Chapter 13 – Happy New Year!

And just like that, here we are in 2026. For a whole lot of reasons, this was by far the best Christmas holiday I have experienced in a very long time. As it is for many people, Christmas is usually a very hard time for me. The commercialism and expectations have taken a toll. It seems the reason for the season has been forgotten. As far back as I can remember, going to church on Christmas Eve has been important to me because it reminds me why we celebrate. I grew up going to church, as did my children. Sadly, a couple of decades ago, my wife and I found that the church we knew and felt close to was changing. We no longer felt comfortable and, as a result, stopped attending. That said, I always attend the Christmas Eve service when I am able because it is special to me.

 A few years ago, I became aware of another reason this time of year is hard. Actually, it was a very painful event over the Christmas holiday that led me to being diagnosed with depression. I mentioned in an earlier post that I plan to write a blog on the topic of volunteerism. Truthfully, when I decided to challenge myself to begin writing again, there were three topics I wanted to cover. Living with depression is the third and, I expect, will be the toughest. More to come on that.

Anyway, this Christmas was as close to perfect as I remember. We spent time with almost all our immediate family. Those who were missing will be here to spend some time with us in a few days. We ate and then we ate some more. We welcomed new family members to the circle. The weather, for the most part, was accommodating. We made new memories. For this I am thankful.

Back to our journey. As we were approaching our renovation project, we received some scary news from our bank. Jennifer, our personal banker, received a well-deserved promotion and would be moving to another city for her new role. Great news for her, but we were terrified. She had orchestrated our retirement plan that had just launched. Who would look after us now? Were we going to be left having to manage this financial maze? I remember attending a meeting she scheduled with us, to do a handoff of our file. As we sat in her office, the door opened and another lady entered. Jennifer got up to greet her, and she turned to us. She said she wanted to introduce us, not to her colleague, not to her replacement, but to her friend Ann Marie. She was very specific about this. She requested Ann Marie to replace her with our file because it was important to her to ensure we would be looked after. Mission accomplished. We have received nothing but the best support, advice and encouragement over the past ten years from Ann Marie. Again, we are incredibly grateful. I admit I was more than a bit concerned when we received the final invoice for the renovation and discovered that we had gone over our budget. I remember being very anxious heading into a meeting with Ann Marie to figure out how we would manage this. There was no concern on her part. She simply said we would do this and we would do that. She confirmed that I would be okay working for an additional year. That was it. The long-term plan hadn’t changed. We were committed to regular contributions to our registered plan designed to give us the money we would need. Now, we just had to stay the course and live our lives. We had a decade to plan our golden years. We would have to commit to being fiscally responsible, but I felt good about this. We have over thirty years’ experience in making bad financial decisions. Surely, we learned our lesson. But had we? More next week.