August 15, 2014
Change from July: 0% increase
Change from January: 265% increase
Our investments took a hit this month so interestingly, between that and our savings, we had exactly no change (except for, literally, some change) since last month.
On Money
I’m working away at Swagbucks to earn Amazon money for household and dog things we need. Feel free to join using my referral link if you like!
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Since the addition of another unbudgeted mouth to feed and body to, well, not clothe, but to get up to medical snuff, all (meager) proceeds of the blog now go to fund Dog#2’s ongoing medical care. I’ve got some saved, but he may bid well to run right through all of it since this isn’t really your standard money-makin’ money blog 😉 We’re calling him Seamus now, Shamey for short when he transgresses, as he has done on occasion.
So if you have to purchase from Amazon and wouldn’t mind using one of my links in the sidebar there, Seamus and we would be most grateful. Every penny really does count!
***
I finally secured a CPA to get started on our much-delayed 2013 taxes – wazoo! Once that’s filed, we can get started on the 2014 tax planning; we’ll have a few things to do there.
I have gotten a few recommendations on an estate planning lawyer, so I think that’s my September goal: Get our paperwork nailed down.
***
Having had no retirement plan through my employer for a while, I really ought to have done this before but I’m just now getting myself in order on that front. I did manage to fully contribute to a 2013 IRA and will do so again for 2014, while quietly kicking myself for not dealing with this much earlier. I think between income, married filing jointly, and having one spouse have access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan, we won’t actually be able to take a deduction on it but whatever. Saving is the key here.
***
Reflecting: You’d think I wouldn’t have to squeeze every penny and point program to fund everyday life. ‘Where the hell did all our money go??‘ pops up an awful lot in my head since we do make a decent income between the two of us, after all! I keep finding myself thinking it’s time to create more income and/or get a second job. But seriously…
Reality Check. We’re still paying for two households, four adults, and two dogs. The Bay Area isn’t cheap by any means, even as frugally as I try to keep our home. And we would like to be in a house that we can reasonably afford to pay off and maintain, someday, so I’m still aggressively saving our cash. And there’s really only so much health/energy I have for THIS life, forget one that includes yet more work.
On Life
We will manage a vacation this year. A semi-actual vacation where I take a few days off instead of just going off to some place and just work while we’re there late into the night and play during the day and come home and collapse.
I’d be excited about this but I’m still in “prep and take care of everything” mode.
SOON.
July 15, 2014
Change from June: 35% 125% increase
Change from January: 118% 262% increase
On Money
I’m still focused on Swagbucks to earn Amazon money for household things we need. Feel free to join using my referral link if you like!
How is our total net worth increasing when I know we just paid big bucks out this month to the tune of $5000+? I don’t think “gift horses” apply here. I’m half convinced there’s something wrong with my math, but I haven’t found the error yet so we’re going with it. I found the error. And good gravy it’s in our favor again. It’s amazing how just being one cell off in these spreadsheets can make the numbers wonky so I’m both grateful that I’ve caught it and that it went up, not down.
We’re looking at a heck of a lot of expenses coming up too, short term and long term, so I’m doing my best to ensure we maintain growth as long as possible before our finances start taking body blows.
In the meantime, I have our 2013 taxes to face down, 2014 taxes to plan for, and it’s well past time PiC and I got our act together on estate planning. I’m locating a good CPA to help with the taxes because I don’t have the time/energy to devote to winkling out every last detail anymore and an estate planning lawyer to start getting our estate plan in place. It could be done online, sure, but I’ve seen some reports where paperwork done improperly through the online forms didn’t hold up and left the estate in disarray. I’m not comfortable enough to go on my own research and homegrown expertise on this.
On Life
We’re in the middle of needing a lot of things: furniture, rugs to replace the thrashed rugs that mainly serve Doggle’s needs, an entire set of second-dog things, and it’s got me beating the bushes for ways to clear out space (donate, donate, sell on Craigslist, donate, trash) and earn some more cash to pay for these things.
PiC’s in charge of the Craigslisting while I’m in charge of the donations. I’ve found a homeless shelter that will take the household things that aren’t really Goodwill material but are in good shape for use: utensils, toys for kids, etc. Then again, he’s also in charge of buying from Craigslist by common consent, he loves searching CL and has this whole system going, while I’m much better at other kinds of bargain shopping. So that’s keeping us busy.
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No sooner do I make the travel arrangements for one trip, another one creeps up demanding my attention. We have some major travel (in terms of time and money) coming up and it’s got me wishing to take Doggle and absconding to a hotel for the weekend where I don’t do any work, thinking or anything other than eating, walking and sleeping. Now *that’s* a vacation! (inspired by Lauren’s weekending, actually.)
***
I had some pretty scary weeks when breathing wasn’t…so possible, I guess that’s an accurate description. It felt like a 30 pound cat sprawled on my ribs so every breath was a struggle and unsatisfactorily oxygenating. It wasn’t so bad that I wasn’t getting air at all but it stank. The nurse made me feel stupid asking why I waited two days to call but I was working! And it didn’t seem like an emergency. Usually sort of broken, I can’t be dropping everything to run to the doctor when I feel awful, I’d have to move into the hospital! Anyway I was vindicated when the doctor declared it another mystery because I wasn’t actually suffocating. It just felt like it.
These days, I’m grateful for being able to breath fully. The little things are great.
***
The Roku experiment continues apace. No real complaints other than the occasional hiccup or freezing that may be blamed on the internet.
June 16, 2014
Change from May: 22% increase
Change from January: 61% increase
On Money
That wasn’t an anticipated, or even mostly a real jump, in Net Worth. I should really get my act together on tracking Net Worth – you’d think that I’d have plenty of practice at this but I totally failed to incorporate the home equity we have; the mortgage liability was included but hello, we do own part of the property. So whoops. Since I don’t feel like going back and correcting every month since January, I have an artificially large increase.
About 3% of that is a legitimate increase though, we had good deposits in the retirement accounts and have been saving steadily with every paycheck.
***
And the deed is done! We have canceled cable and sent the cable box back. We’re now entirely on Roku and while this means I probably won’t be up to date on Hawaii 5-O and Grimm, I am enjoying The West Wing, Studio 60, Downton Abbey, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly and other Doggle-approved shows playing during the day from the comfort of behind my laptop.
***
Even without knowing that our NW was increasing at least incrementally (actually, I tend to assume we’re overspending at any given time), I have been fighting the urges to spend. I want new pillows. I want to swap out a quarter of our furniture for more comfortable stuff like a recliner (for work I swear!), a dresser so I can start to organize that unholy mess that is our closet, a library while I’m dreaming…
In the meantime, I’m doing what I can to earn Amazon money through Swagbucks for the smaller things we need. Feel free to join and help me using this referral link if you like!
On Life
Two Sundays ago, I woke up late. Uncomfortable, as usual, I lay abed for another hour, and finally rolled out of bed. As I wandered over to my desk, it sank in that my limbs didn’t feel inutterably heavy, and my chest didn’t feel like an elephant was sitting on it. Hm!
I actually felt capable of sitting up in a chair! I didn’t need to slump in the corner of the sofa, propped up on cushions, like I’d been doing for … the past five weeks.
The most exciting 70 minutes in 5 weeks ensued: I hopped online, paid some bills, washed a few dishes, ate some breakfast, cleared a two month backlog of mail, signed and sealed documents that needed mailing, scrapbooked several things left over from our reception, scanned documents for my records, sorted my money tracking document, organized photos from the reception into envelopes to be sent out, wrote a card and sorted two piles of leftover wedding crap for recycling. In 70 minutes.
The point I’m making here is if I could pay for energy, I would ABSOLUTELY do it because with this level of effectiveness, I could take on the world with a few months full of energy.
May 15, 2014
Change from April: 2% increase
Change from January: 30% increase
It has been a very strange four weeks since the last update. PiC’s been swamped at work, working longer and longer hours. I’ve been swamped with work and juggling multiple non-work projects, some old, some new, none of which that I can actually talk about yet. But it’s all a lot of work and taking up so much brainspace while it doesn’t feel like there’s anything to report back. I’ve been saving money, spending money to make money, etc. Ye-up.
*
Abby’s post, Chocolate for breakfast, made me smile because in a lot of ways, that’s pretty much what’s happening here. I’m sleeping badly, working through the fatigue and just had a candy bar for breakfast because the recent heat wave has made my body swell up like Violet Beauregarde.
May itself has been a painful month, physically and otherwise. Two heat waves have my joints in total revolt, so I’m barely functional. Just barely. Mother’s Day always makes me even more antisocial than ever, but the day after I can usually remember the supportive, surrogate mother people in my life.
*
Nevertheless there’s been some MONEY progress:
Insurance
– have gotten a whole array of quotes for all our policies and am just a couple decisions away from getting the whole thing sorted. Rates went up thanks to my dad making a bad decision after getting ticket, and some mysterious extra charge on PiC’s auto insurance that I have to get them to correct and refund the difference.
Investing
– have made huge inroads into research, thanks to a really really good friend helping me. Usually I fly solo on these things but I’m no fool, if someone’s an expert and willing to talk me through things, hell yes I’m going to listen.
Cutting cable
– it used to be for PiC but now that I use the tv way more, I’ve been looking for a good compromise since we don’t see a lot of the up to the minute shows anyway and the channels we do have are crap.
1) I roadtested the Google Chromecast HDMI Streaming Media Player
on Kelly’s (Alterations Needed) advice, but it didn’t work out.
The price point was perfect ($30-35 on Amazon); the size and portability was exactly what I wanted (just a USB stick sized doohickey); and you can stream directly from your computer. Set up was dead easy. However, for us, it would only ‘cast Amazon Prime from my work computer as my other computers are too old; I’m not yet prepared to add a streaming service (Hulu, Netflix) yet, AND upgrade our internet, the streaming speed couldn’t handle ‘casting or give us a more than half-decent picture. So while we would have started saving 1 month after cancelling cable, it wasn’t a good enough substitute.
2) I then roadtested the Roku 3 Streaming Media Player
on Katie’s (@grlredballoon) suggestion and that has been 85% good. It was $90 on Amazon for the device and an HDMI cable; I don’t love the cable being visible but the device itself is tiny. It was very easy to set up and I can stream just from Amazon Prime now, and choose to add whatever other service in six months after the device has paid for itself and actual savings have been recouped.
Comparing the numbers against each other, it may seem like I’d still be saving more with the Roku at $30+$10/month for any streaming service right off the bat but I don’t think it’d resolve the internet problem; the Roku has hiccuped a few times but not with the frequency that the Chromecast did.
Cable: 34/month = 408/year
Chromecast: 35 (device)+ 10/month (streaming service) = 155/year + internet upgrade
Roku: 90 (device) + 10/month (6 mos streaming service) = 150/year
I’d love to upgrade our internet to something that’s actually good but the cheapest non-Comcast, non-AT&T option that I’ve found runs $170/month which is far too rich for my blood at this point.
I’ll settle for saving $200/annually for the moment and worry about the internet later.
*
Eventually, this month-long horrors that is my worthless barely functioning shell of a body experience has to settle down… eventually. *grump*
I hope you’re all having a much much better time of it than I!
April 21, 2014
Change from March: 5% increase
Change from January/1st Quarter: 20% increase
It was just a minor increase this month from last month, so I had to mess around with numbers some more to make myself feel better about our progress. Spoiled by last month’s bump which wasn’t going to happen again with just a regular month: making the money, saving the money, spending the money. In that order, mind you. Part of both our paychecks have been set to go to savings first, before anything is spent.
I’ve been doing that since I started working, just after I got out of the “didn’t have a penny to spare and savings had to pay the bills” phase.
I’ve also set up a couple automatic payments out of the checking account for the first time. I don’t trust companies to regularly take money out of my accounts without trying to sneak in extra fees or overcharging, but this works because the checking account is set up to send checks, not allow auto-withdrawals.
At some point, we’ll start experiencing that thing where only truly major spending or saving moves the meter. Obviously that’s a good thing but it’s hard to viscerally accept the prospect of being bored with my money. More obviously, I don’t have to settle. I’m going to go find something new and exciting to do to make money once the routine stuff truly doesn’t take up any time or brainpower.
This is actually really important because a) Baglady Syndrome, I have it; b) My job is, more than most in the past, not guaranteed. Our lifestyle, while not lavish, is quite comfortable and I don’t want to jeopardize that by getting too comfortable & lazy, and income-less. So I’ll just get right on that ….
Happily, PiC’s job is in a really good place right now and quite stable for the nonce so we can take that a little bit more for granted. (For now.)
March 17, 2014
Hot hickory doolittle!
I’d decided to start with not sharing actual net worth numbers back in January and I didn’t want to admit it but some of that was shame-driven. I’d worked so hard to get to a respectable, almost-comfortable, net worth. To combine our assets and liability and come up at near enough to zero as I did? It was a little infuriating and a little worrying. And a little embarrassing.
What it should have been was confusing and a red flag to reexamine my math. Turns out I’m simply not as good at money math as I think I am, some days. (This is what fatigue brain will do to you, sometimes.)
I’d set up my spreadsheets to include the name of each financial institution, account, and amounts. Then I added them up by category. But! You know what happens when you don’t double check your equations? You leave out cells. Important cells. Cells that add to your net worth!
There was a whopping big difference.
Suddenly I want to dance a jig and share our Net Worth because I DO have something to show for the last decade+ of working. 🙂
I’ll chew this over for a bit, but I’ll settle for percentages for now:
February: 3% increase
March: 11.7% increase
The big jump in March was that I finally deposited most of the wedding gifts, and PiC’s bonus came through. We usually opt to put most of it into the 401(k) so that we’ll be on track to max out his 401(k) again this year, for the second year in a row. HOORAY!
January 17, 2014
Yep, I said it. I’m still Happy New Year-ing y’all. It’s been busy!
This is how I know recovery is nearly complete from the Devil Flu + infectious friends: my brain starts insisting on money talk. This is the first chance I’ve had to really look over last year’s money and do a quick review. We combined our finances last year and started to work from a combined budget spending plan. That was rocky, we have totally different perspectives and styles when it comes to money. Still, we had to start somewhere! So we did.
2013 highlights
SPENDING
We went over (between 2-100%) the budgeted amounts in half our specified categories, and under (between 2-50%) in the other half. This was, of course, a disappointment. Overall, we overspent 20% over and above the budget. Most of that, as it shakes out, was the wedding but that was paid for in cash so that’s some solace. I’m NOT thinking about the travel we could have paid for instead. 😉
I do have to keep reminding myself that we pay about $17,000 annually for my dad’s upkeep and that makes a big dent in the disposable income.
SAVING
We maxed out PiC’s 401(k) contributions which has never been done before. WOOT! We also saved 25% off the top of our paychecks through the whole year. Two thumbs up!
Disappointments: I don’t have a retirement plan through the new company so I intended to set up my own. Researched, yes. Decisioned, no. So that’s a fail.
BEST OF
The renewed relationships that came out of planning the wedding. I mended fences with a few relatives that I haven’t spoken to in years. And even more surprisingly, for whatever reason, MIL suddenly thawed towards me a month before and spoke to me like she hasn’t since before PiC and I started dating. Whatever the reason, however long it lasts, I’m grateful that even if I’m not “part of the family,” we can actually behave like non-antagonistic humans. That’s all I ever wanted.
Also: savings. We actually did a good job of saving cash despite all the spending 🙂
Also: Year of the least number of bad surprises (like the car was towed because they didn’t tell me that they were behind on payments! or like, Mom fell and hurt herself! or, Mom was in the hospital with pneumonia for a few days!)
WORST OF
The pained and strained relationships. It’s like I’m just now living the teenage angst years that I never had with my parents, with my dad. Nothing he said when it came to the wedding planning was ok, it was always inflammatory to my overly-sensitive, culture-betraying mind and we argued A LOT. Unnecessarily, I think but it was hard to rein in those feelings. 2 days before the wedding that I had a long painful talk with him over how his reactions made me acutely aware of how I’d failed the family: how I’d failed to straighten out my brother, how I’d failed to provide for my mother, and how I was now failing to properly represent the family as a “dutiful bride”. In turn, he reminded me that I’d done the best I could and more than was expected, and a big portion of these ‘failures’ were his; that the fact that he couldn’t “give” me a wedding was a huge failure as a parent. That he was making his peace with my decisions and in the end, he only truly cares about whether PiC and I are happy. I really needed to hear that. I just wish it hadn’t taken several months of fighting to get there.
Also: no retirement plan for me. This is the first time since age 21 that I haven’t been investing in retirement. No bueno!
:: What were your bests/worsts? How’d you do with saving/spending?
