By: Revanche

Money & Life Report: December 2018

December 31, 2018

On Money

Income

Our normal income comes from our full time jobs. We earn money on the side, including tiny cash flow we don’t touch from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks.

Our side income comes from Swagbucks, occasional sales on Poshmark, cash back sites like Ebates, Mr.Rebates, and tracking physical activity through Achievement (my introduction to it). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a (very) small commission to keep the blog lights on.

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

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Dividend income. We received $291.40 in dividends this month. I reinvest all our dividends into new stocks or move the cash out to be invested into index funds.

Costco Cash Card. Costco was prompt in sending us the cash card for our furnace. Thank goodness! This cashback brings our ghastly total down to around $13,000 (not counting the asbestos cost that was nearly $2000 and has been negotiated down to $1200).

Craigslist sale. +$40. I’m grateful PiC is still able to work on these sales a little at a time even though we’re in over our heads with work. My own sales have petered out pretty badly and I think it’s time to donate all that “inventory”, I gave it a good try.

Spending

Holiday cheer (and gifts). We don’t rely on giving gifts to create the holiday spirit but we do have a handful of obligatory gift exchanges which usually runs us about $250 total. I also had a brainstorm and picked up two bottles of whiskey for two friends we go waayyyyy back with at Club BevMo prices ($90) and got PiC one while I was at it. It’ll last him ohhh 3-4 years, so the average cost is about $10 a year. I think we can handle that much spending on spirits if he wants it. He might not, in which case we’ll return it. I picked up a couple of sweaters for him from Kohl’s using Kohl’s cash. The annoying thing is that they take off the Kohl’s cash before coupons, so my 15% off coupon was basically worth 15 cents off. Barely worth the paper it was printed on! I also treated myself to a set of felt tipped pens for $5.

Holiday cards. This is always important to PiC but this year it was important to me not to spend much money on it and equally important that I not drive myself to gibberish stringing together all the deals I could get from the premium card designers (Tinyprints and Shutterfly). It would have cost around $60 for a set if I’d done it the way I normally do, and I used up all my gift credit from them last year so we agreed to try out the cheapest option available at Costco instead: $20 for 75 cards. After $22 in postage, our total is $42. I accidentally made him feel left out last year when I rushed through getting this done, which he didn’t mention until this year, so I made sure to give him an equal share in working on them before we ordered. We’re both pleased, we cut that cost down this year and maintained marital harmony. Win-win.

Forward spending. Target had a 10% off gift cards promotion this month and I picked up $300 worth of cards for $270. This will be handy for our own spending and any gifts we may need to give.

Holiday stress was amplified by Seamus getting a random and prolonged bout of colitis before we had to travel so I was on tenterhooks trying to figure out if we should go, what to take for him, how to mitigate his discomfort, etc. I did home treatment for five days and he was gradually improving but not nearly enough for me to feel comfortable traveling with him so we went to the vet. Five days and $300 later, he was fully on the mend. Whew. My good ole boy.

Clothing, 2018 total: $272

• Accessories, 2018: Sunglasses, $30
• Clothes, 2018: Dresses, $362; Sweatshirts, $50, Pants, $50
• Shoes, 2018: $80

This was an unusual spending year for me on clothes. Usually I don’t buy anything but things are starting to wear out. I’m not super fashionable but I do prefer not to look like a total bag lady. I picked up a couple high quality items at the end of the year that should last a really long time and a few basic items.

Not spending

Hand me downs galore. One of my aunts works at a place that receives donations of clothing for children every so often and she gathered a big bag of clothes that will help JB through zir next growth spurt. I am ever so grateful for the supplies, I know these won’t last long and we’ll have to start budgeting for clothes in a few years. It is a little bit funny to me that we only give new clothes but we are mainly stocked with used clothing.

Giving

We did an amazing job pulling together for our Lakota families at the Okini and I am so thankful to be part of this giving community. We put together a total of $480 and with that, we were able to purchase 7 holiday gifts for 7 kids: footballs, Roblox, running shoes, warm clothing, art supplies. PLUS we also supplied a parent and child family with necessities: underclothes, a couple of outfits, winter coats and blankets, detergent and dental hygiene, a small heater and humidifier.

Then we had another $125 of contributions come in and I was back at work supplying another family with winter gear. This time we got everyone jackets or sweaters plus a set of four flannel shirts.

If anyone wants to contribute, I will gladly do the legwork of shopping and shipping and following up on the order deliveries. It’s a surprising amount of work because it’s hard to get things delivered to the reservations and I’m learning that USPS really struggles to deliver to their own PO boxes for some reason. It makes no sense to me. You can Paypal me at admin @ agaishanlife.com with a note that it’s for the Lakota families. I’ll report back here!

Saving and investing

Though we didn’t hit any milestones, we stayed on track putting away a steady amount every two weeks. We had enough to buy more index funds when the market slipped, and have some left for kickstarting our IRAs for next year.

Miles & points

Combined Alaska miles: 101,095 and $120 in travel credit
Southwest: $120 in travel credit
Chase Ultimate rewards: 318,377
Combined Marriott points: 607,195

Net worth

Mostly our holdings are down but I just got the state tax assessment for the rental and realized we could based our estimate of the value of the property using the reported taxable value. I haven’t updated it more than once in the past few years, so it suggests we had a big leap but nothing changed. It is nice to see that based solely on the current taxable value versus the assessed value, the difference is finally more than the down payment we put down.

On Life

Year-End preparations. I’m always extra tense when we hit the month of December. We have obligatory family visits and gifts to arrange in time for end of the year, everything needs to be done before the middle of the month. Then there’s the obligatory end of the year work stuff, advocating for staff if necessary, holiday gifts and events to arrange. For the dogs, we stock up on their canned supplies so that we don’t have to venture near a Costco in the last week of the month if at all possible.

Work stress. Things got really bad for a while, then we got a temporary reprieve for a couple weeks this month to regroup, but January is going to be incredibly tough again for me. Probably February too.

Visitation. It’s really good to see family and friends but it can also a great reminder of how grateful I am to mostly be “too far” away. We have our privacy, and independence, and our lives aren’t dictated by social obligations weekly. For now, frankly though I miss some family and friends, I don’t want to have to be in close proximity to some relatives’ kids who are wildly obnoxious while their parents look on with bemusement or completely ignore it instead of addressing the behaviors in the name of “not stifling their free speech”. The kid is 6 years ago and wrests toys from the hands of younger siblings and relatives, then jumps and screams and claims hurt feelings when the younguns don’t stand for that uncivilized behavior. Free speech my left pinky toe! The parents have no intention of addressing this behavior effectively, which is possible, and they’re the sort we’d be forced to stay in close and frequent contact with for family reasons, so I’m glad we’re limited to the occasional holiday visit. Maybe that behavior will wear off eventually, but in the meantime I don’t have any desire to be constantly fighting an uphill battle with teaching my own kid that that behavior is not to be emulated. We have to have that conversation every single time we visit and ze comes home with a charming new (blech) horrible mannerism that we have to address.

On the flip side, and maybe this is why I tolerated all the holiday nonsense including the constant annoying pressure to have another kid with some equanimity, we started off the holidays with the best two days of visiting with dear friends, easy casual meals, quiet time with kid and cats.

:: How was your December? Did you celebrate any holidays or special traditions?

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