June 18, 2018
Our mortgage, recast twice though it has been, is still an astronomical 4 figure number that I’m quietly desperate to reduce as fast as possible. To that end, though we don’t have much spare every month, our payments have been rounded up to the nearest thousand to whittle away at that principal slowly. Drip drip drip!
Before I could bask in the rewards of taking a long term approach, I discovered a hole in our plans.
We started paying a multi-hundred dollar therapy bill monthly at the end of 2017 and I blithely assumed we could cash flow it. Yes, but…
This is where the drips worked against me. I lost track of when the extra therapy bills ate up our whole cash buffer in the checking account but we slowly dripped and dribbled that “extra” money out the door. It’s entirely gone now and we’re back to a paycheck to paycheck situation.
All our money first goes to their various prescheduled destinations (investing and savings), then we have exactly what we need to cover our bills as they come up. This is NOT ideal. As loathe as I am to have money sitting in checking accounts not earning any interest, the scenario where a missed paycheck would send me straight to pulling money out of our savings and that stinks. We do maintain a large cash savings for major bills like insurance and property tax but that isn’t intended to be tapped for any normal recurring monthly expenses.
Sadly this means I’ve got to make even more budget cuts. The “big” mortgage principal payments of $200 are now reduced to only $20 extra per month. Our cash buffer needs to be at least $3000 to be useful for more than a minute and that’s going to take quite a while to rebuild. In the meantime, I’m considering the impact this will have on our charitable giving.
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June 11, 2018
Thanks to being featured by the lovely ladies at Women Who Money, I realized that I should update our money process because it’s evolved since the last time we talked about it.
Ours to have and hold
Budgeting the money
Pretax contributions come out of his paycheck first: taxes, retirement contributions, health, dental and vision coverage, pre-tax FSA, his disability and life insurance. His benefits are way better than my employer’s.
After that haircut, our paychecks hit the joint checking accounts. 30% of our total take-home pay is immediately transferred to our joint savings account for long term savings or investing, another 10% is sent to a savings account, held against the large bills coming up in the course of the year: life, car, home, and earthquake insurance, property taxes (A DOOZY), income taxes if we unexpectedly made more and deducted less over the year. That will need to increase to 15% in 2019.
The remaining 60% covers all living expenses: mortgage, utilities, daycare, credit cards (gas, groceries, discretionary spending, dog supplies and medications).
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May 30, 2018
I’m loving Angela’s recent sustainability tips and Cassie’s posts on deciphering those recycling symbols, buying cleaning products in bulk (though I would have to find the US equivalent), low waste food shopping. Also Miser Mom’s gift to her church that keeps giving.
PiC and I aren’t zero-wasters but we make an effort to be as low waste as possible. Here are some of the things we’re doing now:
1. Reusable shopping bags and produce bags
I didn’t get on this bandwagon until plastic bags were banned here in Northern CA because we always reused our plastic bags for the garbage, but we had a good stash of reusable bags from Comic Con to use when that ban went into effect. We’ve also added mesh produce bags to our shopping trips to reduce the number of small veggie bags that we use, and may soon switch over to using free newspaper to line our tiny trash bins to reduce our use of plastic even more.
2. Recycle!
Everything that can be, is!
- Food is kept separate from paper and plastic recycling to avoid contamination.
- We have small appliance and household waste recycling through the city,
- and film plastics recycling at Sprouts,
- and electronic waste recycling through work.
- I’ve even found textiles recycling for shoes and clothing that are simply too thrashed to be handed down or donated.
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May 28, 2018
Tending to our Net Worth update, I signed in PiC’s Chase account to check some balances and my jaw dropped.
WHAT IN THE SAM HILL.
WHERE ARE MY POINTS???
I had to nag them for Six Frakkin Months to get my rightfully earned 100,000 points for opening a mortgage with Chase during their promotion for massive points for doing a thing we were already going to do.
[panic flails]
Then it dawned on me.
Yet Another PF Blog done alerted me, I thought.
“Odd, I should look into that,” I thought.
Then it completely slipped my mind!
The reasons? I have never had my earned points or miles tied to keeping an account open so it literally didn’t occur to me that they would be (even though YAPFB TOLD ME), I completely missed that we only have 30 days to cash them out in the Rewards Agreement, and … there’s no real excuse. This was my own damn fault.
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April 23, 2018
The Phone Chronicles
I let PiC pick my new phone because he wasn’t really picking for me – he was picking his future phone. I have to learn to use whatever phones we get first so that I can troubleshoot them because I am IT, and I don’t much care about which phones we use as long as they’re functional and not Apple, now. (I refuse to give Apple any more money on principle. I find their confession to throttling older phones, and their excuse, to be fishy. Also, I HATE iTunes and iCloud and all the proprietary, frustrating as all get out software, and Apple ID, with a hot fiery passion and never want to have to see it again. Ever.)
Then again, since he inherits my now “old” phone which has quite a lot of use left in it, I’m destined to spend a few more years with them.
He was debating the Google Pixel and the Samsung Galaxy, and I decided in favor of the Pixel 2 since I would like the option to go to Project Fi in the future to save on monthly costs. We’re still getting service from T-Mobile but we’re paying more than I want to for cell service.
I don’t like buying new phones but it was originally to give us some flexibility as to our phone plans earlier on. Now, while I’m happy to sell our old phones, I am doubtful about buying used/refurbished – what if we get a lemon? Transferring phones is already a colossal PITA buying new, is buying used another layer of risk? Maybe no more than it is with a car which we DO believe in buying used.
I need to hunt down a verified reliable source for refurbished phones for the future. This time we simply didn’t have the luxury of waiting because his phone suddenly made the acquaintance of a large rock with extreme force and prejudice. Actual chunks of the screen were falling out when he got home from that run. Given the choice, I’d prefer that he temporarily lost it again but clearly the choice wasn’t mine.
Quick review: The phone is fine, though too big for my hands, but I HATE the Android WordPress app. It’s so bad that I’ve stopped blogging on it so that’s going to seriously slow down or cut into my blogging.
Phone: $706
Phone case: $14
Phone screen protector: $9
Phone cable (because I didn’t realize that the Pixel uses USB-A grrr): $12
Total: $741 (more…)
April 9, 2018
We recently took on a young lady rescue, to Seamus’s mild chagrin, and my heart’s delight. I’m pretty sure we needed a second dog but the first few months will be tough because no one gets Seamus AND an easy new dog in the same lifetime.
Even Seamus’s first months with us were hard. He was learning the ropes of our household and I was battling his allergies: hives, broken skin, rashes, bathing three times a week, steroids which means 6 walks a day, and one (terribly embarrassing for him) accident in the house because he couldn’t wake me for a walk in time. Those demanding weeks and all his maintenance since then has been totally worth because he’s a lovebug, has perfect manners, coparents JB, and protects zir from all comers. He was and still is a big help to me during my tough days, helping me get up and around during pregnancy and during flare ups, and supporting me through the days when people aren’t around. I don’t expect quite the same from her but it would be a good idea to train her like a helper dog as much as I’m able.
Suffice it to say, new pup has a tough act to follow. But we have lots of training planned, plus lots of patience and persistence. For my own sanity, I have told myself to give her two months to start showing real improvement and the ability to fit in. That’s about how long I can maintain all training all the time mode, and I need the reminder that a perfect dog isn’t achieved in 3 days.
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April 4, 2018
We appreciate the little things that fulfill our sense of luxury but the big things are amazing because we can afford some things that were totally out of reach for me 20 years ago.
The pricey daycare
This is for all of us. Our local preschool wait list is 3-4 years long so we’re not specifically choosing this over the muuuuuch cheaper preschool, but I view it as a luxury to pick this particular option instead of a home care option. Home care options are significantly cheaper but since we don’t know anyone who can refer us to a good one, we just don’t have the peace of mind that ze will be treated well and that any violations or mistreatment of children will be immediately reported by the other people who work at the facility. Our facility isn’t perfect, but they DO self-report any time there are infractions where other people might dismiss them as “not that bad”.
JB LOVES the teachers at this daycare and all the resources they have: books, toys, iPads, desktops where ze can pretend to be me. They are located close to PiC’s work which makes dropoff much easier, we love that their schedule mirrors PiC’s work schedule so neither of us has to take precious days off to cover childcare on holidays.
Empty spaces
We have 2 cabinets in our kitchen that are almost completely empty. I have no plans or desire to add to it any time soon. It’s my favorite non-thing about the kitchen! The emptiness is a promise to myself that if we want to grow or change or add, we can without feeling claustrophobic and that we are committing to not expanding to fill every empty space just because it exists. We’re respecting the space.
My ideal closet is a half empty room, housing exactly what I need, a couple of extra lovely soft cuddly things for cold days and nights, and a wide open space. For possibilities!
Four legged friends
Seamus is a delight and a comfort. He keeps my blood pressure down, generates fabulous sleeping dog scent while he cuddles nearby, and intervenes when JB is driving us all loonytunes.
He brings pure joy when he’s sleep-roaching, when he’s converting a friend who is afraid of dogs into a doglover, when he’s sunbathing and grins with tongue lolling and stretched gaping joyful jaws. He requires a lot of hands on care and he’s worth every minute and every penny.
Travel
As a confirmed hermit, and would be shut-in, who hates to be away from her home and dogs, you would think that travel would be my last priority for spending. In some ways, it is – I hate paying full freight on flights, rental cars, lodgings. But it’s important so I travel hack to make it affordable. We live far away from friends and family so, as a purely practical matter, it’s the only way we’re going to spend time with a lot of them as they have families themselves and it’s no longer just a matter of driving across town and dropping in for dinner.
“Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire.” – Jennifer Lee
The non practical side of it is simply this: discovery. It’s so easy to lose sight of the world out there. It’s really easy to let our own narrow range of lived experiences come to encompass all experiences, to overwrite the wealth of the world’s beauty and inspiration because it’s easier and, for me, less painful to stay home. It’s easy for friends and family to forget that I live with pain as a companion every minute, it’s most definitely easier for me to avoid those exertions that bring on even worse pain. Hiking, exploring new countries, walking to new food experiences, riding horses through Scotland? That sounds fantastic, except that after the first flushes of excitement, I come home to my body. Where I live, the view never changes. It would truly be much easier to avoid travel. That ease makes it much more imperative that we don’t fall into that trap. Even if it costs money, takes a lot of time and precious brainpower, it’s a luxury that we can afford and should afford for ourselves.
In my family, travel hasn’t ever been a thing you did for fun. You traveled when you were leaving everything you knew, for good. Emigration, not tourism. Now that we can, we should.
Laurie described great reasons for international tourism more eloquently than I can manage right now, but Done by Forty reminded me of another one: our children are going to be raised by very different parents than we were. Our parents were immigrants who came here with nothing but the clothes on their backs. By contrast, we are basically wealthy people. Not just compared to our parents, compared to much of the world. As such, it’s even more important that our children be exposed to more cultures and languages and society with different values so they understand that there is so much more to the world than just what they know here.
:: What big extras do you prioritize?