May 2018 Plan Update (Delayed!)

I cannot express to you how fantastic our trip was. It was absolutely tremendous. However, since I got sick on the way home and am now bed-ridden with bronchitis, prepare yourself for all the updates. First off, today’s May 2018 Plan Update, next Monday will be the June 2018 plan update (pared down a bit because…), then next Friday will be all of our trip costs coming at you next week in our Great Banks Merch Challenge Q2 Update. What an exciting week on the blog!

The whole trip really solidified to me how many doors open up when money isn’t a priority. Since I knew we’d be okay financially for the month I was gone, I didn’t worry about how to pay for things. I just lived. THIS IS THE GOAL. We can argue all day about terminology: early retirement, financial independence, entrepreneurship, digital nomads – the point is that WE save money so we can do WHATEVER WE WANT!

It was so freeing to just spend the money when we wanted to spend it and not have to live around working. We’ve already developed habits of money spending that enable us to not want to go crazy when we can. We’re still conscious about spending money on things that are important, but we also don’t want to feel like we’re giving too much up doing so. But the things we don’t care about, we don’t spend money on.

I did do some work while I was on the trip – not much, but some. And being on vacation with my family really helped me identify what I actually WANTED to do and what I didn’t. I enjoy some aspects of work. I’m going to focus on those. If I lose my job in the meantime, so be it. I also discovered that I actually still love this whole designing and selling shirts thing. It’s fun. I enjoy it. I’m not just doing it for the money.

I just calculated all of our costs and I don’t regret any of them. We were really good at aligning our money with our values and I committed to keep spending money on travel with the family. It’s absolutely our first priority for spending our money.

Sometimes a one-month “trial run” of financial freedom is just what is needed!

The Numbers:

Want to know how easy it is for us to write these every month? I literally just log into my Personal Capital and revel in all the numbers being in one place. Do you like checking numbers? Do you like graphics? Do you like playing with calculators like retirement calculators and how much your fees are costing you? Then, you should obviously use my affiliate link to Sign up here to help yours truly speed toward financial independence! (Also feel free to read my more in-depth review of Personal Capital.)

Our mortgage is now at $23,100. With the trip behind us, we have 6 months to kill this. If we pay no extra on our mortgage, we’ll end the year with an $18,000 mortgage balance. That means we just have to come up with $18,000 before the end of the year! I’m hopeful. Especially since we’ve got $7000 of the PFD going toward it in October. That means just $11,000 extra to add!

Investments are now at $205,580 (as of June 1). I was right! We went back to hitting another big number while we were on vacation! If you’ll recall when we hit $100,000 Mr. T and I were in the UK as well (and I got obsessed with the idea of hitting money milestones while on vacation)! It’s only right that we hit the second $100,000 while back in the UK with the family (we’ve hit it before, but it went back down and now back up)!

2018 Financial Goals Update:

• KILL THE MORTGAGE – $23,100 to go! We’ve learned that I’m a terrible multi-tasker when it comes to financial goals. With the trip behind us now, I’m putting my head down and working hard to get there!
• Merch Challenge Update (paying for our 27-night Europe trip and our extra mortgage payments with t-shirt sales) –  -$1,630.14 – Earned: $14,182.72, Spent: $15,812.86 (with “earned” meaning the money we’ve made from selling shirts on Amazon and “spent” meaning all of the costs for the trip as well as any extra payments toward our mortgage) – Details on most of these numbers can be found in our Great Merch Challenge Q1 update with another one coming next Friday! – Back in the negatives, but I think we’ll be able to do it!
• Max out Mr. T’s 401k – Automatic – however, limits rose to $18,500/year which makes it messy if you get 24 paychecks a year. We’ll probably make a contribution toward the end of the year to top it off.
• Stretch Goal: Put $5500 into My Roth IRA – Not yet.
• Market-Based Goal: $250,000 in investments by the end of 2018 – Not yet.