February 7, 2023

Money & Life Report: January 2023

Net worth and life update: Image of nest with 5 blue blackbird eggs.

On Money

Income

Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. The sidebar has ways to support the blog and our charitable giving.

Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.

***

We received our middle class tax refund. January’s typically a lean month, as are February and March, so this was appreciated. It padded out our cash flow and let me make more charitable contributions this month than we would normally feel comfortable making early in the year. It was a bit annoying that they didn’t just direct deposit the refund. I had to hunt down a fee free ATM and withdrew that money immediately to make sure that we didn’t forget and lose that money either by carelessness or to fraudsters.

~~~~~

Whew, I had a minor panic when I realized that I hadn’t claimed all our Dependent Daycare FSA money from 2022. We certainly incurred more than the $5000 we allocated but I forgot to put in one final claim to take the balance. Normally I submit a single claim for multiple months and claim the full $5000 all at once but 2022 was weird, of course. Thankfully the rules give us a 3 month grace period to incur expenses and a 5 month grace period to claim all expenses. I put that claim in as soon as I realized my mistake. Whew.

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January 4, 2023

2022: Our year in review

HNY

“Happy” still feels strange to say right now. It’s been a year, much of which feels divorced from reality, because each day is a week and each week is a month.

The COVID pandemic is still a thing at the end of 2022. We’ve regularly gotten COVID case notifications from the school all year, and I noticed an increase in frequency in the last few months. PiC’s employer is still recommending masking and maintaining certain remote protocols (which I think should be stronger but no one listens to me).

We worked and parented full time all year long and felt every painful minute. This was a hard year for us in a lot of ways, so it’s not just you after all, Nicole & Maggie!

This year felt like another decade.

2022 Highlights in Health

  • I continued brain therapy all year. My pain is more manageable even while the ME/CFS plagues me. I still struggled with loneliness and disconnectedness.
  • In the last few months of the year, we found a way for PiC to get a lot more regular outdoor time than he got last year. We’re hoping to keep that up in 2023.
  • Smol Acrobat’s introduction to daycare and other disease vectors (kids their age) was riddled with germs.
  • JB and Sera were reasonably healthy.

The wild cards of COVID and now RSV are still around. Three of us are fully vaxxed and double boosted. Smol Acrobat’s vaxxed but not yet boosted. We continued to be cautious about socializing, avoiding crowds and staying masked around other people.

2022 Highlights in Life

We are still chugging along.

Me: still occasionally forgetting my learned lessons and trying too hard to do all the things and being feelings-avoidant. When I can’t avoid the feelings, I resent that I have to feel them. But on the other hand, I’m doing so much better at avoiding shame spirals when I make mistakes. That’s progress. I didn’t even know I was doing it before and reducing the spiral frequency reduces my pain. I was doing ok with feeling my feelings for a while but after so many losses, and so many complications with family and COVID, I’ve grown so tired of grieving. I’m doing some things I care about: reading, helping people, saving and investing. I’m wishing I could do more of those things and less work for pay.

Socially, we did more this year. We attended a loved one’s wedding, saw two sets of loved ones we haven’t seen in years and I got to meet up an author whose work I really enjoy for a long chat about anything under the sun. That last one was a whole lot of unexpected fun considering my introverted self wasn’t sure that we’d have enough in common to chat for long.

PiC: still working and fitting in his hobbies around the edges of caretaking and household stuff we share. We could use more balance. We’re slowly making space for more balance.

Smol Acrobat: we were without childcare for eight months. Six of those months were spent stressing over if and when we’d get a vaccine for Smol Acrobat. Once daycare started, the latter months of the year were spent tending to a sick Smol Acrobat, recovering from being sick, or both. But they do seem to be benefiting from the social aspects of daycare and their words are coming in fast and thick (and garbled). They’re loving their commute and they’re thriving with the enrichment so I’m feeling a lot less anxious about their day to day. I’m just mildly anxious about all the germs. PiC caught the little trouble seeker licking all the toys at pickup. 🤦🏻‍♀️

JB: attended school through the academic year, camp during the summer, and had two sports activities at different times this year. They love both activities and I suspect they’d love an additional one but we are in agreement that we want to maintain balance.

Our schedule is nothing compared to friends’ kids and we still have zero desire to add anything else.

The kids being out of the house is very good for my need for quiet / quiet time to work and not so good for my immune system.

2022 Highlights in Money

  • I ended 2022 with almost the same amount of cash in our checking account as we started, for a second year. There’s something nice and balanced about that. Makes me feel like I’ve got some sort of consistency in our savings and spending.
  • Our net worth dropped. The market is doing what it does.
  • Related: With some minor adjustments to the recurring amounts in response to all our expenses going up, I stuck to our weekly investing plan. I squeezed every penny I could to pour into investing. We put in 17% of new contributions but ended the year with only 2% more than the start of the year total. Phew.
  • I am almost done waiting for my state and federal amendments to be paid. One last refund pending!
  • Our iBonds paid some decent interest.
  • Collectively, we did an amazing job with our Lakota families project. We fulfilled 17 family requests for aid in the first ten months. In the last two: we shipped 3 cases of gently used items, friends shipped 3 packages of gently used bedding, and the Fall project provided dozens with warm clothes and other necessities.

We continued to be fortunate in having two full time incomes even if PiC had to start working on site. PiC was minimally impacted by recent layoffs, thankfully, and I might never not hold my breath a little when hearing news about layoffs but I hope to unclench my fists a little more each year.

We spent a lot on daycare, direct aid, my therapy, take out a few times a week some weeks, groceries (delivered, once in a rare while), and convenience foods.

For value, the therapy is probably the best thing I spent money on this year. I continue to identify and unpick (or try to) patterns that don’t serve me well. Very close runner up is daycare. This only misses the top spot because of the increased risk of SO MANY germs that comes with the time it bought me to be able to focus on work.

Financial Checklist for 2023

  • Update our will and trust to include Smol.
  • Change executors to people who have more ability to deal with our mess in case something happens to us.
  • Make the important financial documents securely available to the key people.
  • Add details on our bequests and set up secondary beneficiaries.

Thoughts for 2023

I self isolated from a large branch of family this year. I struggled with their politics and view of the pandemic which has impacted how I see them. I’ve also put more distance between myself and my chaos-driven loved ones for my sanity. It’s worked, my mental and emotional balance is better, even while it saddens me to deliberately foster distance during a time I’m still feeling lonely. I don’t know what our relationships will look like in 2023. I’d like to find a better balance. But I’m not sure if I’m comfortable seeing them unvaxxed (them) and unmasked (them).

We did reconnect with other family this year with whom we’d fallen a bit out of touch. That was really good and I’d like to keep that connection solid.

Our money

Same same. Save more, invest more, give more. Achieve FI in less than 5-10 years.

Our expenses will be going up:

  • Full time childcare is more than our mortgage! We’re still part time. Stomaching that increase will be tough but we should plan for it by around midyear or so.
  • We still haven’t committed to a new car and that chip shortage will probably carry into another year of low inventory and high prices but we’d better start saving.
  • I’m not sure if we can expect any (minor) increase in PiC’s salary. I hope so, it’ll help offset the sting of inflation and increased daycare costs.

Little life things

A dear friend made me a giant Taylor Swift playlist on request. I’m going to start listening to it in earnest in 2023 now that I don’t have a huge stressful holiday to worry about.

I’m committing to monthly phone calls (anathema though they are to my introvert self) with a couple loved ones who connect best by phone, not text.

I’m resolving to do some little things that will make life a bit more smooth for ourselves. Bigger picture: Declutter, donate, organize. Small specific thing: Print out gift labels for people we regularly gift to since that’s one weak point of my gifting. I’m the worst at gift tags and gift labels. Another specific thing: figure out people’s gifts early in the year.

I hope to expand the Lakota Giving project a little more this year.

:: I hope that 2023 is kinder to all of us. How was your 2022?

January 3, 2023

Money & Life Report: December 2022

Net worth and life update: Image of nest with 5 blue blackbird eggs.

On Money

Income

Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. The sidebar has ways to support the blog and our charitable giving.

Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.

***

Dividend income. We received $400 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.

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December 6, 2022

Money & Life Report: November 2022

Net worth and life update: Image of nest with 5 blue blackbird eggs.

On Money

Income

Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. The sidebar has ways to support the blog and our charitable giving.

Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.

***

Dividend income. We received $916.56 in dividends from the stocks portfolio. There are two times in the year that the dividends are this big, and this is one of them. Gives a real false sense of income security coming into the holidays!

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November 1, 2022

Money & Life Report: October 2022

Net worth and life update: Image of nest with 5 blue blackbird eggs.

On Money

Income

Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. The sidebar has ways to support the blog and our charitable giving.

Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.

***

Dividend income. We received $216.40 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.

*****

Many Californians should be getting a Middle Class Tax Refund between October 2022 and January 2023. Whatever we get will come in useful.

I’m getting ready for a lean start of the new year. Traditionally our income is always much lower in the first half of the year thanks to pre-tax contributions. Why did it take me so long to finally remember this is a pattern?

Now that I DO remember, I’m trying to stash some cash ahead of the turn of the year.

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October 4, 2022

Money & Life Report: Sept 2022

Net worth and life update: Image of nest with 5 blue blackbird eggs.

On Money

Income

Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. There are ways to support the blog and our charitable giving in the sidebar.

Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.

***

Dividend income. We received $384 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.

*****

I will be getting a decent raise this year. It’ll help reduce the pain of daycare. Not that daycare only comes out of my paycheck. We pool our income and everything comes out of the one pot. It’s just the money pot is feeling the squeeze of higher prices everywhere plus daycare. Every bit of income helps.

*****

I finally won my battles with the IRS! They finally correctly calculated my tax rate for my long term cap gains and are coughing up the last $41 they owed me. I’ve had the bulk of the money since last October, but hesitated to deposit the check because it’d throw off my account balances and I wasn’t sure if they would issue a check for the difference or if they’d stop payment on this check and issue a new one. The latter solution wouldn’t make much sense but it’s the IRS and they don’t make much sense. I didn’t want to take any chances. So the big check has been deposited, yay! The last $41 should be coming in 4-6 weeks. ::skeptical face::

Update: they paid up! Woo!

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September 6, 2022

Money & Life Report: August 2022

  • Net worth and life update: Image of nest with 5 blue blackbird eggs.

On Money

Income

Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. There are ways to support the blog and our charitable giving in the sidebar.

Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.

*****

Dividend income. We received $909.36 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.

*****

JB gets McDonald’s once or twice a year and this year’s Happy Meal treat came with a bottle of spoiled milk. I gave them a chance to make it right, but they didn’t, and so I went to charge back that portion of the meal. It’s the principle of the matter: we paid extra for the milk even! But Citi is a terrible card issuer in terms of customer services. After four tries, I went back and followed up very firmly with the management. After four weeks, and several follow up calls, they coughed up a $25 Visa gift card. I’m still irritated with Citi but that just reminds me why I must prefer using American Express. I’ve never had any trouble using their services when there was a problem with the merchant. I used the card to buy diapers.

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