July Snapshot, a mid-year evaluation
August 7, 2011
It’s been a while since I’ve posted one of these. Over six months, in fact. I have been keeping track of some months but it’s been sporadic. Life has been consuming.
In the past six months I’ve ….
– been traveling which still hasn’t been fully documented.
– loving my Doggle (talk about for better or for worse!)
– started, stopped, got sick of planning, budgeted for (on paper), and started saving for a wedding that I still haven’t actually started planning again.
– consolidated all of our phones onto a cheaper cell plan to save money.
– gone to My Mecca (SDCC) with bloggy friend.
– generally worked on surviving the master plan of earning my way up the ladder. I need a new plan, this one is beyond exhausting and doesn’t leave any time for real life.
There was far more spending than saving in the daily scheme of things but in the background, the automated investing and savings allocations are ticking along, doing their jobs. I had a glance over my Vanguard funds’ performance the past four months to find that they’ve horrifically lost all their gains of this year:
Huge losses. Just huge. Given the turmoil in the government this month, I can’t say August’s losses were a surprise but it’s an eye-opener.
And except for that last item (working my tuchus off) which, though it paid off, has me pondering those workaholism tendencies, infiltrating all corners of my life again, it’s not necessarily the worst way to have spent many months. More rest, though, would be wonderful, and I want (nay, need) to see far more progress in the savings ledger in upcoming months.
With the state of the economy, the uncertainty of the jobs market, the recent downgrade of the credit rating, it’s time to do massively better.
This isn’t just prompted by general concern for the state of the union or personal insecurity, though. I’ve done that “what happens in case of a layoff” exercise a thousand times. And I’ve done it in real time. This isn’t that faux-planning; this stems from wanting to grow beyond the rat race.
When I start making choices in the near future, I want real choices, not just be limited to picking from the limited array that my employer at the time is offering. Which means that if we want One Frugal Girl’s flexibility if we decide to start a family and get thrown a curveball in the process, or if we want to consider adoption, or we want to move out of the Bay Area, we definitely need financial security in multiple forms.
Besides, working into an early grave isn’t precisely the endgoal, and staying in this routine, driven by my need to achieve in the confines of a traditional environment, is setting myself up for that very thing.
Reading this entry in your blog has really inspired me. There’s something that I’ve been dealing with financially and I’ll be asking advice on tomorrow, but this post really resonated with me. Financially security is so important and being able to have choices is important. The more money you have the more choices you have, hands down. Thanks Revanche for being the voice of reason.