Net Worth, Money & Life News: December 2015
January 8, 2016
Change from Jan 2015: 23.5% increase
0.23% decrease from last month
ON MONEY
I use Swagbucks. Here’s a handy tutorial if you’d like to join and earn.
Spending
Much as I would like to cut out all Christmas gift spending, that’s not going to happen overnight. I’ll instead be glad we’ve gone to a somewhat more organized, pick a person system now and hope that someday we can maybe only do small gifts for kids or something. Honestly, we don’t need anything and the things we want, we can save up for, for ourselves. It doesn’t make much sense to me to share our wishlists so they can buy things we want and we can buy things they want – it’s just a swapping around of money. Signed, The Grinch
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Because Dad didn’t bother to tell me he’d need some help staying warm this season, and we’re looking at a potential record El Nino year, I had to do some unexpected post-Christmas shopping. I won’t dwell on how much we could have saved had I known before. We bought him a new blanket and coat: $150 after discounts, and using old store credit we’d had on hand.
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Merry Christmas to us! I gifted us 100 shares of American Express stock and now am kicking myself that I didn’t wait for a while to buy it since they just lost two major partnerships. But they have been a strong company and I hope that they’ll pick up the pieces soon.
Saving
We haven’t done a stellar job (defined as: saving anything like 10% more than originally planned) saving this month, it was autosavings as usual. But we did save off the top as soon as we were paid, we did contribute to and max out PiC’s 401(k) and I did max out my IRA so those are all good things.
ON LIFE
I’ve been sick all month and it’s exhausting.
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Family is also exhausting. Sometimes my tiredness leads my sentences to just end at “Because Dad.” It would be really appreciated if that area of family could be just a little less stressful.
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We managed a coastal drive in our ideal time for the first time ever. It involved prepacking most things the night before, then finishing packing starting at 7 am the next morning but it was totally worth it: we made it to our destination in 7 hours and before we lost daylight. Lest that sound both boring and, well, more boring, I offer you my infant, my dog and a road trip map. Taking 10 hours is a very different proposition and dragging in after dark to set up camp is what we call “the Suck.”
Hope you feel better. I know how prolonged periods of not feeling good can drag you down. We went to Disney World and came back in late November. I’d developed a shoulder injury that took a couple of weeks to heal and right after that I got sick which lasted for another two weeks. It was a great trip, but it was well over a month before I felt ‘back to myself’ again. Hope you get back to normal soon.
Thank you!
What a way to spend your month after vacation, I’m glad you did heal up in the end.
I think we talked about this via Twitter, but the small extended family gift exchange annoys me to no end. There are very few things I want/need for $20 and if I want them or need them badly enough I have already gotten them for myself! I hate just buying gift cards and trading them around because it’s like you said, whats the point?
Last year, I went above the limit to get some cool jewelry for my aunt (in law) from a local store. This year we were under strict instructions to only give what was on the wish list because someone was upset that they got “dollar store jewelry” last year. So it seems like gift cards it is.
ba humbug!!
wait, what???? You got somewhere on time with a kid in tow? THAT is some kind of miracle.
Hope you’re feeling better soon. Agreed: the impulse to exchange small, useless gifts is annoying. Most adults already have what they want, and if they don’t, they’ll go out and get it. Unless you know there’s something the person really craves, money is ideal. Or how about a mutual agreement to buy, oh, say, nothing? Give to charity in each others’ names?
BTW, in the colder than a bygod and don’t wanna pay the power company to run the heat department, you might look at one of those heated throws for your dad. It’s not a whole blanket — it’s a throw-sized one. Can be washed and dried. Got one at Costco and love it. Turn it on ten minutes before you go to bed and it preheats the bed. It goes off by itself after three hours, so it’s not likely to cook the old boy. By the time the thing automatically turns off, the bed is warm from your body heat. You could use it to warm up while sitting in front of the TV or reading, too.