Good Things Friday (50)
January 31, 2020
If you’d like to join us in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020? Current total: Lakota, $521.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. To combat my restlessness, born of brain fog and moderate pain, I tried to get a lot of money things done. It makes me feel a little better on tough days. A stock purchase I’d set a limit order for finally went through, woo! Then I transferred some cash to our brokerage to prepare for our February index funds purchase, setting the stage for a good feeling in a couple of weeks.
2. I compared our 2019 withholding against our 2018 tax bill. We had a $5000+ bill in 2019 thanks to the tax changes so we increased our withholdings to try to close that gap for this year’s filing. If 2019’s tax bill is the same as or close to last year’s tax bill, we should be ok. I won’t lie – there’s a part of me that would appreciate a refund. That feeling of a windfall, even a fake one, isn’t one to scoff at. It’s certainly better than the sinking feeling of having a four figure bill.
3. I’d made an error in how I was thinking about our mortgage – until we refinance or make greater payments to principal, I can’t actually expect the timeline to be shortened. It’s still a 30 year loan on the current monthly payments, we only reduced the interest we’d pay over the same lifetime. Whoops. Brain fog really sucks but it’s sometimes when I’m most likely to notice I’m missing something and catch my mistakes. And getting my head accurately around our future numbers is important. I greatly appreciate having money-savvy friends to bounce around these numbers with.
4. The Little Bra Company was doing a Lunar New Year sale on Friday and I stepped out of my comfort zone to buy a $50 grab bag of 3 bras. Their picks. Never done that before. Having done the math, even if I only like one of them, I’d still be coming out ahead because a normal priced bra from them in my size starts around $54. As usual my size never shows up on the discounter sites, I’ve looked. My last new bra was purchased 6 years ago so I think it’s ok to add a few new ones now. Here’s hoping I like more than one of them!
The bad stuff I can’t ignore: Too many loved ones are going through tough times right now and I’m serving as emotional support as best I can. One is fighting through a contentious divorce from a covertly abusive spouse who has the support of their church and the spouse only cares about “winning” at all costs, regardless of the well being of their children, but dresses it up as caring about the kids. I’ve been writing up documentation for them of the abuse over the years and that is taking a special unexpected toll on me – I didn’t live that abuse, why is it hitting me so hard? Another friend is getting caught in the sandwich with an elderly parent who is a shopaholic, a bad communicator, doesn’t have the funds to live on their own and is super demanding while juggling their own kids. Another friend has recently lost their beloved pet. DEEP. BREATHS.
5. I think we’ve received half our tax forms. I will be so happy to be done with the slog of filing taxes.
6. PiC and I are totally imperfect and have our own issues of course but we are grateful that we prioritize each other and care about each other.
7. Did you know that Leverage is on Amazon Prime right now? That show is great.
8. I might have found a good first dogwalker for Sera to give her extra exercise and training support! We did a first trial this week and the first outing sounds like they did great together and the walker did a great job with proactively checking in with us whenever she had issues with the schedule, and giving us a detailed summary afterwards. I am hopeful.
We’ve had a busy week with stuff to do every single night. All good stuff but I would love an evening just to veg at home with Netflix.
Thanks for your message! Haven’t updated in forever but I’m still faithfully reading. š
Little Miss Moneybags recently posted…Five Frugal Things
I’m glad you’re well! I hadn’t realized how long it’d been since I’d heard from you, I hate to lose track of long-time blogger friends š
I don’t understand your #3… if you made prepayments and didn’t recast, then it should shorten the life of your loan? I really liked JD Roth’s spreadsheet: https://www.getrichslowly.org/accelerated-mortgage-payments-and-the-grs-amortization-calculator/ . (If you recast, then that is smaller monthly payments but the same lifetime of the loan.)
*jedi hugs* on the bad stuff. š
Leverage is a great show!
We’re still getting tax documents trickling in. I’m guessing we’ll wait a couple weeks before starting taxes. But who knows, maybe DH will be motivated this weekend.
nicoleandmaggie recently posted…Ask the Grumpies: Schools in the SF Bay area that are good for mathematically advanced kids?
Here’s evidence I’ve been brain foggy for a while. I made big prepayments and recast out of necessity, we needed the smaller monthly payments. I intended to keep making extra prepayments to principal, which would have shortened the life of the loan, but we had cash flow issues last year so I stopped. At some point, I just conflated the recast and the shorter loan life WITHOUT the additional prepayments. Oops.
Thank you.
I don’t think we can even expect the last of our documents until mid-Feb. *EEERGHH*
January was a good but exhausting month for us, doubly so for this last week of it. I’m looking forward to February because we’ve got the basic routine back in place now after the holiday chaos, and it’ll be easier now that one of our activities wrapped up this week. I’ve got most of the paperwork in hand for taxes and am enjoying getting it plugged in (though I don’t kid myself that I’ll actually FINISH getting them submitted until April. I am a Pro-Crastinator and have a reputation to maintain!)
Empathizing with someone in pain means sharing in their pain – whether or not it originally happened to you. You’re walking through the worst parts of your divorcing friend’s story without having even the tiniest bit of control over the situation; suffering with them but not having the agency to change it. Of course that’s heavy.
Farewell, January!
I respect your Pro-Crastination š
And … ok I should have seen that. I was impatient with myself for coming so close to tears writing this up but it’s exactly what you’ve said. I’ve got no control over knowing she’s been hurt over and over.
I’m still working on digging out from under December and January–it’s been an over-busy couple of months. Sick family members, holidays, work situations: argh. I could use some serious downtime, and I don’t think I’m getting any before March at the earliest. I’m trying to grab what peace I can when I can, and just maintain beyond that.
I’m sorry to hear about your friend and the divorce, and don’t think it’s surprising that it’s hitting you emotionally. There are things that I’ve encountered in books and movies that I’ve wished I hadn’t read about/seen because once it’s in my memory, it becomes a part of me whether I like it or not. There are levels of evil in the world that are hard to live with knowing–bad as fictions, worse as realities. I think it would be even more upsetting if it was a friend or family member who had suffered. Your friend and her kids have my wholehearted sympathy.
Oh I’m so sorry your relief period is so far away. I hope you manage to cope between now and then with the brief respite moments.
Thanks for the sympathy, it’s very appreciated.