March 2019 Plan Update

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.”