Splashy Summer Insurance Woes (Jun. 2026)

June was our first full month with our baby boy, Lukas. All those stereotypes about sleepy parents aren’t wrong—but—we’ve got a bit of a superpower…We can sleep in! With no fixed schedules, we’ve really been able to enjoy Lukas’s first weeks of life together and try to take turns with all the new responsibilities we have as parents. We kinda love it. He’s not so bad, either. 😉

On the financial front, we’ve continued to deal with insurance headaches and confusing doctor bills. Be sure to read the credits section below to check out our latest sneaky way to earn $10 statement credits—and for many readers—what could be hundreds of dollars!

For our monthly donation, our theme is extreme heat. 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 was a little short of spending this month, but that’s not a huge surprise given the fact that we have a new baby!

Gifts Received
Our two—well, three—birthdays were in May. Some surprise gifts trickled in.

We received about $75 in gifts.

Credits
Several of our credit cards offer statement credits for purchasing with certain companies. Paze, a new digital wallet by a variety of big banks, seems to be competing with Apple Pay, PayPal, etc. They have a promo going where for every purchase over $10, they’ll offer a credit of $10 up to ten times per eligible card. We have quite a few eligible cards and that’s $100 in credits for each. Our favorites:

• Orders around $10 at Newegg for various gadgets and other electronic needs.
• Dominos takeout Pizza—especially with their $9.99 large 7 topping national pizza deal (even works with gluten free crust!).
• Clover—which is a restaurant backend payment system—to hit quite a few walkable coffee shops and restaurants near us (check PazeMap.com).

We’ve started making good use!

Promo runs into September, check it out if you have Capital One, Citi, Chase, Bank of America cards—and probably a few other brands.

We received $50 in statement credits.

Cashback
Chris uses Bank of America’s custom cashback program to earn 3% on all of our online shopping. He cashed out our balance this month—which was fairly significant!

We received about $126 in cash back.

Dividends
We are working to reduce our exposure to dividend-producing investments in our taxable accounts. We’re a little late to realize that it’s creating some issues for us in attempting to control our AGI, but better late than never. Still, plenty of dividends flow into our tax advantaged accounts.

We anticipate significant dividend payments from our various stock holdings—most of them from Vanguard funds like VTSAX. About half of our distributions were automatically reinvested in our tax-advantaged accounts.

We earned $4,105 in total distributions.

Accountable Plan
If you’re interested in the details of how an accountable plan for businesses works, check out this original post.

Chris’s business reimbursed him for the use of our house, utilities, health insurance, and other expenses or repairs. This reimbursement covers expenses for the second quarter of 2026.

Chris received $2,084 in reimbursements. 

Expense Summary

From our $6,897 monthly budget, we saved and invested $2,450 dollars.

After subtracting our credits, savings, and donations—we spent about $4,389 on living expenses.

That’s 92% 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
As mentioned last month, we’ve made good use of our discounted/Aeroplan paid Uber Eats credit. Combined with Aldi delivery, our groceries have been plentiful and cheap. Oh, and, those Instacart to Publix pickup promos with Chase continue to be massively lucrative. Even with more convenient foods to accommodate caring for Lukas, we kept our groceries to about $465.

Restaurants, Fast food, Alcohol & bars
All of our convenience foods this month were either offset with Paze credits (check our income summary above)—like with Dunkin’ Donuts or Dominos—or deeply discounted via the Too Good to Go app. Convenient and cheap!

We spent $514 on food & dining this month. 

Childcare

With Lukas’s first full month of expenses, we’ve got some baby supplies that need accounting for.

Baby Supplies

Just like with our own expenses, we try to shop deals and avoid name brands where it doesn’t seem like they offer much of an improvement. Lukas isn’t very picky it seems—and marketing hype hasn’t quite got to him.

We shopped for quite a few fun things in the last month of pregnancy:

• $104: Target Diapers (150+ of Size 1, 2, and 3); earned a $30 Target GC too!
• $3: Butt Paste—an ongoing need to prevent rashes and this $3 deal was a big tub!
• $46: Breastfeeding pump parts to improve fit.

We spent about $150 on childcare this month.

Health & Fitness

We’re starting to make sense of some of the health insurance changes that had has worried last month and all the bills related to labor and delivery for Lukas and Jenni.

Health Insurance

For June, Jenni and Lukas joined Chris’s existing ACA Silver plan. The plan switched to one with not quite as good of coverage (25% coinsurance, $400 deductible) as what we had early in the year (5% coinsurance, very low deductible). But, it’s not too bad either for what we’re paying on the marketplace.

We ended up paying just two premiums in June for June coverage:

• $85.48—Chris’s ACA Silver plan
• $94.71—Jenni’s ACA Silver plan

The roughly $138 payment for Jenni & Lukas made in May was actually coverage for the few weeks of May for Lukas that remained after his birth and coverage for his first full month (June, this month).

For July, we’re switching to all of us under Chris’s ACA Silver plan. That looks like it should cost around $300.

Doctor

The labor & delivery bills have started to trickle in. As mentioned last month, we’re still not sure which insurance they’ll be billed under (one with a 5% coinsurance rate, or one with a 25% rate—a 5x increase!). So far, the bills are delayed enough that they’ve been hitting the 5% insurer.

Some of those bills so far:

• $26.21: Labs for Jenni.
• $209.22: Jenni has had issues with carpal tunnel after birth and got a steroid injection that seems to be helping.
• $66.94: Jenni’s epidural during labor—something she was trying to avoid but ended up having to take in order to complete delivery.
• $478.38: Room fee at the hospital; the original bill was over $38K!
• $25.77: Labs for Chris’s physical.

No doubt, we’ve still got more insurance changes and doctor bills to come.

We spent $1,405 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.

Furnishings
We like to pick up most of our furniture used and locally. Often that means we can find quality hardwood stuff pretty cheaply. But, occasionally, there’s just too good of a deal to pass up on modern engineered furniture.

• Jenni bought a Walker Edison hallway desk with a glass top. Perfect to replace Jenni’s standing desk that was in our (now) Nursery. Under $20 delivered.
• Chris couldn’t resist adding a three IRIS storage carts to our LEGO sorting collection for $52.
• We still had a few CCFL light bulbs in our house that were getting pretty old; under $5 on Amazon and we got 4x LEDs in a warm 2700K temp.
• With Lukas snuggling around the house, another cozy blanket wouldn’t hurt. We found a pure cotton waffle blanket in baby blue for just $13 on Amazon.

Gas & Fuel
We spent about $34 on gas this month. We earned over $1/gallon in rewards through OnePay which we then redeemed for a Walmart gift card to use on regular purchases. Their current program is pretty great with Wednesdays earning that $1+ bonus at many gas stations; free to signup for the app.

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
Jun 2026	12	0

With our time spent heavily on Lukas, we didn’t do much in the way of earned income work—about 12 hours.

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

The markets continue to gyrate, but fortunately our assets remain pretty stable. From a high level, our assets and liabilities are shown in the data table below as of June 30, 2026.

Description	Value (USD, $)
401(k)	1,409,668
Brokerage	1,198,241
Roth IRA	368,889
Traditional IRA	58,655
HSA	76,422
Real Estate	466,500
Mortgage	(126,464)
Miscellaneous Assets	25,000
Checking & Savings	5,286
Net Worth	3,482,197

• 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 down about 1.0% for the month.

We were down about 0.5%. That’s a little better than the market, which is expected with some of our more defensive investments.

Overall, our net worth decreased by around $18K 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%
June 2026	$3,482,197	(0.5%)

Previous Donation Winner

Our winner is Helen Keller International who is making a big impact with such a simple and inexpensive intervention. Vitamin A drops can prevent weak immune systems which van leads to death. Now less babies will suffer from the negative effects of diarrhea, measles, malaria, and pneumonia.

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: Extreme Heat Prevention charities.

Charity Round-Up

Heatwaves are the number one cause of deaths from natural disasters. In 2023, we ran our first climate change poll where we learned just how bad extreme heat can be. Now here, three year later, we are worse off that we were before. So it’s time again to bring our attention to charities trying to make a difference in our environment, communities, and government around the world and reduce the effects of extreme heat on vulnerable populations. 

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) Save the Children Federation, Inc.

Why? Extreme temperatures is known as the ‘Silent Killer’ causing  dehydration, heart attack, stroke, respiratory illness, and death. Therefore, it’s frequently underreported on death certificates. But among the most vulnerable populations, heat will kill.

Where? Globally.

What? Save the Children Federation, Inc. is a nonprofit humanitarian organization founded in 1919. With extreme heat becoming more of a negative effect on children’s health, Save the Children is helping communities prepare for heatwaves and adapt to the impacts of climate change for the future through environmental education, access to green employment opportunities, and supplying emergency aid and food for those affected by drought.

[Candid] [About]

2) Cool Earth

Why? Rainforests are the world’s best carbon-storing technology. Stopping deforestation and restoring our Rainforests can dramatically reduce our carbon emissions that lead to global warming. By keeping the rainforest intact, it can provide 23% of climate mitigation urgently needed to cool our planet. 

Where? Papua New Guinea, Peru, Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon.

What? Cool Earth is a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the world’s rainforests by stopping deforestation. They help the indigenous people use their traditional knowledge to build sustainable solutions including solar power and farming solutions. Cool Earth‘s Rainforest Firefighters Campaign monitors forest health to prevent forest fires. 

[Candid] [About]

3) Greenpeace, Inc.

Why? A single voice is hard to hear but a crowd is hard to ignore. This peaceful organization holds demonstrations to shout out the concerns effecting our planet and leads by positive direct action. 

Where? Globally.

What? Greenpeace is a nonprofit organization using peaceful protests for the past 50 years to expose environmental problems and bring about changes for a healthier planet. They have several campaigns including ending the climate crisis, flighting plastic pollution, and protecting the oceans.

[Candid] [About]

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.

What’s Next

July will bring ongoing headaches with doctor bills and insurance. But, hopefully, we’ll get that sorted out.

On top of that, we’ve had a few different home repair related issues creep up all at once at the end of June.

• Our HVAC air handler’s repair from last fall doesn’t seem to be holding—the internal drip pan crack is back to leaking into the emergency pan below. So, it’s probably time for a new air handler.
• The house’s front gutter is showing serious signs of age with weak spots at multiple points now leaking. The copper is thin and unlikely to be repairable.
• While Chris was monitoring the attic air handler during a rain storm, he felt a slow drip on his back. Yep, the roof was leaking from a nail near an attic vent. Time for a roofer and—hopefully just—caulk around the nails/vent.

So, while July will bring another amazing month with our new son, it’ll also have some challenges overcoming housing issues, insurance, and bureaucracy of life. That’s not something we can do away with via financial independence—but it sure makes it easier by having time and patience to handle it.

Somewhere far off in the distance…we’re going to start dreaming up some travel plans for the three of us, too. We can’t wait.

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Summer storms bringing out your housing gremlins?
Let us know in the comments or on Threads and X (Twitter)!