Between our recent vacation, new snow tires, dental surgery and some holiday gifts the big bill has arrived early this year. I always assume that it will come after the holidays and although that one might be big too, this feels a bit of a shock.

In one way, it’s a good thing because it means we’ll deal with it before the new year because I always forget that the new year brings smaller pay cheques with CPP and EI deductions starting afresh.

The good news is that we planned for the tires and the dental bill. Most of the vacation was paid for in advance and although we did a little shopping, we didn’t do too much damage. The bad news is that this bill has already been reduced by our credit card loyalty dividend payment so it must have been a whopper!

I suppose I could think that it doesn’t seem to matter how much we plan and budget, there are always surprises but I choose to keep planning and budgeting because so far it’s worked pretty well. I like the challenge of seeing if I can plan for the unexpected because that is life after all.