We lived together for a few years before getting married, which is when the need to start saving and investing snuck up on us, seemingly out of nowhere. We’d moved back to the States shortly after getting married and started looking for a home, but the bank quickly denied our mortgage. During that same period, we also found out that we were expecting our son Hugo, and my mother also announced she would be working into her retirement because her government job was eliminated just a few months short of her vesting period, taking her pension with it.