We contributed $4,804.06 this month to our retirement accounts, and we lost $10,529.49 in investment value this month.

I think this year is going to be negative on interest, but net positive because of our contributions.  We’ve contributed about 30k more than we’ve lost, so we’re still ahead of the game.  So far, October is looking up, but I’m not going to count my money until I sell my investments and take it out of those accounts.

We’re only contributing any cash back to our taxable account for now (and probably until next summer), but it’s been significant – over 1k this year so far.  That will change now that we’re done “moving”, and only pick up again once I start buying things for the deck next summer.   The only reason we’ll be contributing in October is a 2k whole house humidifier that we installed and put on the visa card (because cash back…).

2015 Totals

In 2015, so far, we’ve contributed $50,454.10 (72.08% of our goal of 70k), and we’ve lost $20,012.71 in investment value (-83.82% of our planned total).

We contributed $4,844.74 this month to our retirement accounts, and we lost $25,029.45 in investment value this month (not including September 1 🙁 ).

Holy volatility!  We’re down almost 10k for the year, despite putting in over 45k, so we’ve “lost” 55k just this year.  This money is for long term use, so it’s not that concerning to me, but I still don’t like to see my balances drop that much!  It does make our numbers look bad, but we’re not touching this money for at least 15 years – I’m confident that we’ll make it back up in that time.

My immediate concern is that the balance in my Roth IRA has dropped below the 10k needed for the Fidelity Advanage class fund, so I might end up back in the Investor class fund paying slightly more in management fees.  I’m pretty sure we’ll be under the MAGI for a Roth this year, but I don’t want to add more money into the account until I’ve done our taxes to make sure 🙁 That won’t be until about February/March.

I’m trying to rework our budget to add more money into retirement accounts while the market is “on sale”, but it’s not really happening.  The regular contributions are still going on, but we want to get out of the cash flow problem first, so taxable contributions have stopped other than the cash back from my Fidelity Visa.

We can only control how much we contribute, so that’s what I’m focusing on.  Have your investments done as poorly (or as well) as ours?

2015 Totals

In 2015, so far, we’ve contributed $45,650.04 (65.21% of our goal of 70k), and we’ve lost $9483.22 in investment value (-39.72% of our planned total).

We contributed $6,117.65 this month to our retirement accounts, and we gained $6762.49 in investment value this month.

July was a three paycheck month for Dad, so we contributed more than most months.  I also got an increase in my salary – $18.34 more to my retirement accounts from the University  (whoohoo!) and $7.19 more from me per month (which will reduce December’s contribution).   December is also a three paycheck month for Dad as well, so we’ll have a slightly higher contribution there.

The markets were nicer this month than last, but still relatively flat.  It’s looking like the markets might not make the historical average of 6% annual increase this year. No biggie, we had a huge increase last year to ride off.

We’re getting into a cash crunch with new house stuff and the car, so I’m reducing my taxable contributions for a bit until we get back to living on last month’s income.  It’ll mean that we likely won’t make the 70k goal contributions, but we’ll be pretty close.  Considering that last year’s goal was to contribute 40k, and we ultimately contributed about 45k, I think we’ve really improved our situation.

We’re feeling a little cash crunched in general, although some of it’s going to accounts where we can pull the money from if needed (HSA and taxable).  I felt like we had more money while paying off debt, and we sort of did – because we were prioritizing paying off debt rather than retirement savings.  Now that we’re prioritizing retirement savings, we (obviously) have less money to pay off our 0% loans, so it feels like they’re taking forever to pay off.

How are your contribution goals going for this year?

2015 Totals

In 2015, so far, we’ve contributed $40,766.65 (58.24% of our goal of 70k), and we’ve gained $15,546.23 in investment value (65.11% of our planned total).

We contributed $4,442.69 this month to our retirement accounts, and we lost $8,398.29 in investment value this month. 

Our contributions were a bit lower this month because I “subtracted” our HSA withdrawals from the contribution value.  We still contributed to our HSA, we just also withdrew more than we contributed this month.  I’m still unsure on whether we’ll be withdrawing from the HSA to cover Daughter Person’s surgery on Friday, but I’m trying to avoid doing so. (I can withdraw it at any time, so it may wait until we have a money crunch).

The markets have gone down, down, down, and I foresee that they will continue to go down until Greece is either in or out of the euro zone.  We might even end up negative for investment increases this year – as long as I average out to 6%/year, I’m a happy camper.

I got a 3% raise for the upcoming fiscal year, so based on the ADP calculator, I’ll be getting extra from the University match, and my contributions will go up until December, when they do the calculation for IRS maximum (I hope) and they’ll only let me contribute the difference.  I’m keeping my 20% contribution rate, because it’s still close enough to the max, and I don’t feel like doing the new math 🙂  Unlike Dad’s, there is no “take out the maximum allowed by law” button on my HR site, so I have to do the math every year.

2015 Totals

In 2015, so far, we’ve contributed $34,649.00 (49.50% of our goal of 70k), and we’ve gained $8,783.74 in investment value (36.79% of our planned total).

We contributed $5,400.70 this month to our retirement accounts, and we gained $2,965.63 in investment value this month. 

A good bit of the “extra” this month was redeeming my Fidelity Visa cash back award from paying a lot of stuff on the new house: $307 extra into our taxable account just for putting all of our spending on the cash back card.  We did take some money out of our HSA to pay for a rather large medical bill: Daughter Person may be getting tubes, and the first appointment with the ENT was almost $400 out of pocket.  We have another followup appointment, then the decision on whether she’ll be getting tubes or not (an estimated $3,400 bill).

The markets are slowly inching their way up, and they’re still primarily up for the year (thanks February!), but I suspect we’ll be seeing lower values over the next few months and possibly years until the uncertainty of the Fed’s interest rate hike resolves.

We’re doing well on contributions, and that’s all we can really control.

2015 Totals

In 2015, so far, we’ve contributed $30,206.31 (43.15% of our goal of 70k), and we’ve gained $17,182.03 in investment value (71.96% of our planned total).

We contributed $5,284.68 this month to our retirement accounts, and we gained $2,729.64 in investment value this month. 

We gained in every account except my IRA this month.  There’s a pretty hefty sum in an REIT mutual fund in that account, and it didn’t do so well this month.  Oh well, that’s how the market works, and I much prefer to have a REIT than actual property!

I may delay setting aside money for the Roths until later in the year so that we can pay off our car faster.  It’s 0% interest rate, but we’d prefer to get rid of the payment.  And I’ll still be able to make my goal of 70k into our accounts by only putting aside about 3 months worth.  That will have to be played by ear – I just want to get enough into Dad’s Roth account to get out of ETFs and into a mutual fund to have it 100% invested.  We put a token $250 in for 2014 to just open the account, but we need 2500 to invest in the mutual fund I want (FSTMX).  My Roth climbed over the 10k balance and the investment was transferred to the advantage class mutual fund earlier this year.

While trying to get the new house set up, we’re feeling the pinch of cash flow right now with a lot of money going towards retirement, but I keep reminding myself that it’s good for us and most of the house stuff can wait as well! (except the window blinds – we have huge windows, and we need our privacy and insulation!)

2015 Totals

In 2015, so far, we’ve contributed $24,805.90 (35.44% of our goal of 70k), and we’ve gained $14216.4 in investment value (59.54% of our planned total).

We contributed $5,096.15 this month to our retirement accounts, and we lost $2,508.27 in investment value this month. 

This was a pretty “normal” month in terms of contributions – no one time contributions, no extras from my Fidelity cash back card (although next month that will really have a lot – and the following month once we buy appliances – on the cash back card of course!).  We’ll have to contribute more to our Roths later this year to make it to 70k for the year, but that’s OK, I plan on setting aside that monthly amount in July, and probably putting it all in Dad’s account next February – once we know we’re under the AGis for the full contribution.

The markets seem to be slowing down in anticipation of the Fed rate increase and not knowing when that is, but I suspect it’ll still be up for the year, just maybe not the 20+% it was last year.

We got a letter in the mail allowing us to change the terms of our HSA to “more accurately reflect our goals”.  We have Optumbank, and our previous option was a minimum of $2000 in the “cash” part of the HSA, and $3/mth investment fee plus a $3/mth account fee (completely covered by Dad’s employer).  We sent the paperwork back to be a “investment” HSA, which requires a minimum of only $500 in the “cash” part, and $2.50/mth investment fee plus a $3/mth account fee, $2 of which will be covered by Dad’s employer, so we pay an extra $0.50 in fees per month, but we have the opportunity to invest $1500 more than we currently do – which in VFINX, I think we’ll make up all of the fees during most months.  The online account information hasn’t changed yet, so I haven’t been able to see this in practice yet.  The account fee can be waived if there’s a minimum of 5k in the “cash” part of the account – which kind of defeats the purpose.  I’ll need to watch that account to see if the investment option continues to make sense (so far, it hasn’t, but it’s only been 3 months).

In house news, which really deserves its own post: we have an electric meter!  I should know by Thursday or Friday when closing will be, and I’ll call and lock in my rate then (as well as finish up any other paperwork the lender might need).  We cannot wait to move in!

One quarter into the year, how are your contributions coming?

2015 Totals

In 2015, so far, we’ve contributed $19,521.22 (27.89% of our goal of 70k), and we’ve gained $11,486.76 in investment value (56.69% of our planned total).

We contributed $5,902.70 this month to our retirement accounts  We gained $16,648.42 in investment value this month. 

February made up for January’s market slides, we “made” almost 70% of our annual total in the first two months of the year.  If we keep “making” this much money, we could retire on it now – too bad it’s not consistent!

This month, we dropped an additional $750 into our Roth accounts for 2014. I’m counting them this month since they were a bit spur of the moment. I added $500 to mine to get it above a $10k balance, and I added $250 to Dad’s because we needed to open a Roth for him anyway and that was a nice round number we could afford.  Most of his is invested in ITOT at the moment since we don’t have $2500 to get to FSTMX.  We likely won’t be contributing any more to Dad’s Roth until we see what our taxes are like in 2016, so it might as well gain us some money in ITOT.

Once closing happens (oh please $DEITY soon!), we’ll know our cash flow better, and I’m hoping to start setting aside money to put in Roths next year after 2015 taxes are done.

2015 Totals

In 2015, so far, we’ve contributed $14,425.07 (20.61% of our goal of 70k), and we’ve gained $13,995.03 in investment value (69.07% of our planned total).

We contributed $8,522.37 this month to our retirement accounts  We lost $2,653.39 in investment value this month. 

January was an exceptional month for contributions: it was a three paycheck month for Dad, and his company contributed $2250 to our HSA for us on January 1.  This influx lets us put all of our contributions to investments (minimum of 2k in cash).  I also redeemed a little bit (about $64) of our Fidelity cash back points into our Fidelity account.

There are two more 3-paycheck months this year thanks to Jan1 falling on a Friday – Dad’ll get paid on Dec 31 for his last paycheck of the year.  I had to figure this out because there was less taken out of his paycheck for daycare FSA and I wondered why (the year still has 52 weeks, but instead of 26 pay periods like normal, he has 27 pay periods).

We have a good start on our contributions for the year, but the markets have been going down.  I don’t expect to get 6% gains every year, just averaged over the 10 or so years we’re actually contributing.  2015 may turn out to be a down year, but we were well ahead in 2014 to make up for it!

2015 Totals

In 2015, so far, we’ve contributed $8522.37 (12.17% of our goal of 70k), and we’ve lost $2653.39 in investment value (-13.10% of our planned total).