February 2019 Plan Update

In February the light starts to return and by the end of February it’s finally light when I take the kids to school and when they return. We also celebrate two birthdays in February so it’s all chocolate and cake (even though we only sort of celebrate Valentine’s Day). It’s a good month. Though with last month’s mortgage pay-off, we may have gone a bit hog-wild and has a pretty spendy month. We’ll level out again, I promise. But for now… on to the deets.

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 $ZERO! So far I’m keeping this in the monthly update because I’m so not over it. Still super thrilling. Read the story of our mortgage pay-off here. If you remember that I’ve been overpaying property taxes by nearly $900/year the update is that I can’t get any of that money back. Alas. I still have NO MORTGAGE. If I hadn’t paid it off early, I’m not sure when or if I would have noticed I was overpaying. So… #winning ?

Investments have moved to $234,209. Now that I’m actually starting to pay attention to this number, I’m actually starting to get a bit nervous that 75% of economists predict a recession by 2021.

2019 Financial Goals:

• Max Out My 2018 Roth IRA (0/$5,500) – I may have given up dreams of this goal when I bought tickets on the ferry to the end of the world. But it was a decision I made consciously. There is still a possibility I can put some money in here before April 15, but we’ll see.
• 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 ($800/$5,000) – The only goal I made any headway on.
• Extra Investments ($0/$10,000) – I haven’t figured out what this will look like yet (ie: brokerage, self-employment account etc.) because our income sources and amounts will impact that, but the goal is to invest another $10k.

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:

• $6 – Sound transit tickets from Seatac airport to downtown Seattle to see Dear Evan Hansen with a friend of mine for her 40th birthday. I paid for the hotel and plane with points. We split food but I bought discounted gift cards last month for a few places, so for February, this trip cost me $6.
• $41 – Tickets to see Lego Movie 2: The Second Part for the president’s holiday.
• $320 – Our cable cutting technique requires a computer hooked up to the TV. Ours just died after 9 years, so I bought a slim tower on clearance at Office Depot.
• $75 – Ice skate sharpening punch card (so we can keep enjoying family skate nights at the school, etc.)
• $1794 – Tickets for our family to take the “ferry to the end of the world” which is a ferry that goes all the day down the Aleutian chain to Dutch Harbor. With the current proposed state budget, ferries would shut down by October. I’m sure something will change to keep running some ferries, but this route has been on the chopping block for YEARS since it loses millions of dollars each year. Read about this reporter’s journey in 2015. I know I would regret not taking this if it gets cut and I had the chance so I jumped on reservations when they announced the ferries were no longer taking reservations past September until the budget gets finalized.

Financial Phrases:

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

• “We were kicked out of a restaurant once in rural Alaska because we were camping. It was in the middle of nowhere but it was the kind of place they flew people in to go to.”
• “Our whole tax refund was taken out from under us because I messed up our 2016 taxes.”
• “We never use checks. We are a cash only family.”