November’s Numbers

As of December 8, 2015, we are $322,489.36 in debt with a mortgage.  We currently have $914,767.35 in assets.  Our investment accounts are at $493,010.04. Our Net Worth is $592,278.09, up from $587,477.65 last month (0.82% increase)

Dad got an almost $4000 bonus this year, and we used that to cover our interim property taxes (the mortgage company did an early escrow analysis and sent us some money, but about $1800 short), and pay more off the line of credit.

I’ve switched to making minimum payments on the cars in order to use some of that money elsewhere.  It’s only about $100, but it can pay off the line of credit faster, and the line of credit has interest, the car loans don’t.  The amounts this month are slightly lower than the actual minimum payment because I had “pre-paid” so much previously by rounding up the amounts.  So, next month, we’ll be paying more on the cars.

We’ll likely pay off the cars “on schedule” according to the loan agreement, but I can’t get really excited about paying off a 0% loan early when that money could be going to investments.

On the plus side, the line of credit is scheduled to be paid off February 2016, so I’m looking forward to that.  December is a three paycheck month for Dad and so I can spend that extra paycheck on the line of credit in January.

Next month, I’m going to be re-valuing the cars as well through KBB, so I expect to see a drop in net worth from that.  Hopefully, the surge of HSA money we get in January from Dad’s company will make up for some of that.

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

• Line of Credit (8.75%): $4,000 (-1,600.00)
• Car loan – RAV4 (0%): $8,320.62 (-429.38)
• Car loan 2 – Camry (0%): $24,161.50 (-388.50)
• Mortgage (3.875%): $290,007.14 (-487.09)

Total paid off in November:  $2,904.97

October’s Numbers

As of November 5, 2015, we are $323,794.23 in debt with a mortgage.  We currently have $911,271.88 in assets.  Our investment accounts are at $492,498.51. Our Net Worth is $587,477.65, up from $576,110.21 last month (1.97% increase)

We’re almost at half a million dollars in our retirement accounts – as long as there is no major decline in the markets, we’ll get there just with our contributions before the end of the year.

I added another $250 to my Roth as I’m reasonably sure we’ll be under the MAGI this year because we’re contributing so much to our 403(b)s.  That brought me well into the > 10k range for the advantage class fund.  Next goal is to add $2500 to Dad’s Roth to get him up to being able to invest in a mutual fund rather than an ETF.  He never had a Roth before last year (aka this February), and I’m not sure that it really makes sense for us to contribute that much to Roths right now because of our tax levels.  I had one from when I didn’t make much, but that’s been sitting around growing for a while.

We’re steadily paying off the line of credit and once we do, we’ll be saving to put a deck on the new house next summer.  We’re going to be building it ourselves with the assistance of a friend who has built them before, so that’ll save us a lot – and be quite the adventure!

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

• Line of Credit (8.75%): $5,600 (-1,200.00)
• Car loan – RAV4 (0%): $8,750 (-500.00)
• Car loan 2 – Camry (0%): $24,550 (-450.00)
• Mortgage (3.875%): $290,494.23 (-485.52)

Total paid off in September:  $2,635.52

September’s Numbers

As of October 13, 2015, we are $325,229.75 in debt with a mortgage.  We currently have $901339.96 in assets.  Our investment accounts are at $477,938.09. Our Net Worth is $576,110.21, up from$546,437.20 last month (5.43% increase)

The markets have been nicer to us this month: I’m almost back at the minimum 10k needed for FSTVX in my Roth account (without adding anything).

We’re squirreling away some money for medical procedures that we know are happening this year, and maybe above our deductible(?).  So, we’re relatively slow at paying down the line of credit.  But, I’m much happier having our full buffer back.

We’ve spent about $600 on landscaping for the front yard, all of which will come back to us from the builder, but I have no clue how long that will take.  Some simple plants, a lot of mulch and a lot of bricks for lining the flowerbeds.  Only 5 trips to Lowe’s – it was more of a factor of how much we could fit in the RAV at one time than that we forgot things.  But, it’s done and we have an extra bag of mulch for when the plants die and we need to cover them with mulch for the winter.

We’re chugging along otherwise.  I’ve been working on a class that’s taken all of my spare cycles, and it will be over soon.  Then, we’re going to tackle the basement and get it all set up.

We had an HVAC company over a few weeks ago to install our whole house humidifier, and an electrician will be coming tomorrow to install some more circuits in the basement, which will allow us to plug more things in without worrying about tripping the circuit.  Our goal is to spend 30 minutes each in the basement every day/evening until we get things cleared out and put away. It might take a while, but it’ll be completed!

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

• Line of Credit (8.75%): $6,800 (-200.00)
• Car loan – RAV4 (0%): $9,250 (-500.00)
• Car loan 2 – Camry (0%): $25,000 (-450.00)
• Mortgage (3.875%): $290,979.75 (-483.96)

Total paid off in September:  $1,633.96

August’s Numbers

As of September 10, 2015, we are $333,633.71 in debt with a mortgage.  We currently have $880,100.91 in assets.  Our investment accounts are at $458,255.91. Our Net Worth is $546,437.20, down from $579,248.78 last month (5.66% decrease)

This month, our line of credit is making a reappearance.  I got tired and stressed about not having a full month’s buffer in our accounts, so I pulled from our LoC to make one – we expect it’ll be paid in full in December.  I could have continued to float on our credit cards and timed payments to paychecks, but that was getting too stressful, so I stopped it – it’s worth the peace of mind and extra sleep at night to pay a little bit in interest.

The markets have been mean to us this month (along with everyone else), and we’re down 4.95% this month, despite contributing about $4500 to our accounts.  We’re still up 7.61% from the beginning of the year, but that’s all contributions.  We’re just continuing to contribute and hanging on for the ride!  I have one Roth account which has only FSTVX in it (advantage class), and it’s dropped below the 10k minimum, and I can’t add to it until I’ve done my taxes and are sure that I’ll be able to contribute this year 🙁  I’ll probably get a letter from Fidelity soon about kicking me back to FSTMX which has a slightly higher expense ratio unless the markets take a turn for the better.

We’re plugging along on the car payments, focusing now on the Line of Credit, and letting normal payments on the cars continue – at 0%, we still make a pretty good dent every month.

If you’re continuing to pay down debt, how is it going?

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

• Line of Credit (8.75%): 7000 (+7000)
• Car loan – RAV4 (0%): $9,750 (-500.00)
• Car loan 2 – Camry (0%): $25,450 (-458.00)
• Mortgage (3.875%): $291,463.71 (-482.40)

Total paid off in August:  -$5,559.60

July’s Numbers

As of August 3, 2015, we are $328,104.11 in debt with a mortgage.  We currently have $907,352.89 in assets.  Our investment accounts are at $482,118.58. Our Net Worth is $579,248.78, up from $570,236.46, last month (1.58% increase).

Normally, I’d do our early retirement progress first, but Fidelity’s NetBenefits pages are borked, so I can’t get definitive statement data – maybe tomorrow.

We’ve had our first Net Worth increase in a few months, despite buying a new car and taking on a loan for it.  The markets were very nice to us this month.  I am getting about $128 more per month in net salary, and about $30 more per month to my 403(b) – both my contributions and my “match”.  I’ll have a slightly decreased contribution in December to true up with the IRS limits.

We have a new car – a Camry Hybrid LE and are loving it.  It’s the new “family” car.  We picked it up finally on July 17, and we’ve had to fill it up once (and it’s still mostly full).  The “estimated miles to empty” indicator starts at 617 miles with a full tank.  Dad’s driving it until we get to winter, then he’ll be driving our RAV since he’s the primary transportation for Daughter Person, and the RAV does better in the snow.  I get to drive it on the weekends though 🙂 We’ll be putting it through it’s paces in August with two long car trips planned: one to Sesame Place outside of Philly and one to Baltimore to see Dad’s family.

I made a reduced payment on the RAV this month due to cash flow issues.  We put Daughter Person’s ear surgery on the credit card, it’s due this month, and I’m trying to survive without pulling it out from our HSA investments, so cash is a little tight this month – I paid just over the minimum needed on the RAV for the month to give us some cash cushion until we can get back to living on last month’s income.

We’re finally stabilizing in the new house and have unpacked everything except the basement.  We can even fit both cars in the garage!  With Daughter Person’s surgery over, we should be spending a lot less in August.  I’m not focusing on the debt repayment until we can build up a good buffer and emergency fund, after all, everything except the mortgage is 0%.

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

• Car loan – RAV4 (0%): $10,250 (-250.00)
• Car loan 2 – Camry (0%): $25,908 (-450.00)
• Mortgage (3.875%): $291.946.11 (-480.84)

Total paid off in July:  $1,180.84

June’s Numbers

As of July 2, 2015, we are $302,926.95 in debt with a mortgage.  We currently have $873,163.41 in assets.  Our investment accounts are at $471459.58. Our Net Worth is $570,236.46, down from $574,404.90, last month (0.73% decrease).

We’re socking away money to pay for Daughter Person’s tubes this month, so I made the “minimum” payments – the minimum payment on the car is something like $283 because I’ve paid so far ahead, but I consider the minimum to be $500 (actual monthly payment is $484).

The markets were not very friendly this month, despite putting almost 5k into our accounts, we still “lost” money.  I’ll be happy when the Greece situation is settled so that the markets can go back to generally rising 🙂

We’re still recovering from moving, and generally just trying to not spend much at all, rebuilding a slightly larger e-fund, and since our car loan is 0%, in no rush to pay that off until we’ve “rebuilt”.

We’ve also had to come up with a down payment on a new car ($2000) with 0% financing and $1000 cash back – assuming they can get it in for us by the end of the weekend.  Dad’s Accord trade-in value is “scrap”, yet they’re giving us $500 for it – the transmission is dying, plus the SRS light = time to get a new car. We thought we wanted a Prius v, but we test drove one and really didn’t care for the handling on it, it was OK, but it was lacking some oomph.  We test drove a Camry hybrid – and were blown away with the features and how it felt to drive.  The dealer we test drove at was extremely annoying (we told them we had to leave by 4, and they kept the keys to our Accord “hostage” until 4:15 – needless to say, I don’t care what kind of price they give me, I’m not buying from them).  I went through the USAA car buying program (aka TruCar), and it’s not as good as it was 3 years ago when we went through them for the RAV, but it was decent.  We were waffling between the LE and the XLE version and the only thing that we really wanted from the XLE was the leather seats, except all of them in our region also come with navigation – $1200 I’m not paying for.  Turns out, the dealer can put aftermarket leather on the LE, which is actually nicer than the factory leather.  Too bad the dealer I ended up with sold the LE they had in stock before I got there (in the space of the 45 minutes it took me to drive to the dealer), so they’re having to get one from elsewhere.  We signed the initial paperwork and put the cash down to buy it, and they’ll be giving us a call when it gets in – hopefully this weekend.  Then, we’ll have another 0% loan to Toyota Financial, but it should be at least 7-8 years before we have to consider another car.  The final price (with taxes, title, and fee) of the LE with aftermarket leather was $3k less than the XLE  “base price” – and the only want we gave up was the moonroof, which was a nice to have anyway, and not worth 3k.

Here’s to being able to save a bit more next month!

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

• Car loan (0%): $10,500 (-500.00)
• Mortgage (3.875%): $292,426.95 (-479.30)

Total paid off in June:  $979.30

May’s Numbers

As of June 2, 2015, we are $303,906.25 in debt with a mortgage.  We currently have $878,311.15 in assets.  Our investment accounts are at $473,403.15. Our Net Worth is $574,404.90, down from $577,265.80, last month (0.50% decrease).

The cash has been flowing out paying for new items – we discovered how much we depended on the built-in storage in our old house. We ended up buying several IKEA bookcases and Kallax storage units along with industrial shelving from Costco for the basement. We are, however, almost done unpacking the two main floors of the house. We still have the guest bedroom to completely unpack, and a lot of pictures sitting around waiting for us to decide what wall to put them on. We’re missing a few things, but since I counted all of the boxes coming off the truck, it’s got to be in the house/basement/garage somewhere.

The builder’s subcontractor for media didn’t wire the HDMI connections to the TV mounting place properly, and I haven’t been able to get a hold of them (via phone or e-mail) to work with them to resolve the issue, so I’ve reported them to the BBB and Angie’s List, and may get some traction. They also didn’t wire one of our networking runs properly – it should have been in conduit, so not so easy for us to remedy. I’m going to fix the TV run – it’s nominally in conduit, but we can’t get an electrician’s fisher wire down through it, so there’s no way to get an HDMI cable back through it – I have to destroy drywall in our brand new house. I’m not concerned, I can do it with about a 2″ square hole – but Dad is not happy about me having to do it. I don’t want to have to do it either – but I want my TV off the floor more than I want to wait to fight it out with the subcontractor. At least all of our networking runs are working, even if they’re either not in conduit, or might as well not be in conduit because we can’t pull the blanks through. Next step is considering small claims court – we’re talking $1800 for the entire job, which they sort of did.

We’ve gotten our first electric and gas bills. We pay $16.78 for the privilege of having gas service to the house, whether we use it or not. They didn’t charge us a connection fee. Since the only things in our house that use gas are our fireplace and furnace, I’m wondering if it makes sense to just shut our gas off for the summer months and save at least $50 (June, July, August). I need to call and see if they charge a disconnection fee to determine if it makes sense. Our electric bill was about $45, *much* nicer than the minimum $150 we had at our old house in VA. Granted, it was pretty cool this month, so we didn’t run the A/C as much as we might have, so I want to wait and see what this summer’s bills are. We’re considering a solar system, but I need to know what our electric bills and usage are to determine what the ROI will be and if it makes sense – our roof has almost perfect solar exposure all day long, with no shade (but Pittsburgh has a lot of overcast days).

We’re making progress on the car loan, we might have to buy a new car to replace Dad’s, so we think we’re going to continue paying the $500/mth on the (0%) loan and save up for a hefty down payment (or possibly a full payment) on a new car – inspection is due by the end of July, and we’ve got an SRS light on that we need to get looked at, otherwise, it’s not going to pass inspection. The car we’re looking at is advertising a 0% loan incentive, and if the fix for Dad’s car is more than $1500, we’re likely going to apply that towards a down payment instead. We borrowed an OBDII reader from a friend, but we haven’t plugged it in yet to see what the problem is.

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

• Car loan (0%): $11,000 (-500.00)
• Mortgage (3.875%): $292,906.25 (-477.75)

Total paid off in May:  $977.75

April’s Numbers

As of May 5, 2015, we are $304,884 in debt with a mortgage!  We currently have $882,149.80 in assets.  Our investment accounts are at $468,778.01. Our Net Worth is $577,265.80, down from $579,430.79 last month (0.37% decrease).

We are home owners again (finally!), so we now have a new asset (the house) and a new liability (the mortgage).  We bought the house for 366,730, but it was appraised at 372k (how they do appraisals before the house is finished, I have no idea).  I’m only counting what we paid for it.

We’ve moved into the house, and the movers were almost 1k over the estimate (I do give them a break since the estimate was in August!).  My goal for the next month or two is to buy the last few things we really want for the house (like blinds!) and then build up our mini-emergency fund to 5k again.  It’s at about 3.5k at the moment.  We also have a full month’s salary “buffer” because we use YNAB and live on last month’s income, so I’m not horribly concerned.  Once that’s built back up, we’re going to start aggressively paying off the car.

We’re rounding up our mortgage payment, and it ends up being about an extra $75/mth towards principal, but at this point in time, I’m not in any rush to pay it off.

We’re maxing out our 403(b)s and HSA plans, and starting in July, we’ll be setting aside $950/mth to go towards our Roth IRAs. The money won’t be put in the account until we do taxes in 2016, but it’ll be there (and be part of our emergency fund as well).

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

• Car loan (0%): $12,000 (-500.00)
• Mortgage (3.875%): $293,384.00

Total paid off in April:  $500

March’s Numbers

As of April 7, 2015, we are $12,000 in debt without a mortgage (yet).  We currently have $591,430.79 in assets.  Our investment accounts are at $461,854.73. Our Net Worth is $579,430.79, up from $566,247.28 last month (2.33% increase).

I hate seeing so much money sitting in the bank collecting a pittance and not paying off the car loan.  We’re still on track to pay it off before the end if the year, but after almost 2 years of aggressive debt paying, this slow just above minimum payment is annoying.  It’s all 0%, so we’re not paying for the privilege of borrowing money, but it’s still annoying, we’d like to get rid of that payment.

This month, we spent a significant chunk of change on odor neutralizers and air fresheners for Dad’s car.  A rodent crawled in and died, and we can’t find the carcass.  We took apart the entire trunk and backseat – luckily, it didn’t die in the air/heat system – we can open windows and run the air.  What’s worked best for us has been this charcoal bamboo sachet that we got from Amazon.  It takes the smell from gagging level to bearable.  I’ve been driving Dad’s car to and from work (45 minutes each way) so that Daughter Person doesn’t have to be in the car.  We even took her car seat out so it doesn’t absorb the funk.  Meanwhile, I’m getting great gas mileage since his car gets better mileage and I’m the one with the longer commute.  We’re seriously considering trading the 15 year old Accord (aka rat-mobile) for a newer Prius V for me to drive.  I have perfect driving conditions for it: stop and go in traffic.

No news on closing on the house, but we have electricity, and the sales guy estimated 3-5 weeks after that happened it would be “completed”, and 2-3 weeks after that for closing.  So, we’re looking at early/mid May for now.  Theoretically, I was supposed to hear from the closing coordinator last week, but I didn’t.  I was going to give them the benefit of the doubt around the holidays and call today instead 🙂

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

• Car loan (0%): $12,000 (-500.00)

Total paid off in March:  $500

February’s Numbers

As of March 5, 2015, we are $12,500 in debt without a mortgage to speak of (yet).  We currently have $578,747.28 in assets.  Our investment accounts are at $454,222.97. Our Net Worth is $566,247.28, up from $551,947.34 last month (2.59% increase).

Not as much of an increase, but we didn’t have the same contribution assistance from Dad’s company this month.  Just a lot of improvement in the markets.

The outside of our House

We have siding on the house (mostly), the kitchen cabinets are mostly installed, and most of the outlets, built-in lights, and faceplates were installed as of earlier this week.  Not sure we’ll be moving in by March 26, but they might be finished and we might be on the path to closing by then.  We’re still waiting for the electric company to install the electric meter before we can schedule inspection and closing.

The kitchen cabinets

We’re all ready to finally move out of my mom’s house! We’ve been able to put $3400 (at least) aside every month towards closing, moving costs and new appliances while living with my mom, but we’re done and ready to be on our own again – with a garage, and our own kitchen!

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

• Car loan (0%): $12,500 (-500.00)

Total paid off in February:  $500