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As a reminder, dipnetting is how we get our salmon for the whole year here in Alaska. I’ve explained the dipnetting process here and even shared our salmon recipe if you want to know how we cook it weekly.

This year I needed this dipnetting trip more than ever. We went with a family that is also avoiding other humans, stayed two nights, and it was so much of what I needed: sunshine, beach time, socializing time, etc. So therapeutic!

Penny and Florin tried dipnetting this year for the first time as well and each of them caught their first even salmon this year, so that was very exciting!

How did we do? It was a slow year. We worked hard and stayed two nights, but again, it was just what I needed. Total count: 25 salmon. – This equals just over 58 lbs of edible meat. The fish were also pretty small this year. Our smallest fillet: 9 oz (we’re going to try our hand at home smoking the little ones this year!). Biggest fillet: 30 oz (42 oz is our record).

THE NUMBERS:

Every year I calculate all the expenses associated with dipnetting to see just how good of a deal we’re getting on our salmon.

Costs:

• $58 – Fishing licenses for Mr. T and I.
• $21.59 – Ice to keep the fish cool after catching.
• $22.63 – Gas for the car (at least this cost is lower than previous years!)
• $70 – The cost to camp on the beach two nights and drop our stuff off.
• $139.99 – We used to get our salmon professionally smoked, but they went out of business, so we bought ourselves a smoker this year and decided to give it a try (no idea how that will go yet).
• $22.32 – Blizzards at Dairy Queen for the whole family on the way home.
• $79.99 – Waders for the girls. Price of them catching their first salmon: PRICELESS. (you saw that one coming, didn’t you?)

Total Costs: $414.52

Total Cost Per Pound: $7.15

It was our lowest meat haul since starting the blog and our most expensive per pound costs ever, but again, I feel like the therapy of going and doing was worth it. We actually got a vacation in the time of COVID and relaxation therapy. And with the salmon running pretty slow, I’m pretty happy with our haul.

For the first time, we kept the salmon bellies and smoked them. We also saved the salmon bellies from the friends that fished with us. They added up to an extra ten pounds of salmon. If you include those, it helps!

Total Cost Per Pound (Including Bellies): $6.10

What does salmon cost per pound where you are?

Well, the world continues to explode around us and here I am posting on a useless blog. Some days, I feel like I could do so much more to solve the problems of the pandemic, systemic racism, gender inequities, the wealth gap, and SO MUCH MORE. I have poured my energy the past few months into two things: work (full-time COVID research) and teaching my children to care (translates to: talks to my children maybe WAY TOO MUCH about the above problems. Their generation is our hope). I remember learning about a year ago that some people actually thought men had NO benefits over women in society, employment, safety. IT BLEW MY MIND. Now, you can imagine my COMPLETE SHOCK AND ANGER to find out that people have this same belief about RACE. I mean, THAT IS NUTS. We have a huge history of terrible laws and policies that have held Black people back (starting with SLAVERY – no one should ever get over that). It’s been a quarter. In case it isn’t clear to you, I am a white, cis-gender woman with SO MUCH PRIVILEGE. My journey is completely unfairly weighted in my favor. You need to know that. And hopefully, we can make this journey more equitable for all!

In our “free time,” we continue the house projects which will be never ending. Most days, I’m so grateful for my wonderful life, but full-time COVID research causes a certain amount of existential angst I’ve tried to combat by spending more time reading in the sunshine in my new backyard.

The Money Stuff

This still feels like the least important conversation ever, at best, and unfair bragging at worst, but I committed to being transparent and that will continue. The most helpful thing to me on my journey was people sharing actual numbers. I hope ours can prove useful to someone else.

Still have a giant new (as of March) mortgage. $335,000. We are locked into a 15-year at 3%, so all logic indicates we should let it ride the full 15 years, but we’ll see if I last doing so. At least for now, we’re actively saving for an addition we have planned next summer, so other than rounding my monthly payments up to make them even (which adds a whopping $20 of extra principle a month!), we’re paying no extra on this.

I’m actually both grateful and furious the market hasn’t tanked yet. On the one hand, this is the kind of thing that causes me existential angst because I feel like the market is only still up because THE RICH PEOPLE ARE OKAY. And it’s SO UNFAIR. So while I’m angry the rich are getting richer in the midst of all this (while definitely realizing I’m counted among them!), I’m also glad we haven’t (yet) jumped into a depression because that will ALSO negatively impact people in terrible ways (primarily the poor, again). That being said, our investments currently sit at $317,000.

Also happy to report I finally updated to the widgets to the right. It’s been awhile. And I raised the $500,000 to $1,000,000 because even though we’re not there (or close), it feels possible now.

2020 Goals

With Mr. T and I both working, I had said that my goal was to max out all the retirement accounts for the first time ever. With the current climate, I’m not sure I’m going to do this. I currently plan to max out both of our 401ks and our 2019 Roth IRAs (this week!), but am unsure on 2020 Roths or a SEP-IRA. Mainly because I like cash hoarding and we also have an addition planned next summer… I might feel more comfortable now with more cash.

• Max Out My 401k ($11,200/$19,500) – Fun fact: my company uses percentage of pay instead of actual dollar amounts, so I’m gonna have to play with that to get close.
• Max Out Mr. T’s 401k ($7,700/$19,500) – Another fun fact: Mr. T’s work uses an arbitrary slider for contributions. So, he can contribute something $784 or $832, but no number in between… so, we’ll have to play with that to get close this year as well.
• Max Out my Roth IRA for 2019 ($0/$6000) – with the extended July 15th deadline for this, we’ll maybe be able to do it!
• Max Out Mr. T’s Roth IRA for 2019 ($0/$6000)
• Max Out my Roth IRA for 2020 ($0/$6000)
• Max Out Mr. T’s Roth IRA for 2020 ($0/$6000)
• Figure out and Contribute to a SEP-IRA

Take Care of Yourselves

I ended our Q1 update this way, but I think it’s still important. Please take care of yourselves. If you live in the US, we’re in for a really bumpy ride. As of today, we’ve broken the 50,000 cases/day record and both case counts and hospitalizations are up or flat in every quadrant of the country. PLEASE avoid the 3 C’s: close contact, crowded places, and closed places. AND PLEASE WEAR A MASK IN PUBLIC.

The world is weird now, right? All of a sudden it’s the middle of May but March was like ten years long. Let me first say that we’re incredibly lucky at this time in so many ways and we know that everyone is struggling, so please understand that what you’re feeling right now is okay to feel. If you need help, reach out for help. Mr. T and I both still have jobs. His is more secure than mine, but mine has turned into full-time COVID-19 research, so I will probably keep it for the near future anyway. We’re also trying to balance working on the new house, moving over there before our renters move into our condo on June 1, school schedules for our 3 kids, etc etc. It’s a lot.

March 2020

March was a strange month. We started the month in California for Spring Break. We went to Legoland and Universal Studios and everything seemed fairly normal. We then went to LA one day in the pouring down rain and got stuck in horrible traffic on the way back and during the HOURS we were stuck in the rain on the freeway in a standstill, the world changed. As we listened to the radio on the way home, Disneyland closed, sports were canceled, everything started happening at once. We had 3 days until we were supposed to return to Alaska. We got news the kids wouldn’t be going back to school upon return as school had been canceled. Quarantines hadn’t been initiated for all state returnees yet, but the trip home was scary and I kept worrying the 6-year old would cough or something and we’d get kicked off the plane. We made it home without incident and self-isolated for 2 weeks (and then much much longer because we’re still basically in isolation). Mr. T started working from home, my job got really intense with COVID-related stuff, and we started a big family calendar full of work meetings and school Zoom meetings so none of us would get in each other’s way.

The Money Stuff

It feels weird that I’m still talking about this stuff with all that’s going on. And the market not reflecting the real crisis of so many losing work is frustrating. It seems such an example to me of how this is impacting lower-income families so much more. It’s unfair and devastating.

At the end of March, we had scored ourselves a brand new mortgage so we found ourselves with a new mortgage balance of $336,000, but at 3% interest on a 15-year mortgage, we’re not planning to pay it off faster than 10 years (and I am trying to pledge to put no significant amount towards principal unless we’ve maxed out all the retirement things possible for that year). Our investments were at $276,600. Boy we went backwards didn’t we?

So we returned from an expensive vacation into a worldwide pandemic with a brand new mortgage. Of course I freaked out a little! I ran so many numbers and now have a WORST CASE SCENARIO PLAN. Right now, we have renters under contract for a year starting June 1. Because the condo is paid off, that money can pay half the mortgage of the new house. If Mr. T and I lose our jobs in the next year, we’ll live off of the cash we’ve been hoarding to build the addition we had planned to add onto the house next summer (and obviously forgo said addition). After the year is up on the condo renters, if they choose to move, we can sell that and live off that money for a bit. I digress…

Right now, we’re doing well. We both still have jobs. Our online sales are down 90%, so our side income is unremarkable (and may continue for some time since people aren’t feeling very confident shopping for stuff they don’t need right now). But, it feels better to know that even if we both lose our jobs, we’ll be okay.

The House

We spent March and April doing so much work on the house late at night, on weekends, etc. We removed the popcorn ceilings, patched the drywall, textured, and painted. We had the carpet replaced (we hired that one out). We installed hardwood flooring in the living room so the whole main floor has hardwood. We sanded down the existing hardwood and then stained and finished the whole thing so they matched. We drywalled a storage area into a little playroom for the kids. We exposed a structural beam that was hidden under drywall and finished it. We’ve painted. We’ve patched. The most frustrating part of all of it is that we have all been on top of each other during this whole thing when we have another big house just down the road that we could have been using but still needed so much work. Now the main stuff is done and we can finally move in starting this week! Remember how I said we enjoyed house projects? No one warned me about popcorn ceilings. Do. Not. Like. And I’m glad we’re done with some big projects, because it’s been pretty exhausting.

2020 Goals

With Mr. T and I both working, I had said that my goal was to max out all the retirement accounts for the first time ever. It seems weird making financial goals right now, but since that was the goal I made in January, we’ll go with it and give ourselves grace if we don’t succeed (like basically every year. ha ha). I’m channeling the person on Amazon that bought one of my 2020 planners this week. (Like, you’re actually doing PLANNING for 2020?! Who IS this person!?) Here goes:

• Max Out My 401k ($2,880/$19,500) – Fun fact: I found out THIS WEEK that the maximum was $19,500 for 2020 and not $19,000 like last year. I’m totally nailing this PF blogger thing. Seriously. I’m the greatest. Also fun fact: my company uses percentage of pay instead of actual dollar amounts, so I’m gonna have to play with that to get close.
• Max Out Mr. T’s 401k ($5,100/$19,500) – Another fun fact: Mr. T’s work uses an arbitrary slider for contributions. So, he can contribute something $784 or $832, but no number in between… so, we’ll have to play with that to get close this year as well.
• Max Out my Roth IRA for 2019 ($0/$6000) – with the extended July 15th deadline for this, we’ll maybe be able to do it!
• Max Out Mr. T’s Roth IRA for 2019 ($0/$6000)
• Max Out my Roth IRA for 2020 ($0/$6000)
• Max Out Mr. T’s Roth IRA for 2020 ($0/$6000)
• Figure out and Contribute to a SEP-IRA – Because our online sales for December were over $10k that month (then crashed pretty shortly thereafter), but we get paid in January on that money, our 2020 sales money is already over $10k. I need to figure out what “max out” means for how much we end up making in 2020 and do that.

Take Care of Yourselves

As I said at the beginning, this is a weird time for everyone and we’re all realizing stuff about ourselves that we didn’t know and we’re all feeling all the things. Please take care of yourselves. Check in with friends. This thing isn’t over yet and it could get worse before it gets better, so everything is up in the air for 2020. I’ll still do quarterly updates (though maybe continue the trend of being 6-weeks late on them) just to keep up momentum, but they seem silly since so much is uncertain. Hang in there, friends. I send you a virtual, social-distanced hug.

About a year ago, I had a dream that I had to write a post on this blog that said: “This blog was about our journey to early retirement. Unfortunately, I have to shut the blog down because I became a successful stand-up comedian and Netflix has given us a large advance for my comedy specials that we’ve reached our goals.” Unfortunately (for both Netflix and myself), that dream didn’t come true. However, our situation is changing dramatically, and thus, so is our journey.

When we first started our journey, I was a stay-at-home mom working less than ten hours a week. We were entrepreneurial wannabes but had no actual success. We made significantly less than $100k combined. This was an interesting place to be in and ultimately, why we started the blog. I read about a lot of people waiting to have kids until they were early retired or being able to retire early when the kids were still young. We already had two kids when we discovered the FIRE movement so too late on that front. AND, there was no way we would be able to retire anytime soon with our numbers. I chose to stay home with the kids to frontload my time with them. We knew the financial risks of doing so and ultimately, I still decided that’s what I wanted. We wanted that voice in the community, too.

Our original goal was $500k by 2022 because it seemed impossible. Everytime I would try to calculate real numbers, they wouldn’t work. I still argue that early in the journey, the numbers don’t matter. Do what you can and pick-ax up that financial cliff. Every step forward matters.

Why We Got Lucky

Having a stay-at-home parent stunts a career projection. We knew that. However, I lucked out having a part-time job I could work hourly around my schedule for the past nine years. This fall, Lui started school and my full-time momming years were at an end. I expressed interest in going full time and (after three months of absolute drama with the HR department), I’m happy to report they gave me an offer. AND it was higher than what Mr. T was currently making. (When I asked him if his masculinity was questioned as apparently happens when the wife makes more than 40% of the household income, his answer was: “More money for the household? Isn’t that a good thing? Also, I have no idea how much I make…”. Ironically, he got a promotion the next week which put his salary back over mine. The Patriarchy!!!) Anyway, this is not the norm for most stay-at-home-parents. So I am incredibly lucky. Now we haven’t gotten any of our new paychecks, so we don’t know exactly how much we’re dealing with here, but combined, we’re now around the $150k range pre-tax (and pre-benefits) with our two salaries combined.

This, I realize, makes us and our journey no longer relateable to many of you. This is often a point of contention in the Personal Finance community. When people focus on increasing income, their stories change and they are no longer relateable to so many. I, however, have been assured that until we reach $198k, we’re on the border. 😉

The Side Hustle

The reason we have the opportunity to get into that unrelateable category is because our entrepreneurial efforts have actually started paying off. I gave an update in Q3 on those efforts and am happy to report that this month, we surpassed $10k in sales in one month! This is HUGE for us (since our previous record was $3200 in October 2017 and we haven’t been able to get close to $3k again since then). The full-time designer we had left this month so we’ll have less outgoing money and we’ve pivoted the business toward things Mr. T and I enjoy doing ourselves. We’re working on building these things up in 2020 and we’re excited about the potential.

The Numbers:

Full disclosure: I stopped using Personal Capital (affiliate link) because they stopped working for Mr. T’s retirement funds. But I really did enjoy them before they stopped working entirely for me. (Also feel free to read my more in-depth review of Personal Capital.)

Mortgage is still at $ZERO! Again, we’re cash hoarding for a potential home purchase this year. Again, only if the market drops a bit and we find a house we like.

As of this random Monday in December (ha ha, can’t be bothered to wait until New Year’s to update the numbers) our investments and savings are at $324,000. The bonkers double digit markets have been good to us.

2019 Financial Goals (REWORKED):

• Max Out My 2018 Roth IRA ($5,500/$5,500) – Thanks to the totaling of the car, WE DID IT!
• Max Out My 2019 Roth IRA (0/$6,000) – Still cash hoarding. We’ll see come the end of March if we want to do it this year.
• Max Out Mr.T’s 2019 Roth IRA (0/$6,000) – Ditto here.
• Replenish Emergency Fund ($1,200/$1,200) – Because our emergency fund is in a Capital360 account so we can use it for free ATMs while traveling (but the account only earns 1%), we lowered our emergency account goal from $5000 to $1200. Then we changed this goal:
• Extra Investments ($22,700/$45,000) – We still have a couple paychecks coming at the end of this month, so we’ll end the year with just under $25k here and another $7k in our business account (we don’t get paid for December’s sales until February). Not bad. Not great considering our goals, but not bad.

In 2019, we really focused on increasing income. We spent a lot of money a long the way and didn’t really keep track well (we trusted ourselves on autopilot). In 2020, now that we’ve set up some pretty good incomes, we’re going to focus on saving more of that money and grow our businesses. We’re also building a new plan that we’ll let you in on the details of in early 2020.

Meanwhile, as always, we’re grateful to have you along for the ride. And to celebrate the holidays, we’ll remind you that Mr. T and I put together a few holiday classics (the song-owners added the ads, not us, FYI):

Happy Holidays! Love, the Banks Family

Hello friends! It’s me, Maggie! Remember me?! Well, here’s where I tell you ALL about how 2019 is going and what is happening around here. In short: I’ve been spending money like crazy and hustling hard to make up for it. 😉

Summer Update:

We spent a lovely summer being crazy travelers as per usual. We went dipnetting (post coming tomorrow because we’re either feast or famine around here!), took several Alaska ferries including one down the Aleutian Chain, and went to Oregon and Washington to be with family. Mr. T and I finished off the summer with an expensive weekend in San Francisco with just the two of us (and seeing Hamilton!). We also got to meet up with Revanche, who is one of my favorite humans.

I started the year with big savings goal (after paying off the mortgage), but then bought a whole bunch of tickets to all the ferries! I do not regret my decision. One of the ferries we rode has been dry-docked thanks to budget cuts and several other routes have been reduced dramatically with no guarantee they will remain at all in the future.

One of the great things about paying attention to money is the ability to SAY YES to opportunities. We really enjoyed the freedom we had to do that with the cash flow we’ve enjoyed since paying off the house.

Life Update:

At the end of August, Lui went to kindergarten and I retired from being a full-time stay-at-home Mom! (Until the summer I suppose…) This kicked off a big transition for me. I started working 32-hour weeks at my job and am trying to negotiate a full-time offer (sounds like it might be in the works! – I’ll do a post with a bit more info if and when that goes through). I also hired my designer full-time (at less than $450/month) to help grow my e-commerce business. She hated her job, asked to go full time, and I was able to say yes because at this point, we’re just risking profits (not loss). She helped me make a hilarious cat coloring book (affiliate link). So, between getting the kids off to school, throwing myself into my real job and trying to build up my e-commerce business, I’ve been busy, but I’m really enjoying all the things that are happening.

E-Commerce update:

Since you asked (or wanted to), we’ve done pretty well so far this year. In June, we made $999.55 in sales (before expenses, but those are under $500/month with my designer) and that was the only month this year we’ve fallen below $1000 in sales (and missed it by less than a dollar!). January and March had sales right around $2000. With the heavy shopping months coming up November-December, we’ve been working all extra hours we’ve got to get as much up as possible. We’re working on a new line of coloring books I’m pretty excited about that are pixel art color by number books. We got our first one up this month: Pixel Museum World Famous Art (also an affiliate link).

Alaska Update:

We’ve moved almost entirely into cash hoarding at this point because we would like to have $80-100k saved for a possible down payment on a house ASAP. We do love our house and we’ll keep it and try to rent it out (which is why we need a new down payment), but things might get really cheap here soon. The economy in Alaska isn’t doing well thanks to state budget cuts and BP announcing it is leaving the state. We are a one-industry state, so BP leaving will make a BIG impact. Employees will find out their fates in December and there will be a mass exodus from the state. There are already an influx of houses on the market, but prices are remaining pretty steady. We will only buy a house if prices drop dramatically and we find a house we actually like (most houses up here make no sense at all). But we’re in a hurry to save the cash to be prepared!

The Numbers:

Full disclosure: I stopped using Personal Capital (affiliate link) because they stopped working for Mr. T’s retirement funds. But I really did enjoy them before they stopped working entirely for me. (Also feel free to read my more in-depth review of Personal Capital.) Also, once I checked this month to update the numbers, I went into each account separately and discovered it hadn’t updated MY Roth IRA for like six months. So we’re richer than I thought! Win! (also maybe another reason why you shouldn’t use Personal Capital…)

Mortgage is still at $ZERO!

As of October 1, we had $275,400 in investments. Not bad. (With such up and down in the market, a quarterly update on this number rather than a monthly update is probably a good idea.)

2019 Financial Goals (REWORKED):

• Max Out My 2018 Roth IRA ($5,500/$5,500) – Thanks to the totaling of the car, WE DID IT!
• Max Out My 2019 Roth IRA (0/$6,000) – Not yet.
• Max Out Mr.T’s 2019 Roth IRA (0/$6,000) – Not yet.
• Replenish Emergency Fund ($1,200/$1,200) – Because our emergency fund is in a Capitol360 account so we can use it for free ATMs while traveling (but the account only earns 1%), we lowered our emergency account goal from $5000 to $1200. Then we changed this goal:
• Extra Investments ($12,700/$45,000) – Thanks to the PFD, we were able to get over 25% of this knocked out this quarter. Unless we have some $10k sales months in November-December, we probably won’t get close to this, but I’m thinking I can at least get up to $25k. We’ll see.

So that’s where we’re at. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s Dipnetting update and fingers crossed for a full-time job update soon! Thanks for sticking it out with us in our crazy journey! We’re grateful for all of you.

It’s officially still July, so I’m still winning on this whole blogging thing, right?! Right. That’s what I thought. June was a fantastic month filled with more ferries! We flew to Juneau and took a ferry to Haines, saw the oldest lighthouse in Alaska, saw some more whales and otters and sea lions, took a ferry to another little island village and enjoyed slow, village life for a few days (we even attended a graduation party of some random stranger – the town is THAT small). Then we flew down to see family in Oregon and Washington. Summer is for travel. And we’ve been doing plenty of it.

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.)

Mortgage is still at $ZERO!

Okay, so with all the travel, etc. I actually forgot to check my investments at the end of June! By the time I got around to checking, it was July 12th and we had $267,000. Not bad. I really, really like forgetting about money, living my life, traveling, and still see this go up! It’s my favorite.

2019 Financial Goals (REWORKED):

• Max Out My 2018 Roth IRA ($5,500/$5,500) – Thanks to the totaling of the car, WE DID IT!
• Max Out My 2019 Roth IRA (0/$6,000) – Not yet.
• Max Out Mr.T’s 2019 Roth IRA (0/$6,000) – Not yet.
• Replenish Emergency Fund ($1,200/$1,200) – Because our emergency fund is in a Capitol360 account so we can use it for free ATMs while traveling (but the account only earns 1%), we lowered our emergency account goal from $5000 to $1200. Then we changed this goal:
• Extra Investments ($300/$45,000) – Nothing new here. Barring any $20k sales months toward the end of the year (not looking likely at all), we’re not going to even get close. Oh well. This is why we make goals, right? Or should we be sticking to “the unaimed arrow never misses” mentality? 😉

Notable Expenses This Month: The Story Our Money Tells:

These are expenses that tell an interesting story. A peek into our lives through our pocketbook (prepare to be judg-y this month!):

• $55.39– Our annual Trader Joe’s imports.
• $102 – Alaskan Christmas presents for all the nieces and nephews purchased in Juneau.
• $10 – The Haines Hammer museum. I’ve never seen so many hammers in my entire life!
• $20 – The Sheldon Museum in Haines. Cute little museum and very well done.
• $43.50– Breakfast aboard the LeConte Alaska ferry. Impressive food.
• $89.10 – Wheat and oats for oatmeal and grinding our whole wheat flour.
• $10 – Day pass to hike around Mendenhall Glacier area before the glacier totally melts. (Watch the crazy time-lapse of it melting.)

Financial Phrases:

These are things said by actual people that were either talking to me or near me enough that I could hear them:

• “All I need is a million dollars to retire. Only $990,000 to go!”
• “They didn’t care whether we succeeded or failed. It was a franchise model so they made money whether or not we did.”
• “I tried to go to school, but then decided: ‘I’m already doing what I want to be doing!'” – the guy running the Hammer Museum in Haines.

May was absolutely lovely. School got out and we took a week-long ferry down the Aleutian islands. (A whole post about that by request later this month.)

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.)

Mortgage is still at $ZERO!

Investments have dropped slightly to $255,000 – but staying above a quarter of a million dollars, so overall still pleased. Still really haven’t saved much this month. We’ll have to really work hard to hit most of our goals this year!

2019 Financial Goals (REWORKED):

• Max Out My 2018 Roth IRA ($5,500/$5,500) – Thanks to the totaling of the car, WE DID IT!
• Max Out My 2019 Roth IRA (0/$6,000) – Not yet.
• Max Out Mr.T’s 2019 Roth IRA (0/$6,000) – Not yet.
• Replenish Emergency Fund ($1,200/$1,200) – Because our emergency fund is in a Capitol360 account so we can use it for free ATMs while traveling (but the account only earns 1%), we lowered our emergency account goal from $5000 to $1200. Then we changed this goal:
• Extra Investments ($300/$45,000) – Nothing new this month because we had to come up with the $2,500 to max out my 2018 Roth IRA. But we’ll catch up. $45k by the end of the year still seems like a big stretch. But you know, aim for the moon and you’ll fall among the stars or whatever. 

Notable Expenses This Month: The Story Our Money Tells:

These are expenses that tell an interesting story. A peek into our lives through our pocketbook (prepare to be judg-y this month!):

• $451.44 – Hotel in Dutch Harbor/Unalaska for 2 nights.
• $422.44 – Hotel in Kodiak for 2 nights.
• $23 – Museum of the Aleutians – a tiny little museum in Dutch Harbor.
• $92 – Train tickets for the 5 of us between Seattle and Portland for our upcoming trip. It’s a lovely ride if you’re trying to get between those two cities – much more pleasant than I-5.
• $47+$55 – Two meals aboard the ferry restaurant. It’s only open for an hour per meal and you can’t tip the staff because they’re all public servants.
• $27 – 1/2 pound of king crab in Dutch Harbor (where we saw some of the Deadliest Catch boats in the harbor) so everyone could try some (basically two bites each).
• $20 – Kodiak museum tickets – housed in the oldest Russian-built structure in the United States – an old store during the Russian settlement days that also survived the 1964 tsunami following the great earthquake.

Financial Phrases:

These are things said by actual people that were either talking to me or near me enough that I could hear them:

• “Working on this ferry is my second retirement.”
• “I came up with a genius idea that is going to get me to retirement. Someone pursued a patent for it nearly a decade ago but abandoned it.”
• My 60-year-old Neighbor: “Your new copy of Work Optional [(affiliate link)] just came. I’m going to keep the one you gave me. And I’m getting one for each of my kids. They’re at the perfect age to read this. I’ve kind of missed the boat on most of it.”

This month has been one of the warmest in the history of Alaska. We’re already starting to get buds on the trees and nearly all of the snow is completely gone. Luckily our community doesn’t depend on permafrost as much as many others… so we’ve been enjoying more afternoons outside!

From a financial perspective, March was another crazy month of spending (remember how I said I’d calm down from spending? I will. I will. I promise). But the crazy story goes: my husband’s car got totaled by an uninsured motorist. It would cost $2k to fix, the insurance deemed that totaled… which apparently means they give you more money…? So, they gave us $5,100 to keep the car, we took it to a different place to get it fixed, which charged $1500, we had to pick up a “reconstructed vehicle” title at the DMV, and just like that, we’re $3,600 richer! (Spoiler: $3k went into my Roth IRA for 2018 and Mr. T bought a nice telephoto lens with the rest. We’re a wild bunch!)

We haven’t entirely finished spending on travel for the year yet – a few loose ends for all of our trips need to be tied up, but after that, we’ll be good! In fact, in April, I’m going to get the kids involved in budgeting. We’re going to put a very simple budget up on the fridge and have them help us track everything we spend. My oldest heard the plan and whined: “But I already did that at school once!” I laughed in her face and told her money is kind of an every day kind of thing, not really a one-time school project. We’ll see how it goes.

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.)

Mortgage is still at $ZERO! However, having a zero mortgage (and the mishap of the almost-totaled car), we’ve completely changed our financial plans. Our family really has outgrown this house. We can stick it out for a few more years, but with Penny solidly in her tweens, sharing a tiny room has led to much angst. And with bigger kids, clothes and such get bigger. Also, the biggest problem: no place to hang with friends. The bedroom basically fits the bunkbeds and that’s it and the only communal room is our small living room, so we’re literally always going to be in the same room if friends come over. Also, our car has made it through much. It’s a 2005 and though we’re glad it made it through this accident, we can’t be guaranteed it will last forever. We need to be prepared to replace it. And so, with those decisions ahead of us, we’re now entering a cash-hoarding stage!

Investments have moved to $242,870. Again, cash hoarding now. But I’ll be adding our cash hoard to this stash as well. So “Investments” will basically mean all savings in all varieties. I’d love to hit $300k by the end of the year, markets willing.

2019 Financial Goals (REWORKED):

• Max Out My 2018 Roth IRA ($3,000/$5,500) – Thanks to the totaling of the car, I’ve added $3k for 2018! I’m determined to get the other $2.5k in there in the next two weeks, so stay tuned!
• Max Out My 2019 Roth IRA (0/$6,000) – Not yet.
• Max Out Mr.T’s 2019 Roth IRA (0/$6,000) – Not yet.
• Replenish Emergency Fund ($1,200/$1,200) – Because our emergency fund is in a Capitol360 account so we can use it for free ATMs while traveling (but the account only earns 1%), we lowered our emergency account goal from $5000 to $1200. Then we changed this goal:
• Extra Investments ($300/$45,000) – Financial plans should by dynamic to meet your individual needs. Recap: Right now we feel like we should be cash hoarding. I’m pretty sure we will want a bigger home in a few years (the main thing we’re missing is a place the kids can hang with their friends as teenagers. We have one small living room and the girls share the bedroom). We want to be prepared with a large down payment in 2-3 years so we can either rent out this house (in case we want to return to the small house when the kids are gone) or apply the full sale amount of this house to the next house to get us mortgage-free again faster. Plus possible new car if ours dies. So, we’re no longer maxing out Mr. T’s 401k (don’t worry, he’s still contributing and getting matches). I will also be contributing enough to get the match in my 401k (which starts in April!), but nothing more. Instead, we will be saving money in a high-interest Ally savings account. We will be monitoring our income closely so that we don’t get killed on taxes with these adjustments. We’re using Ed’s super useful “free money” post to make sure we don’t go above the 12% tax bracket.
• NOTE: $45k feels like a bonkers amount for us. It’s a stretch goal. It includes the state government deciding to stop capping the PFD and it includes our t-shirt business continuing to bring in money each month. But also, knowing that we spent $26,000 on our mortgage in 2018 (after factoring in still paying for taxes and insurance) that we won’t have to spend this year makes this seems a lot more doable (even after spending 3+ months spending like crazy people!).

Notable Expenses This Month: The Story Our Money Tells:

These are expenses that tell an interesting story. A peek into our lives through our pocketbook (prepare to be judg-y this month!):

• $1500 – The whole car being totaled debacle.
• $668 – Ferry tickets to get us from Haines back to Juneau on our second Alaska ferry trip this summer. (All the ferries!)
• $897 – One-year YMCA membership. We’ve been talking about joining for awhile, but actually did it right before spring break so we could swim every day. We nearly did! Since then we’ve all been going as a family at least twice a week to different classes and we’re big fans.
• $740 – Mr. T’s telephoto lens. (I’ll mention that he purchased the lens because it went on sale from it’s usual $1000 price tag. Our camera broke, so the replacement camera has yet to be purchased… expect to see that in April.)
• $248.62 – With Payless Shoesource going out of business, we may have gone a little nuts. But, we don’t have tons of low price shoe options up here for the kids, so everyone is now set for all seasons for at least the next year or so.
• $391.23 – While we were at it, we figured we should buy everyone’s school clothes for next year and all the summer clothes as well. So, now everyone should be set on everything! (Remember how I said we’re just in crazy buying mode? I wasn’t lying.)
• $59 – Date night to an improv show and some dinner.

Financial Phrases:

These are things said by actual people that were either talking to me or near me enough that I could hear them:

• “I don’t know what a SEP-IRA is. I’m not good with computers and tech stuff.”
• “We thought we were pretty good with money but when we started tracking it, we realized we were not. We had no idea where our money was going.”
• “We have more work than we know what to do with right now after the earthquake.”