By: Revanche

Net Worth & Life Report: June 2016

July 11, 2016

ON MONEY

I use Swagbucks. Here’s a handy tutorial if you’d like to join and earn.

1. MTurk experiment, total earned: $44.05. Up $31.40  from May’s ending total of $12.65. As money making experiments go, this continues to be teensy tiny beans. I use it in the few minutes a day I designate for my (non-existent otherwise) water cooler breaks so no harm done. Gives my brain a breather from the problems I’m working on and makes, literally, a few bucks.
   
2. Last month’s big news: We spent money and 6 long months to finally refinance the mortgage. Ahoy, the prepayment scheme! I’m really excited about that. That, and cutting our mortgage in half so that the second half of our mortgage payment all goes to principal. DELICIOUS.  We’re under $250K now, and I’m eagerly targeting when we’ll be under $200K.
3. Last month’s other big news: We finally bought a new to us car. After maintenance and accessories (which sounds so fancy but really isn’t), we are out a couple thousand dollars. For that price, we can FINALLY get around without plotting logistics on a chart.
4. We replaced my sad crickety old phone.
5. I keep forgetting that our crockpot broke a couple months ago after rendering unto us, in its last faithful service, producing fantastic ribs for our dinner guests. I know it’s “only” $30-40 to replace it but given our pile of other necessary expenses that add up very quickly, and *points up* that list of spending these past two months, I’m extra not ready to spend a penny more. The crockpot recipes must continue to pile up for now. Even that mac and cheese one. *sniff*
6. I continue to be not surprised, but surprisingly irritated, by the fact that Dad is behind on his utility payments. He insisted that he could take them on three years ago (four? I can’t remember now) but I didn’t totally trust him so I kept online access to the accounts. Sure enough, when I logged in to the water and electricity bills, they were glaringly overdue. Think he said anything to me? Gave me any warning that he was struggling with them? History repeats itself. So we’re sinking an unbudgeted $100-300 in utility bills every few months because he simply can’t do me the courtesy of talking through the income shortage with me.
7. Highlights of my #1GoodMoneyThing this month: I bought stocks instead of stuff which are dropping like rocks thanks to Brexit but I’m buying long; deposited reimbursement checks for various reimbursable things; returned two baby carriers to Amazon because PiC found a decent one for $50 on Craigslist!
8. We’ve been holding a lot of cash because I have a problem. An addiction, almost, to keeping cash on hand. Left over insecurity from that long layoff? Maybe. But it was time to get off my  bum and move cash into our investments. I don’t want our eggs too heavily in any one basket. Overall, most of our savings go into pre and post-tax investment accounts, and real estate, there to grow and multiply, we hope.

Our net worth: increased 0.16% from last month, and 51.65% from January.

Caveat: A huge part of that March – April bump was updating the assessed value of our home.

With all our spending above, and post-Brexit, I’m surprised to see that our change month to month was just about flat.

ON LIFE

1. We choose to spend money on good food. Luckily, the local produce shop and Costco keep our bills down to an almost reasonable amount. Now that we’re into the summer harvest, I’m chuffed that we’ve been feeding JuggerBaby all kinds of yummy fruit. It’s one of the things that makes me feel like a good parent: exposing zir to a variety of healthy and delicious delights, even if I don’t love them. Ze has added cherries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries (mostly good for crushing in zir tiny hands) and grapes to zir rotation of fruit snacks.
2. Can I brag for a minute? I have been doing some AWESOME pantry cooking. Two or three days out of the week I am of less worth than a stale crust of bread and can’t cook but the other days, I’ve pulled together some super tasty dinners, and I usually don’t like eating my cooking. I made baked lemon-garlic catfish and polenta topped with grilled onions and tomatoes; turkey, artichoke, tomato and bacon frittata; zucchini turkey burger patties (you can’t really tell there’s zucchini in there) piled high with tomato, sweet onion, lettuce and ketchup. We had burgers four times leading up to Father’s Day. I even baked for the first time in a couple years! A treat for PiC, his favorite wheat bran muffins three ways: raisin-raisin, raisin-choc chip, choc chip stuffed. And adobo chicken is always a hit around here, I need to remember to make that more often.
3. JuggerBaby and I spent a full day together, mostly outdoors. We went to the playground, we played on the stairs (up, then down, up, then down, up, down, up, more up, more up, then dooownnnn). We even threw a ball for Seamus and sat on the grass soaking up the sun. I almost feel guilty saying that part when so many of my friends were baking in 90-100+ degrees while we had a breeze and a cool 68 degrees. Though I paid a dear price for it that evening, I could barely walk for several days after but for those hours, I LOVED pretending to be a fully functioning adult human.  Also nice: ze had two solid two-hour naps. Grand day!
4. The side effect of using the Health app on the iPhone is that with data to look at, I’m doing a much better job of pushing myself, within reason, to walk and stretch more. The stretching seems to temporarily helped with some of my random neck pain so I’m going to keep it up. I should whether or not it helps that specific thing but it helps to have a target reason.
5. I have a new breakfast routine! I started having a yogurt crammed full of granola and cereal every morning. After a few days, I noticed I was feeling nourished longer without gastro pains (frequently a problem when I eat the wrong thing for breakfast) and more mentally alert through the morning than before the yogurt. The downside is when I depart from routine, the rest of my day is spent in a fog and extra fatigued.

Look out August: something big this way comes!

:: How was your June? What’s in store for July? Did you have mid-year milestones? Can you believe we’re halfway through 2016?

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