By: Revanche

Money decisions I need to make

June 20, 2018

My burning money questions I’ve got a backburner full of unanswered questions, none of them big enough for a post, and all of them bothering me enough that I want to dump them out of my brain.

It always helps me to write through my puzzlement, and I’m hoping that putting them out here will help me make decisions on at least a few of them!

Keep or return the large WaterPik set that PiC bought on sale to Costco?

I haven’t had time to do more research on what set makes the most sense for our situation but I wanted something that would be relatively portable because we have limited counter space and travel regularly.

Conclusion: I think we should return this for now.

Buy dog health insurance or self insure?

The Nationwide quote was $1100 a year for full coverage which gives 90% back on vet bills, and you can use any vet:

Accidents & injuries, Hereditary & congenital, Cancer, Specialty & ER coverage included, Dental diseases
Eye, musculoskeletal & blood disorders, Behavioral treatments, Rx therapeutic diets & supplements
Alternative & holistic treatments, Wellness*

*The relevant wellness stuff that I expect to pay for every year would be far less in any given year than the premiums except for the dental cleaning. Any year she got a dental, the cost would likely be at least $1000:

Veterinary exam fees, Vaccinations, Heartworm test, Fecal test, Flea control, Heartworm prevention, Tick control, Dental cleaning

A recent quote for Seamus ran into the $2000s but that also included some extractions, a mass removal, and biopsy.

Conclusion: undecided

Do I need to add any coverage riders to our homeowners policy?

I have a few pieces of jewelry that may be worth something, but I doubt it’s worth much and I wouldn’t replace them if they were stolen. We have some electronics but almost nothing new and the data on them is mainly sentimental value aside from our identities. Do you have any riders on possessions?

Conclusion: undecided

How best to handle my IRAs and his 401(k)/IRA secondary beneficiaries?

We are each other’s primaries, of course, but JB is a minor and wouldn’t be allowed to take control of the accounts if we should both die before ze is 18. Everything I’ve read elsewhere says that designating a living trust is a bad idea, both Fidelity and Vanguard allow those as options without comment. Of course, it would become an irrevocable trust if we were both dead, so is it the trust part or the living trust part that’s an issue? More research needed.

Conclusion: undecided

Dump T-Mobile (2 lines for $90) for … ?

The current frontrunner is Mint Mobile with the following (prepaid) plans adding up to around $35 a month. I need more data in case of Comcast connection outage, I have to tether to my phone to keep working.

$15/month, good for PiC
3 months of wireless service (regular price $23/month)
2GB of 4G LTE data per month; speeds reduce after monthly allowance

$20.00/mo, good for me
3 months of wireless service (regular price $30/month)
5GB of 4G LTE data per month; speeds reduce after monthly allowance

Same for both plans
Unlimited talk, text and data delivered on the nation’s fastest, most advanced 4G LTE network
Includes FREE international calls to Mexico and Canada
With our BYOP program, bring your own unlocked GSM phone (you love it, cracks and all)
Mobile HotSpot: turn your device into a WiFi hotspot

Conclusion: undecided

Do I buy a bond fund now, and should I go with tax exempt or a taxable bond fund?

We are heavily overbalanced into stocks now and we’re completely overdue for rebalancing. Rather than selling stocks, I’m thinking of just allocating some of our emergency funds into new bond funds.

Some quick chatting with someone who knows bonds suggests that I should go for the Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund, or consider the California Intermediate Tax Exempt Fund. The former has Admiral shares with a minimum of $10,000 which is much more attainable than the latter’s Admiral Shares minimum of $50,000.

Conclusion: Probably at least putting some money into the Total Bond Market Index and then decide later about the tax exempt fund.

Long term care insurance: yea or nay?

I believe in the idea of LTC insurance and so have moved forward with the research and quoting processes but keep hesitating to follow through because I get the sense that LTC insurance doesn’t have a good rap. There’s a lot of “but what if the company goes under or won’t pay out” speculation out there and I’m guessing that stems from it being a relatively newer product and because there isn’t a big enough data set of people using it successfully to have confidence.

I keep waffling between figuring out some stellar investing options and self insuring, and being skeptical that I can manage to generate high enough returns to cover the same kind of benefits.

:: What money decisions have you been putting off?

30 Responses to “Money decisions I need to make”

  1. This reminds me that we have to figure out estate and pre-nup stuff soon. Bah. Also, now that I have a job, we need to increase fiance’s retirement contributions and figure out if I want to go Roth or traditional on my new 401k (or use it at all due to the very high fees).

  2. SP says:

    I’m pretty bad at keeping up on administrative stuff. I need to figure out life insurance and living trust or whatever the plan should be. This is a pretty big deal, and overwhelming. Cost-wise, it probably would have been wise to get 20 year term a few years ago, but here we are.

    I have no idea who my secondary beneficiaries are – probably my parents – so I suppose I need to answer that question too.

    We self-insure for pets, but this is our first dog and I imagine we are in the “cheap” portion of life, so it may or may not be a good decision.

  3. bethh says:

    Recent decision made: I had all of my emergency fund in a stock index fund (vtsax) but just rolled 2/3 of it into a money market fund. The money market fund is either 9 months of lean living/no health insurance or 6 months slightly fatter/able to pay cobra or similar. (I’m a SINK.) I knew it wasn’t safe or smart to keep it all in the market but it’s so freaking painful to get no returns on the money. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts around using a bond fund for your e-fund (or any other options).

    Decisions I’m not even engaging with as yet: long term care insurance. So I look forward to hearing more on this!

    • Revanche says:

      We wouldn’t use a bond fund for our actual emergency fund, at least not the first line of defense. That is composed of cash and cash like equivalents (CD ladders and T-bills when they’re worth buying). Then we would draw on our taxable accounts which will be bond and stock index funds or our individual stocks.

      There are some decent interest rates on CDs right now! I parked my cash at Ally but there are a few banks that have better rates. Synchrony Bank currently has a 14 month CD with 2.45% APY for a $2000 opening deposit: https://www.synchronybank.com/

      *Added note: I should say that I know people who choose to have all their emergency funds in the market, so I wouldn’t necessarily pooh pooh that choice. It’s entirely up to your risk tolerance. Mine is lower 🙂

  4. Leigh says:

    We have a “personal articles” policy for my fancy engagement and wedding ring set. It’s with the same company as our other insurance policies but isn’t a rider. My agent said that a rider on a homeowners policy means that if you file a claim on it, it counts as a homeowners insurance claim, so I like having the separate policy.

    I know the person said that bond returns mostly are low enough so picking Total Bond Market is likely best but I honestly just like having one less thing to declare on my taxes so I like the tax-exempt bond fund myself.

    We have been putting off how much to split my husband’s life insurance policy between me and his parents. They’re secondary right now, but once we are life insurance FI, I want to have him adjust that somewhat and our estate attorney said that life insurance would be the easiest way tax-wise to make sure to leave them some money in our situation.
    Leigh recently posted…Adjusting our giving strategy to 2% and a milestones checklist from 2015My Profile

    • Revanche says:

      That’s a great bit of information, I didn’t know that we could just get a separate policy for the personal stuff but I did know that a rider would pull on our homeowner’s insurance so I didn’t want to bother with it. It’s not worth making a claim on that whole policy for a bit of jewelry.

      Bond fund: That’s fair, I definitely opted out of some stuff to simplify our taxes just a bit.

      Life insurance: Makes sense, sounds like something you could wait on for a little longer?

  5. Bethany D says:

    I need to get my life insurance switched. Right now I have two separate policies on myself but if I bundled them into one policy I could potentially save $10-15 a month. I’ve intended to get around to doing this for the last few years!

  6. NZ Muse says:

    Oof those are some hefty pet bills!

    I need to get my A into G around wills and upping insurance this year, and i guess ideally in the next 4 months. Sigh.
    NZ Muse recently posted…The one question I hate being asked, as a pregnant woman…My Profile

  7. Juli S says:

    I highly recommend pet insurance. Our puppy just recently got diagnosed out of nowhere with an autoimmune disease. On a Saturday, with no warning, our pup just fell down and got all wobbly. Several in and outs of a Vet ER later, we were offered four options for diagnostic testing, ranging from $1500-$5500. We ended up doing the most expensive one, and thank goodness we did because they found brain inflammation and were able to get her on treatment early on. Pet insurance is covering 90% of all of it except the exam fees, and we are so, so thankful. We use Healthy Paws and they have been amazing to work with – I highly recommend them. They even directly paid the emergency deposit the day of the incident.

    • Revanche says:

      Oh wow, thanks for the suggestion! I didn’t know Healthy Paws did health insurance so I ran a quote and they’re coming in at half the cost of the policy I priced out earlier! Continuing research – maybe this will be the thing that gets crossed off my life.

  8. We have a whole lot of the same standing items to decide (Will/Trust now that Baby DB40 is here, Bond Allocation, pet insurance…

    For what it’s worth, we didn’t modify our insurance to include Mrs. DB40’s jewelry, and we rock a 25% bond allocation, which is probably too high for the accumulation phase, but we plan on using a rising glide path in early retirement, bringing the bond allocation down to 10% over time.
    Done by Forty recently posted…Baby BabyMy Profile

    • Revanche says:

      You’ll get there! We didn’t settle our will for MONTHS after JB was born because I had to question every single detail. I’m sure I drove our attorney up the wall and down again.

      We had 1% bonds so I had to fix that 😉

  9. I’ve been waffling over whether to add some inherited jewelry to our insurance. That and the stuff I collect adds up to probably $4,500 so it’s probably worth getting a rider on one or both sets of items. But I need to look at our policy again to remember how much is covered and decide whether it adds up to enough on its own or not. Or whether insurance would be annoyed/protest if we try to claim it later without disclosing it now. Not really sure how it works, honestly, since I’m not used to the idea of having anything of concentrated value.
    Abigail @ipickuppennies recently posted…I may have a cataract and other gloomy newsMy Profile

    • Revanche says:

      I had the same concerns as you did and didn’t get a rider either but check Leigh’s comment up top – sounds like a separate policy could be a better bet.

  10. Jover says:

    I love my WaterPik, but yes it does take up a bit of counter space and one outlet.
    I’d opt for VBTLX (which I need to do personally as soon as I’m up to 10k in my bloated e-fund). I feel cash-poor right now because it’s split among 6 Banks to get those sign-up bonuses, but I’m actually holding almost double the amount of cash than my target. 🤷‍♂️

    • Revanche says:

      That’s what I ended up with for starters! I might just stick with it.

      Cash: I love having it to deploy for those bonuses, I really do. I MIGHT have to do another round of cash/banking bonuses this year.

  11. GYM says:

    Thanks for sharing your thought processes!

    I didn’t get insurance for my dog (I had it before) but they kept declining everything so I decided against it. I had it for about 3 years though. But it’s definitely a hard call!

    • Revanche says:

      Sure thing!

      That’s a good point that’s also been part of the evaluation process – I’m only checking out companies if I know they’ve been good at paying out. There’s no point, otherwise!

  12. Aitza B says:

    I need to get my license before I leave the states in the fall, but I’m not looking forward to spending an additional $80 a month in non owners insurance. If I’m not insured my license becomes invalid. Smh.

    • Revanche says:

      You need a driver’s license AND non owner’s insurance to keep the license valid? That seems … weird!

  13. Do you and PiC talk about these things? Or does he pretty well trust your (high detailed and thought-through) decisions on financial matters? We find that with big decisions at least, if we talk over the pros and cons of a given situation – and then sleep on it – and then talk some more, the choice becomes clear. I’m glad you’re not just settling on a choice for the sake of having it decided. It’s OK to sit with “undecided” for a while until the answer becomes clear (or not even completely clear, but clearly preferable).
    Prudence Debtfree recently posted…My Daughter’s Lesson in PerseveranceMy Profile

    • Revanche says:

      Both! I might talk it through with him but he just as often will just talk it through, then leave it with me because he knows I run through all the scenarios and have a better grasp of the big picture so he trusts my final decision in most cases.

      And also I get impatient and make a decision faster than he does 🙂

  14. Stephanie says:

    We also got stuck on the beneficiaries. The way our will is written, if we both go, a trust is formed and our money goes there for heirs. So, for now, my husband and I have each other as the primary beneficiary, and then nothing for the other options.

    I’ve also wondered about adding riders to homeowners insurance. We have some nice/pricey stuff but I don’t know what threshold to worry about.
    Stephanie recently posted…Welcoming Baby Number Two!My Profile

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