenopause it can help reduce symptoms
  • If you’re having hot flashes or other sleep disturbances, things like hormone therapy can help to get the thermal regulatory centre and serotonin levels back to normal
  • If you’re on HRT and still having middle-of-the-night awakenings, racing thoughts or get up to pee and can’t get back to sleep, something like progestin might help to settle down the brain
  • For better sleep, cut out alcohol or at least know that if you are choosing to drink, you are choosing alcohol over quality sleep
• Regular exercise (in particular resistance/strength training)
  • Diet and exercise with the goal of being thin can actually chip away at bone and muscle strength needed to stay fit into old age. Research is now showing that everyone, male, female, young, old, should resistance train at least three times a week
  • Use of a weighted vest may be an easy way to start building this in while walking
• Stress reduction: Keeping cortisol levels down will make you healthier in every other way
• Supplements: Vitamin D, Creatine for muscle (5g/day), Bioactive collagen for bone density
• Acupuncture: This can help reduce symptoms but is expensive and not addressing the root cause which is a decline in estrogen

For sexual dysfunction:

• Vaginal estrogen therapy can help where sex hurts
• Viagra can help where you want to do it but the blood’s not getting to where it needs to go
• If your relationship is struggling, therapy can help
• If you previously had a good libido, you have a good relationship with your partner and it doesn’t hurt, then testosterone can help

Mental health:

This last one is a hunch of mine based on what I’ve read in books like The Myth of Normal and accounts of women who have gone through menopause, so take of it what you will, but I do believe that any unresolved mental health issues, be it trauma or unprocessed emotions or grief to name a few, will come to the surface in menopause. So any work you can do before you reach perimenopause in respect to counselling or other therapies to process and release those emotions will only help to reduce symptoms and make you more resilient.

Some studies show that neurodivergent women will experience menopause symptoms more severely. My gut tells me that part of this is because neurodivergent women typically experience more trauma and have a very low window of tolerance in their nervous systems. As a lot of women are late diagnosed, it is also unlikely we will have done the relevant therapy to process and release that trauma or built up resilience in our nervous systems, hence the experience of increased symptoms in menopause. Again, just a theory but I’m hoping that the work I’ve done in this space will pay off.

Hormone Replacement Therapy

That WHI study:

Hormone replacement therapy got a bad reputation resulting from the misrepresentation and misinterpretation of a medical study that was completed by the WHI (Women’s Health Initiative) in 2002.

The data that caught the headlines was misinterpreted and stated that HRT causes a 25% increased chance of breast cancer but in actuality, the absolute risk was an increase of 0.8%. In addition, the study was done on women who were already 10-13 years post-menopausal which can be argued were already past the point of the preventative benefits that estrogen can provide.

Unfortunately, many doctors and even specialists are now refusing to prescribe HRT because of this study. You may be able to find supportive physicians in your area here.

In contrast, in 2020, a different study found that women who started HRT between 50 and 59 had a 50% decreased risk of cardiovascular disease and death from cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality. Estrogen is better at prevention than cure. It’s protective of the coronary arteries so taking estrogen away, we lose that protection and disease and plaque can start to build up so there is a worry that adding estrogen once you’ve developed sclerosis or plaque might loosen the plaque which can lead to slightly increased risk of stroke so it’s important to get the right tests and scans before starting.

HRT or not?

Not every woman will choose HRT but every woman deserves an informed conversation about it and let her make her choice.

It’s a bit like when I took Little MH for his vaccines – there is a booklet that says getting this vaccine has these risks but not getting the vaccine and actually catching the disease has these much greater risks up to and including death.

So HRT has a small risk of breast cancer but lack of estrogen increases cardiovascular disease, diabetes and insulin resistance and increased cholesterol. Statistics show that the most common cause of death of women is cardiovascular disease, heart attack or stroke. So framing it this way can help to shift the perspective.

On cholesterol: 80% of women will have abnormal cholesterol levels through menopause. Elevated LDL and lowering HDL means greater risk of cardiovascular disease. Statin is typically prescribed. In 2020, it was found that Statin does not decrease risk of primary heart attack in women (though it does for secondary) and does not decrease risk of death from cardiovascular disease but as above, if given in the right window of opportunity, HRT does.

Side note:

The difference between low-dose birth control pill and high-dose hormone replacement are not that far apart.

Heart Attack Signs in Women

On the topic of heart attacks, did you know women are much more likely to die in a hospital setting from a heart attack than a man because we don’t present the same symptoms as men do?

Women experience more psychological symptoms rather than the biological symptoms that men do. As a result we are more likely to brush them off and delay going to the hospital.

Symptoms can include:

• Neck, jaw, shoulder, upper back or upper belly (abdomen) discomfort.
• Shortness of breath.
• Pain in one or both arms.
• Nausea or vomiting.
• Sweating.
• Lightheadedness or dizziness.
• Unusual fatigue.
• Heartburn (indigestion)

Sources:

• Andrew Huberman Podcast with Dr. Marie Claire Haver
• The menopause wiki
• Fibre Fuelled by Dr. Will Bulsiwicz
• The Myth of Normal by Dr. Gabor Mate and Daniel Mate

Planning

This 6 week workation was part of 2.5 month workation between Portugal and Ireland. See details of the Portugal portion here.

Flights

Per the Portugal update, we booked the below route for about 2,872$ (1,967€)

• Montreal – Lisbon return (2,424$/1,660€)
• Bus Lisbon – Portimao (80$/55€)
• Faro – Cork 1 way (214$/147€)
• Dublin – Lisbon 1 way (154$/105€)
• Lisbon accommodation 2 nights (Free via homeexchange)

Accommodation

Accommodation in Ireland is expensive and hard to come by. It took a good bit of searching but we managed to find a lovely spot close to the sea. As it was not in the city we also needed to rent a car to get around which added to the expense.

Sites I checked to find accommodation:

• Daft.ie – search for short term rentals or holiday homes
• Homeexchange.com
• Booking.com
• Hogans Irish Cottages
• Trident Holiday Homes

As we wanted to catch up with as many friends and family as we could we decided to split the trip up.

We spent 3 weeks in Cork, 2.5 weeks in Mayo/Sligo and 4 days in Dublin.

In Cork, we stayed in one rented accommodation that came to 2,654$ (1,818€) for the 3 weeks. We also had to pay an additional sum at the end for utilities which came to 365$ (250€).

For the 2.5 weeks in Mayo/Sligo, we spent 1 week in Ballina for free using our guest points from Homeexchange. A few nights in Strandhill with Mr.MH’s sister and the remainder at Mr. MH’s home.

For the 4 days in Dublin, we split it between Mr. MH’s siblings.

We also had a 2 night stop over in Lisbon to break up the return trip which we again had for free through Homeexchange.

Car Rental

There used to be a day when I would go out of my way to save money by using public transport, but my relationship with money has shifted over the years, especially now that we have Little MH. Now, I am willing to pay a bit more to make things easier on ourselves. It was also important for us to be able to get out to visit our friends and family while we were in Ireland so renting a car made the most sense.

Renting a car in Ireland is, let’s say, interesting.

I’ll try to summarise how best to go about it, to save hassle and added costs.

Before you book:

• See if you have a credit card that offers car rental insurance as an added benefit or see if you can apply for one before your trip.
• Call the credit card insurance provider and get a letter in writing that states that coverage includes the Republic of Ireland. The wording has to be exact. The car rental will not accept terms like “Worldwide” or “Ireland”, it has to state Republic of Ireland specifically for them to accept the waiver. The credit card company may point you to the standard terms and conditions but insist that you get a separate specific letter with the card holders name on it.
• Make sure the credit card is in the name of the person that will be driving, if it isn’t, see if you can order a supplementary card with their name on it
• Make sure you have enough credit to cover the 5,000€ hold that will be placed on the card for waiving the car rental company’s insurance.

When you book:

• Make sure you select an automatic transmission if you can’t drive manual as most cars will be manual, especially if in our case, you converted your Canadian license to Irish, there may be a restriction to only be licensed to drive automatic cars.
• Make sure you waive the car rental company’s insurance when booking.
• Use the credit card that has the car rental insurance as a benefit for the entire booking. The name on the card should also be who will be the driver.
• Decide who will be the driver if you don’t want to pay extra to have both people covered to drive. As above, the driver is whose name should be on the credit card used to waive the insurance.

When you pick-up:

• Make sure you have the letter printed off that states your credit card’s insurance includes coverage in the Republic of Ireland, or better yet send the letter by email in advance to the car rental to ensure they have no issues with it before you arrive.
• Make sure you have the credit card in the name of the person who will be driving
• Make sure you have 5,000€ free on the card for them to place a hold. This will be held for the duration of the rental.
• Make sure you have an in-date license to present
• Walk around the car, taking a video and pictures, to show any damage already on the car, before you drive off the lot.

You can only rent a car for a max of 1 month so if you need it for longer you can just do another booking and get another car for the remainder of the trip. You’ll need to pay again for the extras like car seats and one-way transfer fees if you’re dropping at a different location but that’s not too expensive for the hassle you save from taking public transport with 2.5 months worth of luggage and any groceries you will have accumulated from the stay.

We booked through rentalcars.com and got an automatic Toyota Yaris for the full 6 weeks for 1,112$ (761€) and paid an additional 445$ (304€) for 2 car seat rentals and 2 one-way fees as we had to swap cars at the one-month mark. So about 37$(25€)/day total.

School

We continued some of the activity books we got from the school but also borrowed some lego’s from Little MH’s cousin and some new activity books from friends. Social-wise, we had so many play dates, catch ups and sleepovers with friends and family. It was wonderful.

During the week, Little MH got to go to the sea, climb some sand dunes, go to an indoor trampoline park, meet an Irish wolfhound pup, eat award winning ice-cream, drive a car out to Coney Island, visit playgrounds and other activities.

What it cost

The below details what it cost for the 6 weeks in Ireland in Mar/Apr. Flights are proportioned 60% to this portion of the trip and 40% to the Portugal portion. It also includes a 2 night stop over in Lisbon on the way home. The total cost excluding ongoing costs at home was 9,901$ (6,782€) which averages 6,601$ (4,521€)/month.

• Accommodation: As above, the only costs we paid for accommodation was for our 3 weeks in Cork.
• Food/drink: included groceries, take-aways and restaurants.
• Flights: included 60% of the costs of our flights from Montreal to Lisbon, Faro to Cork, and Dublin to Lisbon for 3 people.
• Transport/Parking: included car rental, petrol, tolls and ubers.
• Entertainment: included a night out, a spa day for me, the trampoline park, and entrance to see the Palace of Monserrat on our stopover in Lisbon (highly recommended).
• Shopping: includes a clothes top-up for Little MH who had outgrown some of the clothes we brought.
• Costs at home: included rent for the full 2 months (not proportioned for 6 weeks), mobile and internet.

Our current estimates on what we will spend per year in Canada is 64,000$ (44,000€) or 5,333$ (3,652€)/month. Averaging out the 6-week stay into the average for 1 month the stay in Ireland was about 1,500$ (1,000€) more than that not including the ongoing costs at home or 2,800$ (1,900€) more per month including ongoing costs at home.

How it went

Overall, it was a great stay. It was a big contrast to Portugal where we saw very few people. Once we were in Ireland, we had catch-ups with friends or family once every few days. We:

• had a dinner and a few sleepovers with some of our best friends
• had a birthday party at Little MH’s cousin’s house
• had a few friends call out to us at ours
• had a dinner with Mr. MH’s whole family and all of Little MH’s Irish cousins at a restaurant
• climbed and ran down some sand dunes (I still have sand in coming out of my shoes months later)
• had the best dinner I’ve had at a restaurant in quite some time (check out Stoked if you’re ever in Strandhill in Sligo – go with a group and order one of everything (tapas))
• had proper catch ups with family.

I also got to go into the office and catch up with workmates and had a full spa day and dinner with a friend. I also got to go for my morning walks in beautiful locations a lot warmer and greener than I would have at home, some through forests, by lakes and by the sea.

For our stopover in Lisbon, we met up with some new friends I had reacquainted with when we were in Portimao, and went to Sintra, had some of the freshest and best pastel de natas I’ve had so far, went to the Palace of Monserat (some of the nicest architecture I’ve ever seen, Little MH was so excited and impressed to be in a real castle – it looked very regal), took the scenic route back to Lisbon through the most Western point of Europe (Cabo da Roca), and stopped in Cascais for dinner at a vegetarian restaurant where they have all the dishes prepared on a table for you to see before you order.

After all that, however wonderful, I was dysregulated and tired and looking very much forward to getting home and back into a routine, keeping in mind that I was still working 3-4 days a week between all those visits and activities for most of the stay.

Once home, while my Dad collected us from the airport, my Mom turned the heat back up in our house and had a fresh pot of homemade soup and homemade apple crisp with apples off last year’s tree waiting for us in the oven when we got home. My Dad had also finished the extension he had been working on in the house so we had a whole new space to expand into. These are just some of the things that continue to remind me that the move home was the right choice for this chapter of our lives.

The first few weeks home were very low-key, not including the first few days where I rearranged all the furniture to make the best use of the new extension.

I had also put on an extra kilo from all the restaurants, pastries and fresh food, so definitely tried to up my exercise game to shake that, which I’ve thankfully been able to do (months later). Totally worth it.

Lessons learned

The only thing I think I’d do differently about this trip, next time, would be to do a bit less moving around so I don’t get so dysregulated. Other than that it was pretty great.

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Planning

Why/When

Firstly, I’ll cover off why and when we decided to travel.

When we were moving from Ireland to Canada last summer, I wanted to have a trip planned back to Ireland within the year to take the sting out of saying goodbye to the life we built there over the last 9 years. Knowing we’d be back in a few months made it easier.

We also wanted to trial slow travel, where you stay for a longer period than a typical vacation in any one location before moving on to the next. This method of travel is used by a lot of families who worldschool and travel full time. It is easier on the mind and body in terms of adapting to change and usually cheaper as you can avail of long-term stay discounts.

In terms of when and where, Ireland was obviously part of the equation but when we decided that we’d want to be in Canada for the summer, it made sense to travel somewhere warmer during the winter. Travelling in the off-season is also quieter and cheaper. When we lived in Ireland, Portugal was only a 2.5 hour flight away and we had been a few times and knew we liked it.

I played around with different durations, originally we planned on travelling for 3 months but when it came time to actually book we felt this might be a little too long to be away from our home base and cut it down to 2.5 months.

Flights

As usual, I had a spreadsheet to plot out the trip. I looked at a few different flight routes and checked prices on google flights fairly regularly to get the best price. Once upon a time, I would have looked for the cheapest deal only regardless of duration and flight times but now I know what toll it takes on my body and I’m willing to pay a bit more for better options. I generally try to find direct flights that leave between 10am and 8pm. I’d love to avoid red-eye flights but that seems to be the only option from Montreal to Europe.

The route options I looked at were:

Route 1:

• Montreal-Lisbon 1 way
• Bus Lisbon-Portimao
• Bus Portimao-Faro
• Faro-Cork 1 way
• Bus Cork-Dublin
• Dublin-Toronto 1 way
• Toronto train to Ottawa

Route 2:

• Montreal-Lisbon return
• Bus Lisbon-Portimao
• Bus Portimao-Faro
• Faro-Cork return
• Bus Faro-Lisbon
• Lisbon accommodation 2 nights

Route 3:

• Montreal Lisbon return
• Bus Lisbon-Portimao
• Faro – Cork 1 way
• Dublin – Lisbon 1 way
• Lisbon accommodation 2 nights

All 3 options priced out at about 3,100$ for the 3 of us. That meant the choice was really down to preference. We opted for Route 3. The longest day was the first flight and bus, the rest were direct 1 way flights/bus trips.

Accommodation

Once we had the flights/dates booked, we needed accommodations. Portugal was the simplest as we were staying in one location for the whole duration. I searched on booking.com, homeexchange.com and a local real estate office which we had found through booking.com and had stayed with a few times before.

As we had been before we knew the area and where on the map we wanted to be so it made it easier to narrow down where we wanted to be.

We ended up booking a three-bed apartment with huge balcony as we hoped we would get some visitors to come stay with us.

School

Little MH is in kindergarten so school is not yet mandatory in Quebec. We let the school know the dates we’d be gone and they provided us with some activity books to work on while we were away.

In terms of socialisation, I found some local ex-pat/digital nomad/ worldschooling Facebook groups in Portimao. During the week, school-aged kids are in school so the playground isn’t a guarantee to find similar aged kids, unless they’re on holiday. The world schooling/digital nomad groups would have more school-aged English speaking kids available during the week for meetups. Little MH went to one of the group meetups while we were there but in general was happy out with just us. While I was working, Mr. MH and Little MH would go to the playground, play on the beach and play ball on the boardwalk.

Packing

We’ve gotten fairly good at packing minimally after all our travels. This time we managed to keep it to 2 40L backpacks, 2 regular backpacks and 1 large handbag.

At a high level we brought:

• 4-5 days worth of clothes each
• Minimal toiletries
• 3 months of diabetic supplies
• School activities, pencil, eraser, markers
• Electronics:
  • Work laptop, keyboard and mouse
  • Personal laptop
  • PS5
  • Nintendo Switch
  • Plug converters and chargers

I have a “leaving for months” checklist at home that I’ll add in at another time that includes the things we needed to prepare before we left to maintain the house/car ie: have plants watered, mail collected, arrange to have the car driven periodically to stop the battery from dying etc. I’d keep a paper list in the kitchen that we could add things to in the days coming up to the trip to help keep track of things not to forget.

What it cost

The below details what it cost for the 1 month in Portugal for the month of Feb. Flights and travel insurance are proportioned 40% to this portion of the trip and 60% to the Irish portion which I’ll detail in another post. The total cost was 4,342€ (6,338$).

We of course have ongoing costs at home which add to this. Costs for Feb for remaining expenses like Rent, Electricity, Internet etc came to 1,369€ (2,000$). Some of the travel costs like flights and accommodation would have been paid in December and January so the outgoing for Feb was not the full 6,292€ (9,187$).

Our estimated annual spend for the 12 months including travel is 44,000€ (64,000$), this averages out to 3,652€ (5,333$)/month. So the Portugal portion on its own is only a little over 1,000€ more than the average monthly spend.

How it went

In summary, it was lovely. The weather was warm and sunny and we had the beach, boardwalk and restaurants pretty much to ourselves, which is typical for this time of year. Working from a nice location was also great.

That said, a month is probably our limit. As we experienced in a previous mini-retirement, even though we had people visit us, it does become very isolating to not have friends and family to visit on the weekends.

A typical work day

• I would wake up naturally without an alarm between 7 and 8am
• Make my way to the kitchen for breakfast
• Little MH would already be awake, playing the switch or PS5
• Make myself and Little MH breakfast, having my tea on the balcony in the sun if it was out
• Get dressed, brush teeth etc
• Go for a walk on the beach by myself, taking a few moments to consciously breathe in the fresh sea air and look up at the sky without sunglasses to let in the morning light to my retinas to set my circadian rhythm and regulate hormones.
• Get back, grab my water bottle and log on to work
• Mr. MH would usually get up some time between 9 and 10am and get himself and Little MH ready to head out for some activity and groceries.
• I would typically have lunch by myself on the balcony
• Work for a few more hours
• Mr. MH would have dinner ready by the time I log off from work
• Eat dinner together as a family
• Spend the evening sometimes doing a school activity or playing card games, sometimes doing our own thing.
• Get Little MH ready for bed and asleep some time between 8:30 and 9pm. I’d usually go to bed at the same time as Little MH.
• Mr. MH would stay up a bit later.

A typical weekend

Similar to the work day in terms of wake up and sleep routine. We’d go to restaurants more often on the weekend. Sometimes for brunch, sometimes for dinner, heading down to the beach and playground either before or after food. I’d call home at some point. We had Mr. MH’s sister over for a few nights one weekend.

A few weeks before we got to Portugal, I saw on Facebook that someone I went to school with was posting pictures of Portugal. We got to chatting and it ended up they had moved there in 2020 and spend their summer’s at a cottage 20 minutes from where we are living now in Canada. Although I was probably 12 years old the last time I saw them in person, we decided to meet up. They came down with their partner for a night and we got to catch up. We will likely meet up again this summer. Such a small world.

Lessons learned

As with every trial, there comes some error to learn from As long as we learn from them, it will make the next trip even better.

1. We may have been able to save money on groceries by availing of grocery delivery from bigger chains. Continente and Uber Eats offer food delivery which we’ll likely avail of next time.
2. Uber/Bolt to and from the airport is only slightly more expensive and less hassle than the train and bus that we used to take. The bus/train takes 1.5 hours from Faro to Portimao and you still need to use Uber to get to the train and to the accommodation costing about 28€ for the 3 of us. Uber was 50 minutes total, 40€, and no timetables to worry about.
3. In regards to deposits, from now on we will take a video tour of the accommodation as soon as we get there. This trip Little MH accidentally pulled a curtain rod down and as a result the property manager did a thorough walk through when we left and blamed us for breaking a number of other things that were broken when we got there. We are still trying to get some of our deposit back on this one. Also, best to give the deposit as a separate payment not included in the total for the accommodation so that you can dispute it with your bank if needed. Lastly, perhaps booking through a website like booking.com rather than directly though the property company might give you more protections in terms of these types of disputes.
4. Packing wise – next time we might try to pack 1 checked bag between us. Having to carry all our bags on our backs any time we move around is cumbersome. While it’s nice to not have to wait for your bag in baggage claim and there is no risk of it going missing, we’re still trying to find the balance of what we carry and what we check.
5. As mentioned before, a month is probably a little too long, unless we can get more people to come visit us. I think the sweet spot might be 3 weeks.

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The time off has given us some insight into what it would be like to retire early. We enjoyed the time so much that we have now structured our investments in a way that we hope will allow us to do this regularly, at least while our son is still small.

While this time off was initially meant for me to focus on my health, there were a lot of other things we got to learn and experience that we wouldn’t have if we were working.

Finances

As this is a financial independence blog, I’ll start with the financial realisations.

Non-employment income

One of the most interesting realisations I had during our extended time off was that while I had focused heavily on where we spent our money, I hadn’t looked at non-employment-related income. When we stopped working, we still had money coming in.

When I looked back at the last almost 4 years, it ended up that we had an average of 7,500€/year of non-employment-related income coming in. 38% came from tax refunds (explained below), 31% of that came from blog-related income, 23% came from the child benefit and 2% from credit card cashback rewards. If I added in after-tax dividend income (before we invested all of our assets), it brought the total to 8,600€/year.

While this income is not fixed, permanent or reliable, it has been consistent over the last 4 years, which is long enough for me to feel comfortable factoring in that I do not need as much as I thought I did to reach financial independence.

Our original FIRE calculations did not take into account any money we may make once we stop traditional employment, nor did it take into account social security or any possible inheritances. All calculations erred on the side of caution and scarcity.

Now that we’ve been off for over a year, my mindset has drastically shifted. It’s given me a new perspective, one of abundance. To use the money we have now to live the best life we can (optimised and within reason of course). I’m even considering gifting money where before, I would have hoarded it. The more positivity and abundance I feel, the more seems to be drawn to me.

Tax refunds

Another realisation, which should be obvious but hadn’t occurred to me, is that working less means much less income tax and results in big refunds from any of the year that you did work. As Mr. MH was also off, we could also claim the Home Carer tax credit against my income, which only gets applied at the end of the year and results in a bigger refund.

From the 2020 tax year, we got a refund of almost 700€, for 2021 we got a refund of 2,700€ and for 2022 we got a refund of 8,200€.

The less I worked, the bigger the refund.

If semi-retirement is something you could be nearing, don’t look at how many months you’d need to work to cover your annual expenses at your current tax rate. Figure out instead how many months you’d need to work at say a 10% net tax rate instead and look at any other regular non-employment income that might be coming in and see what a difference it makes.

Costs to work

Having time on your hands allows you to unintentionally save money.

When both parents are working, you might spend more money on take-away dinners, lunches at work, use more petrol or public transport, have a gym membership to get your recommended level of exercise and travel at peak periods due to school breaks.

Since both of us have been off, we have cooked more, eaten almost all our lunches at home, used far less petrol, gotten exercise from just living our lives and get to travel more cheaply as we travel at off-peak times and can stay for longer which costs less.

On the exercise front, neither of us are very active, however this summer I managed to close the exercise ring on my watch (30 minutes a day) for 21 days in a row without trying. With all the swimming and walking and paddle boarding, I got my recommended daily exercise without effort. If I had been working, I’d have been sitting at a desk and would have had very little energy at the end of the day to fit in any exercise.

Unfortunately, I haven’t kept up that level of effortlessness but did want to highlight that for those thinking retirement would cost more than if you were working because you would not have work subsidies or would have more time and want to travel, that is not necessarily true.

Being off work also allows you to take advantage of getting to do things when they are less busy and less costly. Early bird menu’s, mid-week spa rates, getting a playground or nature walk all to ourselves and so on.

Renting instead of owning

Renting instead of owning a home has been a change that has resulted in less stress and less expense.

Less Stress

No stressing about mortgage rate increases or housing market crashes and no stressing about maintenance when things break.

Fewer Expenses

Less money spent on renovations. Less money spent on home ownership costs (purchase and sale costs, maintenance, property taxes, refuse, insurance etc).

We owned our home in Ireland for 5.5 years. If we average out these costs over the 5.5 years, we spent the following to own it:

• 7,200€/year on renovations, purchase and sale costs
• 3,800€/year on mortgage interest
• 1,200€/year on maintenance
• 1,100€/year on home insurance, property tax, mortgage insurance and refuse
• 13,300€/year total

We sold it for more than we bought it for and estimate it earned us an average of 6.63%/year (tax-free) on the money we had invested into it.

Now I know the argument for home ownership is not purely financial. For us, we bought because we wanted security to not be kicked out, to put our own stamp on things and to control rising rents. We loved our home and it served us well.

That said, we now pay the equivalent of 8,100€/year in rent (2 bedroom 1 bath in a very remote area in Canada) and have our money invested. So far this year our investments have earned us 14.53% (before tax), but since we haven’t worked much this year, we will pay very little if any taxes on any withdrawals.

And before people say that level of rent is impossible in Ireland, looking on Daft today (Dec 2023), there are a number of 2-bedroom properties available around the country for between 850€ and 1,000€/month – if you’re willing to downsize and have the option of working remotely. Not that I recommend isolating yourself, but if any of these are closer to a community you already have and can reconnect to, it could be food for thought if it could allow you to semi-retire much sooner than you’d originally thought.

Travel

During our 16 months off, we travelled to Canada (2.5 months), Portugal (1 week), Canada (Moved), France (3 weeks) and Mr. MH travelled to Birmingham for a Football match. If we’d been working, we would not have been able to travel to half of those places or for half as long.

Most of these trips also included friends and family. Time in Canada was spent catching up with friends and family. Our trip to France was for the Rugby World Cup and we had at least 8 of our closest friends and family stay with us at different points during our stay there. Mr. MH also went to a football match in Birmingham with a childhood friend.

We got to mix in my passion for travel and Mr. MH’s passion for sports AND got to share it with some of our favourite people.

Family time

We also made up for lost time from the pandemic and crammed in so many family catch-ups.

Between christenings, confirmations, communions, birthdays, sporting events and other family gatherings, Mr. MH’s family got together once or twice almost every month. Given how large Mr. MH’s family is, that is no small feat. I think with nieces and nephews included, there are about 25 of us that come from all over the country.

We were to Mayo 4 times, Tipperary at least 3 times, Dublin twice, Galway and Leitrim once each and Mr. MH got to 5 Rugby matches in Cork, Limerick, Galway and Dublin.

Again, something we would not have been able to manage if we’d both been working.

Our calendar looked something like this:

Pink is international travel, Blue is national travel, Green is sporting events and Black are milestones.

Friend time

In addition to the additional time we got with family, we also had more time with friends.

At this time in our lives, our friends are so very busy with work, kids and all the activities that come with juggling the two. As time with friends is a priority for us, and because we had more flexibility, we would arrange to go to our friend’s houses when best suited them. If we’d been working we wouldn’t have seen our friends half as often as our schedules just wouldn’t have lined up. We would even text friends mid-week and see if they wanted to come by for dinner or even bring a slow cooker out to their house for us all to eat together. Using our time to save them time and get some extra time together.

We also had the flexibility to meet up with friends when they were off during the week. We could go meet up for coffee or lunch in town or meet friends who were on maternity leave for walks or playground visits. I got to go to the spa mid-week a few times with friends who were off from work.

During the summer, a friend was on sabbatical and we met up to spend a day on the lake, floating around and laying in the sun. It was the first time in my adulthood that I can remember just laying on the ground and watching the clouds rolling by – queue Otis Redding.

Couple time

When we were still in Ireland, our son was in playschool for 3 hours a day. As we were both off, we would use this time to go on brisk walks together in nature. It was a great way to get exercise, fresh air and quality, child-free time together. Once we were in Canada and our son was in school all day, we used the time to watch movies and play video games together.

Me time

As I’ve been focusing on getting healthy, my sleep routine has shifted in that I go to bed around the same time as our son. If I were working, this would leave very little time to do anything for myself. As I’ve been off, I had time to decompress, listen to podcasts and read books that energise me and do active rest activities that I enjoy like diamond painting and jigsaw puzzles while listening to music. It’s been nice to feel like an individual again and be able to get some time to focus on things uninterrupted.

Mr. MH also followed his interests and did his own thing. He listened to copious amounts of sporting podcasts and recently started a full-time 10-week French course which he’s really enjoying.

Parenting

In terms of parenting, I’ve realised that no matter how much time you have, you still want to just do your own thing. I thought that if I was off work I would have so much more time to spend with my son and I could stop feeling guilty looking at Instagram pages with educational activities parents were setting up for their kids. I had all these ideas of activities we could do together, fun crafts, outdoor activities, cooking and baking together and so on. Once both me and Mr. MH were off, it didn’t really change how much time I did active things with our son. While Mr. MH was good to bring our son to the playground and get him outside, I might sit on the floor to play with him for 5 minutes to get him going on something but then I’d get up and go back to doing housework, laundry, cooking or even something leisurely I was interested in. I say this because I thought it was important to stop feeling so guilty, especially if you are working and have little quality time with your kids. To say that, even if you were off full time, you probably wouldn’t have much more time as it gets filled up with other things.

The other thing I’ve really appreciated is that with both parents being off, we had so much more flexibility and less stress. Having both allowed us to be more present and patient with our son. If play school or school was closed at a moment’s notice, no problem. If our son was sick, we didn’t have to worry about who was going to take work off. If our son was having a tough week, we just kept him home. If we have a family event on a bank holiday weekend, no rush, we can leave whenever suits, or even the day before and make it a longer weekend. If we have travel coming up, packing and organising isn’t stressful as we don’t have to juggle work schedules before we go. Having less stress allows us to create a calm and consistent home environment which is so important for a child.

Time and Boredom

The last thing I’ll comment on is that no matter how much time you have, it will get filled up.

When I first went down to a 4 day work week, I thought I would have so much more time for all of the things I mentioned above, but I didn’t – it helped but wasn’t near enough for what I hoped. When I was planning to take extended time off, I thought it would be easy to find time to exercise. It wasn’t.

If you want to spend time on things that are important to you, you need to make those a priority. You need to safeguard your time as it really is your most precious resource. If you don’t guard it, others will take it up.

In terms of boredom, I can honestly say, it’s only started to creep in recently as I’m alone during the day, with little MH in school and Mr. MH in his full-time French course. You may have noticed an uptick in blog posts – this is how I’ve been filling my time! It wouldn’t take long though for me to get into a new routine and find new things to fill my time. It would just be a period of adjustment.

That said, I am actually looking forward to getting back to work and catching up with my colleagues. The last time I worked, it was for a 6-week contract and it was a trial run for myself to see if I was ready to get back to work. I actually found myself energised by the work, to use a different part of my brain and have problems to solve on a daily basis. To feel like I was contributing to something. I do think that semi-retirement is a happy medium. To dip in and out of work life as wanted/needed. Will keep you posted on how it goes.

Well hello there, it’s been a while. For those who are new to the blog, I’ve been struggling with burnout and depression, brought on not by work but instead by a compounding of life events, the pandemic and an undiagnosed condition which I will unveil below. I’ve been on a long journey to recovery and in this post, I hope to “summarise” how I got to the other side.

I’m now happy to report that I am back to my former self, better even. I am content, happy and can experience joy again. Coming from where I was, this is no small statement. I still have work to do but I’m in a much, much better place. It’s amazing the difference a year can make.

If you are where I was, please know that this too shall pass, you are resilient, and with the right resources and information, you too can make it to the other side.

Here is my very high-level list of my own journey back to myself. I will go into each in more detail. I also want to say that, most, if not all of these things are NOT easy. It’s going to take work and perseverance but it’s well worth the effort.

• Recognise you are not yourself
• Ask for help
• Rest
• Educate yourself
• Go on a digital diet
• Eat better
• Sleep better
• Move more
• Meditate
• Journal
• Be patient

Also just to note the obvious, I am not a medical doctor and below is my own story and journey.

Recognise you are not yourself

The conditions and events that lead to depression and burnout are going to be different for everyone but the end result may be very similar. At a high level:

• If you feel like you want to leave your job, leave your marriage, move or all three, it can be a sign that it’s time to reach out for help
• If you are a woman and are experiencing severe PMS, mood swings, insomnia or other symptoms linked to your cycle when you didn’t before, it could be a sign your body is telling you something is not right
• If you struggle to feel joy or get excited about anything, especially things that you would have enjoyed or looked forward to before, this is also a sign that getting help would be beneficial

My story

When I was at my lowest, I wrote down the following list to bring to the GP.

I’m struggling and need help diagnosing the root cause. I’m willing to put in the work and know it won’t be a quick fix. My life, work and marriage are severely impacted by how I’m feeling.

• Exhausted
  • Constantly sick (son in playschool)
  • Even though I’m sleeping 8-9 hours, aside from sickness I can’t remember the last time I woke up feeling rested
  • I’ve always had low energy
  • Very quickly tired by social outings (introvert)
  • Insomnia during cycle
• Seasonal Affective Disorder
  • Lack of sunlight affects me but I’m unable to go anywhere sunny (I had surrendered my passport for a time to apply for citizenship)
• Low mood
  • I’m generally positive, content and grateful but can’t remember the last time I felt that way, so much so I’m considering quitting work
• Mood swings
  • PMS linked to cycle since being off the pill, getting progressively worse, so much so I almost ended my marriage
• Grief
  • loss of my Grandma during the pandemic, no funeral, couldn’t go home
  • recent loss of family pet
• Lack of support
  • pandemic particularly hard, no family support with a toddler not sleeping, husband gone on some weekends helping a sick relative, I felt extremely isolated

Ask for help

I’m going to start this one off by saying that asking for help was THE hardest step for me. Please know that asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness and please don’t wait for things to get as bad as I did before reaching out. Here are some ways that reaching out looks like:

• Talk to friends/family that have gone through something similar
• Book an appointment with your doctor
• Find the right therapist. Finding a therapist that fits with you is so important, it’s like any other relationship, if the first doesn’t suit, find another, get recommendations from like-minded friends/family, try an app like BetterHelp that matches you to a therapist based on your preferences and outlook. Check your employer health benefits to see if you have cover for therapy, although in my experience the therapists provided through work schemes were not a good fit for me
• Consider taking anti-depressants with the guidance of your GP

My story

As I mentioned, asking for help for me was hard. I’m usually so solution-focused and determined that I can fix most things myself. I felt that I was weak or a failure for needing help. I knew something was very wrong but no matter how much I tried different things I couldn’t fix myself. I think what finally led me to reach out was that I first started talking to friends and family that I knew had, had similar struggles. On their gentle pushes, I scheduled an appointment with my GP. It took me weeks to even schedule an appointment. Asking for help is SO hard. Please do not wait so long if you are feeling this way.

GP Visit

With the list I included above in hand, I got through reading 2 words before I broke down into tears. After getting through the full list, the GP asked me a series of questions, prescribed anti-depressants, talk therapy and asked if I wanted to be written off for work.

I said I didn’t feel like it was depression (I’ll share more on this below), but she said anti-depressants can help all kinds of imbalances not just depression. I also didn’t feel like being off work would help as it would give me more time to ruminate and have spiralling thoughts but in my gut I knew I needed a break.

Anti-depressants

This is another one I was extremely reluctant to try. Throughout my childhood, I had heard a lot of anecdotal horror stories about medication and that they were to be used as a last resort when all other avenues had been exhausted. I felt like I was weak to need them but at the point of getting them prescribed, I was so desperate to be better, I filled the prescription. Even then, they sat in a drawer for weeks before I mustered up the logic to take them, again by talking it through with a friend I knew had been on them.

They aren’t magic pills but they can level you off to give you the headspace you need to work through what you need to in therapy. Studies show that a combination of medication and therapy has statistically higher chances of healing depression and reducing chances of recurrence. I certainly wouldn’t be where I am without having done both for an extended period of time.

After about 4 months, after what I felt was sufficient therapy and with the guidance of my doctor, I weaned off the anti-depressants. I went through about 4-6 weeks of withdrawal which was more like the re-emergence of symptoms I had before I went on them. The symptoms eventually tapered off but I hadn’t done enough in therapy and although I was more myself, I still had the inability to feel joy. Friends and family said I had lost the light in my eyes. I was always on the verge of tears. One day at a playground play date with friends, my friend noticed my blank stare and asked if I was ok, just her asking that had me wanting to cry. I thought I was better until that point and remember talking with my husband on the way home that I was going to go back on the meds.

6 months after weaning off the anti-depressants, I went back to the GP, renewed my prescription and started back to therapy. This time I stayed on them for 9 months and continued therapy, which made a world of difference. Studies have shown that once started, patients should stay on anti-depressants for at least 6 months from the point they start feeling better before trying to wean off in order to see the most benefits and avoid reoccurrence.

I have now been off them for almost 5 months and still feeling really good. My decision to go off the meds was not a judgment against being on them but rather that I also have ongoing sleep issues which I wanted to work on while knowing that there were no medications possibly causing side-effects.

Therapy

This was another one that took me months to start. I’d never been to therapy until this point. Despite having liberal views now, I grew up in an era where therapy was often considered to be airy fairy and that you were weak if you needed it. I felt like, I talked openly with my friends and family and had done ok so far working through things that way. This was a very hard mental block to break through. I think on some level I was also afraid that the therapist would convince me to leave my marriage, which on the surface I thought I needed, but at my core, I knew I didn’t want. Again, I talked to friends and family I knew had been to therapy and they helped me push through and book my first appointment. When you start opening up about your struggles, you’d be very surprised who of your friends and colleagues has been to therapy. Only that I shared my struggles, did some of my friends and even work colleagues, including quite a few men, shared with me their experiences.

I initially went through my employer assistance program where I did a 90-minute assessment. The program only covers 8 sessions and so the assessment session is for them to assess whether they think your current problem can be solved in just 8 sessions. I went through all I was struggling with only to be told they could not help me further as I would likely need more than 8 sessions to get through all I was struggling with. I got off that call so deflated. It had taken me SO much JUST to make that one phone call only to be told, go back to square one and find someone else. I also felt I got nothing out of the call that I didn’t already know. I would have been very disappointed if I’d paid for it.

I shared my experience with a friend who recommended I try a free 15-minute consult with their therapist as we have very similar outlooks and felt we’d be a good fit. I got more from that 15-minute call than I did from the 90 minutes with the other therapist. Even though I had no cover for this new therapist and the higher-than-average cost would be completely out of pocket, I knew that I could get through so much more in one session with them than if I paid a lower rate with a different therapist. I now say this was the best money I’ve ever spent. To no longer feel the way I was feeling and to be off anti-depressants. Hands down.

This is why I say, finding the right therapist is so important. If you haven’t found them yet, keep looking, you won’t regret it.

As an extremely open person, this post alone can attest to that, I never thought talking to a therapist could achieve what it has. Talking with someone that holds space for you and has no bias, along with a professional degree in helping provide you with tools and ways to reframe your mind and your experience is extremely different than just talking with friends and family. This seems so obvious now but it was a barrier for me.

When I first went in, I thought my issues were one thing but after going through therapy, those issues were just symptoms of a deeper rooted cause. Now that I’ve gone to the root, the other surface level issues have resolved themselves or vanished all together. At one point, I was convinced I had premenstrual dysphoric disorder (a severe PMS that causes extreme mood shifts that can disrupt daily life and damage relationships), as my symptoms had gotten so extreme around my cycle but after reading Code Red and other books and working through things in therapy, I realise that those symptoms were my body’s way of screaming at me that something in my life/environment was very wrong and needed my attention.

Rest

If you’re burnt out, take time off if you can, or find ways to do as little as possible guilt-free to allow yourself time to rest. Despite what our culture tells us, rest is productive. Rest allows you to come back stronger. As the airlines say, put on your own oxygen mask before helping others. This is true for mental and physical health too. If you’re familiar with the spoon theory, at the end of the day, ask yourself how many spoons or how much energy do you have left to finish out the day, if you have low energy, ask yourself is there anything that doesn’t NEED to be done or what shortcuts can you take so that you can finish out the day without borrowing spoons from the next day – which if done consistently, will leave you in chronic burnout and require a significant amount of down time to recover/recharge from.

My Story

In my first session with the GP, she asked if I wanted to be written off work. My gut was screaming YES at the time but my head and mouth said no. I continued working while starting the anti-depressants, therapy and subsequently weaning off the anti-depressants 4 months later in the Spring. I had planned to take that Summer off to go back home to Canada for an extended visit. I thought this might be enough time to allow me to rest and get back to my former self. You can see by the end of this post just how that went. Long story short, it wasn’t enough time. I decided at that point that I wasn’t going back to work and was going to focus on getting better. I went back on anti-depressants, went back to therapy and “rested”. By rest I mean, consumed an inordinate amount of wellness content, focused on eating and sleeping better and exercising more which I’ll go more into below. I also made some huge life and financial independence changes which I will share in another post.

In total, I was off work for 16 months minus a 6-week contract around the 12-month mark. My husband was also off during this time which was paramount to me getting the support I needed. I know this is extremely privileged, but I feel like it has its place on a financial independence blog as it was our working towards financial independence that allowed us both to take this time off. From a financial perspective, I’ll explain how we were able to fund this time off in the next post.

Educate yourself

Consume positive media on wellness and healing. Opening yourself up to this space and seeing where it leads could uncover things about yourself you never knew. Listen to podcasts, watch YouTubers, read books, and start a new Instagram account that follows only positive wellness accounts.

My Story

As I mentioned above, I consumed an inordinate amount of media in my quest for healing. When you’re looking for positive content, the algorithms actually work for good too, in that they continue putting forward related content and like-minded individuals. You may start to notice recurring themes or concepts, take note when you see them, the universe is trying to get your attention.

Following the trail actually led me to getting a diagnosis which has been a big part in getting me to where I am now. It started with me watching the comedy skits of Laura Clery on Facebook. She is an American, who was married to a British guy who did silly skits on the differences between American and English terminologies, which was relatable to me being a Canadian married to an Irish guy. She is around my age and at the same stage of life as me. She went on to become a mother around the time I did. She shared the same parenting styles as me. Her content started to evolve as she grew as a person. In one video she shared that her son was diagnosed as autistic and they shared the process that they went through getting that diagnosis. She also shared that in that process, they found that her husband had experienced many of the same things their son did as a child and has since gone on to get a diagnosis of autism himself. I was extremely moved by this video. I didn’t think much more about it at the time but very shortly after for whatever reason, a seed planted in my subconscious maybe, I decided to look up Asperger’s traits in women (now grouped together under the autism spectrum due to the unscrupulous history of Hans Asperger). The list has about 150 criteria, of which I identified with 80%. And down the rabbit hole I went. I spent probably 5 days straight (and many more since) consuming everything I could find on autism in women (hello hyperfocus), and have since navigated the pathways to getting formally diagnosed myself. I also likely have ADHD (having both is very common) but those traits are largely overshadowed by my autism.

I will write more on this and my lived experience in another post, but for now, I will share that getting this diagnosis has been a huge relief and extremely validating. I have a better understanding of myself and much more compassion for myself. Where once I felt broken in comparison to other people, now I know I’m just wired differently and have different strengths and weaknesses because of it. It also helped me understand that the burnout I was experiencing was something called autistic burnout which can take much longer to recover from.

From these I have read books on autism, one of which led me to the book Code Red which helped me see that my extreme PMS was more psychological than physical, and prompted more work in therapy.

Other content that really helped me on the healing front includes:

Podcasts/YouTube

These are all from Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown but hand picked the ones that helped me heal the most.

• Gabor Maté: Who Gets Sick and How to Prevent It
• Jewel: Turn Your Life Around One Thought at a Time
• Micheal A. Singer: Let Go of Yourself and Surrender to Life
• Byron Katie: Find Out What is True
• Dr. Sarah Schewitz: How Your Childhood Wounds Are Affecting Your Relationships

Books

Of all the books I’ve read on healing, these were the most impactful. The below are affiliate links which help support the blog.

• The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté and Daniel Maté
• Code Red by Lisa Lister (Any women with a monthly cycle should read this)

Netflix

• Brené Brown: The Call to Courage
• Stutz
• Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones

Go on a Digital Diet

• Stop watching the news, watching the woes of the entire world of which you can do nothing about is way more information, mostly negative at that, than humans are meant to consume
• Uninstall social media from your phone
• Turn your phone into a dumb phone, mute all notifications, remove all or most apps from your home screen, turn on auto do not disturb mode from 8PM, turn on night mode from 7PM to limit blue light.

My Story

When I was at my lowest, I had no more room for anything. Dr. Gabor Maté talks about women being their family’s shock absorbers, this felt particularly true for me and my experience during the pandemic. I had absorbed too much and had no room for anything else. I couldn’t cope with watching the news. I couldn’t read or watch anything that had any drama or heavy content of any sort. I went through a phase where all I watched on Netflix was stand-up comedies and all I read were fluffy holiday novels as that is all I could take. Social media and the news would only make me feel worse about myself or increase my anxiety.

At one point I came across the idea of a dumb phone. I researched various models and decided that I still needed a smartphone for things like authenticator apps and maps but that I could reduce my reliance on it by artificially making it dumb. I removed all social media applications, muted all notifications, especially group chats, I removed most apps from my home screen and moved the most used apps to a separate screen so I wouldn’t see them when I first unlocked my phone. Especially at night if I picked up my phone, I didn’t want to see any new emails or messages as it would send my mind racing wondering what they were and I already struggle enough with sleep. I set my phone to go into DND mode automatically by 8PM and turn on night mode on both my laptop and phone from 7PM to limit blue light which can impact sleep. I use the search function to load the apps that are removed from my home screen. Months later, a few more apps have made their way back to my home screen but it has made me be much more intentional with the use of my phone and significantly reduced my endless scrolling.

Eat Better

I’m not going to go on too much about the obvious stuff everyone knows. Healthy nutrition is so important for all health. You are what you eat and all that. I did want to share my experience of having been off work and having had time to try eating more healthily and what I learned about putting too much pressure on ourselves.

My Story

I’ve always eaten fairly healthily but in my search for healing, I came across a book that included a 4 week meal plan to help with improving gut health which has impacts on overall health including depression and anxiety. When I went off work, I wanted to give it a go. In true autistic style, I went all in and tried my very best to follow it to a T. The first week I tried to do the breakfast, lunch and dinners recommended in the book. They included all different ingredients we didn’t know where to buy, took us going to 4-5 different shops to just try and get the ingredients and then I pretty much spent the entire day in the kitchen just following the recipes for each meal. In the second week, we focused on just the dinners because even though we were both off, ain’t nobody got time for that. At the end of the 4-week plan, we had a repertoire of the meals we liked best and getting groceries got simpler, we kept those in rotation for another 3 weeks. I can’t say I felt any difference either physically on the scale, in my clothes or mentally in my mood or energy. I think I was so tired from trying to follow the meal plan that even if I did have energy gains they were consumed by the effort of following the recipes. We started re-introducing some of our old reliable meals that we knew how to make without following a recipe and it was such a relief. Now, a year later, we’ve gone back to our old ways and are eating simple whole foods. I still try to include some of the ethos which is to eat as many different whole foods as possible and get as many colours as possible every day but the pressure is off. All this to say, that while eating healthy is important, there has to be a balance where the effort to do it adds more to your life than detracts from it.

Actually, now that I think of it, our best and most effective diet, wasn’t intended to be a diet at all. When we were trying to go zero waste (produce as little waste as possible in all areas of our life), we were only buying whole foods or things with sustainable/very limited packaging. This meant no crisps, no biscuits, no processed food, no store-bought salad dressing or sauces and so on. I remember doing a scan at work that showed your BMI, visceral fat, metabolic age etc before and after we attempted this lifestyle and all of my measurements went down. My visceral fat went down, my weight went down and my metabolic age went down by 10 years!

If you watched the Netflix documentary on the blue zones where many people live to over 100, their diets are varied but none of them eat processed foods. In fact, once some of the communities became modernised and started getting easier access to processed foods, they are now losing their blue zone status.

The zero-waste lifestyle also took into account everything we put on our bodies. Hand soap, shampoo, laundry soap, dish soap, cosmetics, feminine hygiene products and so on. A lot of these things have toxins in them we aren’t aware of, and if you put it on your body, it ends up in your body. While I don’t make all my own soaps anymore, I did spend a lot of time researching which ones I could buy that were least harmful to both my and my family’s bodies and the environment.

Sleep Better

Similar to the eating healthy bit, sleep is paramount to good health. I’m not going to go into that which we all intuitively know but again wanted to talk through all I have tried and things I have found to have worked or not worked for me. You will have to do your own trial and error but hopefully, there are some learnings you can take away.

My Story

I’ve always had low energy despite sleeping 9+ hours a night. I very, very rarely wake feeling rested. I’ve been to the doctor many times over my life with this complaint starting in my early 20s, I had bloods done every time, and each time told there is nothing out of the ordinary. Get more exercise, more sunlight, more fresh air they’d say. Years later, add onto that already low energy, a baby that doesn’t sleep (less so than other babies). Even though he is now sleeping, I’m still struggling to sleep through the night and get through the day without needing a nap. I got a sleep tracker. No surprise, I get 0-15 minutes of deep sleep on average despite being “asleep” for 9-10 hours a night. I also have awake/disturbed sleep for 1.5 hours on average. Now that I know I’m neurodivergent this makes a lot more sense. This is a common affliction in our community. Still, I’ve scoured tiktoks and blogs trying to find the magic cure. I’ve yet to find it but I’ve tried a lot and found some things that help and some that make things worse.

Things that make things worse:

• Alcohol – if I have even half a glass of alcohol, my heart rate is elevated ALL night. My sleep suffers.
• Caffeine – if I have any caffeine – even tea – after noon, my sleep suffers
• My cycle – certain parts of my cycle wreak havoc on my sleep
• Screen time before bed – this is only a recent trial but I’m starting to be able to fall asleep without listening to something on my phone after only a week

I know these can’t always be avoided but at least if you know what effects they have, you can try to plan things around them. If you need to be on point for something, try to work around the things that don’t help.

Things that help:

• Go to sleep when you’re tired – this sounds obvious but too often, when you just want that little bit of me time once the kids are asleep, we push through and stay awake longer than we should. Learning my body’s natural sleep rhythm has helped.
• Listening to TV shows that I know or am not interested in – I need something for my overactive brain to focus on to keep my brain from kicking into overdrive but it has to be something I’m not interested in or already know by heart. I have certain shows on repeat. When I wake in the night, I put on an episode and 5-10 minutes later I’m back to sleep. Otherwise, I could be awake for an hour or more.
• Turning lights low before bed – I’m hypersensitive to artificial lights, they actually cause me pain (hello hypersensitivity), so I always have lights dimmed, but having overhead lights on after a certain time of night will keep you awake for longer as it messes with your circadian rhythm
• Exercise – this is obvious, although I know I need to do more, when I do exercise it helps
• Sunlight/Vitamin D – I got more deep sleep in the summer when I got outside every day, I take vitamin D supplements but haven’t seen the same impact as getting actual sunlight
• Time in Nature/Fresh Air – As above, I got more deep sleep when I got outside in nature every day.
• My cycle – other parts of my cycle increase my deep and overall sleep
• Sleep in a dark room – I have black-out blinds and a weighted sleep mask that I bring with me if I’m travelling
• Breathable sheets, duvets and pillows – these bamboo rayon sheets are my fave, an all-season duck/goose down duvet that comes in 2 and snaps together or apart depending on how warm you want it and down pillows help me feel cosy but not too hot
• Weighted blanket

Other things I’ve tried with inconclusive results for me (though I probably didn’t try them for long enough) were: hypnosis, meditation, magnesium supplements, going to sleep at the same time and getting up at the same time every day and journalling.

I have yet to try melatonin, CBD oil/ cannabis or going to a sleep clinic but they are on my to try list. I’m reluctant to try any more supplements/ sleep aids as I feel like they are a sticky plaster over a root cause. I need to do more work in therapy to get to the root of this one I think.

Move More

Again, exercise is an obvious one for overall health. When I exercise, I sleep better and have more energy. I listened to a podcast (which for the life of me I can no longer find) that said “If you could bottle the benefits of exercise into a pill, it would be the most prescribed drug in the world”, it also said that “no matter how little you think you can do in a day, any exercise is better than none. So if you can only manage 5 minutes, do that and go from there”. It also highlighted that as humans we need a combination of muscle, flexibility and cardio exercises to keep us healthy for as long as possible.

My Story

During my time off, I thought I would exercise more. I did for a while and I was seeing benefits but something happened along the way that got me out of the habit and I stopped. I really do need to get back into a routine again. One trick I saw was that, once you’ve started a workout routine, no matter how little you think you can do, especially when life hits, like you or your kids are sick, you can always do something. If all you can do is 5 minutes, do that. When it comes to building a habit, you need to do something each day no matter how small. That’s what will build the momentum. This is more of a do as I say, not as I do section as I have yet to crack this one myself. I’ve also come across another health hack that says you should move as soon as possible as soon as you can after you eat. Even if you can do calf raises under your desk at work that will help level out your glucose spike and keep energy levels even.

Meditate

I recently heard a different podcast that said something along the lines of “We as humans did not always brush our teeth, but we now know that brushing our teeth extends the health and life of our teeth and so we take a few minutes each day to brush our teeth. We also now know that meditation is scientifically proven to improve all kinds of mental and physical ailments, so why don’t we also take a few minutes to meditate each day”. This really stuck with me.

My Story

I’ve “tried” meditation so many times and while I had some success, I have yet to make it as second nature or as hard coded into my routine as brushing my teeth. Another podcast stated that there is no “trying” to meditate. It is something you do as a lifestyle. It takes time. When you first start training for a marathon, you don’t just get up and run the full race without training. Same goes for meditation, when you first start, you might not be able to sit still for 30 seconds, but with training and practice you can get there. Also to know, there are different kinds of meditation. If you’ve tried one without success, there might be another you can try. While guided meditation is a great starting point, there is also walking meditation and yoga which is a movement-based meditation for those who are particularly restless (hello ADHD). My favourite is to go for a walk in nature or get out on water and sit/lay in the sun and take deep breaths while bathing in nature’s stillness. When I was at my lowest, I felt called to the forest and to be in nature. I had a pass to a local garden and I went there as often as I could. I felt the forest and lake were so healing.

Journal

Buy yourself a nice journal, keep it by your bed and build it into your screen-free bedtime winddown routine. There are many different ways of journalling, so try different ones to find the one that works best for you. The more you journal and tap into your subconscious, the more your intuition comes through and unveils things that need uncovering to help you heal.

My Story

After reading Code Red, I bought the journal that goes with it. It has guided sections to fill out every day. This one in particular is for tracking your ups and downs in relation to your menstrual cycle but taps into all elements of your mind-body experience. It gets you to reflect daily on how you’re feeling in your physical and mental body, what you did for yourself that day and what your gut is telling you. At the end of the month it gets you to reflect on the last month and previous months and notice any trends that are starting to appear. Which days are the best and which were not so great. When you get into the daily habit, it’s amazing how your intuition starts to get stronger and your subconscious brings things up throughout the day that might be needed for you to continue healing.

Be patient

There are no quick fixes, medication takes time, therapy takes time, seeing effects from routine, diet, exercise, sleep hygiene, meditation and supplement changes take time. Just like losing weight, building muscle, or running a marathon, you need to slowly build up to sustainable practices that heal you. Don’t just try something for a few days or even a week or two and give it up as you are seeing no effects. Be persistent and your efforts will pay off.

My story

This one is more of a do as I say, not as I do moment. In other words, learn from my mistakes. As above, I went off anti-depressants too soon. I’ve tried so many different things over the last 2 years trying to get better and probably gave up on a lot of them way too early.

My mood and outlook on life have dramatically improved because I gave therapy and anti-depressants the time they needed to do their job (the second time).

Give things a go for at least 6 months before writing them off. Otherwise, you might, like me, look back and think, I didn’t try that for long enough and it will extend your trial and error efforts trying to find something that works for you and your body.

Also, like me, try not to try changing too many things at once. Firstly, you’re unlikely to keep at them as too much change at once is unsustainable and not easy to build habits and second, you won’t know which thing you changed made a difference or not.

Give yourself grace and compassion along the way and don’t compare yourself to others. You are on your own journey and it will take the time it takes.

This post outlines our family’s annual spend for 2022. This is for a family of 3 in Cork, Ireland.

For longer time followers, I know it’s been a while – I will be posting some big life updates soon so stay tuned. In the meantime, see below the details of our spending from last year.

Total spend in 2022 came to:

€34,907

This is just over 3,100€ less than last year which is under my predicted 36k!

Not included in this figure are investments (5k). Also excluded is the tax refund we got from last year’s overpayments (2.7k) and any other income offsets.

Expense tracking and reporting in this article is done using my own excel tracker template.

Overall spend

Here is a summary of the main categories with spend over 400€.

And all main spend categories summarised by annual and average monthly spend.

Food

Food remained our biggest expense in 2022 (10.1k), making up 30% of our annual expenses. This is up 46€/month on average compared to last year.

Our grocery category (8.3k) includes everything you’d buy at the grocery store so can include alcohol, toiletries, cleaning products, the odd centre aisle item like small tools, toys for our son etc.

Grocery spend went up by 300€ compared to last year but take-away spend was 200€ less than last year so we did a bit better cooking at home.

Restaurant spend was our biggest increase by almost 800€ as we were in Canada for 2 months and treated friends/family to meals as we were staying with them.

So even given the rate of inflation this year on food, we don’t seem to be seeing that much of an increase in our grocery bill, this is likely due to an increased effort to eat less meat.

If we convert the full annual food spend of 10.1k into cost per person per week (assuming 2 adults and 1 toddler (I’ll average at 2.75), it comes to 71€/week/person (up 4€/week/person from last year).

Monthly bills

Monthly bills came to a little over 7.2k or 20% of our annual spend. The vast majority of our monthly bills was our mortgage (55% or 3,963€). The rest were made up of Gas, Mobiles, Electricity, Internet, Refuse, Life Insurance (for me only to cover our mortgage). Gas was 300€ more this year due to rate increases. Electricity was 63€ less than last year due to the government credit. Combining the two brings our utility costs up by 238€ from last year. The remaining costs were fairly similar to last year.

Entertainment

Entertainment made up 11% of our annual spend. We spent 140€ more on entertainment this year totalling 3,603€ but sub-categories have shifted. Last year the biggest spend was sporting events which was overtaken this year by video games (double from last year). Alcohol also doubled from last year, some of which was because we could have people over again. The alcohol spend is only those bought directly at an off-license, the remainder is included in our grocery spend. Gadget spend was a bit higher as we treated ourselves to a Nintendo Switch this year. Remaining categories include nights out, sporting events, apps/patreon memberships, netflix, sightseeing (passes to Blarney Castle and Gardens), books, movies, and board games.

Vacation

Travel costs made up 10% of our annual spend coming in at 3,547€. Last year we spent 1 week in Portugal and 2 months in Canada. The one week in Portugal came to 1,482€ – 300€ for flights, 560€ for accommodation, 438€ for food/drink and 96€ for transport (trains and ubers). The only costs included in this category for the Canada trip was the flights coming in at 1,865€. As we were visiting family we didn’t have accommodation costs and food/drink costs were included in our main food/drink category. The other cost included in the accommodation line in this category was our annual membership for homeexchange (149€) which allowed us to host a student for 3 weeks and gather enough guest points to cover our accommodation in Paris this Fall for the Rugby World Cup.

Transportation

Transportation made up 8% of our annual spend coming in at 2,799€. This is 433€ less than last year mainly due to the fact that I paid motor tax for 2 cars last year before we got our “new” car. Petrol was about the same at 1,334€ and car insurance was higher at 728€ as we had a break-in and had to pay an additional 300€ as a deductible to get it fixed. Remaining categories include maintenance (313€), motor tax (180€), taxis (96€), tolls (70€), parking (53€) and public transport (25€).

Home

Home costs came in at 1,892€ (6% of annual spend). Sub-categories include home insurance (393€), accessories (378€ – we got some new bedding and a security camera), maintenance (354€), garden stuff (341€), local property tax (241€ – the additional top up from updates to valuation was paid in 2023), TV license and small appliance costs (spare part for our coffee machine).

Personal

Personal spend came out to 1,477€ and includes things like clothing (both Mr. MH and I needed a wardrobe refresh which we did in Canada), accessories (travel bag, backpack, earrings, shoes and a travel mug), vape and toiletries.

Medical

Medical costs came in at 1,449€. The biggest expense last year was therapy at 656€ (more on that to follow in the life update post but thankfully I am doing MUCH better), supplies (356€) includes things like multi-vitamins, probiotics and other non-prescription stuff bought at a pharmacy, Mr. MH’s glucose sensors ran out while in Canada and we had to pay out of pocket (221€), GP visits (200€), prescriptions (172€) and dentist (50€). Health insurance is a minus because we switched to monthly payments for 2023 instead of paying the full year up-front and we got a refund mid-year due to reduced services resulting from COVID.

Other

The remaining categories had a spend of 1k or less and include things like:

Gifts/charity came out to just over 1k. This was for birthdays and Christmas and charity giving.

Blog costs came in at 842€ for insurance, website and subscription costs.

Kid stuff came in at 321€ including clothing, accessories, toys, books and other supplies. We get most of our clothes from my sister-in-law (thank you!).

Misc includes postage and lottery tickets (238€).

Weddings/Special Occasions (168€) was for accommodation and food/drink for family events.

Goals for next year

I’m actually fairly happy with last year’s expenses and would be happy to aim for the same amount again this year. That said, we have some big changes coming up this year which will hopefully reduce our cost of living even further, potentially by another 8k bringing our annual spend down to 27k/year. Stay tuned for more on that!

My family of three is nearing the end of our three-month mini-retirement. Both Mr. MH and myself were off work for the summer. We spent two months in Canada and one here at home in Ireland. This post goes into how we managed it, what it cost and how it went.

I contemplated not writing this post, as in the wake of the cost of living crisis, it feels a bit insensitive. But after some thought, I think different people will be at different points of their journey at different times and it’s ok to show what can be achieved along the path to financial independence should you choose to follow it.

Starting off I should say, we did not get here overnight. We are probably 15 years into our journey of getting and staying out of debt, consistently spending less than we earn and using the remainder to either pay for big life expenses in cash such as cars (albeit old), our wedding, two down payments, renovations and extended maternity leave or building up some investments such as paying down our mortgage, stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs)).

It’s important not to compare the beginning of your journey to the middle of someone else’s, so keep that in mind as you read on.

What is a mini-retirement?

In short, a mini-retirement is an extended break from your regular work, it can be for 2 months or even a year or more.

This will be our family’s second mini-retirement. The first was 2 months in duration in Portugal at the beginning of 2020 right before the first lockdown at the tail end of my maternity leave. You can read that series in the posts below.

Why we took a mini-retirement

The short answer is, because we felt like it and because we could.

The long answer is, the pandemic was hard, as it was for many. I hadn’t seen some of my immediate family for 3 years. My twin nephews were 1 the last time I saw them, now they are 4. There were points during the pandemic when I wasn’t sure I’d ever see them again – this may seem dramatic but my mental state was not normal at that time – actually it still isn’t but I’ll get into that later. I wanted to be able to visit and catch up without being rushed. I wanted to make up for lost time.

Second, I was and still am recovering from burnout.

How we managed a mini-retirement

You can read more about how to plan for a mini-retirement in general in my previous post, but for this time for us, we made the decision in January 2022.

Budgeting

First things first, could we afford it?

I track my expenses in detail 3-4 times a year so I have a fairly good idea of what our monthly expenses are month on month. At the moment, our monthly expenses are 3,000€/month on average.

We knew we wanted to take 3 months off and that if I went back contracting it would take 2 months of working before I would get paid again – when you work on contract, you invoice at the end of the first month and the company generally has 30 days to pay it so you have to work for 2 full months before you are paid. This meant we needed money for 5 months to get us to our next paycheck.

Simple math is 5 months times 3,000€/month = 15,000€.

Our bank balance at the beginning of January was 15k. We like to keep 10k as an emergency fund so we had 5k extra to put towards our next goal. I figured we’d be able to save the additional 15k back up by the end of my contract so I added 5k to my ETF investment portfolio in Degiro*.

I finished my contract at the end of June but had 1 final paycheck due at the end of July, so by the end of July we had built our savings back up to 26k (including our 10k emergency fund). Meaning we were saving about 2,500€/month towards this plan.

Getting off work

I was working contract work and Mr. MH was already off as a stay-at-home-Dad, so we only had to worry about getting work off for one job. In March, I told my Manager I would not be extending my contract at the end of June but that I would like to come back in October if they had work for me. I was told it wouldn’t be guaranteed but that I should get in touch a month before I wanted to come back and they would see what they could do. Worse case, I would be applying for a contract somewhere else. With the way the job market is at the moment, this was a risk I was willing to take.

Preparing to go

In terms of preparing to go, we installed a lockbox for our house along with a Ring battery operated security camera for the outside and we re-purposed the camera we used as our baby monitor to watch the back door. We told our friends and family to use our house while we were away, which was made easier by the lockbox. They kindly watered our plants when they stayed meaning we only needed to bug friends of ours to drop by twice while we were away.

The last time we were away for a long period, our car battery died which we solved in the past by taking the battery out and putting it back when we returned. We thought we’d do the same this time however since we now have a hybrid, this caused the battery to prematurely die. We have since learned that hybrid cars, especially those with stop/start functions need a special battery and for that battery to be fitted by a garage in order to sync it up properly with the onboard system. So, depending on what type of car you have, you may need to get friends or neighbours to drive your car intermittently while you are away, if gone for extended periods.

Packing-wise, due to all the baggage delays and stories of lost baggage, we only brought our stuff in carry-ons. As we are fairly minimalist and used to travelling light for the likes of Ryanair, I’d been doing some research into the best/biggest carry-on which fits even Ryanair’s size limits. I invested in this Osprey 40L backpack which I’m fairly pleased with and managed to fit all my stuff in for the 2 months. We did have one suitcase filled with baby stuff for my sister but even that managed to make it through ok.

What our mini-retirement cost

The below table outlines what we spent our money on from July-September 2022. This includes 2 months in Canada and 1 month in Ireland and the flights we purchased in March.

In total, we spent 9,741€ or an average of 3,247€/month. Adding on the additional 2 months of 3,000€ to our next paycheck, this comes to 15,741€ which is almost 1,000€ over what we had estimated.

As the flights were purchased in March, that brings our actual monthly average for Jul-Sep down to 2,625€ and our total actual spend during that timeframe to 7,876€, add onto that the additional 3,000€/month until our next paycheck and that comes to 13,876€, so slightly under our estimated actual spend for that timeframe.

Out of curiosity, when I looked at the money we spent while in Canada only (including ongoing Irish costs such as mortgage etc), the monthly average came to only 1,874€/month.

How our mini-retirement went

On the surface, we had a wonderful summer. We got quality time and catch-ups in with friends and family. Mr. MH and I had date nights and nights away on our own. We got to go to the cinema and splashed out on a fancy-tasting menu. Little MH learned to swim. We had pool time, beach time, lake time, boat time and nice weather. Little MH had lots of play dates with cousins. Mr. MH read lots of books. I made jigsaw puzzles while singing along to my favourite songs. We got to eat food we hadn’t had in years. We shared many meals in good company and ate in restaurants.

Once we were back in Ireland and back into the routine, Mr. MH and I had a few hours each day to ourselves as Little MH had started back to playschool. We went on long walks in nature on our own in the fresh Autumn air. We got to catch back up with Irish family with cousin play dates for Little MH here too.

For all of this, I am so grateful.

Digging deeper, I am still struggling mentally and physically. I am tired all the time. I don’t have the energy to do the things I want in life. Mood-wise I feel mostly numb. About a month into our time off I was frustrated with myself for not feeling more rested, even with all the support and no work, I was still running on empty. For the first month, I was obsessing, planning and analysing our next move (more on that to follow). I remember basking in the sun on my parent’s pontoon boat surrounded by family feeling nothing and being mad at myself for not being able to be present and feel joy at what should be a most joyful moment. I then vowed to stop my planning and to spend the last month being more present. This helped somewhat but not as much as I’d hoped.

Reading some other FIRE blogs, for those that had already retired, some said it took them a year to decompress from the working world. So maybe my expectations for feeling rested are too high.

Somewhere along the way, I decided I needed to take some more time to try and heal. I feel like I’ve been troubleshooting for a year and although I’ve definitely levelled off and am much more stable, I’m still numb most of the time. I do get moments of joy every day and some moments where my heart is just brimming with love and gratitude but I very quickly fall back to my baseline of numbness.

So, Mr. MH will be going back to work while I focus on getting better. I’m very lucky to be in this position and am thankful for that. Since we’ve been back, my routine looks like this:

• Wake up with Little MH between 6:30 and 7 and have breakfast together
• I’ve started taking the Revive Active energy sachets before eating/drinking anything each morning
• Get Little MH off to playschool
• Come back and exercise with either a brisk walk in nature if it’s nice or some strength training and/or yoga for 30-60 minutes
• Shower, clean the house, make the beds and collect Little MH
• Have lunch
• Food-wise, we’re following a 4-week gut health program featured in the book Fibre Fuelled.
• Putter around in the afternoon, go to the shop, library, playground, give Little MH snacks (so many snacks) etc
• Start dinner around 4
• Chill out for a bit after dinner
• Get Little MH to bed around 8:30
• Go to bed myself between 8:30 and 9 – I downloaded a sleep tracker and have been seeing that my sleep quality is very poor (very little deep sleep, awake for 1.5 hours most nights) so I have to go to bed very early if I’m to get 7-8 hours actual sleep.

I’m about 2 weeks into this routine and feeling more energized most days, not waking up as groggy. My default mood has not really improved so I will give it one more week before heading back to the GP. I think it may be a matter of going back on anti-depressants for a while and maybe getting referred to a sleep clinic.

All-in-all, I’m so grateful for having this time with friends and family. For being able to take time to get better.

I do think that as we are living and working longer, mini-retirements will one day become the norm. People will be able to take extended career breaks to enjoy life while you are still able to do things you love.

The beauty of reaching financial stability is being able to choose when to do things like this and not feeling trapped to keep going when your body says stop.

What do you think? If you could take a mini-retirement what would you do? Has anyone experienced what I’m going through and what did you do to get better?

* This post contains a referral link where I get a bonus if you sign up and use the service at no cost to you. Note investing comes with a risk of loss. Do not invest any money you can’t afford to lose.

For those who aren’t aware of the term, Coast FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) is when you have enough in your retirement/investment accounts that without any additional contributions, your net worth will grow to support retirement at a traditional retirement age.

We were recently on holiday and the time off usually kicks my “outside the box” thinking into overdrive. Having the time and space to take a step back from the everyday and look at things from a different perspective. I hadn’t really had coast FIRE in our plans but had the thought “what if we didn’t invest anything else and just lived off our whole salary, when would we reach FIRE?”. Out came the spreadsheets.

The numbers

The way our investments currently stand, we have about 120k between different investment and retirement accounts combined. Growing at a rate of between 6% and 8% after fees and inflation and earning dividends of between 0.5% and 2% – I have the estimated portfolio performance broken down per investment vehicle as some are tax-deferred and have higher growth while others do not – our portfolio should grow to 850k by the time I am 61 and Mr. MH is 65 without investing another cent between now and then.

Using the safe rate of withdrawal of 4%, that should give us enough to withdraw 32k/year. This is our expected cost of living once our mortgage is cleared and Little MH is grown. This does NOT include any state pension which we would not qualify for, for another 2 – 6 years at current projections.

What about current markets and inflation?

Of course, this is all based on assumptions on certain market performance and inflation, and many things could go wrong along the way but similarly many things could also go right. The goal of early retirement for us is really about financial security and being able to live a life of intention.

If for whatever reason our retirement pot doesn’t grow to a certain value by a certain age, the worst case scenario is we keep working to normal retirement age, which is the status quo anyway. And if we’re honest, neither of us think we will give up work in full, unless we have to, even if we do reach our FIRE goal. Work may just take on a different form, in that we could work on things we choose, things that make a contribution to society and feels valuable.

Our plans

So, does this mean we will stop cutting expenses where we can and stop investing from today going forward? Of course not. However, it does give us the freedom to choose and do things differently. It gives us options.

Besides, our current level of spending is somewhat optimal in that we feel we spend enough to be happy. Spending more would not bring more happiness.

Options

Some of the other options we’re considering:

If we stay in our current house.

Another option we are quite seriously considering is moving out of the city. The main criteria would be a better schooling district for our son and cheaper housing. The house would need to be well serviced and within walking distance of school and shops to ensure we would not need a second car. This is more feasible now due to the availability of remote work.

We have our eye on a number of communities, one is even within the same estate as some of our best friends. A house of similar quality and size to ours recently sold there for 220k while a house in our own estate recently sold for almost 360k. If we sold where we were and moved out of the city we could free up some equity to invest and reduce our timescale significantly.

*Flamingo FIRE is where you save 50% of your FIRE pot and then coast from there earning just enough to cover expenses which usually gets you to your full FIRE goal in less than 10 years from that point.

Realistically, we will probably toggle between these options along the way. Some years we may take it easy and spend more, others we will both work and invest more.

Ultimately we are tracking towards a goal and we’ve already reached a certain degree of security which has made these options available to us while still working towards the goal of early retirement. When exactly we get there doesn’t really matter as long as we are living life in line with our values along the way.

The correct term is mortgage neutral, meaning we now have more in liquid investments (non-retirement accounts) than we have left on our mortgage.

I feel incredibly blessed and thankful to be in this position. Looking back at the 9 stages of wealth we are now somewhere between stage 5 (net worth positive) and 6 (security where passive income covers basic expenses).

As the path to full financial independence is a long one, I think it’s important to stop and notice the milestones along the way as a way to keep motivated. Also, to look back at all that we did to get here.

Firstly, I think it’s important to say that luck definitely plays a part in where we are today in as far as

• where we were born
• the families we were born into
• being born white and all the privilege that comes with that
• the housing and job market where we have lived
• being introverted and able to stick to long-term goals and spend less money
• being part of a long-term couple which lowers expenses
• and so on

There is a really interesting scientific read on the impacts of luck on the path to success here which I think is important to keep in mind – especially when comparing your own journey to others.

Secondly, we did not get here by mistake or overnight. We’ve been on this journey since I was 22, although being mortgage-free was not always the main goal, living within our means was always at the root.

At a high level, I think the major factors that contributed to getting here have been:

1. Tracking expenses in detail, taking stock at least once a year and assessing if there were trends we could change
2. Saving and paying for big expenses in cash (cars, wedding, renovations, maternity leave)
3. Never financing a car
4. Carefully choosing where we live to ensure that we would only need 1 car between us to get to work
5. Avoiding credit card debt
6. Educating ourselves on investing
7. Educating ourselves on doing our own taxes
8. Not inflating our lifestyle as incomes increased

Each of these actions have easily saved 10s of thousands over the last decade.

Our own journey looks something like this:

• 2005: Met at age 19 and 24 (those eyebrows were a choice?)

• 2006/07: Travelled and amassed almost 15,000$ in debt

• 2008: I lived with my grandma for 3 months and walked to work while Mr. MHs visa was being processed and he had to stay in Ireland. Mr. MH moved to Canada and went a few months without work. Consolidated debt to lower interest line-of-credit and paid off in full within the year. Shared a 3-bed apartment with a friend and my sister. Public transport was sufficient for commute, no car needed. Ottawa was fairly insulated from the economic crash and we maintained our jobs (insert luck here)
• 2009: Moved to the suburbs with younger sister and brother in a house bought by my Mum. Mr. MH, myself and my Mum split all expenses including mortgage as a way to “invest” (again insert luck into the equation here). Commute on public transport was brutal for me so bought 10-year-old Toyota for 4,200$. Started earning more than I needed to cover expenses. Started reading about investing and started contributing to workplace pension matching scheme.
• 2010: Renovated house to add value – paid in cash, bought furniture, saved towards down-payment

• 2011: Bought first apartment on our own at 26 and 30 with 20% down-payment

• 2012/13: Enjoyed life in the city, travelled, ate in restaurants. Paid a number of lump sums off the mortgage. Saved for move back to Ireland.
• 2014: Moved back to Ireland, I went 8 months between paychecks while waiting for visa to come through. Rented out Canadian apartment. Figured out international tax requirements savings at least 5k in accountants fees. We rented a 2 bed apartment in Cork City. Public transport was not great. Bought a 10-year-old manual Toyota for 2,100€ with the hopes I would learn how to drive manual – I didn’t (insert trauma lol). Got back on our feet money-wise, built our emergency fund back up

• 2015: Got engaged! Bought 10-year-old automatic Toyota for 4,500€ (notice a trend?). Started saving towards wedding.

• 2016: Got married! Paid for wedding in cash. Started saving for down-payment for house

• 2017: Bought 2nd house with 20% downpayment. Purposely bought close to Mr. MH’s work so we’d only need 1 car which also happened to be in an area with a reputation of being rough but cheaper as a result – see our full house buying guide here. Got pregnant! Saved for maternity leave
• 2018: Renovated and furnished house. Had our son. Started reading about investing in Ireland. Mr. MH maxed out stock option in work. Spent less on maternity leave than expected and invested in ETFs.

• 2019/20: 18 months maternity leave. Started this blog. Saved for and took mini-retirement in Portugal. Sold Canadian apartment. Figured out taxes, again saving thousands in specialist accountancy fees. Used proceeds to halve mortgage. I went back to work and Mr. MH left work to be stay at home Dad.
• 2021: Saved for and bought a 9-year-old hybrid Honda for 6,500€. Renovated garden. Continued adding to ETF portfolio

• 2022: Irish stock/ETF value exceeds remaining mortgage at age 36 and 40!

In terms of accessibility, while we have certainly had lucky events that propelled us forward, we have still lived fairly traditional lives with a number of intentional financial set-backs.

Setbacks: Over the last 14 years, we have lived off 1 income for about 4 of those due to moving countries twice, having our son and not being able to find childcare at the start of the pandemic. We also had a number of large costs like moving country, a wedding and renovations and still managed to progress on our path to financial wellbeing by following the key factors outlined above.

In terms of income, over the last 7 years, our take-home income has averaged less than 100,000€ gross combined so while this is high it is not like we’re both earning 6-figure incomes.

In addition to the key factors of tracking expenses, living within (or even under) means, staying out of debt and self-education on financial matters, the other 2 key factors are consistency and time (like with all long-term goals).

No matter where you are on your journey, keep it up and make sure to celebrate your successes along the way, big or small.