An old friend of mine recently shared her Christmas tradition with her husband. They postpone Christmas!
My friend said that each year, she and her husband set a budget based on their income, goals, and financial goal status for that year. Then, they do no shopping at all until December 26!
You cannot decide to have a relaxing holiday season when you’re already in the midst of it. You have to plan now for a simpler holiday. Here’s how:
As you prepare for Thanksgiving next week, I want you to make two lists:
It’s not easy to save money on healthcare in the United States. The status of healthcare is up in the air and the functionality of the healthcare system is abysmal. It makes no sense and keeps costing more money. For a really good overview of all the problems and possible solutions, I highly recommend Elisabeth Rosenthal’s book, An American Sickness. It uses many, many real life examples and ends with a plan of action on how to solve the problem with many tips on things you can do. Some of the ideas listed in this post are from there, others are ones I’ve encountered in my own research.
Here are some actionable things you can do to try to help keep your health bills down:
On Monday, we we used our portfolio balance and our current savings rate to calculate the impact of different market conditions on our future portfolio. Today, we’re going to mix it up just a little bit. Same market scenarios. Different savings rate. Since Alaska is solidly in its own recession, we’re going to assume that Mr. T loses his job by the end of the year (Debbie Downer? I don’t actually think this will happen, but again, I love a good calculation scenario!), so instead of considering our current savings rate, we’re going to assume that we can only max out our Roth IRAs at a total of $11,000/year (or $916/month).
This scenario is more broadly applicable. You have $150,000 portfolio? You max out 2 Roth IRAs? This is the post for you! Again, to make these calculations, I use my very favorite compound interest calculator to plug in the numbers. We’re looking at 4 scenarios: from major recession to bonkers markets to see how long it would take to reach $1,000,000 and $2,000,000. Here we go:
In this scenario, our entire portfolio takes a 25% hit before the end of the year and then grows at 3% forevermore. Let’s look at the numbers:
Mr. T and I were married in the midst of college. We were happiness-rich, but cash poor. We were both lucky to not be in debt because we were both given some assistance from our parents for college. After we were married, we combined our meager bank accounts and started an elimination budget.
We both worked hourly as custodians for our college football team cleaning the locker rooms and the coaches’ offices between 9:30PM and 1AM. Perks: football games were way more engaging because we knew the players intimately though we never met them (“the player that’s got that cute letter from a 6-year-old fan on his locker board has the ball!”). We also got random things out of the trash, like a barely-worn pair of shoes and a dozen tickets to the nearby waterpark. Also, we got to work together and we got a slight pay increase for working nights. Downsides: It was very late and we were tired. We got weekly wheatgrass shots at Jamba Juice to get us through.
Quick call to action: I’m running an awesome research project and need your help. I need as many responses as possible. Go take the survey. It won’t take long. Thanks so much! Do it for science!
Maybe you’re like me. You read all these amazing posts about how the solution to your problem is simple. Make more money. And then you think: “Yeah, wouldn’t that be great?!” The posts say: “Don’t worry. It’s easy. Start a blog. Make an extra $90,000/year” Or “just start an e-commerce business and watch the sales replace your day job income in no time!” Now, as a consistent blogger of nearly 2 years that has made a grand total of less than $400 on this blog (want to increase that? Sign up for Personal Capital with my affiliate link. The service is free. And awesome. I promise), and as someone that runs an Etsy shop with 2 total sales (I won’t pitch that to you as well. You’re welcome), let me tell you that I finally figured it out!
A business can do everything right, but if they have poor business communication, they’ll never succeed. You are your business. You need to make sure you have the ability to communicate your goals and priorities to yourself, your partner and to others that that are involved in your bottom line.
I can’t tell you how excited I am to share this with you today! As our Christmas present to you, Mr. T and I have written and recorded a brand new Christmas Carol for Personal Finance Geeks and Money-Savers alike! Enjoy!
NOTE: The Google ads in the video were not added by us, but by the owners of the copyright of the original song.
Today we’re going to have a little drawing lesson. Don’t worry, even my 2-year-old can do this! For the purposes of this lesson, color=money!
*Special thanks to Mr. T for drawing our awesome moose-piggy bank for this demonstration!*
When you spend money, you should “stay within the lines.” Only spend money that is actually in your moose bank. Think about this picture.
If you wanted to get the money out, you would have to break the moose bank (awwww… but he’s so cute!). Think of this cute moose every time you go to spend money. Does that mean you should never spend money? NO! But before you spend money from your cute moose bank, you need to get into the habit of pausing and thinking about it first.
Is this purchase worth breaking this cute little moose face? Ask yourself does this spending align with my goals? If it does, break that little moose face and go for it, but don’t spend more than is in there… looking at the picture, that isn’t possible, right? There’s no other money anywhere. Remember this. It’s really that simple. If the money isn’t in the moose, you can’t spend it!
Savings breaks all conventional rules. There’s no need to “stay in the lines.” The most important thing is to save. You want lots of color!
Imagine just dumping the color all over. Will some of it end up in your moose bank? Yes! Will some of it end up in emergency funds, retirement funds, brokerage funds, etc. Yes! We can argue about the nitty gritty details about which moose bank needs which colors, but that’s not important. Pour that color!
Until you increase the amount of color on your savings picture, you don’t need to worry about the details. If you’re pouring color, you’re moving in the right direction.
Mr. Moose Bank Says: “Stay in the lines for your spending, go crazy on your savings!”
I’m sure you’re familiar with the phrase “Perfect is the Enemy of Good.” I’m experiencing that in my financial situation here at the end of the year. Last week, I calculated our projected taxes for 2016 (PRO-TIP: Do this earlier than November!) and realized we’re set to owe nearly $7,500! Yikes! (It doesn’t help that I am self-employed and our PFD and Energy Program Rebate are both taxable.)
(blatant Hamilton reference, yes)
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