Money & Life Report: May 2018
June 4, 2018
On Money
Income
Our normal income comes from two full time day jobs. We earn money on the side, including minimal cash flow that we don’t touch from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks.
Our side income comes from Swagbucks, infrequently selling on Poshmark, using 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.
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines enough to prevent me from working.
***
I forgot to mention some of these in April’s update so I’m taking credit this month!
Craiglist Sales. PiC had some luck offloading some of our spare parts. That brought in a small handful of cash: $40.
Legal settlement. I got an unexpectedly large check for a lawsuit for a brand of dog food that we’d bought for years. It turns out that not enough people claimed their share so my check was almost twice the amount originally projected! Score! $280.
Decluttr. I tried selling off some books and DVDs. Sadly, most of the DVDs we have aren’t desirable but oddly enough some old Meg Ryan movies were. And I sold PiC’s smashed to heck phone for a few bucks which was more than I thought we’d get: $10.
Freelancing. I picked up a little bit of freelance work. That brought in almost $400 between March and April. May was too busy with work to do much on this front but I did manage to squeeze in another $100 worth.
Spending
Dental care for Seamus. I’d estimate this will cost about $1000. Brushing his teeth and a daily bully stick can only do so much to fight the plaque and gingivitis.
Long term care insurance: I spent over an hour submitting applications for PiC and myself to Genworth. If approved, I’ll need to find an extra $1900 a year to pay for these policies. I’ll write more about it when we get an answer.
Stockpiling gifts for birthdays: We ran across the closing sale at Aaron Brothers and made it out alive. We picked up five painting projects for kids 5+ for $28, to supplement the dwindling stash of puzzles from PiC’s stocking up. They’re pretty cool, too, canvases with cute animals on them, plus the necessary supplies attached: paint brush and seven tubes of paint, and a paint tray. So we are now prepared to attend three 5th birthdays and two 8th birthdays which is coincidentally all I can stand in a year anyway.
We also bought $25 of painting supplies for home – a dozen bottles of paint, two pads, and no brushes. PiC didn’t exactly complete his vision for these art projects here. But that total also includes a 72-count pack of colored pencils for $5.50 which I’m going to sort into 6 sets of a dozen pencils with “all” the colors so I can dole them out to zir and zir friends slowly. No 3-year-old can handle the magnitude of a 72 pack of colored pencils. I can barely handle it!
Highly recommend:
- OXI CLEAN! How is it that I’ve been a parent for over three years and I’ve only just now discovered this miracle substance?? We’ve had JB come home with all manner of stuff all over: dirt, paint, ink, gobby gucky stuff, and the worst stained clothes are given up for lost. Now I can soak it overnight in Oxi-clean and most things come out clean!
Wish list:
- Basic gardening tools. To start with, a weeder, a big shovel, rust resistant hand tools, and gloves for all (his, hers, kids). We’re almost ready to start tackling at least the weeding part of working in the yard.
Not spending
Months since last shoe purchase: Nikes, July 2017, 9 months!
Months since last clothing purchase: Jeans, October 2017, 7 months!
Note: I’m not being a martyr about not buying clothes, I’m just keeping track of it for my own amusement right now since I don’t have specific needs that are worth indulging.
Saving and investing
A friend has convinced me to rethink my highly conservative approach to our money. We hold 15 months of expenses in cash and cash equivalents because, quite frankly, I’m scared and scarred. It’s not just the experience of being out of a job for almost a year. It’s also the knowledge that if either of us were to lose a job now it would be an even rougher transition because our base expenses are so high: mortgage, insurance, property tax, childcare, etc., and also because we currently have really good jobs that suit our lives. It’ll be hard to replicate the kind of money and benefits and lifestyle we currently enjoy if these jobs go away.
I’ve held tightly to a large cash position but it’s also at a high opportunity cost, and one that we can ill bear if we are to double our investments in the next several years. I’ll talk more about this as I work my way through it.
Miles & points
Alaska miles: 215,045 and $120 in travel credits
Chase Ultimate rewards: 310,262
Starpoints: 165,074
Net worth
On Life
Pot Roast. I should stick to making this fabulous dish on weekdays, not weekends, so that my schedule doesn’t get derailed and the roast can truly braise for a full 3 or 4 hours. I know that’s an odd statement but weekends are far busier and more stressful than the work week. It does make me want a much larger dutch oven, though, because it’s only big enough to make two large meals for our family of 3, and I’d really like to be able to cook 6-12 meals at a go.
The Decluttering Life. I spent so much time cleaning up the room that was intended to be my office over a year ago that it’s starting to look like a place fit for human use! There’s a floor in there! There will eventually be a desk and fewer than ten boxes! There will be organized media and files and a place to sit, even a place to stand! I’m “verra excited”, to quote JB.
The unscheduled (mostly) weekend. Memorial weekend snuck up on us. I vaguely knew it was happening but was totally unprepared with a list of things to do, except for “playdate with JB’s bestie”. This was the best thing ever. I didn’t really think about work until Monday and even then I kept my day abbreviated. We greeted Saturday morning at an utterly humane 8 am, and worked on cleaning my office while JB sat on the floor with me, sorted paperwork, and colored. PiC got to clean and wash the car which he lives for. We spent Sunday having fun, and just having more fun, which hasn’t figured largely into our lives for a while. Monday was partly doing things, leaving us wrung out by late afternoon but the dogs and all their bedding were clean and fresh. There was so much less frustration with JB. It turns out that if you don’t have pesky places to be like work or school, there’s much less tension.
Wow, all I can say is you are productive!!! I got tired reading all that. So curious…you have all these travel points and credits. Are you saving them all for something?
Remember that some of that was from April and I’d just forgotten to add them to our report 🙂
Yes, I’m hoarding the travel points and credits for some domestic and (I HOPE) a nice international vacation at some point. Maybe in the next two years.
Nice score with the class action lawsuit. I’ve been ignoring these lately. They are such a pain to deal with especially if I need to find records. Who has these receipts and records? Good job with everything. 🙂
I do obsessively keep certain records but not enough for class action lawsuits! I tend to submit the ones that don’t require a lot of work from me 🙂
I just calculated that when we’re full up we keep almost 17 months expenses in cash equivalents… (it dips to 1 year right after say, buying a new car). I don’t have a good reason why so much other than it makes me feel comfortable any time I think about having to flee to a blue state or to Canada after a stock market crash. (In a blue state it would be less than 17 months expenses…) If we get extra cash to put in taxable I should start thinking about putting money in bond funds next time to tap in a recession.
I’m pretty sure I had the same desire to be able to take our cash and flee if necessary, not that it’d be easy to do, nor would we want to abandon our home.
What would you do with your place if you were to hypothetically leave?
One of my possible solutions for investing the cash is putting it into bond funds because we are very heavy in stocks right now. Do you have a preferred VG bond fund?
I assume we’d still be able to sell our house if we were fleeing to a blue state. If we had to flee to Canada, our house would likely be more of a minor concern. (This is another reason I haven’t wanted to consolidate my accounts– making it more likely we’ll have money available to us from *some* account should the government seize our property. Paranoid? Hopefully!)
For bond funds I went to Bogleheads and just got what they recommended. I don’t remember what it was off the top of my head but can look it up later.
Having a newly decluttered space is one of the most satisfying feelings in the world. We’ve been pretty good about getting rid of stuff on an ongoing basis at our place (how did we get so much stuff!?), but while I have the time I’d like to do a big overhaul of my bedroom space.
Definitely interested in hearing more about your LTCI experience. How much do the premiums increase each year, what do you do if the company goes belly up at some point, etc.?
It is! Our space when we cleared out for the sale was amazingly freeing. I still have a long way to go. Balancing that open space feeling and actually owning books and toys for a growing human is tough and I think we’ll always be fighting entropy to some degree.
LTCI: I will update you as I get more information!
Decluttering feels like a never ending project. Right now we are doing (somewhat) OK inside the house, but sometimes things don’t get decluttered to anywhere further than the garage… so that is up next!
“never ending project” – YES. It is!
I have to try to isolate the mess to one place, like your garage, and then tackle it ruthlessly there.
That’s quite a share from a class action settlement. I’ve never been eligible for anything more than a $5 to $10 coupon myself.
I really enjoy decluttering (maybe too much), but at this stage in life, where we’ve been in rather small NYC apartments (with relatively little closet space, though more than in comparable buildings/units), there’s not much left.
Until this year, I hadn’t either! It was very unexpected.
I feel slightly embarrassed to admit that we have about 24 months of cash and its equivalents. What can I say, I like cash. I think that having about $100,000 in cash and equivalents is a good sweet spot for us at the moment. If cash gets to be more than 10% of our net worth though, then that’s when we should start shifting it more to investments.
I like cash too! But I think what makes sense for you or me is so highly individual.
OxyClean is amazing. I use the spray as a pre-treatment and put the powder in the wash (mac and cheese stains can be surprisingly hard to remove). That said, I once used OxyClean Max Force and it removed the color from the fabric in the area I’d sprayed. So I recommend OxyClean really highly, but I also recommend sticking with the regular spray.
Oooh good tip. I may reserve using that spray on our whites that have stubborn lingering stains since that seems like the safest use.
That could work. I’ve found that the spray + powder method seems to get rid of just about everything–blood, poop, chocolate, washable-marker-after-you’ve-scrubbed-it-so-how-washable-is-that-really, etc. I try to spray, let it sit for a bit, then wash. Sometimes a stain that sat for a few days without getting sprayed is hard to get out.
I will try that first! We do have stains that have sat for a while.
I tried Decluttr and I found it a bit insulting. I think it’s better for phones and such though. I inputted my textbook and they wanted to give me $0.14 for it hahaha. I would rather just recycle it or give it to the library haha.
Oxiclean- great idea! I used to have it I think. I should look into that now that I have a messy baby who has food stains on his clothes all the time!
Right? I was literally offered pennies for some books. HARUMPH. But .. well, pennies DO add up…
Oxi-clean does great work on food stains 😀
I have about 1.5 year of expenses in savings bonds and could probably stretch it to 2 if I go all out on frugalness.
It’s my compromise. I get some return but it is safe. I laddered them so they would mature monthly but they are all cashable now.
You really shouldn’t feel guilt about not having 100% of your money working for you. The stock market will eventually tumble and it will feel good to have some cash untouched by the downturn.
I also have some money in a low interest cd for an emergency used car fund. I guess it adds up to a lot but compared to my net worth, it’s less than 10% of my savings.
My favorite spot cleaner is Zout.
I keep planning to include savings bonds into our portfolio and letting them slip in favor of CDs because I hate logging into Treasury Direct. I wish it was just a little less cumbersome.
It just bothers me that my conservatism may be responsible for dragging down our holdings over the years – but you’re right, there IS a reason for it.
Thanks for mentioning Zout, I’ve not heard of that before!