As hoped and predicted, May was a huge month for us—roughly halfway through the month, we welcomed little baby Lukas into our family! He was delivered after about 36 hours of labor to our local hospital and the midwife team with our Doula by our side. 8 pounds, about 11 ounces, and very healthy! Mom was a champ, too! We’ll continue to share our expenses for labor, delivery, and pediatric care as the bills come in.
For our monthly donation, our theme is childhood mortality prevention. You can read more about the three charities we’re considering and vote for your favorite in the poll below!
We track our income, spending, and savings each month to stay on our FIRE path and share it with you. Keep reading to see our monthly updates, tips, and charity reviews.
Budget Update
In the Sankey diagram below, the income on the left matches our expenses on the right.
We’ll run through the income and expense sources for the month and remark on any interesting items.
Income Summary
Our income fell short of our expenses this month, but that’s quite alright given our ongoing investment growth.
Gifts Received
Our two birthdays were in May—and parents continue to insist in a little cash gift. In fact, we now have THREE birthdays in May. Even crazier, Lukas shares a birthday with Jenni!
We received about $225 in gifts.
Local Sales
Another big month via our local Facebook Marketplace!
- $150: Jenni sold her electric standing desk to make more room in the nursery; at $150, she probably made a few bucks over the original cost.
- $5: We were gifted a diaper wipe warmer we don’t plan to use which we offloaded to someone who does.
- $155: Jenni sold off his previous Apple Watch, a Series 8, after buying an upgrade—Series 11—this month for less than he sold the old one for!
- $100: We sold off our kitchen 2008 iMac we use for recipes and local games; and upgraded to one three years newer for a net profit!
We earned $410 from local sales.
Expense Summary
From our $6,683 monthly budget, we saved and invested $561 dollars.
After subtracting our credits, savings, and donations—we spent about $6,112 on living expenses.
That’s 128% of our FIRE budget from 2022 ($4,787/month).
Let’s break down some of the more exciting details this month.
Food & Dining
There’s been so many food-related promos in our area that we’re overstocked at this point—and still underspending our normal!
Groceries
We stocked up on some prepared food or frozen items—stuff that it is easy to make—anticipating Lukas’s birth. Those items tend to be a little more expensive (and less healthy), but we still kept our costs really low. A huge number of Instacart promos between all our Chase cards cut our costs pretty deeply when combined with pick up and BOGO Publix deals.
On top of that, we utilized an amazing little grocery hack—
Jenni just signed up for a Chase Aeroplan card. That’s a Canadian airline rewards card. While we won’t be flying very soon, we will be eating… The card allows you to redeem 1 point for 1.25c worth of travel purchases. Uber gift cards from Uber count as travel. And you can redeem Uber gift cards for UberEats. Finally, Uber was running 15% off gift cards this month! All in, a $500 card was $425 charged. At 1.25x, that’s 34,000 Aeroplan points out of the 80K the card earned as a signup bonus. We then stacked various UberEats delivery promos from Aldi and Kroger. Pretty great!
All in, this kept our grocery expenses to about $400 this month. And, about half the month had three mouths to feed!
Restaurants, Fast food, Alcohol & bars
Our local sweetgreen salad/bowl place was running a BOGO promo combined with a free gift card from Xfinity rewards and we got two huge healthy salads for our total dining out expense this month—$6.30!
We spent $406 on food & dining this month.
Home
Our home expenses represent nearly half of our expenses after accounting for savings/investment this month. Our mortgage, insurance, HOA is all typical for us but there was a few interesting elements in Home Improvement & Furnishings.
Home Improvement
We’ve been putting off a repair to our house’s rear porch roof. It covers some access panels, electrical panel, and so on—so it’s not just cosmetic. From what our contractor visitors could tell, the wood seems to have been original—1926! Naturally, this meant that repairing the small roof and roof supports was going to be expensive. Some quotes we received:
- $800 just to paint the roof
- $4,700 to jack up the roof, repair the roof, pull the wood support structure apart and repair/replace as needed; another $2,000 to strip and paint
- $7,000 carpenter restoration without paint
And finally, we ended up going with a local, well-reviewed handyman with some carpentry experience. He supported the roof, pulled the main beam out, cut out the rotted parts, replaced, and tied on a support beam. Then, replaced a support arm as well. He resealed the roof to the rear wall. All for $1,200.
After letting the repairs dry for a handful of days, he returned to strip, paint, and reseal the roof surface, support structure, and roof underside. While visiting, he also repainted a section of a fascia board under a gutter nearby. Add $920.
So, all in: $2,120. Because the rear roof and porch is shared with our neighbors, they contributed half which brought our costs down to $1,060.
It’s wild how varying quotes can be. One would assume, however, the workmanship would be much finer with the higher end professional carpenter approaches. Our needs and desires focused on the structural elements.
Furnishings
We picked up a few odds and ends for around the house this month. The baby continues to motivate our desire to cut things that irritate us and finally take care of little projects here and there.
- Winco kitchen shears—replacing a junky plastic scissor we used in the kitchen
- Oxo dish brush—replacing a worn out dish brush we’d super glued back together multiple times
- Mini screwdriver bit set—specialty set for disassembling electronics Chris needed for some other projects
And lastly, a fairly high quality Winix C545 True HEPA air purifier for about $33 delivered. A crazy good deal on a closeout purifier. We didn’t have anything like this—and purifiers kind of seem like snake oil with their ozone generating systems. But, that can be disabled on this unit and the HEPA filters is what we were really after for allergens/air quality in our bedroom/nursery.
We spent $2,431 on home this month.
Shopping
A seemingly frequent shell game for us—we upgraded and gifted a few electronics this month.
Electronics & Software
Last month, Chris bought an Apple Watch Series 10 for less than he (then) sold his Apple Watch Series 8 for. Free upgrade! And this month, we repeated the process for Jenni and Chris’s father. We actually ended up buying two Apple Watch Series 10s for Chris’s dad (one locally, and then one shipped to his dad) after it seemed apparent it’d need to be shipped to make it in time for Father’s Day. We sold the first one locally at a small profit!
We shopped for quite a few fun things in the last month of pregnancy:
- $140.72—Apple Watch Series 10 for Chris’s Dad [$172.58 first watch (sold for $200), $168.14 second watch]
- $125.00—Apple Watch Series 11 for Jenni—this was a smoking good deal!
- $13.19—2pk Apple Watch chargers and Series 11 case for Jenni
- $30.00—2011 iMac for our kitchen (local multiplayer games, recipes; sold the 2008 it replaced for $100)
- $15.28—8bitdo video game controller for Jenni (she’s playing Hogwarts Legacy!)
- $220.00—Chris brought a childhood dream alive buying a 9v LEGO train setup locally—another fantastic deal!
We spent about $544 on shopping this month.
Health & Fitness
We had some very big and unexpected changes to our health insurance this month which will cost us a ton.
Health Insurance
Our health insurance experience this month has been quite crazy. We each buy our insurance on the Virginia health insurance marketplace (ACA) individually. We were told to wait for our baby to be born to then request to add him to mom’s insurance, backdated to his birth.
Which was exactly what we did not long after he was born.
We’re still reeling from the effects. Summarizing, it seems that because Jenni’s plan didn’t actually exist on the marketplace for 2026—it was simply renewed at the beginning of the year, something like being grandfathered—making any change to her plan…triggered it to be canceled! That’s right, long after the birth—and even after Jenni already made her June insurance premium payment—her insurance was revoked back to the date of Lukas’s birth. Crazy!
A new plan was instated starting on his birth date that covered both Lukas and mom, but that new plan had far worse coverage. For example, the coinsurance rate went from 5% to 25%—a 5x increase! That meant that a $10,000 bill would go from $500 out of pocket to…$2,500!
One has to wonder how this is even legal, but even into June we’re still working through the effects of this. More to come.
That said, we ended up paying three bills for health insurance in May:
- $85.48—Chris’s ACA Silver plan (no change, but now forced to expire on 6/30!)
- $138.32—Jenni & Lukas new ACA Silver plan, prorated to his birth date
- $94.71—Jenni’s original ACA Silver plan, expired on Lukas’s birth date
We still don’t have all the hospital and pediatric bills to know exactly how these insurance changes will affect our final labor & delivery costs. We’ll find out in the coming months, but it has not been fun.
Doctor
While nothing to sneeze at, our Doctor bill this month isn’t actually for labor and delivery. That big bill will be fun to deal with next month. Instead, this primarily represents the cost of hiring a Doula ($1,800; we had a small discount of $75 from using discounted gift cards).
And, we’d have happily paid this twice or even ten times over. Our Doula experience was wonderful. She not only helped guide us through the physical parts of labor & delivery, but also through the hospital system and the staff. This was immensely valuable in getting us what we needed—whether a room with a bathtub or helping us avoid a caesarian section which was part of Jenni’s desires.
That shouldn’t discount the extreme value Chris found in having a helping hand—literally—in guiding Jenni through labor & delivery.
We spent $2,211 on health & fitness this month.
Expense Conclusion
While that covers the big stuff, we still had a few random things or small purchases to mention that might be of interest.
Childcare
We’ll certainly see increasing childcare costs in future months, but our baby shower and various gifts really curbed most of our early expenses. In fact, all we bought this month was special pins for our cloth diapers—about $5!
Gas & Fuel
We spent about $29 on fuel this month despite rising prices. Take a look at 7-11’s monthly promo on both the 7th and 11th of the month where they take 50 cents off per gallon. This can be stacked with their other promos; we ended up saving over $1/gallon.
ⓘ Curious about some of the other expenses that we didn’t address? We’ve written about every expense in this month’s diagram either in this post or in the past. Check out our previous budget updates for more details or ask in the comments below!
How Much We Work
We like to keep track of how much time we spend doing work that is paid.
Let’s add this month to the list…
History of Monthly “Hours Worked”
| Month | Chris (Hours Worked) | Jenni (Hours Worked) |
|---|---|---|
| May 2020 | 41 | 108 |
| Jun 2020 | 38 | 96 |
| Jul 2020 | 36 | 120 |
| Aug 2020 | 39 | 48 |
| Sep 2020 | 27 | 76 |
| Oct 2020 | 26 | 104 |
| Nov 2020 | 27 | 57 |
| Dec 2020 | 28 | 57 |
| Jan 2021 | 25 | 102 |
| Feb 2021 | 24 | 104 |
| Mar 2021 | 24 | 106 |
| Apr 2021 | 23 | 85 |
| May 2021 | 17 | 29.75 |
| Jun 2021 | 19 | 66 |
| Jul 2021 | 21 | 30.25 |
| Aug 2021 | 23 | 16.5 |
| Sep 2021 | 26 | 28 |
| Oct 2021 | 22 | 49 |
| Nov 2021 | 21 | 51 |
| Dec 2021 | 64 | 27 |
| Jan 2022 | 32 | 80 |
| Feb 2022 | 29 | 63 |
| Mar 2022 | 14 | 70 |
| Apr 2022 | 15 | 21 |
| May 2022 | 14 | 36 |
| Jun 2022 | 6 | 12 |
| Jul 2022 | 13 | 45.5 |
| Aug 2022 | 15 | 96 |
| Sep 2022 | 12 | 54 |
| Oct 2022 | 14 | 34.5 |
| Nov 2022 | 12 | 72 |
| Dec 2022 | 11 | 16.5 |
| Jan 2023 | 10 | 88 |
| Feb 2023 | 11 | 81.5 |
| Mar 2023 | 12 | 47.5 |
| Apr 2023 | 8 | 1 |
| May 2023 | 16 | 100 |
| Jun 2023 | 10 | 109 |
| Jul 2023 | 12 | 48 |
| Aug 2023 | 16 | 54.5 |
| Sep 2023 | 9 | 20 |
| Oct 2023 | 14 | 22 |
| Nov 2023 | 15 | 22 |
| Dec 2023 | 16 | 12 |
| Jan 2024 | 12 | 61.25 |
| Feb 2024 | 14 | 28.5 |
| Mar 2024 | 16 | 61.5 |
| Apr 2024 | 12 | 22 |
| May 2024 | 8 | 19.5 |
| Jun 2024 | 18 | 19.5 |
| Jul 2024 | 14 | 44 |
| Aug 2024 | 18 | 81 |
| Sep 2024 | 15 | 20 |
| Oct 2024 | 18 | 51 |
| Nov 2024 | 5 | 15 |
| Dec 2024 | 19 | 12 |
| Jan 2025 | 17 | 17.5 |
| Feb 2025 | 4 | 8 |
| Mar 2025 | 14 | 12 |
| Apr 2025 | 3 | 11 |
| May 2025 | 14 | 33 |
| Jun 2025 | 12 | 2 |
| Jul 2025 | 12 | 13 |
| Aug 2025 | 16 | 13.5 |
| Sep 2025 | 12 | 30 |
| Oct 2025 | 13 | 40 |
| Nov 2025 | 12 | 22.5 |
| Dec 2025 | 13 | 16 |
| Jan 2026 | 12 | 8 |
| Feb 2026 | 12 | 12 |
| Mar 2026 | 7.5 | 12 |
| Apr 2026 | 14 | 22 |
| May 2026 | 6 | 0 |
Likely our lowest working month ever—about 6 hours! No surprise with Mr. Lukas arriving!
Net Worth Update
Net worth is not our primary measurement, and can understand it can be discouraging if you’re working yourself out of debt. We also understand it’s difficult to be transparent with our readers without divulging this information, so we continue to do so.
Account breakdown
Even with the wild swings in the market lately, our investments continue to be pretty stable. From a high level, our assets and liabilities are shown in the data table below as of May 31, 2026.
| Description | Value (USD, $) |
|---|---|
| 401(k) | 1,403,490 |
| Brokerage | 1,203,170 |
| Roth IRA | 380,642 |
| Traditional IRA | 60,886 |
| HSA | 74,721 |
| Real Estate | 468,700 |
| Mortgage | (126,918) |
| Miscellaneous Assets | 25,000 |
| Checking & Savings | 10,824 |
| Net Worth | 3,500,516 |
- Miscellaneous assets include specific investments we’ve made in physical assets (think collectibles) and treasury bonds
- Amounts do not reflect the value of the businesses Chris owns or their assets, which should appear as income to us over future years
- Jenni’s Prius is omitted
The S&P 500 was up about 5.2% for the month. No quite as crazy as last month, but still a big run!
We were up about 4.2%. Not too far behind the market, but it’s noticeable how much we lag the run ups (and the breaks down!).
Overall, our net worth increased by around $142K this month.
Net Worth History
| Date | Amount | % Change |
|---|---|---|
| July 2020 | $1,555,289 | – |
| August 2020 | $1,597,334 | 2.7% |
| September 2020 | $1,566,393 | (2.0%) |
| October 2020 | $1,568,182 | 0.01% |
| November 2020 | $1,720,113 | 9.6% |
| December 2020 | $1,810,864 | 5.3% |
| January 2021 | $1,860,996 | 2.8% |
| February 2021 | $1,878,154 | 0.9% |
| March 2021 | $1,918,269 | 2.1% |
| April 2021 | $2,010,849 | 4.8% |
| May 2021 | $2,049,213 | 1.9% |
| June 2021 | $2,093,896 | 2.2% |
| July 2021 | $2,092,153 | (0.1%) |
| August 2021 | $2,130,761 | 1.8% |
| September 2021 | $2,070,730 | (2.8%) |
| October 2021 | $2,151,272 | 3.9% |
| November 2021 | $2,095,273 | (2.6%) |
| December 2021 | $2,160,235 | 3.1% |
| January 2022 | $2,055,292 | (4.9%) |
| February 2022 | $2,058,001 | 0.01% |
| March 2022 | $2,134,428 | 3.7% |
| April 2022 | $1,968,069 | (7.8%) |
| May 2022 | $1,975,569 | 0.04% |
| June 2022 | $1,868,397 | (5.4%) |
| July 2022 | $1,975,608 | 5.7% |
| August 2022 | $1,878,352 | (5.2%) |
| September 2022 | $1,735,997 | (7.6%) |
| October 2022 | $1,820,287 | 4.9% |
| November 2022 | $1,920,635 | 5.5% |
| December 2022 | $1,866,513 | (2.8%) |
| January 2023 | $1,953,691 | 4.7% |
| February 2023 | $1,882,656 | (3.6%) |
| March 2023 | $1,969,566 | 4.6% |
| April 2023 | $1,981,934 | 0.6% |
| May 2023 | $1,995,247 | 0.7% |
| June 2023 | $2,092,479 | 4.9% |
| July 2023 | $2,189,821 | 4.7% |
| August 2023 | $2,140,296 | (2.2%) |
| September 2023 | $2,042,865 | (4.6%) |
| October 2023 | $2,015,648 | (1.3%) |
| November 2023 | $2,157,404 | 7.0% |
| December 2023 | $2,261,458 | 4.8% |
| January 2024 | $2,296,269 | 1.5% |
| February 2024 | $2,365,110 | 3.0% |
| March 2024 | $2,434,250 | 2.9% |
| April 2024 | $2,371,284 | (2.6%) |
| May 2024 | $2,423,205 | 2.2% |
| June 2024 | $2,472,353 | 2.0% |
| July 2024 | $2,513,877 | 1.7% |
| August 2024 | $2,560,215 | 1.8% |
| September 2024 | $2,592,558 | 1.3% |
| October 2024 | $2,576,903 | (0.6%) |
| November 2024 | $2,685,615 | 4.2% |
| December 2024 | $2,621,732 | (2.4%) |
| January 2025 | $2,689,706 | 2.6% |
| February 2025 | $2,665,053 | (0.9%) |
| March 2025 | $2,581,708 | (3.1%) |
| April 2025 | $2,588,737 | 0.3% |
| May 2025 | $2,711,140 | 4.7% |
| June 2025 | $2,818,049 | 3.9% |
| July 2025 | $2,836,370 | 0.7% |
| August 2025 | $2,915,960 | 2.8% |
| September 2025 | $3,012,036 | 3.3% |
| October 2025 | $3,067,605 | 2.3% |
| November 2025 | $3,066,024 | (0.05%) |
| December 2025 | $3,077,922 | 0.4% |
| January 2026 | $3,174,543 | 3.1% |
| February 2026 | $3,212,548 | 1.2% |
| March 2026 | $3,107,967 | (3.3%) |
| April 2026 | $3,358,212 | 8.1% |
| May 2026 | $3,500,516 | 4.2% |
Previous Donation Winner
The benefits of breastmilk are numerous and last way beyond providing food for a baby. This month’s winner is Mothers’ Milk Bank of Tennessee. Thanks to them, tiny little humans are able to receive the important nutrients from breastmilk even if it’s unavailable from their mom.
Our Reader’s Fund seeks to leverage the principles of FIRE to build a lifetime of giving.
Thank you for your participation in our polls over the last 5 years. We’ve given over $10,000 to deserving charities with your help in deciding which organizations to donate to.
Polls are now open for our next round of candidates: childhood mortality prevention charities.
Charity Round-Up
Lukas arrived to us this month safely and in great health. Shortly after birth, he was checked over for various diseases or troublesome indications; vaccinated against Hep B, dosed with Vitamin K to support blood clotting, and eye-wiped with erythromycin to prevent infection.
But, not all babies are so lucky to have such great resources with access to modern healthcare technology, research, and expertise. With charitable funding lapses ongoing after recent aid cuts, there’s a lot of newborns and kids in parts of the world lacking the most basic sources of mortality prevention. So, in the FIRE spirit, this month we’re looking at highly effective sources of preventing that childhood mortality. Each organization has received grants from GiveWell in 2026, indicating the urgent need they have as well as their effective use of resources.
Each organization has great charity ratings. We invite you to learn more about their life saving work and join us in donating to one of them by casting your vote.
Summaries below include the impact metrics and a link to their Candid profile, which details the nonprofit’s operations and transparency.
1) New Incentives
Why? New Incentives estimates that 40% of deaths of children under age 5 in Nigeria are from vaccine-preventable diseases.
Where? Northern Nigeria.
What? The nonprofit incentivizes parents to get their kids vaccinated against common, often deadly, diseases through cash transfers. There are significant barriers to vaccination like the difficulty and to simply visit a clinic in remote areas with limited healthcare access. Taking some of the burden off of parents financially while encouraging vaccination can increase uptake and prevent death effectively. GiveWell estimates a life is saved for $4,500 through the program.
2) Helen Keller International
Why? Vitamin A deficiency leads to weaker immune response, and often death, from more common childhood illness and disease such as diarrhea, measles, malaria, and pneumonia. Yet, the deficiency can be resolved through inexpensive and easy supplementation.
Where? Globally.
What? The helps distribute and provide a twice-yearly dose of vitamin A in areas where deficiency surpasses 28% of children. The supplementation can reduce childhood mortality by more than 25%. And beyond preventing death, proper uptake of vitamin leads to better vision and immune response to other non-life threatening illness. GiveWell estimates a life is saved for $3,500 through the program.
3) Against Malaria Foundation
Why? GiveWell estimates 600,000 people die annually from malaria, and the vast majority are children under the age of 5. Pregnant women are also gravely affected. Yet, one of the most effective means of protecting against the disease are fairly simple mosquito nets hung over beds in open air dwellings.
Where? Africa
What? The foundation works with local NGOs and government to distribute long-lasting insecticide treated nets (LLIN) to different regions with population in need. The org estimates that for every 600 nets, one child doesn’t die and some 500 to 1,000 cases of malaria are prevented. Their recent (and ongoing) distribution cites a whopping 9.5M nets throughout South Sudan. If their estimates hold up, that’d indicate some 15.8K children’s lives saved in just their current distribution. GiveWell estimates a life is saved for $5,500 through the program.
Nonprofit poll
After reviewing the list above, please take a moment to vote for which nonprofit you think will put funds to use in the best way.
(Have trouble using or seeing the poll above? Some reader tools or apps may not display it. View this page in a browser or use this link to our Reader Fund page, which has a copy of the poll!)
Thank you for taking the time to vote!
One of our primary goals with TicTocLife is building a stream of giving within the FIRE community, and that starts with knowledge.
Want to hear about the results? Sign up for our free FIRE Insider newsletter! We send it out every few weeks and include the monthly poll results and donation winners. You can see an archive of the FIRE Insider and sign up here!
What’s Next
We still find it surreal to see, realize, and hold our baby boy. Lukas is growing like a weed and finding new ways to employ his little body to surprise his parents everyday. We love to watch him experiment and learn.
It’s incredible to us that we get to experience so much of his early life together, minute by minute. That’s something afforded to us by those early years of investing into our futures—and, come to find out, his too.
Expect an upcoming post to detail our total medical costs for baby delivery and an updated list of all of our pre-birth costs. Forgive us for including probably just one too many shots of little baby feet, hands, and other fun in the coming months!
Parents—what’s your thoughts on pacifier use?
Let us know in the comments or on Threads and X (Twitter)!
