By: Revanche

Money & Life Report: February 2018

March 5, 2018

On Money

Income

Our normal income comes from two full time day jobs.

We experiment with earning money on the side, including minimal cash flow that we don’t touch from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks.

Our side income comes from Swagbucks, selling clothes on Poshmark which is hit or miss, using cash back sites like Ebates, Mr.Rebates, and tracking activity through Achievement (my introduction to it).

The long term goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines enough to prevent me from working.

Spending

Valentine’s Day. We haven’t celebrated in over ten years but since it’s been about 3 years since our last date, PiC asked me out for lunch this year. My first reaction was “ugh, no, too expensive to go out on Valentine’s Day! We just bought tons of groceries!”

A day and a half later I realized that my husband wanted to spend quality time with me. Oh. Duh. We enjoyed our $40 (after tax and tip) sushi lunch downtown.

Wish list:

• We usually use foil to protect our burners but I dislike the foil waste when it comes time to clean. I discovered these stove burner protectors and am waiting for Amazon money to pay for them.
• I’m yearning for a piano (Mom is cackling at me from wherever, saying I TOLD YOU SO) but since we don’t have the space for one, I’m looking for a keyboard for my office. My hunt for something without Graded Soft Touch (I haaaate soft touch keys) wasn’t going well until I discovered I should be searching “digital piano. Let me know if you see any digital pianos like this one going for a song? This is almost entirely for me, maybe a little bit for JB. I miss playing.
• When my business flats wear out, I’d like to try these Rothy’s flats. Luckily I can run around in my Nikes almost every day so the flats are going to last a good long time.

Not spending

Handkerchiefs. When JB brought home another virus and started leaking mucus like an Alien vs. Predator extra, I pulled out zir old baby cloths. They protect zir nose from getting chafed utterly raw even better than the lotion tissues!

Voting with my dollars. I had to return a handful of clothes that didn’t work from the Gymboree Christmas purchase. They were jerks and only processed the return for exactly the cost of the items, less the sales tax they collected, and refused to respond to my many emails asking that they correct the error. Exactly how do they justify keeping my sales tax (nearly 10%!) when I returned the items the tax was levied on?? This is why I use AmEx. I complained to them with the exact numbers of the return amount and the related tax, and AmEx took care of me. Here’s me thumbing my nose at Gymboree – which I will never shop again!

Repurposing. I hate tossing shoes into our swim tote because who wants dirt all over our clean clothes or towels? We’re working on eliminating plastic bags from our home and didn’t want to buy something just for this purpose.

You know those handy wine and beer bags that are divided so the bottles don’t clank into each other? When I snagged one from a work function to carry home leftover alcohol, I figured it’d come in handy but five years later, we still haven’t used it.  Turns out it’s the perfect carrier for JB’s shoes. This should last a couple years. Cross your fingers against any more growth spurts, would you?

Months since last shoe purchase: Nikes, July 2017, 7 months!
Months since last clothing purchase: jeans, October 2017, 4 months!

Saving and investing

Accounting. Now that the error in my emergency fund planning has been figured out, I changed how I track our cash and investments! Long term five-year CDs are investments, short term 18-month and shorter CDs are cash. I’ve shifted 25% of our emergency fund into a 12-month CD and will shift the other 25% into a 9-month CD in a few days.

Miles & points

Alaska miles: 204,001
Chase Ultimate rewards: 299,283
Starpoints: 155,265

Net worth: decreased 1%

The market correction took its toll on our accounts this month but we expected that! No worries in the long term. I assume 😉

Goals!

MONEY

• Max out retirement and 529 savings: His IRA – DONE! This is the only year I’ve had some cash on hand to max out an IRA immediately, I held it back from the sale last year. (Maybe I can squeeze our cash flow this year so I can do that for both IRAs next year?) 529 – half done! When the market dropped, I pulled a lot out of the 529 cash fund to drop into JB’s 529. We got a good lot of shares for a lower price.
• Savings rate: 30%
• Mortgage principal: This goal was very poorly written which rendered it pointless. Our regularly scheduled payments are at least $10,000 to principal as it is. I should increase this to $15,000. $2254 paid to principal/$15,000.
• Charitable donations: We supported a local elementary and high school through Donors Choose.
• Side money: $320/$5000

LIFE

• We made mini muffins twice! JB is getting good at sifting and mixing. Filling the tins is another story.
• I mailed a letter to surrogate Mom, a thinking of you note to a dear friend having a hard time, and 2 condolence notes to friends who have lost loved ones.
• I’m on the fence about the baked eggs. I have to try them again later. The yolks were powder dry. Yuk!

HEALTH

• Seamus has been working his way through 10 lbs of carrots.
• I’ve done terribly with the add a mile per day goal, it may have to come off the list. My major joints were in terrible pain this month.
• We are doing neutral-good with getting PiC out for runs 3x a week. We don’t hit it every week but we make a real effort and he usually gets out at least once if not the preferred 3x. That’s better than last year when he would go 2-3 weeks without getting out.
• We are making progress with the sleep training but I’m afraid of invoking a variation on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Parenting here – any time I say that something is going well, it goes terribly wrong.

On Life

Eating well. We hosted a fantastic Hainanese chicken dinner for 6 adults, I promise to post the recipe soon, and thanks to having caught a sale AND a manager’s special, I got ten lbs of chicken for less than $8. With all the fixings, our dinner for 6 was around $20.

That averages out with our Lunar New Year dinner which was fancier and was not much of a savings over eating out. No, wait, that’s not true. We paid as much for the steaks raw as we would have paid for 1.5 servings of it cooked in a restaurant.

PLUS I cooked so much this month just for us. I can’t remember everything but we had:

• fancy healthy fried rice (tofu, spam, green beans, corn, edamame),
• pesto tilapia (JB helped!) with snow peas and snap peas,
• shrimp and very cheesy grits,
• meatloaf stuffed with zucchini,
• penne with ground turkey and vodka sauce
• pizza from scratch with artichoke dip for topping.

JB and I edited my regular spice muffin recipe to include apple and zucchini and yogurt making them moist and delicious and healthier.

So much is on my mind this month that I’m burying my head in dozens of books instead.

• Recession proofing our lives and portfolio
• Deciding if I’m going to stick with dividend investing or move to an index funds strategy. With the former, I’d have to save lots more to replace our incomes but we’d keep our capital investment, with the latter we’d have to sell off shares to generate income and I’m oddly averse to the notion.
• What are our five and ten year plans?
• Assessing and scheduling further work on the house: HVAC inspection, replacing the furnace?, adding insulation?, how do we effectively do that without encouraging trapped sitting moisture? We already have a mosquito problem. Do we add solar panels this or next year? I adore YAPFB for putting together this solar panel recap.

:: Did you celebrate Valentine’s Day? Where are you with your goals in this second month of the year? Do you have an exercise accountability buddy?

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