Author Archives: Mom

About Mom

A family of three living in the Pittsburgh area. We both work full-time and work on raising our daughter.

And the Hammer Falls…

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Well,  It looks like as of Monday, I might well be out of a job.  I *think* I qualify for unemployment since technically the company is closing and I’m being “laid off”.  I’ve been offered employment from the company that is “buying” my company, but it doesn’t look very attractive (no retirement plan at all!).   I need to talk to someone who is familiar with unemployment law to check on that (murky details, so I’m not sure that it’s cut and dry).

I’ve not met the people I’d be working for – although I’d directly be working for my current boss.  According to him, other than pay, benefits, etc, the work we do won’t change, the clients won’t really change, etc.  I’m leaning towards giving it a try – maybe.  I’m meeting with the “new” owners this afternoon.  There is a serious non-compete (“Company loyalty”) clause where I can’t hold down any other work while working for them, and anything I come up with while working for them (even on my own time) belongs to them – puts a serious dent in Dad’s and my plan to write our own software.  I don’t know how negotiable it is – I can declare previous invention, and since we’ve had this idea percolating in the backs of our minds for a while, I can declare it.  I *think* I have to declare this blog, although I make no money off of it (haven’t in over a year), it might turn into something though – and it is prior invention.

Because I’ve been working so hard the last three weeks, my brain is a bit fried – I lean towards giving them the finger and hoping we can make it (I need to make my decision by tomorrow, no idea what time tomorrow though).  I need to run some numbers to see if we really can do it, and where we can cut back.  I know we can do it if we take Daughter Person out of daycare, but I mentally can’t handle that, so we’d probably do a day or two a week at least – or maybe talk Grammy into staying for a while.

At least I don’t have student loans to worry about!  And thanks to YNAB, we have June fully covered as far as income.

Last student loan payment scheduled

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I just scheduled my last student loan payment.  I’m cheating a bit by scheduling it on May 30, when technically the payment isn’t in the budget until June, but whatever.  The money will be in our account on May 29 to be used for June, and the processor probably won’t take the money out of our bank account until June anyway.   I’m a bit over-excited about the prospect because that means that all of our non-mortgage, non-0% interest rate debt will be GONE!  The car loan remains at 0% interest, and the mortgage remains at 4.125%

3 years of trying to get out of debt will be “over”:  from owing a high of just under $100,000 in debt to $17,600 (what’s left on the car).  Or progress will “slow down” as we focus less on paying off the car, and more on building up our long-term emergency fund.  I’m excited and nervous at the same time.  We’ve been paying off debt with an almost laser focus for 3 years, and now we’re moving on to the next “baby step“.  It’s a pretty big change in our lives really.  I’m hoping that we can transfer that laser focus to saving up our large emergency fund next.

We’ll be maxing out our retirement accounts, giving us a “new” income to work with, so I don’t think we’ll build our emergency fund as quickly as we paid off debt, but at least we’ll be paying ourselves instead of someone else in the meantime!    We’ll continue to round up payments on the car and mortgage, but not dump all of our extra money to them like we were to debt.

Reasons we have a large-ish emergency fund

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This month, the annual checkup of our two kitties revealed that one has hyperthyroidism.  They’re both a bit older (~14), but they are indoor only cats, otherwise healthy and expected to live another 5-6 years.  Bloodwork revealed early hyperthyroidism in Bootsie, our black and white cat.  Just the diagnosis for her was $178 (in addition to the “normal” vet visit which we had saved for all year long and was already in the budget).  Then we needed to decide what to do.

Untreated, it is fatal.  It can be “cured” (98% success rate) with a one time injection of I-131 radio isotope (Iodine), or it can be managed with 2 times daily doses of medicine.  Realistically, we know we’re not going to remember to give her pills twice a day, and many times, we leave for long weekends, and we’d have to find someone willing to come by the house to dose her up while we’re gone.  So, that left the one time “radio cat” treatment.  It’s not cheap, but it has some distinct advantages over the medicine – other than not having to dose her twice a day, we would only have to have her thyroid levels tested once per year after the treatment, whereas with the pills, we’d have to have her tested every quarter to make sure the dose was still correct (at $178 a pop!).

We got the estimated costs for the medicine (we don’t have pet insurance), and doing the math, the $1400 radio cat treatment would end up being cheaper if she lives 4 more years – and there’s a really good chance of that if the treatment is successful.  It also means that we have to come up with about $1800 “now”.  The $1400 is for the full treatment, we also had to do a few more diagnostic tests with the vet before hand, and a one month and 3 month followup with the vet to make sure she’s “cured”.

She’ll be at the treatment facility for at least a week, because she’ll literally be a radioactive cat for a bit, and we have to follow special precautions once she does come home for 2-3 weeks, but it’ll be easier than giving her a pill twice a day!

If we only had $1000 in our emergency fund, we’d still have to come up with $800 in the budget quickly, but with the $3000 we had left in the emergency fund after taking some to pay off the student loan, we’re doing OK.  I’m not even going to “refill” the emergency fund until August – after the student loan is paid off.  We live in a high cost of living area, and I always felt that $1000 wasn’t enough for an emergency fund – now I’m glad we had it.

Busy, Busy, Busy

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Work has picked up this month, and I’m traveling during 3 weeks this month – including to Brazil at the end of the month.  The traveling is fun to a certain extent, but in addition to the actual travel to the sites I’m visiting, I have to spend approximately 40 hours writing a report once I’ve finished my site visit.  If you do the math, you’ll notice that there are not more than 40 hours in a work week – leaving me finishing my reports after hours.   I’m particularly keen on finishing the reports before I do the next site visit, just so I don’t get multiple sites mixed up in my head!

The travel normally isn’t too bad, but this past week, I got caught up in the delays caused by a fire at air traffic control in Chicago.  My flight (no where near Chicago) was delayed over 4 hours!  At least we managed to get to our destination, which is more than I can say for some other travelers that day.  I actually was so exhausted when I finally made it to my hotel that I ordered room service.  I think I can count on one hand how many times I’ve ordered room service.  I can expense it, but I still have a deep-seated desire to not waste money, even if it’s not mine. (I’ve actually got a bit of a reputation at my client for being the “cheap one”).

I hope to catch up on everyone’s posts as I procrastinate report writing, but I do want to spend some time with my family while I’m not traveling!

World Travel and Another Place off my Bucket List

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I have an informal goal to visit every continent on the planet, and near the end of the month, I’ll be able to cross another continent off my list: South America.  I’m going to Brazil for work.  This will be my first time in South America, and that leaves one last continent on my list: Antarctica.  I would also like to spend more time in Africa, because I was only in Mauritius, a small island off the coast of the continent (but technically part of the African continent).  Kinda like Japan is an island off of the Asian continent.

Of course, I’d love to go everywhere in the world (or most places – some of the Sharia law places scare me as a woman), but I know that’s not likely to happen in my lifetime. I’ll settle for the world’s major cities 🙂

Getting to Antarctica will be a lot more interesting – I doubt I’ll ever get to work at McMurdo or travel there for work (although, they do need network administrators!), so it’ll have to be a leisure trip.  And the only way to set foot on the continent is traveling on a boat of less than 100 people – otherwise, you can see Antarctica, but not set foot on it due to environmental concerns.  And almost all of the small boats that go to Antarctica are luxury boats – not my idea of a good time.  I don’t like cruise ships to start with, I’d especially hate one that’s “luxury”.  I’m hoping by the time that I have enough time to enjoy such a trip, there will be other options to visit there.  Seriously, I’m OK with stepping off a boat, wandering around for 10 minutes and getting back on the boat – it’s just the experience of being there!

Second Student Loan Paid Off!

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My student loan processor just “processed” the final payment on my second student loan – the remaining one at 6.55% interest.  I’m now down to one student loan left – ~$2500 at 2.10% interest, and I hope I can pay that off in July.

June’s a possibility, but one of our kitties needs a rather pricey treatment and I have to wait and see what the final details of that are.  There’s apparently an “interest-free” payment plan available, but I don’t know if there’s a fee.  And I think I’d rather just pay it off and not worry about it.  But that’s what our emergency fund is for!

So, it’s looking like July will be our “first” debt-free date – the only thing we’d have left is our car payment at 0% interest and mortgage at 4.125% interest.

Spring Cleaning

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Total items out of the house: 187/365

And I only counted the large bin of diapering stuff I gave to to my friend as 3 things (diapers, diaper bag, and wipes).

I sold several smaller items on e-bay this past week, mostly more expensive clothing that Daughter Person had inherited or shoes that she never wore.  We also traded her velcro diapers for snap ones (the velcro was falling off at night), and I sold the velcro ones on ebay for $10/diaper.  These were all the pink ones that weren’t appropriate for my friend’s boy.  For diapers that needed repairing (and I was upfront about that in the description), that’s pretty good. I started the bidding at $25 for all 7 of them, and it went up to $70.  We only bought 6 diapers to replace them.  We’re doing a bit more diaper laundry, but since she’s only wearing them at night, it’s not too bad.

The Lupus Foundation is coming today to take the three large boxes of stuff off my front porch.  It’s all Daughter Person’s 24mth stuff (and 2T stuff that’s too small), some of my shirts I never wore all winter, and some of Dad’s shirts.  I also had her go through her toys and pick a few things that she was willing to donate.  She picked about 5 things – 2 of which I knew were her favorites (she likes to share) and I took them out of the box and hid incase they’re asked for in the future.  I also added a few things to the box that I hadn’t seen her play with in a while.

I freecycled her plastic slide and a few storage bins that I had cleaned out.  All largish items that weren’t worth much, but they’re out of the house.

We have a treadmill and exercise bike, and I think I’m going to get rid of the treadmill, but I’m going to wait until the end of the year when people are looking for them instead of now when craigslist has a glut of them from failed New Year’s Resolutions.  Dad’s undecided on the exercise bike.  I prefer to walk outside anyway – and I’ve been doing P90x3 – which doesn’t need a treadmill 🙂

I still see lots of things around the house that I want to get rid of, most of which I think will fetch something on Craigslist or eBay.  It’s quite freeing to get rid of things!

Detailed Financial Picture – May 2014

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April’s Numbers

As of May 6 , 2014, we are $438,339.52 in debt (that includes the mortgage).  Without the mortgage, we’re at $22,544.49 in debt.  This includes student loans and an auto loan.  We currently have $1,030,065.49 in assets (including our house).  Our retirement accounts are at $370,706.34.  Our Net Worth is $591,725.97 (includes house and mortgage), up from $589,763.53 last month (0.33% increase).

This  month was relatively flat in the investment area.  We went up by our contributions, and that’s it (1.33%).  Our assets went down again – our estimated house value (through Zillow) dropped as well as using some of our savings to pay off debt.  I suspect the house value will increase a bit as the spring/summer selling season goes on – there are about 5 houses for sale in our neighborhood, none of which are our model though (one of the largest in the neighborhood).

I decided to strategically reduce our emergency fund to pay off more of the student loans.  The 6.55% loan has a balance of about $2,300, and will be paid off in July (at the latest).  We reduced our e-fund from 5k to 3k, so we still have quite a bit should Murphy pay a visit.  The plan is to pump up our e-fund to 3 months of expenses after paying off the student loans (and maxing my 401k contribution), then split what’s left between bringing it up to 6 months and investing.  At 5k it would cover our minimum expenses for a month if both of us lost our jobs at the same time (which is unlikely), *and* we use YNAB’s rule 4 to live on last month’s income, so we have a built in one month buffer/e-fund there as well.

We’re still up 5.30% in net worth since the beginning of the year, and I think we’ll be able to hit our goal of 650k this year – especially if we keep contributing as we plan to.  If the markets take a dive, we’ll be out of luck, but that’s gambling for you!

Debt (in the order we’re paying it down):

  • Line of credit (8.75%): $0.00
  • Chase (4.99% for life): $ 0.00 
  • Student loans (aggregated 4.21%):  $4,944.49 (-3,282.14)
  • Car loan (0%): $17,600 (-490.00)
  • Mortgage (4.125%): $ 415,795.03 (-705.01)

Total paid off in April: $4,477.17

April 2014 Early Retirement Progress

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April saw a slight decrease in contributions because I didn’t get a bonus payment in March (which shows up in my account in April).  Next month will have more of an increase though as I upped my contributions to 8%, and $580 was taken out of my April paycheck.

The markets were flat, in our account that has more bonds than the others (about 25% of the account) lost money, and the others didn’t really increase that much either.  We gained $835.73 in investment gains/value, so pretty close to zero.  I have a feeling that this year won’t be near as nice to the investments as 2013 was.

Even if I don’t increase my contributions later this year, we’ll contribute more than $40,000 this year, so I’m going to be changing our contribution goals to reflect that 40k is the minimum we should be contributing.

2014 Totals

So far, for 2014, we’ve contributed $13,114.40 (37.47% of our planned total of 35k, and 32.79% of the new goal of 40k), and we’ve gained $8,005.37 in investment gains (39.51% of our planned total).

Daughter Person’s Easter Money

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This is the first year that Daughter Person has received small sums of money directly for any holiday – $5 from finding the affikomen at Passover, and $12 from Easter eggs – and we’re not sure what to do with it.  Usually, we’re given a check to put towards her college fund, so we dutifully cash it and transfer that amount to her 529 account.  This year, we feel like it should be *her* money, and not go into her 529 account.  But, we’re not sure if we can use it to teach her about money – she can barely count to 10, much less understand the concept of dollars and cents.  I was figuring I’d wait until she could count to (or at least understand the concept of) one hundred.

She knows we have to pay for things – when we go to the grocery, she’ll carry her bag of goldfish (my bribe to get her to behave long enough for me to actually shop) up to the counter and lay it on the belt for the cashier, but I don’t think we’ve ever discussed amounts – how much we’re paying for things.

I was thinking we could let her buy a doll or other trinket with it, but I don’t think she’d understand the concept of “not enough money” yet – although $17 is enough to buy most of the little things she tends to want/ask for.

The other option is to add it to her savings account – the catch there is that I add a little bit of money there for her every month to use when she’s older.  We have a S is for Savings account open at PNC for her – and I think she’d understand the jars “save, spend, share” – but we’re back at the question of what to save for or how much to save.  Or maybe it just sits there until she’s ready to learn?

Any of my readers have ideas on introducing money to young ones (she’s just over 3)?