Denali Northern Expenditure

Dipnetting 2021

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On July 20, 2021

In Alaska

Each year, we go dipnetting as a family. In a matter of 24-48 hours, we catch enough salmon to last us all year. I’ve explained the dipnetting process here and even shared our salmon recipe if you want to know how we cook it weekly.

Florin and Penny were solid contributors. There are two ways to dipnet: Stand with your net in the water and wait for a fish to jump in, or add more poles to make it longer and walk as the tide goes out. The walking way catches more fish, but it also takes more mass and strength as the pole is longer and you have to put it in the water, walk with it, and then pull it out and carry it to do it again. This was the first year Penny was big enough to do it. She caught one and promptly quit, but at least she learned how to do it. Florin loves dipnetting while standing. She caught 5 of our 33 this year.

How did we do? The salmon counts were really low so there was hardly anyone on the beach (compared to the THOUSANDS which come when the salmon is running), which was lovely. But despite the low numbers, the fishing was pretty average. It wasn’t too terrible and it wasn’t fabulous either.  Total count: 33 salmon. – This equals 77 lbs of fillet meat (over 88 lbs if you count the salmon bellies that we’ve already smoked!). The fish were also pretty small this year, just like last year. Our smallest fillet: 11 oz. Biggest fillet: 29 oz (42 oz is our record). Our average fillet was 19.3 oz.

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:

  • $40 – Fishing licenses for Mr. T and I.
  • $21.59 – Ice to keep the fish cool after catching.
  • $50 – New netting for Mr. T’s dipnet – his had lots of holes that we’ve had to patch over the years.
  • $28.08 – Gas for the car
  • $60 – The cost to camp on the beach two nights and drop our stuff off.
  • $22.75 – Blizzards at Dairy Queen for the whole family on the way home.
  • $FREE – New waders for Mr. T (I won a $500 Amazon gift card from Ally Bank earlier this year and used that to cover the waders)

Total Costs: $222.42

Total Cost Per Pound: $2.89

This exactly matches our lowest price per pound (in 2016).

We also got our smoker with last year’s haul (making 2020 our most expensive price per pound) and have been practicing all year. We smoke some pretty good meat! When you include the salmon bellies we have already smoked and put in the freezer from this year, it brings our price per pound down to $2.53! For reference, 2015 was $3.93 per pound, 2017 was $3.84 per pound, 2018 was $4.79 per pound, and 2019 was $2.64.

Another solid year of fishing a full freezer to show for it!

Q2 2021 Plan Update

By

On July 1, 2021

In Plan Updates

This was an eventful quarter. It kicked off with tapping our birch trees and making birch syrup. Then, we dealt with the last month of remote school for the kiddos followed by a visit from my parents and then Mr. T’s parents (after not seeing either for over a year and neither had seen our new house). We went on a glacier cruise. Here’s proof we saw a glacier calving (followed by a collective reaction from the whole boat and Florin yelling: “Yes! That was AWESOME!” a few times.):

Then we sold our condo to our renters and submitted our plans to the city for our home addition. I also chaperoned our oldest (who was fully vaccinated!) at a church camp adventure with 20 teenage girls that involved rafting, hiking, camping, etc. And then had eight coworkers come to visit. After a year of only being social with our one pod family, this quarter was both thrilling and totally exhausting.

Work is still tenuous, to put it mildly:

Since then, several others were let go and I’m now on my fourth manager in a year. I really don’t know what happens from here, but things aren’t terrible yet, so I’m holding out until they are (or until I get let go as well).

I also got my official ADHD diagnosis yesterday. I feel like I should throw a party or set up a gift registry or something. Momentous I guess.

Selling the Condo

It turns out that buying a house in February of 2020, renting it for a year, and then selling it to the renters was one of the smartest, luckiest financial decisions we’ve made. Zillow says our house has appreciated nearly 75k since purchasing a year ago, we sold the condo for top dollar, and we didn’t have to deal with listing it, etc. It was fabulous.

So what did we do with the money?

  • $25k went to a mortgage recast – We chose a recast because it will lower our required monthly payment when we quit our jobs. For now, we’ll still pay the current amount and likely recast again before quitting if we don’t pay it off so we have maximum monthly payment flexibility. This recast brought our balance down to $289,000 (below 300k!) and got rid of our $27/month PMI.
  • $6k went to maxing out my Roth IRA for 2021 (yay for knocking out two goals!)
  • $65k went to a joint brokerage account – maybe we’re behind on this whole FIRE thing, but we finally managed to open a brokerage account and put 65k in.
  • The rest is being set aside for our home addition. When the addition is done, we’ll assess what, if any, money is left over and figure out how to distribute it.

The market appears to still be on a tear. Wild, right? Between the market’s wild climbs and the condo selling, our investments are looking pretty darn good! We’re currently sitting at $639,000 in investments. Again: WILD, RIGHT?! We jumped over $100k in a quarter and skipped right over the $500ks in our blog quarterly investment tracking! And, as mentioned previously, our mortgage is now down to $289,000.

2021 Goals

We made these goals before we knew we were selling the condo. That certainly helped fund most of what we have listed here. But the addition is still the big unknown. We’ll hold off on making any new goals or doing anything big with money until that is paid for. Lumber fluctuations make it really hard to pin down a price for what we need done.

  • Have the Addition Exterior Finished – We are planning to do all the interior work ourselves (except MAYBE drywall. TBD). But we need to have the addition “dry in” by winter. We have a contractor lined up pending plan approval by the city. If that takes too long, we’ll have to wait until next summer. But we’d really like to have the exterior done this year so we can spend the winter working on the interior.
  • Max Out My 401k ($10,077/$19,500) – I doubled my contributions this quarter and am on track for maxing out. But still have to make sure it doesn’t happen too early or I’ll miss out on my employer matching.
  • Max Out Mr. T’s 401k ($9,576/$19,500) – Mr. T’s retirement contribution “slider” may be the death of me. I can slide it to “$732,” “$798” or “$819″ per paycheck, but not $750.” We were under by $600 in 2020 because of the dumb slider. I’m hoping to get closer to maxing out this year, but I’m doubting we’ll actually be able to get the exact $19,500. My company doesn’t let you overcontribute, but I’m not sure about Mr. T’s. I’m afraid to try.
  • Max Out my Roth IRA for 2021 ($6000/$6000) – Done. Probably the earliest I’ve ever done so!
  • Max Out Mr. T’s Roth IRA for 2021 ($6000/$6000) – Done. Seriously nailing these goals (thanks to the unexpected condo sale!)
  • Max out a SEP-IRA – My current plan is to save all our self-employment income in our business account without using any of it. This will mean we can max out our SEP-IRA and then put the other funds into the new brokerage account, but we’ll wait until the addition is done… we may need to use the funds we get from our t-shirts/coloring books business for the addition.

That’s a wrap from me for the quarter. We have loads of summer plans ahead of us and a (fingers crossed) fairly normal fall with kids back in school. Watching the Delta variant closely and hoping Pfizer is on time with their September approval for 5-11-year-olds with vaccinations! I hope you all have a lovely summer moving at the pace you want to as we figure out what the new normal is.

Tapped birch trees

How to Tap Birch Trees and Make Birch Syrup

By

On June 26, 2021

In Alaska, Food!

This year, we decided to embark on a new adventure learning to tap birch trees and make birch syrup. The new house came with a small birch forest and we were all home all the time so we decided to add a new element to our “urban homesteading”: Birch Syrup.

Now, before you start this process, let me start with two disclaimers:

DISCLAIMER #1: You should not do this for the cost savings. Making birch syrup is not at all cost-effective. You can buy 8 oz. of birch syrup from the professionals for $29. Because birch syrup has a 100:1 ratio (meaning it takes 100 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup – compared to maple which has a 40:1 ratio), it takes a lot more work.

DISCLAIMER #2: Birch syrup, if boiled, tastes bitter and molasses-y. This can still be used as a delicious glaze on things, but is not pancake syrup. If someone says they hate birch syrup, they likely haven’t tried it cooked correctly. Because birch sap consists of a different kind of sugar than maple, you can’t just boil it. In fact, if the sap goes above 180, it will burn. This means you can’t actually boil it at all.

The combination of the 100:1 ratio and the fact it can’t actually be boiled means you really can’t make a good birch syrup without a reverse osmosis system. This allows you to pull out around half of the water from the sap without heat at all. We DIY’d our reverse osmosis system using the instructions provided by Souly Rested (if anyone deserves the Amazon affiliate commission for providing useful content, it is them with this post).

How to Tap Your Birch Trees

Being new to this, I attended webinars on the topic and read every available resource on the internet. Ultimately, what you need to know was written up by the professionals in their article: Tapping a Birch Tree. Be sure to check if your birch trees are at least 25″ in circumference. Smaller than that can hurt the tree. If you’re doing it as a family like we did, I recommend the Molly of Denali episode called: Sap Season. Molly of Denali is a FABULOUS cartoon all about life in Alaska and they do a great job explaining how to do it.

When to Tap Your Birch Trees

This was the hardest part. We wanted to start right away! And I checked every single day and saw people reporting that sap was flowing in Fairbanks and the Mat-su Valley and our trees were dry! We even saw someone on the other side of Anchorage getting sap three full days before we did! But, based on my research and our experience this year, we learned it’s best to set up 2 test taps in different locations in your yard when things are getting close. How do you know they’re getting close? Well, I’ve heard many things: after you’ve seen 4 mosquitoes, when the base of the trees are out of the snow; but mainly, it ends up being after about 3 nights above freezing and 3 days above 50 degrees F. All of our trees starting flowing at the exact same time. So, our two test taps started dripping within an hour of one another. It was a notably late year according to the experts; the sap started flowing April 23. Next year we’ll set the test taps and stop freaking out so much.

How to Process the Birch Sap

Birch sap can go bad quickly, so it has to be collected daily and stored somewhere cool (we buried our collection barrel in a mountain of snow before the snow melted and we collected all the sap in the barrel each morning). If you’re doing more than 15-20 trees, you’ll also likely have to start processing the sap each day so you can keep up.

Our process was:

  • Collect all sap in the barrel each morning
  • Run the reverse osmosis system – the pure water output would be piped to buckets, the sap runoff would be sent back into the barrel so it could run continually until we turned it off. Generally, we would keep it running until we’d pulled out about half the water (ie: the water in the buckets equaled about what was left in the barrel).
  • Pour the remaining sap from the barrel into our steam table pan on the camping stove
  • Heat the sap until about 160 degrees F (we had a meat thermometer probe attached to the side of the pan)
  • Turn on the bubbler at 160 – This was something we hadn’t initially planned on, but it turns out, it takes FOREVER for the water to evaporate out of the sap without boiling it. So Mr. T built a bubbler contraption out of CPVC pipe with holes drilled in the bottom attached to an air mattress pump we got at Target. This blew bubbles into the sap to simulate boiling at a low temperature and helped the water evaporate WAY faster.
  • Bubble the sap around 170 until the liquid level is 1-2 inches deep (too low for the bubbler to help). Don’t let it go above 180! (We set an alarm on our thermometer so we could run out and turn the heat down before that happened.)
  • At this point, if we had the previous day’s sap we had completed to this point in the fridge, we would combine the two and then let it bubble again until it was 1-2″ deep.
  • Use the refractometer to check brix levels. Birch syrup is done at 67 Brix (same as Maple). It took several combined days to get up to 40+ and then we had to complete it to 67 in a turkey roasting pan on the stove (again, don’t let it get above 180 degrees!).
  • Strain through coffee filters (it will take several filters as the sediment that’s created when heating the sap will clog it quickly) while it’s hot and put immediately into jars and seal.

Other Birch Syrup Info

  • Birch syrup is very distinct. It tastes nothing like maple and is kind of hard to describe. It’s sweet and woodsy.
  • Early run birch syrup is lighter in both color and flavor than late-run birch syrup. The sap starts to yellow as the sap flows, resulting in the change in color.
  • Taps should be pulled out when the sap turns cloudy (usually when the buds burst into leaves on the tree).
  • Holes should be left unplugged and if you tap the same tree the next year, it should be at least 6″ away from this year’s hole.

How Much Does Birch Syrup Cost?

  • Components for the Reverse Osmosis system: $388.47
  • 30 Taps: $70.51
  • Sap Buckets & Food Grade Garbage Can to use as Collection Barrel:$207.10
  • Tubing and clamps: $54.06
  • CPVC pipe for bubbler: $14.70
  • Blower for bubbler: $12.19
  • Steam Table Pan for cooking into syrup: $30.76
  • Adorable 8oz syrup bottles: $28.99
  • 2 Propane Tanks: Free – A friend had a few extras and gave them to us
  • Propane: $52.70
  • Coleman Camping Stove: Free – I got a bonus at work in the form of a Cabela’s gift card that just covered the camping stove.
  • Refractometer: $23.99

TOTAL COST: $883.47

After about 17 days and nearly 200 gallons of sap, we ended up with 2 gallons of syrup. So…

TOTAL COST PER GALLON: $441.74 – remember how I said you should just buy it from the professionals?! Well it actually turns out that if you’re buying it for $30/8 oz from them, it would cost you $480 (lucky for you, they also sell it in 32 oz jugs for just $105).

Hopefully next year, we can bring the cost down significantly since much of the cost this year was one-time purchases. Overall, we really loved the process. It was fun to do each day as a family, and it comes at the perfect time (the 2 weeks before the trees get leaves, so we’re all antsy for spring and needing something to do until it comes!). Also, we’ve got the neighbors on board and we may be doing a street-wide birch tapping blitz next year! I’ll let you know how it goes. 😉

1500 Days Until We Quit

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On April 11, 2021

In Plan Updates, Self-Employment, The Ride

The pandemic has me calculating all of our numbers on the daily, which made me realize, today is 1500 days from our target quit date of May 20, 2025! Why is this significant? Well, I’m sure you’ve heard of Mr. 1500 days. He and his wife set out to amass $1 million (+their remaining mortgage amount) in 1500 days. When they began in January of 2013, they had $586,000 and were contributing $2000/month toward investments. So… did they make it? YES! On April 19, 2016, they hit their goal (just 1204 days into their journey!). They now have a net worth over $3.6 million and are doing exactly what they want to be doing.

That means WE CAN DO IT TOO!

The New Plan

So our goal is the same as the 1500s. In 1500 days, we hope to have $1 million invested + at least 1 year cash + either a paid off mortgage or enough in a brokerage to pay off the mortgage. (If we pay nothing extra on our mortgage, we’ll need $235,000 to pay off the balance in May 2025.) We currently have $500k invested (THANK YOU CRAZY MARKETS!), which is less than the 1500s started with, but even if we just max out our two 401ks, we’re contributing $3,250 monthly, so we should be able to catch up.

Now, we’re more conservative in our estimates. I don’t trust the market to return 10% and I don’t think we could live off of $1 Million forever. However, that was never our goal. We want to be entrepreneurs for awhile without having to depend on the money forever. We are already CoastFI at 65 which means our $500,000 will take care of us forever after we’re 65 if we don’t touch it until then. This new goal will take us to Flamingo FI, which is another made-up goalpost, but I like it’s simplicity. Flamingo FI means you can count on your money doubling every 10 years counting on a 7.2% return and the rule of 72. So, with $1 million invested, in 10 years, that would be $2 million if we don’t touch it for 10 years and then we could withdraw between $60-80,000 forever (counting on a 3-4% withdraw rate).

With enough money to cover the mortgage and a 1 year emergency fund, we would just need to make enough for living expenses for a decade before being able to tap the investments. This sounds like a good balance between an exciting entrepreneurial challenge and a big enough safety net in case we either hate it or are terrible at it.

Why May 20, 2025?

The goal has always been to be available full time the summer before Penny is a senior in high school. We want her to be entirely in charge of the summer itinerary that year to maximize our time with her before she’s potentially getting college prepped the next year. She will get to choose where we travel and what we do that entire summer. May 20 is an arbitrary date that felt like a nice round number and is likely a few days before school will get out for the kids. 😉

Because the goal is not to never work or earn money again, I reserve the right to quit earlier if we hit our numbers earlier! This is, after all, about pursuing the things we want to do, so if that opportunity happens earlier, we’ll take it! (I mean, if we keep earning $20k/week with these crazy market increases, we’ll get there in no time!)

What’s the Entrepreneur Plan?

Mr. T and I have been dabbling for a few years with online side hustles we really enjoy. We currently sell t-shirts and coloring books on Amazon (affiliate link). With the pandemic, we’ve had almost zero time to work on any of those things, but have still managed to earn about $500/month as totally passive income. So, we’re not worried we’ll earn ZERO money when we quit our jobs.

We also have a HUGE LIST of things we want to create. We have so many stories we want to write together–likely YA fantasy. We’ve been piecing the worlds together in conversation over the past few years and are very excited to be able to go full time trying to map out and write the stories.

We also want to build an Etsy shop the kids can run to earn money in high school (and build up their Roth IRAs early). TBD what that looks like, but it’s on the list.

The list also includes an Alaska travel game we created a decade ago and a whole bunch of other things we’d like to see become realities. For us, most of this stuff isn’t about money. It’s about seeing these things in our brains become realities. But I’m also sure we can figure out something that will earn us money along the way. After all, we spent a year playing the Unemployment Game and won!

What are the Blog Plans?

We’ll keep documenting our journey along the way as we always have. Quarterly still feels like the right amount. I want to use real numbers because real numbers were what helped me know it was possible. But monthly seems braggy (and I can’t commit to more than quarterly right now!) Hopefully as we emerge from this pandemic (and I’m no longer working so much on COVID research and have a little more mental capacity), I’ll start posting more.

I have lots of things I have to work through as we get prepared for this big leap that I hope to talk through here including:

  • Pay off the house vs. Have the amount in a brokerage account (and how this decision impacts taxes and ACA subsidies)
  • Planning for healthcare
  • Helping the kids with college – how much and in what form (we don’t have 529s for any of the kids)
  • Eventual withdraw plans / Roth conversions, etc.
  • Donor advised fund?
  • AND MORE…

And don’t worry! I’ll definitely keep you posted on the Birch tapping experiment and update the annual dipnetting numbers. I’m hoping to get back to a more consistent schedule by the end of 2021, but who knows what the world will look like then. No guarantees.

Q1 2021 Plan Update

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On April 1, 2021

In Plan Updates

Well, 2021 is starting to look hopeful. I’ve got both my shots (as of Monday) and Mr. T is getting dose #2 today! (We’re lucky to live in AK which has been open for vaccines for all 16+ for awhile now.) I’m still full time COVID-19 researcher and recently discovered I have ADHD.

So, I found myself a neuro-therapist that specializes in ADHD and started therapy this week! I look forward to learning some new tools to help get me out of this pandemic in a healthy way. Right now I’m burned out, exhausted, and sick of feeling gas-lighted (gaslit?) as people try to school me in all things COVID (this is LITERALLY MY JOB). Also with 5 people in this house for a full year, I need some executive functioning tools to not feel overstimulated and tired all the time. The good news is the kids have less than 2 months left of the school year! We’ve almost survived!

The other thing happening is birch tapping season starts in the next couple of weeks (weather dependent)! We’ve built a reverse osmosis system to help cut down on fuel to make the syrup (because it takes 100 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup). We’re tapping 35 trees and with all the kids home all day every day, we’re all pretty excited to have a big family project to do together. And it will be a great big science experiment since this is all new territory for us. (Don’t worry, I will actually do a blog about the experience. Shocking, I know.)

The Money Stuff

It turns out, even after daily running the numbers, and the insane market, we still can’t retire yet. DANGIT. But can we just talk about how this market is INSANE? It’s UNREAL.

Still have a giant new (as of March) mortgage. It’s down to $318,000. At 3% for 15 years, my goal is to not pay it down early, but save enough money to cover it before early retirement (an account just for paying down the mortgage each month). But we’ll see if I last FOURTEEN MORE YEARS before paying it off.

And where has that bonkers market gotten us? Our investments are currently at $494,000 (SO CLOSE to half a million dollars!) making us officially CoastFI. That means if we don’t touch any of our investments until we are 65, we’re all set for traditional retirement. To calculate this number, you can use the Fioneers’ CoastFI formula (their website also has a calculator you can download for free if you don’t want to calculate it):

Coast FI # = FI # / (1+Expected Growth Rate)^# of years until retirement

We assumed a 5% growth rate and an annual spend of around $60-70,000 ($70,000 if we want to use a 4% withdrawal rate and around $61,000 for a 3.5% withdrawal rate). 27 years until Mr. T is 65 (I’m slightly younger, so I went with his). And BAM. There we are. CoastFI. Now we just have to figure out the next 27 years!

2021 Goals

We bought a house last year, as I mentioned, with the plan to build an addition. Mr. T and I are currently sleeping in the basement and plan to build a master suite off the main part of the house (we purchased the house with this addition in mind. We couldn’t find a house we liked that also had enough rooms for us). So, that’s our big elaborate project this year. Other than that, the goal is to max out all the things. 2020 was our first year of doing so (yay two full time incomes!!).

  • Have the Addition Exterior Finished – We are planning to do all the interior work ourselves (except MAYBE drywall. TBD). But we need to have the addition “dry in” by winter. Contractors are busy and we’re unsure if we’ll be able to get the help we need to get it done, but this is the big spendy goal this year.
  • Max Out My 401k ($2,661/$19,500) – I better raise my contributions!
  • Max Out Mr. T’s 401k ($4,788/$19,500) – Mr. T’s retirement contribution “slider” may be the death of me. I can slide it to “$732,” “$798” or “$819″ per paycheck, but not $750.” We were under by $600 in 2020 because of the dumb slider. I’m hoping to get closer to maxing out this year, but I’m doubting we’ll actually be able to get the exact $19,500.
  • Max Out my Roth IRA for 2021 ($6000/$6000) – Done. Probably the earliest I’ve ever done so!
  • Max Out Mr. T’s Roth IRA for 2021 ($0/$6000) – Not yet.
  • Max out a SEP-IRA – We maxed out for 2020 just this week and obviously we won’t be able to officially max out on this year until tax time next year, but I’d like to have enough set aside to be able to just max it out with taxes next year.

I hope you are all well. Take care of yourself. Be kind to one another. The world is dark enough.

Q4 2020 Plan Update

By

On December 31, 2020

In Plan Updates

It is truly hard to believe that 2020 is finally coming to an end. This has been a year and a decade at the same time. I want to say that this year has been traumatic. Even if you never got COVID-19 and didn’t lose employment, you have experienced trauma. Just remember that it’s okay to not feel totally okay right now. You are not alone. It’s okay to not have a plan right now. It’s okay if you feel like you’re just treading water. Do what you need to do to get through this. Remember 2021 won’t get better right away. Prepare yourself for that.

I’ve seen so much hustle talk from wealthy people and it’s exhausting. It’s truly okay if you emerge from this pandemic with nothing to show for it but yourself and your family. Just get through it, friends. I’ve shared how I plan to approach New Year’s resolutions this year. I suggest you do something equally guilt-free.

It’s also okay to not see all the “bright spots” people keep saying about 2020. It’s hard to identify the positives when you’re in the middle of the trauma. One positive I would say is that 2020 made my migraines so bad I sought treatment and it turns out there are some miracle drugs on the market that can stop a migraine in 30 minutes. SCIENCE IS MAGIC.

I also wanted something to look forward to during this dark winter before vaccines come available, so I am diving all in to the two-week birch tapping season at the end of March. Birch syrup is a northern novelty. Because of the type of sugar that birch sap has, if you boil it down like maple sap to make syrup, it ends up with sort of a molasses-y taste (which still makes for yummy baking on carrots, salmon, or mixed with honey), but don’t you worry. I’m building (with much help from Mr. T) a reverse osmosis system to help cut out some of the bitterness. This is a big foray into my suburban semi-homesteading lifestyle I hope to ease into as we leave traditional employment. Don’t worry. I’ll definitely blog all about it.

The Money Stuff

I will say what I’ve said all year: 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. It’s down to $322,000. At 3% for 15 years, my goal is to not pay it down early, but save enough money to cover it before early retirement (an account just for paying down the mortgage each month). I also have to constantly remind myself that a lower interest rate (2.5%), would save us less than 20k BEFORE closing costs, so I need to just settle down and live with my pretty incredible 3% mortgage. (Though, if it drops to 2%, all bets are off!)

The market remaining high still remains one of the greatest mysteries of 2020. And it all feels like fake money at this point. But at this rate, we’ll hit our goals in 2021 and sail off into the sunset (just kidding). Our investments currently sit at: $444000. Bonkers, amiright? That’s a $73,000 increase over last quarter. That’s a salary! I’m sure this will continue to blow my mind as investments get higher, but in 2020, this seems particularly bonkers.

After last quarter’s work drama of the boss getting let go and getting a new supervisor, this quarter, I got ping ponged around the office. I still do the COVID thing but no one can quite decide who I should report to. This drama is sure to continue through the first quarter of next year when they think they’ve finally decided which team I should land on. This is the first year I’ve really been exposed to the giant corporation nonsense I’ve heard so much about. Like, can everyone just leave me alone to do the work we all agreed has been valuable? Instead I’m constantly stuck writing my strengths and weaknesses, goals for a week, a month, a quarter, a year, etc etc.

2020 has verified to me that a) Mr. T and I will not get bored not having regular employment and b) corporate life is not my natural habitat. I’ve been living vicariously through Purple’s early retirement the past few months (I mean, she even took a sleeper train car!).

2020 Goals

Here’s the final break-down. We did pretty darn good considering all the chaos that is 2020 (including purchasing a new house without selling the old one!).

  • Max Out My 401k ($19,500/$19,500) – DONE! I found out that my company doesn’t let you contribute too much, so my last paycheck just maxed out and then gave me the rest back!
  • Max Out Mr. T’s 401k ($18,900/$19,500) – Mr. T’s retirement contribution “slider” may be the death of me. This was as close as we could get because we can slide the slider to “$798” or “$819” – random, arbitrary numbers. I kept messing with it all year to try to get as close as we could… but I was still $600 off. Hopefully I can get this closer to the max next year.
  • Max Out my Roth IRA for 2019 ($6000/$6000) – Done (thanks to the extended July 15 deadline).
  • Max Out Mr. T’s Roth IRA for 2019 ($6000/$6000) – Done. Same.
  • Max Out my Roth IRA for 2020 ($0/$6000). Done.
  • Max Out Mr. T’s Roth IRA for 2020 ($0/$6000) Done.
  • Figure out and Contribute to a SEP-IRA –Done. Because we had a really good Q4 sales season in 2019 that paid out in Q1 2020, our self employment income was quite high this year (though Q4 2020 saw less than half as many sales, understandably). I just opened a SEP-IRA this week and contributed $2k. I’ll wait until my accountant tells me the final number needed to max out the employer part of this (since I already maxed my personal Roth IRA) and then contribute that amount.

I hope you are all well. Take care of yourself. Be kind to one another. The world is dark enough.

How To Set New Year’s Resolutions during Hard Times

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On December 30, 2020

In The Ride

So 2020 was something, wasn’t it? Now, I’m usually all for starting over and setting goals and resolutions at the start of the year, but I feel like 2021 New Year’s Resolutions need to look totally different than previous years and I think this is true for any really hard season in your life. Over the past several weeks, I’ve thought of several ways to approach goals during Hard Times and I think I’ve settled on what I think it should look life for me. Everyone is different, so don’t assume this is how you should be doing it. (If you need to just treat the New Year like any other day and keep on surviving, by all means, DO THAT.)

If you can adapt any of the following to yourself this New Year’s resolution season, go for it:

Reflect

In “normal” times, this looks like reflecting on what you did well this year and what you would like to improve upon. But in the middle of Hard Times, this turns into self-shaming and that’s not going to get anyone anywhere. So, here’s how I plan to approach “end of year reflections” this year: Stream of consciousness write your thoughts and feelings of 2020. Seriously. Just write everything. Does that mean you just write down a bunch of angry words? Do it. But this moment is historic (in 2020, this is true both globally and in your own life, but tough times are personal historic moments). Document it. Add details that you’ve found notable this year. Here are just a few of mine:

  • We moved this year and the elderly new neighbors came over and tried to shake my hand at the front door and I had to decline but still try to seem friendly and happy to be in the neighborhood. It was a weird, notable moment for me.
  • The absolute horror I feel when I find someone wondering the grocery store completely maskless. It’s a cross between indecent exposure and fearing for my life.
  • One of my big regrets of 2020 was not watching Tiger King. Not that I feel like I’m missing out on the actual show, but at the beginning of all this, it was the first way the US came together in a collective experience binging that crazy show. And I was too busy with work because I’d just been thrown in the deep end of being the office COVID research expert. I feel like I missed out on a notable, collective experience in this lonely year.

What is this supposed to accomplish? Well, catharsis if nothing else. It’s not ever and we’re still in Hard Times. But reflecting helped me work through some emotions about this year and also find some humor in the insanity that is this Hard Time.

Set Just ONE Goal: Feel Better next year at this time.

See? That wasn’t so bad. I even set your goal for you. And it breaks all the goal setting rules. Other than being timely (one year), it is not specific or measurable. But it’s the only goal you need this year. I promise. Let me explain.

During Hard Times, all the fringe stuff falls away and you’re just surviving. It’s super easy to be like: I have eaten terribly this year, I’ve hardly exercised. My meditation time is down to zero. I haven’t hustled. etc etc etc. DON’T DO THAT. You’re in the middle of Hard Times. It’s okay to not be improving in all areas of your life. And you’re probably feeling yucky about lots of things. Pick just the yuckiest and set a simple goal to feel better about it next year than you do now.

This could mean many things. Maybe in order to feel better about that thing, you need to process it or approach it differently in order to feel better about it. Maybe you need to take some sort of action. Do that.

Example: My sedentary 2020 lifestyle has led to hip pain (yes, I’m a 35-year-old really old lady). My entire goal is to have my hip feel better at the end of next year. That will involve me moving it sometimes.

No Guilt Allowed

The goal is to mainly empower you to do SOMETHING helpful to yourself during Hard Times. It is NOT to give you something else to feel guilty about. What if all through January, I exercise the same amount I did 2020 and my hip still hurts? I can get up and move that hip once and feel great about doing that one thing. Was my goal exercise X amount each week? Nope. Was my goal to have zero hip pain at the end of the year? Also nope. It was just to FEEL BETTER. That’s it. I can’t have guilt about that at all because a) it’s not the end of the year yet and b) these are Hard Times and I’m just going to try to feel better.

Now, Happy New Year’s friends. May 2021 be way less terrible than 2020. And may we all feel better next year than we do this year in some way.

Kennicott

Q3 2020 Plan Update

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On October 17, 2020

In Uncategorized

Since I started getting hassled from my IRL readers about not updating (hi dad!), I thought I should update the blog before we got too deep into Q4. When last we chatted, the world was burning around us and there was a worldwide pandemic in full swing. Turns out, 3 months later, not much has changed there.

A young caribou in Denali National Park

So, let’s focus on the good stuff from the last 3 months: In July and August, we got to visit two national parks here in Alaska: Denali and Wrangell-St. Elias (the largest national park in the US). Because of the lack of tourists, Denali, which is usually only accessible by bus, opened the road to 70 cars per day for a few weekends. The tickets were nearly impossible to get (first to click through wins), but we had 4 computers and 4 people clicking and Penny will be the first to brag that she scored us the tickets. It was an INCREDIBLE trip. We had bears, caribou, porcupines, hares, and ground squirrels all crossing the road right in front of us. It was magical.

Wrangell-St. Elias and the Kennicott Copper Mine town (header image) are accessible via a 60-mile railroad pass road which is rough and narrow. Once you get to the edge of the water, you camp there with your car and bike across the river bridge (not accessible to cars) to get to McCarthy and Kennicott. This was also a great trip. Visiting places in Alaska with all locals is so enjoyable!

The kids also started school, via Zoom. It’s going well, for the most part, but the tag-teaming parenting/full-time jobs/3 kids in school is still an exhausting daily effort. My job is still 100% COVID-19 research which comes with a healthy dose of existential angst and Alaska’s cases have never been higher, so that doesn’t help much. But, we have a nice pod so we’re not totally starved for socialization and we’re healthy and so very lucky to still be employed, so there’s not a ton to complain about here.

The Money Stuff

I will say what I said last quarter: 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. $327,000. At 3% for 15 years, my goal is to not pay it down early, but save enough money to cover it before early retirement (an account just for paying down the mortgage each month).

Our investments are up over $50,000 in the past quarter which still completely blows my mind because there is something seriously wrong with this economy. I covered successful investing on the Twitter:

So easy. Well, our investments now sit at $371,000. If market returns continue like this and we don’t die, we’ll early retire in no time!

Work, for me, got weird this quarter. My boss of 10+ years was laid off leaving me in management limbo. Currently, the consensus is I’m valuable because I’m the “COVID girl” but we’ll see what happens. In this world, anything is possible.

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. I still go back and forth on whether we’ll actually do this. I want to hoard all the cash, but also know I want to invest a whole bunch too. #RichPeopleProblems

  • Max Out My 401k ($17,003/$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 ($14,140/$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 ($6000/$6000) – Done (thanks to the extended July 15 deadline).
  • Max Out Mr. T’s Roth IRA for 2019 ($6000/$6000) – Done. Same.
  • 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 – Not yet, but for tax purposes, I’m def gonna need to figure this out.

I hope you are all well. Take care of yourself. Be kind to one another. The world is dark enough.

Dipnetting: 2020

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On July 19, 2020

In Uncategorized

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?

Q2 2020 Plan Update

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On July 2, 2020

In Uncategorized

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.

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