Category Archives: Finances

Selling used stuff

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For the last few months, I’ve been decluttering and getting rid of things on various selling and trading sites – mostly craigslist, Amazon marketplace and ebay. I just ran a report in YNAB and I’ve netted $795 year-to-date on that. Mostly amazon and ebay. And I’ve got about 10 Nintendo DS games up on ebay right now, with the auction ending next week. Then the DSs are going up – I’m just checking that they still charge and the battery will hold a charge before I list them. We haven’t played them since Daughter Person was born, and we both agree it was time to sell them.

Detailed Financial Picture – December 2012

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November’s numbers

As of December 10, 2012, we are $483,472.64 in debt (that includes the mortgage).  Without the mortgage, we’re at $56,427.13 in debt.  This includes credit cards, student loans, lines of credit and an auto loan.  We currently have $878,163.82 in assets (including our house).  Our retirement accounts are at $246,407.31.  This doesn’t include my November paycheck deduction or match – that doesn’t get deposited until the 15th of the month.  Our Net Worth is $394,691.18 (includes house and mortgage), up from $381,829.74 last month (3.37% increase).

We did well this month.  Despite our mileage run to San Francisco (and attendant eating out and hotel expenses), we still paid off a significant chunk of debt.  Two extra income streams occurred this month: I cashed $1,400 in savings bonds my grandmother had bought when I was younger, and Dad got a bonus.  The bonus is earmarked as mostly “his” fun money to buy a new laptop (I get to sell the old one!), but he contributed some to the general fund.  I expect I’ll get a bonus in December’s paycheck, but I have no idea what it will be.  I know how it’s calculated, but it’s based on company profits, which were not stellar this year.

There’s also a lot of timing differences between this report and last month’s. The amount paid off on our line of credit includes this month’s minimum payment as well as the extra I threw at it, but depending on when I get to next month’s report, I may or may not have paid January’s minimum (automatically debited on the 7th). Same with the car payment – I know I sent in a payment on 12/1 – but the balance is the same as last month, I need to look into whether it cleared or not.

Our investments also did well this month, up almost $7k (2.8% increase). Part of that is contributions, part of it is just decent stock market performance.

I started a very small taxable investment account where I’m going to play around with dividends and individual stocks rather than the mutual funds that are in our retirement accounts. I’d like to get to an eventual point where we can pay for some of our expenses from dividends/interest income. It’s only getting $25/mth from my “fun” money until the debt is paid down, and currently, I own one share of one stock in it, so it is most definitely in it’s infancy.

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

  • Line of credit (8.75%): $9,596.27  (-2,396.25)
  • Student loans (aggregated 6.55%):  $14,123.54  (-342.30)
  • Chase (4.99% for life): $6,777.32  (-68.59)
  • Car loan (0%): $25,930.00 (-0)
  • Mortgage (4.125%): $427,045.51 (-626.78)

Total paid off in November: $3,433.92

Financial Independence

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Dad’s and my ultimate goal by being frugal is to “retire” early.  We have a long way to go, but we’re starting the process.  We both expect to continue working for the foreseeable future, but we’d like the ability to not *have* to work.  We’ve already got our expenses (minus debt repayment and daycare) down to one of our salaries (which are pretty similar), although it would be tight, and not much wiggle room.

“Financial Independence” is the keyword you’d want to search for if you’re looking at it on Google.  Basically, it’s the ability to live off your savings and investments.  Of course, how much you need in your savings is a subject of great debate.  Most financial advisers still recommend the 4% rule – you can withdraw 4% of capital/principal from your investments every year for basically forever.  It makes some assumptions about your investments though – that your investments are growing about 8% each year, and that your living expenses will decrease as you get older.  I’m a bit more cynical, and expect my living expenses to go *up* when I retire.  Partly because I’ll have time to do things I want to do, like traveling, and as I get older and older, medical expenses will get higher and higher.

And unlike many “can you afford to stay at home” calculators that suggest living expenses decrease for non-workers, it’s not accurate in my case.  I wear jeans to work, I don’t have to maintain a “work wardrobe” (Dad does, but it’s still pretty much khakis and polos),  I probably wouldn’t save any money on commuting since my commute is so low, and Daughter Person and I would be getting out of the house more – so if I stopped working, I’d expect those little daily expenses might actually go up (not near as much as daycare costs, but still).  So I’m fully planning on being able to support 80-90% of our current income in retirement (whether we use that’s another story, but I’m planning for the worst).

We’re saving for retirement in several ways – even while paying off debt.  I’m contributing up to the max match in my 401(k), which is 4%, and Dad is contributing 10% – mostly because his 403(b) retirement account has some really funky matching rules, and we figured that 10% would give us all possible company matches, even if it’s not a 100% match.  Once the non-mortgage debt is paid off, we’ll be maximizing those withdrawals to the legal limit.

We *may* be able to contribute to a Roth IRA this year – depends on where the cards fall as far as our MAGI. If we meet the income limitations, we’ll contribute as much as we can afford.

We don’t have much outside of tax-advantaged accounts yet, since we haven’t maxed out those, but I’d like to start a Fidelity brokerage account to start playing around with dividend investing – all our other investments are mutual funds – and potentially increase that to provide us with a decent income each year – I realize that that’s quite a long way off, but I can dream 🙂

Finally, we’re going to put aside $60,000 for Daughter Person’s college, and then pay off our mortgage – which has a guaranteed return of 4.125%.  Once our mortgage is gone, we can live quite comfortably on about 25% of our current income.  Projections have the mortgage being paid off in 10-12 years from now.

And maybe social security will still be around by the time we make it to 70 – although I’m not holding my breath.

Detailed Financial Picture – November 2012

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October’s Numbers

As of November 5, 2012, we are $486,906.56 in debt (that includes the mortgage).  Without the mortgage, we’re at $59,234.27 in debt.  This includes credit cards, student loans, lines of credit and an auto loan.  We currently have $869,226.30 in assets (including our house).  Our retirement accounts are at $239,683.99.  This doesn’t include my October paycheck deduction or match – that doesn’t get deposited until the 15th of the month.

My student loan processor upped my interest rate on one of my loans (from 2.8% to 6.55%), and I’m not sure that’s correct, so I’m still trying to figure that out.  Either way, they “recalculated” my payment, and my minimum payment is now $5 more per month.  I really don’t understand why the payments have to change, I mean, the terms of the loan (especially fixed rate loans!) are known up front, and my rates have always decreased until this last month.  It’s not a big deal, and it’ll get paid off right after the line of credit is gone.  I *hate* the new processor with a passion – so much so that I’ve considered seeing if I can consolidate with a private provider, but they can’t match the interest rates, and so it’s not really worth it.

Obviously our retirement accounts did not do as well this month, but that’s OK.  The money is in relatively risky things, so I expect that value to fluctuate quite a bit.

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

  • Line of credit (8.75%): $11,992.52  (-221.70)
  • Student loans (aggregated 6.55%):  $14,465.84  (-134.79)
  • Chase (4.99% for life): $6,845.91  (-69.26)
  • Car loan (0%): $25,930.00 (-495.79)
  • Mortgage (4.125%): $427,672.29 (-624.63)

Total paid off in October: $1,546.17

Home at Last

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I’ve spent the last three weeks in Europe (mostly Switzerland), where the food is really expensive.  I’m glad to be home to see Daughter Person and Dad – I actually missed her. I’m also glad that we had food in the freezer – I went to the grocery Sunday morning and only bought fresh stuff, knowing that there was plenty of food in the freezer.

According to the freezer inventory, we have a whole ton of food still left – however, Dad admitted that he wasn’t very good at marking things off when he used them, so we’ve got a bit of a guessing game over the next few months.  I think we can make it through November without having to make a meat run at Costco.  I will probably make a mini run in late November, early December, and make a new (much smaller) batch of meals to last us through the holidays – if I need to.

Our bank account is a little bit lighter until I get paid at the end of the month since I used cash for a lot of things, and I pulled it out at the ATM (from our account).  I get reimbursed for it (including all foreign transaction fees and conversion fees), and I could ask my boss for a check before my paycheck, but it’s not that big of a deal.  Thanks to YNAB, we can float the difference until my paycheck with no problems.  It did mean however, that we won’t be paying as much to debt this month as I would like, but we’ll be making up for it next month thanks to the additional money in my paycheck.

Detailed Financial Picture – October 2012

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September’s numbers

As of October 3, 2012, we are $488,942.73 in debt (that includes the mortgage).  Without the mortgage, we’re at $60,645.81 in debt.  This includes credit cards, student loans, lines of credit and an auto loan.  We currently have $871,433.15 in assets (including our house).  Our retirement accounts are at $240,861.17.  This doesn’t include my September paycheck deduction or match – that doesn’t get deposited until the 15th of the month.

We paid off more last month than I was expecting given our ride through August, but not as much as I would have liked to.  The beginning of September saw us spending a lot of money on groceries, but the end of September and the beginning of October will slow down as I travel.  The accounts get drained a bit, but I get paid back at the end of October for anything I paid out of pocket (except souvenirs, etc.), so by November’s numbers, we’ll be equal.  Most of Dad’s extra paycheck went to rebuild savings after August, and some of October’s budget includes paying our savings back first, so it’ll be another “slow” month in the debt repayment department.  Hopefully, November has us back on track for throwing more money at the line of credit – I’d really like to see if we can pay it off by the end of February.

I sold a few things before I started traveling, and added some money, but not much.  I had to slow down on selling things as I started traveling, as I’m not going to be around to meet people, and I’m not going to ask that Dad does it in addition to everything he’s already doing.  I should get back on track when I get home and get to breathe a little.

The beginning half of October should see a decline in general spending as well, since I’ll still be traveling, and not spending money on gas, etc.  Dad should also be relatively light on the groceries since he has plenty of food in the freezer.

Obviously our retirement accounts did well this month – we didn’t add $20,000 to them from our paychecks.  Hopefully, they continue to do well and we can retire happy – someday.

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

  • Line of credit (8.75%): $12,214.22  (-768.34)
  • Student loans (aggregated 5.52%): $14,600.63  (-153.86)
  • Chase (4.99% for life): $6,915.17  (-69.96)
  • Car loan (0%): $26,915.79 (-490.00)
  • Mortgage (4.125%): $428,296.92 (-622.49)

Total paid off in September: $2,104.65

Massive Freezer Cooking Session – day 2

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Today we got to use my new toy – a 20qt stock pot that arrived last week from Amazon. Here’s Dad holding it – next to it is a 2qt All-clad saucepan for size comparison.  It’s sitting on my induction burner.  We made two batches of garlic mashed potatoes.  Last time, we had to use the 12qt stock pot and our 7qt dutch oven to boil 10lbs of russet potatoes.  This time, it all went into the one pan.  We’re liking it.

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Dad bought me the induction burner for mother’s day.  I’m just biding my time until we can afford the full induction range (and hopefully by then, it comes in white to match the rest of the kitchen).  Until then, we have one very powerful burner which we use most of the time.  All of our cookware except the 12 qt stock pot are induction capable, and with the new stock pot, that won’t be an issue – we can also get an “induction disc”, which makes the induction burner basically a regular old electric burner.

Today involved a *lot* of cooking and putting together marinades.  I cooked the curry for the shrimp curry, and we cooked the potatoes for two batches (48 servings) of garlic mashed potatoes.  Otherwise, it was pretty much putting together marinades.  I put all of the fish dishes in the freezer, and all of the flank steak and pork tenderloin recipes.  I made the basic red sauce for the vegetable lasagna, but didn’t make the lasagna yet.  I also chopped about 10 cups (7 large) onions which are in the fridge waiting for tomorrow’s recipes.  Lighting a candle to help with the tearing really does help.

I had a psychiatrist appointment this morning which kinda broke up the day.  Then I had to fetch Daughter Person at about 3:30-4, so I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked since I can’t leave the stove running while I’m gone.  In the morning, I started trying to figure out the cost per serving for the recipes, but it’s not done yet, so nothing to publish.

Tomorrow requires scrambling eggs for breakfast burritos, and then putting together the rice pilaf, the chicken fingers, veggie lasagna, and tomato-basil soup.  Dad did the potatoes tonight, so he didn’t help with halving the chicken breasts, so I either get to do that tomorrow or wait until he comes home to do two of the recipes which require chicken breast halves.

Daughter Person liked the pumpkin muffins, so those are definitely a keeper.

Massive freezer cooking session – day 1

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Today was day 1 of my massive freezer cooking session. I’m making 2 months worth of freezer meals for Dad and Daughter Person while I’m traveling for work for 5 weeks.
On the menu:

Today’s task was to get all of the ingredients.  I made a trip to Costco ($512 even), Wal-Mart ($143.32) and Whole Foods ($173.43) – there was quite a bit of wine purchased at Whole Foods and Costco (about $150 between the two of them), as well as some stocking up because they had coupons (like garbage bags and tooth paste) – so the totals were not all the food.  I’d like to figure out the cost of each serving if I get the chance, so stay tuned for that information.

You can see below the back of my RAV4 after my trip to Costco:

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And the fridge after it was stuffed. This is a 26 ft^3 fridge, so it’s no small fridge. Every drawer is stuffed with costco purchases.

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This is the refried beans that will become part of the bean burritos (dried pinto beans are much cheaper than the canned variety and we didn’t fry them, so we removed a lot of fat from them; although given the work, we might opt for the canned next time)

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We also made pumpkin muffins for Daughter Person’s breakfast. She likes muffins, so we thought this would be good. I had to get out the hand mixer, which I’ve used once in the last four years (today) because the batter for the pumpkin muffins needed to use the *big* mixing bowl. Gave us 3 1/2 dozen muffins though.

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Finally, we made butternut squash lasagna – one large 9×13 dish (hard to make lasagna noodles smaller than they are).

During all of this, I made the chicken with tarragon vinegar sauce for dinner (and leftovers tomorrow and the next night).

Tomorrow, I need to take the burritos and put them in freezer bags, print the labels for everything we did today, and start on the next set of prep work. I hate halving chicken breasts, so Dad is going to do that part for me when he gets home tomorrow night. I’m going to put together the fish dishes, and probably the side dishes. Lots and lots of potatoes to peel and onions to chop tomorrow!

Detailed Financial Picture – September 2012

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August’s numbers

As of September 3, 2012, we are $491,047.38 in debt (that includes the mortgage).  Without the mortgage, we’re at $62,127.97 in debt.  This includes credit cards, student loans, lines of credit and an auto loan.  We currently have $841,661.80 in assets (including our house).  Our retirement accounts are at $214,280.31.  This doesn’t include my August paycheck deduction or match – that doesn’t get deposited until the 15th of the month.

This month was a comedy of errors and several visits from Murphy.  Dad’s check engine light came on, and we ended up replacing an O2 sensor in his car.  We had to pay the lawyer for our wills, and we had to have some pretty major work done to our chimney to make it safe to burn fires this winter.  The earthquake and tropical storm last year must’ve done a number on the chimney – we had to replace the top 2 sets of ceramic tiles and the bricks surrounding it.  But we have it cleaned and inspected every summer around August during the chimney sweep’s “off-season”.  We had it cleaned before the fun last summer, and so I’m glad we didn’t have to use it a lot – could’ve been dangerous 🙁

Basically, one of dad’s paychecks plus some of our emergency fund was spent on Murphy’s visits.  So September’s “extra” paycheck is going to rebuilding the emergency fund rather than paying off debt.

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

  • Line of credit (8.75%): $12,982.56 (-753.50)
  • Student loans (aggregated 5.52%): $14,754.49 (-159.19)
  • Chase (4.99% for life): $6,985.13 (-70.69)
  • Car loan (0%): $27,405.79 (-490.00)
  • Mortgage (4.125%): $428,919.41 (-620.36)

Total paid off in August: $2,093.74

Cut our telecom bills by about $30

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Yay!  Dad finally gave up his cell phone and home phone number, and we’re now about $31 richer per month.  How’d we do that? 2 things: we switched to a family plan for cell phones with AT&T’s new Mobile Share, and we’re switching our VoIP provider to cut down our telecom bill.

I’ve had Lingo (Primus Telecom) since about 2004, but they keep raising the prices – as of now, we’re paying $17.89/mth for 250 minutes (and about $9 of that is “taxes and fees”).  I like their service, and it’s been rock solid as long as we’ve got power (and Internet), but the increase in taxes and fees is a bit too much.  Dad ported his number to Lingo when we moved in together, and for a while, both my old home number and his number ringed the same VoIP account.  My number started getting a lot of debt collection calls (and not for me!), so I started giving out my Google Voice number, and disconnected the old number.  Since then, my Google Voice number forwards to Dad’s “home” number, and Dad gets the calls directly.  Dad was reluctant to give up his home number, so we tried porting it to Google Voice, and we couldn’t so he decided to give it up.  He’s now got his own Google Voice number.

We both had AT&T (iPhones) for the last three-ish years, but we couldn’t be on a family plan since I had a Pittsburgh area phone number, and Dad had a Columbia (MD) area phone number.  AT&T can’t put them on the same account because they’re stupid like that – so we had separate accounts, even though it cost us more.  Way too many people know my cell phone number, and trying to give the new one out would be a bit torturous, so I kept mine, he kept his.  When AT&T came out with their mobile share plans, I looked into it, and convinced Dad that it would make sense to give up his number (we’d save over $20/mth) – so today, we went and added a line to my account (which gets a 22% discount thanks to my employer) and Dad has a new phone number – in Pittsburgh.  We have unlimited talk, unlimited text, and 1GB of data to share.  I would occasionally go over on my texts – my mom has learned how and thinks everyone has unlimited texts, so I don’t have to worry about that any more.  The only worry I have is international travel, but I’ve got a plan for that too.  We looked at our historical data usage, and we only use about 500-700 MB per month combined, less than the 1GB plan, so we’re starting there.  If we find that we use the data a lot, we might upgrade to the 4GB plan – which is the same price we’re paying now.

At home, we bought an Obi202 and have it connected through my Google Voice and CallCentric for 911 services.  We got a free incoming number from CallCentric (from Selden, NY), and our Google Voice numbers now point to that number.  We pay $1.50/mth for just 911 service, and (currently) per minute for outgoing calls ($0.015/min) – shortly, we’ll pay $6.95/mth for 500 minutes outgoing, which includes the 911 recovery fee – about $11 less than we pay Lingo.

Currently, the Obi is set to send all outgoing calls through my Google Voice account, and we can force it through one of the other SIP providers (Dad’s Google Voice, or CallCentric) at any time – which is why we’re paying per minute for outgoing right now – to see what our usage is.  All Google Voice outgoing calls are “free” to the US and Canada, at least until the end of 2012.  And the Obi is programmed that if we dial 911, it goes out through CallCentric automatically, so no one has to know the codes to pick the outgoing line.

We’ve got Lingo still hooked up to a dumb phone, and I’ll keep the number for a month until we know who calls that number, and we can let them know the new number.  Then, we’ll disconnect it.