March 12, 2018
This is a reader requested post on a subject that’s been percolating for some time.
I say “our strategy”, but PiC trusts me with our money, even when I appear to be giving it away with reckless abandon. (Or maybe that’s how it feels to me, and he knows I’m rarely reckless with money.)
I’ve already talked about my philosophy on charitable giving. We’ve talked about increasing our not-significant giving each year, and I’ve committed to continue doing that this year. It seems like more transparency is in order to keep us on track, and perhaps sharing our thoughts with others would help them, but I’m not sure if others value that part. Let me know if it’s yea or nay?
Here, I’m going to share how we’re structuring our giving this year.
Warning: I’ve never been this organized before, but we’re also not all that organized by objective measures so, lower your expectations please!
NOTE: Cutting off Dad doesn’t mean we’re flush with cash now so that hasn’t had any effect on our giving. We originally needed to stop supporting him because we couldn’t afford it any longer. When we moved, our mortgage and our taxes tripled. YEEK.
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March 7, 2018
It’s done.
The gravy train has left the station.
You joined me on this stressful, ugly, painful path last year and I’m starting to breathe a sigh of relief as I share this: decoupling our finances is finally done.
I’ve stopped paying his rent.
I’ve stopped paying his utilities.
I’ve stopped paying for his gas, groceries, car registration, insurance, and cell phone.
We removed all identification information that I knew of from the old house so he doesn’t have easy access to my SSN and placed security freezes on all three credit reporting agencies so he can’t get to my credit.
He doesn’t know our new address.
He doesn’t have any of PiC or JB’s personal information, and their names are so common anyway that they don’t show up in Google searches.
My name is not common so I routinely request the removal of my personal information from data scrapers. (more…)
February 26, 2018
Photo by averie woodard on Unsplash
Are you naturally a money-worrier (hello friend), or does it depend on your situation?
It’s been said that you can’t rely on the wealth you accumulated, you can only truly rely on the skills that you have that would let you start over if you really had to. Having come up from near the bottom, for years, it was easy for me to agree with that.
I knew how to climb the ladder, having done it before. I have a strong work ethic and drive. It wouldn’t be fun or easy, but it was doable.
These days, it’s more complicated than that. It’s about money and it’s about more than money.
My worries about money on a day to day level are much reduced now that we bring in two good incomes and have dedicated savings. Some time back, our focus pivoted to building wealth with a background of simple living and frugality, no longer preoccupied to the point of breaking on survival. That was a massive change.
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February 21, 2018
Photo by Mark Eder on Unsplash
I found the flaw in my previous attempt at the CD ladder.
In hindsight, it’s incredibly obvious: The ladder should have started with 6, 9, and 12-month CDs, not 5-year terms. Duh!
My five year CDs were held in my Cash category but they’re so long term that, if I hold them to term, then they don’t actually make sense as my liquid reserves! I don’t know why I didn’t math out the whole plan before… oh, wait yes I do. I was impatient. Antsy, even, after a year of massive spending. That was foolish.
What I did earlier only makes sense if it was part of a 5 year bundle of cash and cash alternatives, though we’d then have to talk about the wisdom of having that much cash when we’re still far away from retirement!
Reclassifying those CDs makes our Investments category a little bit stronger at the expense of the Cash category but we truly needed the balance anyway. Across all our investments, our portfolio is incredibly heavy on stocks, I hold only one bond fund. That’s less than 1% of our portfolio and that’s way too aggressive.
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February 7, 2018
After I knew he had the signed title in hand, I emailed instructions on completing the process. I’d done everything needed short of signing his name, including filling out the statement of use, verifying that this was a family transfer and therefore should be free, but of course it still took him five days to bother to confirm receipt and, naturally, offer an excuse not to complete it.
The registration was due in a month, which is no impediment to transferring because you don’t have to pay til the due date, duh, he claimed he wouldn’t be allowed to re-title without paying the registration so I’d have to wait for him to scrape up that money.
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January 31, 2018
Shutterfly has this feature where they randomly email you “look what you were doing 3 or 5 or 12 years ago!” Sometimes they pick moments like JB’s birth, sometimes they pick a barely memorable random date from our first year together.
It makes me smile sometimes to see how much we’ve changed. You can’t see it in pictures alone (except for the hair – I used to have much better hair and my eyebrows were excellent) but I remember who we were back then.
Our Relationship
I’m so glad that PiC wasn’t as cool as I thought he was. (He laughed at the very thought.) We are both huge dorks, that what makes us fit. We’ve made lots of good memories, and had plenty of downs to go with the ups, but we also appreciate each other more deeply now.
Admittedly we have gone to having just about zero time for each other, solely each other, these days and that’s not good. But we don’t resent it, it’s a result of our choices and we’re still prioritizing each other in the daily choices we make. We’ll make some changes this year, like hiring a sitter on occasion, but I’m not going to worry about it. As long as we keep looking out for each other, we can’t go too far wrong.
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January 29, 2018
On occasion, we receive gift money in varying amounts and while I always know what to do with it, I don’t know how to write about that money.
When it’s a $5 or $10 red envelope for JuggerBaby, that’s easy. Savings, call it side money.
But when it’s a substantial gift to zir 529 fund or to one of us from, say, a relative disbursing money ahead of their passing as part of their estate tax strategy, what do I do with that? It feels somewhat dishonest not to discuss it when I talk about our savings and money strategies.
But am I being dishonest if I don’t discuss it?
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