Money & Life Report: January 2022
February 1, 2022
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. There are ways to support the blog and our charitable giving in the sidebar.
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.
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Dividend income. We received $188 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
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I cancelled my Chase Sapphire Reserve and got the Chase Freedom Unlimited instead. There was a $200 Bonus on $500 spend, no annual fee, 3% Cashback on drugstores/dining and 1.5% Cashback on anything else. I knocked out that $500 spend 10 minutes after activating the card: we had insurance, water, internet and cell phone bills to pay!
I haven’t done a credit card churn in probably four years, I might do two more cards this year to generate some extra income. We could use a bit of padding against the time we (*knock wood*) start paying childcare and/car payments.
Spending
We had an unexpected large bill because of a misunderstanding over who was covering what over the holidays. I think this says something about my progress as a person who has extreme anxiety over money. PiC’s preference was to just foot the bill rather than remind them of the agreement. Even though I wasn’t happy about it, I am ok with letting it go for his sake since it’d have to go through him. He and I both know that it’s a lot of money, we would have done things differently if we had known they’d ‘forget’, so we will take the hit this time and arrange things better next time.
Not spending
Well. We gave up our daycare spot. *sobs* Without a vaccine, and I know so MANY parents of under-5s are feeling my pain, I just can’t send them into the plague pit. Now, the daycare is taking a lot of precautions. But they cannot have a vaccine mandate for the adults and an under 2, heck an under-3 (or 4, in JB’s case)? They lick everything! Smol licks EVERYONE. There’s no way they would not be licking their classmates. So gross. But also so disease vector.
PiC and I will be saving that daycare money at the expense of our sanity. Stay tuned as we slowly spiral out of our minds and into… Who knows where?
Giving
On giving: we have worked really hard and been very fortunate that our hard work paid off in significant ways that I couldn’t have dreamt of when I first started this blog. Though we have not reached our FI number where I can feel like all income is gravy, we’ve always felt it was important to lend a helping hand. Many people say they’ll give back later, when they’re financially set. I say that if we don’t practice and prioritize giving now, we won’t give later either.
All year round I run the Lakota Giving Project, donate to a number of organizations that do meaningful work to help others in need and do direct aid.
Saving and investing
I’m having a long debate with myself over how to save the kids’ money. We have a 529 but I put contributions on pause to focus on our retirement. I was also very concerned that we were putting a lot of money into an account for one kid when we didn’t really know for sure that they’d go to college or use it all up. That’s probably too pessimistic. No one in our cohorts didn’t go to some kind of continued education / higher learning / something. But I truly wonder if our planet is going to be livable in 50 years, and if that trend continues, it’s plausible to think that between that 15-50 years range, maybe my kids won’t want to waste that time in college.
With two of them, I’m a bit more assured that we no longer have too much but I’m still not interested in stuffing the 529 too full. We get cash gifts in various sizes for them from a few dollars to a big chunk of change, and I’d been putting those into the 529 until last year. It’s now going in a savings account for them while I mull over how to deal with it. My plan was to cashflow a reasonable portion of their college expenses that isn’t covered by the 529, and cash for living expenses is always a good thing.
I want it to grow at better than a half percent interest rate but I also want a simple solution. I don’t want the trouble of opening separate brokerages for them, I’d rather just put it in ours if that was the route we’re taking. I wonder if there’s an easy way to just isolate rate of return for the years that money is in our brokerage so I can give a decent accounting for the money and its growth when it comes time to calculate such things.
Net worth
Honestly, I didn’t have time to take a look at this yet for the month. I assume it’s down!
On Life
Entertainment.
Amazon’s With Love made me laugh a lot. It’s definitely NSFW but good! It doesn’t rely on tired old offensive tropes for cheap laughs, there are healthy dynamics mixed with the normal unhealthy dynamics and conflicts that have to be worked through. And I love the grandparents! OMG. It also introduced me to Sarah Barrios’s IH8EVERY1 which I love because I highly identify with those lyrics.
Also very belatedly I gave Schitt’s Creek a second chance and once I got deep into Season 1, it started clicking for me. It turns out my quitting a few episodes in was a common experience for folks on Twitter so I hope those other second chance folks enjoy it as much as I did.
Self care.
I picked up brain therapy again this month, and had my first massage in six months too. You wouldn’t think a recovery period is needed after a massage but it is when you’re me. Wheeee…..
Thinking about eating.
As we shift into another 6(?) months of fending for ourselves without childcare, I’ve been thinking about food a lot. It’s a pain point. We need it every single day, and it requires way more thinking and energy than we want to give it when we’re both drained. PiC has been doing all the cooking for weeks because I’ve been about as motivated as roadkill, and that isn’t fair to him, so I’m trying to be proactive about doing my bit again.
For cuisines that I don’t cook well enough, or flavors I crave from restaurants (real Thai curries, for example, my curry is good but definitely not authentic), I’ll order extra when we get take out and freeze half.
I’ll browse Smitten Kitchen more often to kick off my cravings. Not that SK typically does my kind of easy recipes, it’s just that I’m much more likely to feel motivated to cook when I’m craving something even if what I’m cooking is utterly unrelated. So it’ll help with the feeling that my brain is in the deep freeze when it comes to anything food related.
When I do cook, I’ll make double portions and freeze some in smaller portions. The last time I did a huge batch of Hainan chicken, I made it wrong and froze unrealistic batch sizes. Smaller freezing portions, self.
You said: “I wonder if there’s an easy way to just isolate rate of return for the years that money is in our brokerage so I can give a decent accounting for the money and its growth when it comes time to calculate such things.”
I imagine if it’s possible, you’ll figure it out! There was a time when I briefly tried pooling money that had different identities and purposes – emergency fund and house payoff savings, I think. I reasoned that investing the house money was a higher rate of return than just paying down the mortgage, but my brain imploded over trying to figure out the earnings and I shifted to just paying extra principal after all. (and then stopped prepaying to save up a bridge fund to retire early, which instead I’m going to use to fund a break from working)
Foodwise: it’s pretty archaic, but I keep a 2-inch stack of printed recipes that I enjoyed, and when I’m feeling really directionless I’ll sift through it looking for something that sparks with me. It got me moving this week, thank goodness, so now I have ALL the curry in my fridge. My usual failing is: making a ton, and failing to freeze any.
I appreciate the vote of confidence! I’m going to keep mulling it over in the hopes that inspiration will strike when I least expect it.
I’m excited that you’re planning a break from working – is that meant to be soon?
The stack of printed recipes sounds pretty good, TBH, that would probably work better than the journal I keep inconsistently.
My intended work break is (big picture) soon, but I assure you can’t come soon enough! My current timeline is to start the break midyear, and I’m not sure when I’ll return to work. Kind of depends on how expensive my life gets, and how bored I get; I should be able to go 9 months at least with plenty of padding left to allow for a job search. In a dream world I’d be hit by a bolt of lightning about Mission and Purpose but realistically I’ll wind up doing something like what I’m doing now, possibly even returning to my current employer. That’s okay too – the time off should give me a good feel for what retirement could be like and what it may cost!
@bethh: I’m very excited for you! If you want to, do please share how your break’s going (when it starts)?
It would be amazing to have sudden inspiration but failing that, a good long rest and return to work you’re ok with doing doesn’t sound half bad.
I feel for your childcare woes. My employer and most colleagues are acting like things are normal – high expectations, heavy workload and less flexibility overall. People with kids under 5 are definitely struggling.
Ugh, that’s so inhumane.
For kids money, could you pick an index fund or any other fund or individual stock and use it exclusively for kids money investments? That way you don’t need to open a new account and their returns will be contained within that single fund/stock.
I’m thinking about that. I might could!
My employer recently offered us a webinar on dealing with the pandemic for parents. I quote it below for your enjoyment. Have you considered that listening to someone get paid to tell you about self care could fix all this? I mean, clearly just taking time to paint your nails may make you feel better about having no childcare and two full time jobs in a pandemic! You’ll still have needs but you will have had FEELINGS about them! Revolutionary! /s
“When the Well is Dry: Reset & Recharge When You’re Depleted. Join Care.com for a candid discussion about how the challenges of the last two years and the stress of living in ongoing uncertainty have impacted our mental health. We’ll talk about strategies to increase self-compassion, have open conversations about one’s needs, and the importance of self-care. You’ll leave the session with take-aways on how to implement changes in your daily routine.”
We have been getting weekly emails with these kinds of tips since the semester after the pandemic started. Using the payroll email list, so no way to unsubscribe. They recently completely rebranded (going from one obnoxious name to a different obnoxious name) after doing an employee survey so I had to redo the “go directly to trash” thing (after again complaining about misuse of the payroll email list, which I purposefully have going to a different email so I don’t miss important payroll information amongst the spam that goes to my main account).
@N&M: I often wonder what those people are thinking.
Oh wooooowwwww, hey presto so many solutions to parenting in a pandemic in that webinar!
XD
That was good for a laugh, at least.
So, I hesitate to make a suggestion because I know you think hard about stuff, but … have you considered dedicating a portion of what you are not spending on childcare to a meal service of some sort? Either those recipe boxes or I have heard of people who sell a sort of personal chef food delivery service; not sure if that is a real option in your area.
Anyway, I hope this isn’t an offensively obvious suggestion: I just know you have a do it yourself bias and thought it might have obscured options that involve getting help.
Very best wishes for a good system to fall into place.
@Rae: Oh not offensive at all! You’ve got me pegged 😉 But I do appreciate your delicacy in offering the suggestion. Sometimes some solutions don’t occur to us because we’re biased against it or we don’t make it work. In this case I think it’s been both.
We tried a couple of those meal services for a while last year but we never quite got into a good groove with it. The Indian food one was amazing but so much work because it’s for native Indians who know the cuisine and so need no explanation of the ingredients. Hello Fresh took a lot more attention than I expected in choosing meals regularly and it ended up being as much work as meal planning than I was hoping for.
It couldn’t hurt to try another service to see if it fits better, though, thanks for putting the bee back in my bonnet!
We have childcare and I’m still failing at meal planning and cooking. It isn’t a time thing on my part – I could make the time, it is just a mental bandwidth and stress and anxiety and depression thing. I was trying to get into a more normal routine in the fall (going into the office a few days, regular meal planning), but Omicron stopped that, and really did a number on my mental health – despite it not really impacting my household.
I like budget bytes for easy-ish recipes. I’ve been doing Bentocart delivery of meals, which helps a lot, but feels like a short term solution. (We stretch them by having two adults split the main for most of the dishes, then eating other easy stuff to fill out the meal. Probably not as easy to do with kid or two who actually will eat what you eat most of the time.)
Did you see this news on under-5 vaccinations? Could be sooner than we were thinking (and especially promising for the under 2 crowd): https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/here-comes-the-under-5-vaccine-but
@SP: OH yes, even if we had oodles of time, those barriers are all HUGE! And those four in particular kill my appetite which in turn kills my motivation to cook. Ugh.
I have finally started visiting Smitten Kitchen just to remind myself that food is good and tasty, which helps a little.
I had not heard of Bentocart, thanks for mentioning them! We definitely have one big eater in JB and then a medium eater when they feel like it in Smol so we might have to approach it differently but hey, if it gets us through!
I did see the news! We are trying not to hold our breaths but really hard not to do.
Ohnoooooo I’m so sorry about daycare. I can only imagine 🙁
It’s just … a lot.
I love how you say you didn’t check your net worth in January 2022–I didn’t either! Better not to worry too much about it. I would love to learn about the Lakota Giving Project! Did you start this yourself?
Yes, it’s been an ongoing project for years. I always link to it.