May 4, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $659.86; Rural libraries, $321.62.
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from an investment property (which is all saved for maintenance) and investing in dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks and cash back sites (Ebates, Mr.Rebates). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running and I’ve added a way to support the blog in the sidebar to the right!
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.
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Dividend income. We received $193.60 in dividends in April.
Federal taxes. I’m glad we filed on the last day of March. I know there was no rush with the deadline delay to July 15th but we were due a federal refund and I wanted our money before the virus spread brought the IRS to some kind of grinding halt. Our deposit arrived in about ten days so I stashed it immediately to pay for our CA tax bill in the summer. I’m not paying that until July. We have a little extra after we deduct our state taxes, but I consider that money already spent. I’ve been hearing reports from other bloggers that they’d filed much earlier but they were being asked for ID, birth certificates, etc, and their refunds are indefinitely held up. What gives?? What has your experience been with your tax refund?
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April 20, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $640.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Winter! December 21 through March 19
This post contains affiliate links. I may be compensated for purchases made through them.
What I read
Terry Pratchett
Unseen Academicals (Amazon, IndieBound). When the world is too much, you just need Pratchett.
All the RWA nonsense (in Reno in 2005) and over the 2019 Christmas holidays made me have a look into romances to support the decent writers. I’ve mostly avoided the romance genre through the years because I wasn’t interested in books with HEA built in but you know what? With the world being what it is right now, that’s now something I appreciate! Clearly everyone had the same thought in my town because all of Courtney Milan’s books were checked out 🙂 Also Jeannette Ng interrogated something about romances of more than ten years ago that makes a lot of sense to me now – basically, the older romances defined love in a narrowly Western way that I didn’t recognize or didn’t resonate with me. Today’s are more varied and nuanced. So fittingly, I had a whirlwind romance with romances.
Sherry Thomas
The Luckiest Lady in London (Amazon, IndieBound)
The One in My Heart (Amazon, IndieBound)
The Hidden Blade (Amazon, IndieBound)
Jade Lee
What the Groom Wants (Amazon, IndieBound)
What the Bride Wore (Amazon, IndieBound)
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April 6, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $640.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from an investment property (which is all saved for maintenance) and investing in dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks and cash back sites (Ebates, Mr.Rebates). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running and I’ve added a way to support the blog in the sidebar to the right!
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.
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Dividend income. We received $274 in dividends in March. I’m grateful we don’t rely on this income yet because we would not make it.
Our Rental Income has been seriously disrupted for the past few months with the previous tenant situation. I’m really glad that we managed to get a new one in before all this came down. We’ve contacted them to ask after their health, NOT THEIR RENT, even though really this is a truly low point in the finances of the rental after I spent more than all our reserves repairing everything the last tenant wrecked but good. So far they are healthy which is the most important thing and my hope is they will be fine financially so we can start to rebuild the reserves. But if they need concessions, we’ll make something work. Not all of us need to be heartless bastards in this.
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March 2, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $521.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from an investment property (which is all saved for maintenance) and investing in dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks and cash back sites (Ebates, Mr.Rebates). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running and I’ve added a way to support the blog in the sidebar to the right!
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 have today.
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Dividend income. We received $545.98 in dividends in February. This was an unusual month.
Ko-Fi! Awwww, another kind reader! I so appreciate the support. Thank you! <3
W-2 income. We’re making a little more money this year. This was just about enough cover our increased costs of living with inflation plus a trickle to savings but thanks to my new health spending category below, that’s gone. Drat. Every bit counts. Especially with PiC’s increasing unhappiness with his job, and the peculiarities of his company’s financial stability, I am banking and investing as much as I can. We’re earning well right now but I also know that can go away very quickly. Maybe this is me being pessimistic but I don’t think so – he’s been unhappy for two years and they’ve been through five layoffs. Also I AM admittedly pessismistic because I feel physically terrible all the time. How long can I keep going?
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February 3, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $521.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from an investment property (which is all saved for future maintenance) and investing in dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks and cash back sites (Ebates, Mr.Rebates). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running and I’ve added a way to support the blog in the sidebar to the right!
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working because I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA.
I aim to make the most of what we can do while we can.
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Accounting and tracking. It felt great to switch all my spreadsheet tabs to fresh tabs for 2020. I have one for our net worth tracking and transactions history, one for our dividend investing, and another one for our index fund investing.
Smaller paychecks. I forget that the first part of the year always means smaller paychecks because we work on to maxing out PiC’s 401K as soon as we can. This is not helpful.
Dividend income. We received $165 in dividends in January.
Ko-Fi! A friend encouraged me to set this up so readers can support the blog. I was skeptical but then tickled to receive a lovely note and coffee from a long-time reader this month. Thank you! <3
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January 6, 2020
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from an investment property (which is all saved for future maintenance) and investing in dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks and cash back sites (Ebates, Mr.Rebates). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running and I’ve added a way to support the blog in the sidebar to the right!
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working because I know from my Mom’s experience that relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA.
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Dividend income.We received $298 in dividends in December. It was all reinvested. Our whole year of dividends from stocks plus index funds dividends adds up to $7319. We’re still not nearly close enough to making enough on the side to cover even half my income (less than PiC’s before benefits, grrr). I’ve been thinking about one of us going part time for family and health reasons but we can’t afford to do that yet without dramatic changes and I’m not prepared to make them (moving would be required).
Windfall. My work finally earned enough revenue to give a wee bonus this year! I never ever count on bonuses because it’s never certain whether it’ll be a good enough year for one so it’s extra sweet when we get one. It’s the perfect time. While I wish to hoard it like a dragon, it will be such a help with our bills from last month.
CD interest. Our emergency fund is mainly in CDs at Ally. I set it to pay out the interest annually which means Dec 31 is a fun day.
Side money. I didn’t have time to commit to any real side jobs this year but we earned $1,805.81 this year from Craigslist, cashback sites, MyPoints, Swagbucks, and Bing. Most of our side income wasn’t in the form of cash, so this money subsidized our household spending and freed us up to direct our cash where we needed it most.
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January 1, 2020
2019 highlights in Life
- We solved puzzles, created crafts, wrote cards to friends and family, and read a TON of books.
- We traveled to Hawaii, San Diego, and Lake Tahoe. Not all the trips went smoothly (Hawaii was an epic UGH due to one terrible person) but on the whole we had good times with everyone else.
- Weird health thing: me. I am the weird health thing. Oh wait, for this year. I’ve developed some strange kind of allergy situation where I randomly sprout really itchy rashes for no apparent reason. That’s at least as much fun as you can imagine. Allergy testing, here we come.
- Weird pride thing: I’m happy that I spent only 1/10th of the time that PiC did on hair trims and removal.
- I am grateful for my improving ability to physically exist in this world in this year, and the friends who gently encouraged me to keep at it, supplying sugar free recipes and cooking inspiration. Battling chronic health issues is exhausting and it’s easy to give up even before having to create a new diet with no guidelines. December was especially hard physically, and maybe extra hard because I had several months of lighter pain prior, because I was hit with a triple whammy: overextending myself, catching JB’s cold, menstruating which always makes my pain and fatigue at least 3 times worse. Then add to that the holiday stressors of having to plan and host a holiday party, buy, wrap and pack over a dozen gifts, order and mail 80 holiday cards and packages of some kind for loved ones and I was ready to dig a hole and pull it in after me! But at least half the year was more about better than worse.
- I am grateful for a true partner who continues to learn to improve himself because he and I are totally imperfect people with room to grow and I both appreciate his efforts and find them encouraging for me to keep improving myself as well.
- I am grateful for the professional skills that mean I can still earn a decent amount of money within my physical limitations.
- I am grateful for my child growing up healthy and reasonably independently so far.
- I am grateful for the technology that lets us stay in touch both asynchronously and in real time with our loved ones across thousands of miles and time zones: Twitter, Skype, messaging apps, Marco Polo, air travel that brings us together every so often.
2019 highlights in Money
- I reorganized our banking in March so the accounts would make more sense, and later realized that setting aside all large expenses (property taxes, insurance, other large expenses) in a single account wasn’t working so we stopped doing that too. Instead we only set aside money for property taxes and cashflow the rest of our bigger expenses.
- We stopped contributing to JB’s 529 since it has a healthy amount. Now I’m fully focused on retirement income investing. I still feel like I’m running way way behind in a race to the finish line but my anxiety about it isn’t always high. Sometimes it’s only medium.
- Out of uncertainty comes a bit of good. In January, we both got raises but the outlook was murky. PiC’s company had undergone several layoffs. He still had a job after several restructures but he was uncomfortable and unhappy. I still had a job but I was definitely unhappy and concerned – the political climate has hit many of our clients hard and a recession loomed. I’m paid well but that could also be the reason they chose to get rid of me to cut expenses. I’m still scrambling to make up for 7 years of not contributing a penny to retirement and oh, 20 years of money being drained away by Dad.
I was a swirl of anxiety. To combat that panicky feeling, I decided to aim to squirrel away our highest amount of annual savings ever in case we both took a serious hit any time through or after this year that meant we couldn’t save. I figured we could both could at least hold on for 2019 and then I’d feel less freaked out about whatever negative stuff comes down the pipeline. We scrimped, saved, and controlled our spending aggressively all year, took a lot of hits, made as many contributions on faith that we would make it work, and it did come together in the end.
- We did a much better job giving more time and money this year.
2020 Life outlook
- We are anticipating a number of life changes in the lives of people nearest and dearest to us: a marriage, a divorce, the health of at least three elderly relatives. We are making some travel commitments to support our family through at least the hardest of those life changes and we really need to find a great dogsitter for our pups. That’s one major source of anxiety for me as Seamus’s needs multiply like bunnies. I can’t go tend to other people if our aging pup isn’t well cared for!
- I wish for: Better health.
- I wish for: Internal peace from the anxiety that’s developed over the years.
- I wish for: A lot of good years with my family.
- I wish for: As many good years at this job as I need or want: I have a lot of autonomy, the set up is as ideal as it can be to preserve my energy and let me be present for my family, and pay the bills.
2020 Money outlook
- My job should be stable for another year if nothing big changes like a recession or changes in geopolitics. Those can and will change our stability dramatically so I remain very cautious.
- PiC’s job is still in the same unknown status of “he’s got a job right now that he doesn’t much enjoy but it’s paying the bills and we have no idea if he’s safe from another round of layoffs!” Yay!
- We have at least two necessary major maintenance projects this year though we haven’t nailed down exactly which lucky two yet and I’m guessing we need to set aside $10,000 (???) for them. We need to do our brace and bolt (our preferred contractor will match the price of the EBB contractors after subsidy if we add it to the other project) and deal with some drainage issues. We also have a massive landscaping problem to tackle that may be contributing to our drainage problems. We have multiple home projects on the list after that but I’m not willing to commit to more than two in the year, yet.
- Minor home maintenance: we still have to fix our showerhead, figure out the leak in the washer and why the dryer won’t stop on its own anymore, and murder all the mold that keeps trying to grow.
- Knowing we are committed to spending on some major home maintenance this year, it’s more realistic to aim for saving and investing 80% of what we managed this year.
- Financial stability: We currently have 10 years of expenses invested but we are also holding 5 years’ worth of expenses in mortgages, so it doesn’t feel like we’ve got all that much financial freedom under our belts. Pondering: Does that X times your annual expenses take into account the lifespan of your debts? I guess it doesn’t need to, this X years of expenses is just that – income enough for 10 years and then we’d better have another 10 years of money after that, and so on.
Goals for 2020
Life: Add, one at a time, two new activities for JB. We meant to start one of them this year but I just couldn’t hack it. The other one was a back of mind thing that PiC is interested in getting zir into. It’s 45 minutes a session, we’re not going bonkers here, so it shouldn’t be as insurmountable as it FEELS to be adding two more commitments to our week but it sure does feel like a lot.
Life: Start hosting one Friday movie or potluck night a month with locals. I worked hard at hosting in 2019 and we did see a lot of friends but I think I’d like to make it a regular recurring thing so that I get comfortable with it. I’d also like to see my friends who are not hyper-local but are within a 2 hour drive. That’s harder to swing.
Money: I’m working on some ideas for charitable giving that I’m excited to share. Nothing big but definitely meaningful.
It feels like I should have some big career or money making goal this year but I just don’t. I didn’t in 2019, either. I don’t know why I remain wound so tight with worry but I am. It’s more important for me to let go and relax than to find some new star to aim at in 2020. Perhaps the bigger goal is to embrace a mindset where I can both aim to achieve and trust that we will get to where we’re going.
Decade Summary
It’s been the most eventful decade of my life! It’s the first full decade in which I was fully an adult throughout – able to make all my own decisions, mistakes, and even take some risks. I’m proud that I did take some risks. Having the freedom to do so doesn’t mean one is willing to take them, nor the guts or resolve, but together PiC and I chose to take some risks together and they’ve been really good for us as a family and for each of us individually.
Together, we got married, we buried more than our fair share of loved ones, we built our own small family, we learned to set boundaries for our little family (still learning!), and we’ve embraced chosen family and friends wholeheartedly. We navigated tough situations at work and I learned to stop letting professional toxic messes seep into our marriage (I was terrible at this between 2008-2011).
I won’t speak to PiC’s or JB’s highlights here because that’s their decision to make but individually for me:
At my FT job, I professionally advocated for myself year in and year out, and for my team. I’m proud of what I’ve built in my career thus far. I pushed myself to learn bits and pieces of creative endeavors shared here on the blog and that was satisfying in a whole other way. It feels weird to say I’m proud to be a mother because so much of that wasn’t in my control, but I am glad we ventured into parenthood together. It’s a super tough job and I will have no idea if we “succeeded” for many years yet, but we’re doing our best. I’ve spent half the decade being a remote landlady and that’s been a learning experience as well. I haven’t decided if I should sell, double down and buy another property, or just stick with the one. I’ve also read so many books and feel like I’m still at the teething stage of figuring out my own writing chops. There are stories I don’t want to die with me, and I’d like to get them out when I’m ready.
The decade has been a bit of a bell curve, especially at the end here where I feel like I didn’t actually accomplish anything of note in 2019 but I did hold steady with everything and that’s not nothing.
:: Thanks for reading! What are your expectations for 2020? What would you like to bring into your lives with the new year and the new decade? What were your favorite moments of 2019?