A Personal Finance and Money Saving Blog in Alaska

Tricking Ourselves Into Learning

On March 14, 2018

Everything we do teaches us something. Life is all about tricking ourselves into learning.

Penny’s Big Invention

Penny had a big school project last year where they got to invent something. It sounded like an amazing idea and I was very excited to see what she would come up with. You know what she invented? A pencil box. Made out of paper. (So I’m not counting on her invention skills to get us to early retirement quite yet!) But instead of saying: “Hey Penny, see that plastic pencil box you’re using that actually holds the pens because it’s a durable material? It’s already been invented!”… I let it go to see what would happen. Surely the teacher would tell her it was a terrible idea and help her come up with a better one. But guess what? She did not.

Putting Process Over Product

I know, you educators are probably eons above me in this story and you can already see where it’s headed, but Penny’s teacher didn’t care about the product. Instead, she used the invention project to teach the kids through the process. Penny may not be winning any invention awards, but she learned the process of inventing. She had to make a working prototype. She had to work with a team. In order to do that, they had to learn Google Docs to share their notes. They learned how to put together a powerpoint presentation (filled with funny GIFs and cute kitty pictures). None of this felt like work to Penny because she was so excited about their amazing paper pencil box, she was excited to do what had to be done.

Tricking Ourselves Into Learning

As grown ups, these same situations often arise, but I feel like sometimes we ignore the lessons. If something’s hard, we want to forget it and move on instead of analyze what we’ve learned and move forward. Because we choose to ignore the lessons, we don’t emerge any different.

Though this applies to all circumstances, this is primarily a personal finance blog, so I think we should talk about money. I’ve witnessed tragic financial circumstances. When people hit rock bottom, they just want to start over. Everyone needs a fresh start sometime. But these people need help.

Money is a tool. If someone didn't have any tools, you would get them tools so they could build. Without any money, it's hard to build anything, including a life for yourself. I'm so blessed to have tools. And I could always do better sharing them.

— Maggie Banks (@northernexpense) March 11, 2018

This is what I’ve learned from witnessing these situations. And I’m better for it. If we’re able to learn from the situations of others as well as our own, our education expands exponentially.

Get yourselves out into the world. Do good. Help others. When we get ourselves out there and interact with others, we are tricking ourselves into learning. But it’s up to us to apply the lessons.

What lessons have you learned from the situations of others?

February 2018 Plan Update

By MaggieBanks

On March 5, 2018

In Plan Updates

I keep feeling like I need to apologize for not filling this space as often as I used to. But then I remember you guys are my friends and the whole point of not filling this space as often is because I’m practicing what I’m preaching. I’m following the money while trying not to lose sight of what’s important (like my children, for example). So, here I am with another plan update.

February was crazy busy for all of us. We got the science fair project for Penny started (rock candy with every kind of sugar available currently growing on my counter). We spent many days reshaping our snow pile into sledding tracks, watching the Olympics, taking the kids to swimming, etc. Life is glorious, isn’t 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.)

Our mortgage is now at $26,700. We weren’t able to put any extra towards the mortgage this month because we owe just over $1,000 for taxes. Blech.

Investments are now at $186,840. I told you we’d be back below $200,000 this month, but it was fun to hit another nice round number first!

2018 Financial Goals Update:

KILL THE MORTGAGE – $26,700 to go! If this was the only thing we were doing this year, I would feel super confident, but this big trip AND paying off the mortgage… it feels like a stretch! If we nail both of these goals this year, I will be ECSTATIC!
27-Day Europe Trip – -$487.75 – Earned: $10,996.65, Spent: $11,484.40 (with “earned” meaning the money we’ve made from selling shirts on Amazon and “spent” meaning all of the costs for the trip as well as any extra payments toward our mortgage) – We didn’t put any extra toward our mortgage and didn’t pay for any trip costs this month. Sales are low this time of year and next month is going to look worse than this one!
Max out Mr. T’s 401k – Automatic – however, limits rose to $18,500/year which makes it messy if you get 24 paychecks a year. We’ll probably make a contribution toward the end of the year to top it off.
Stretch Goal: Put $5500 into My Roth IRA – Not yet.
Market-Based Goal: $250,000 in investments by the end of 2018 – Not yet.

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:

$24.26 – Batting to finish a quilt I got in the mail from someone who made the top for my wedding 12 years ago and then never got around to finishing the quilt. Now I need to figure out how to finish it! LOL!
$9.99 – This is a monthly fee, but I’ll only include it once. Mr. T has photoshop on his computer, but I wanted to get more into photoshop myself, so I signed up!
$8.97 – Carl’s Jr. dinner for my children for Lui’s birthday.
$15 – The cost to pull the police report to file to insurance to replace our neighborhood mailbox that got plowed over by a car in December.
$15 – Taking a friend out to peanut butter pie for her birthday.
$77 – Mr. T and I went out to a semi-fancy restaurant with friends on a double date. It’s fun to do this on occasion.

Financial Phrases:

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

“$7,000 isn’t a lot a lot, but I could have stretched it pretty far.”
“When you have a mortgage, three car payments, student loan debt, and credit card debt, a $5,000 tax bill is enough to crush you.”
“I decided I’m going to use my birthday money to buy an ukulele.” – This is Penny. And don’t worry… you’ll probably see an Ukulele in our expenses for next month. (shhh. Don’t tell.)

Mosaic Thoughts After a School Shooting

By MaggieBanks

On February 23, 2018

In Goodness

“Mosaic thoughts” means these thoughts are all over the place and the only connector is the most recent school shooting:

Life is Heavy Sometimes

The weight of this school shooting really hit me the next day after I dropped Lui off at preschool. I returned home to an empty house and instead of getting anything done at all, I just wept. For a really long time. I cried again later that day when I heard Pink’s song on the radio: “What about us? What about all the times you said you had the answers?” – We’re failing our children. And it hurts.

The weight really made me ask myself a few questions this week:

If any of my family members died today, would they die knowing I love them? What was the last thing I said to them and how did I say it?
If I knew any of my children had just one year left to live, what would I change about this next year?
With so much darkness in the world, how can I bring light?

Light up YOUR world

I can’t solve the world’s problems. I can’t change the hate that gets thrown around on a daily basis. But I CAN brighten my world. I focused more on that this week. I spent time in my son’s preschool class. I collected clothes for twin baby boys that were born in Anchorage from the bush so they could go home equipped. I brought dinner to another new mom. I snuggled with my kids.

Each day I need to focus on lighting up some part of my world. And if you do the same, eventually, the world will be a better place. I truly believe that.

Fighting is Better than Hiding

Our school district recently moved over from lock down drills to ALICE training. The big difference is that the kids used to hide behind coats and be really quiet and basically wait to die. Now, they actively barricade, run, zig zag, throw things, etc. I MUCH prefer this for two main reasons:

Empowerment – The demeanor of my kids explaining ALICE drills is TOTALLY different than how they used to explain lock down drills. After hiding in coats and trying not to breathe, they were so scared. Now, they have an active plan. They’re excited they get to take control. They no longer have to wait to see if they’ll be the one to die. They’ll ACT. When we have a plan for things, we don’t feel as scared about them. Instead, we’ll be prepared to jump into action because…
Statistics – The chance my kids will be involved in a school shooting is still statistically very low. I absolutely think they should prepare kids for that event even if the chances are slim, but the trauma of pretending to wait to die is so much worse than giving them tools to fight back and succeed. The drills are hard no matter what. You’re telling kids that a bad guy may enter your safe space and kill you. That’s never easy. But it’s the truth. And if we have the truth AND tools, we can move past the fear of that event happening.

Some Things are More Important

Six weeks into each year, I realize I’ve set my goals too big. I take too much on. This year is no different. And this event happened at the exact same time. It really shook me out of thinking: “You’re failing at everything you set out to do” and instead got me thinking: “You’re failing those things because you’ve been focusing on what’s important.” It’s hard to remember that playing with your kids instead of writing a blog post is the right choice. When you’re constantly reading about personal finance and entrepreneurship, it’s hard to remember that spending time watching the olympics with your family instead of throwing yourself neck-deep into work is the right choice. But those are the choices I’ve been choosing.

So I’m not failing at all.

January 2018 Plan Update

By MaggieBanks

On February 9, 2018

In Plan Updates

January was a crazy month for the Banks family. The kids started swim after school twice a week which has been quite an adjustment for all of us. On top of that, we’ve had some big responsibilities at Church. We’ve also been trying to get our Merch shirts organized so it’s easier to relist them if they don’t sell and Amazon takes them down. So lots of awesome, productive things going on, but really busy.

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.)

Following the Money: In Practice

By MaggieBanks

On February 2, 2018

In Uncategorized

One of the big entrepreneurial concepts is following the money. If you haven’t figured out how to get paid or you’re not chasing the pipeline that is actually paying you, you’re doing it all wrong.

Following the Money

As you know, our current most lucrative side hustle is selling shirts. When we realized the potential of selling shirts, we had to hit it hard (getting 1500 listings on Amazon takes real work!).

2018 Non-Financial Goals (and 2017 recap)

By MaggieBanks

On January 26, 2018

In Plan Updates

I like to also set non-financial goals here at Northern Expenditure because life is worth living for more than just money!

2017 Goal Recap:

The Great Banks Merch Challenge January Update

By MaggieBanks

On January 19, 2018

In Plan Updates

As a reminder, we’re attempting to pay for our 27-day Europe trip and all the extra payments toward our mortgage until it is gone with nothing but selling shirts on Merch by Amazon.

First off, this trip is not cheap. We’re not trying to do it all that cheaply. We’re taking our kids to some of the most expensive countries (we’ll reserve our next international trip for Cambodia!). But we also really wanted to stretch ourselves this year with our t-shirt sales, so we decided to add in our mortgage to really make things interesting. Also remember that most t-shirt sales come in October-December, so it’s going to look pretty bad here at the beginning of the year as we keep spending, but don’t make as much. But hopefully, by December, everything will come together in magical ways and we’ll pay for our whole trip plus our mortgage with just t-shirt sales! Wish us luck!

I’ll be providing quarterly updates. This one is 2017 Q4 update:

December 2017 Plan Update (and 2018 Financial Goals!)

By MaggieBanks

On January 10, 2018

In Plan Updates

Ah… December. I do love the holidays with the kids home and Mr. T having so many days home as well. December was glorious. We really could have used more snow, but we did at least get a few good days of hoar frost where all of Anchorage was magical and white.

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.)

December 2018 Plan Update

By MaggieBanks

On January 3, 2018

In Uncategorized

December was a great month. Though we still had our fair share of aftershocks, we got to enjoy a tremendously snowy Christmas full of sledding, ice skating, hot cocoa, friends and fun. I also got to FINALLY open the Lego Hogwarts Lego sets I bought “for the kids” in August. They’re amazing (I got the 2 sets, not the one giant $400 one) and I love them so much. The girls have been playing Hogwarts everyday since Christmas and Lui got to put together Aragog’s lair and now he’s pretty thrilled with “being Aragog” when he decides he wants to play along with them. Mr. T build a pretty epic luge track that uses our snow pile as usual but goes down the backside and winds around behind the house.

This month I will also be publishing a Merch Challenge 2018 Q4 Update (after December sales numbers post mid-month), a more in-depth 2018 recap, and introduce new goals for 2019. I love a New Year!

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 now at $1,900! That means NO MORE EXTRA PAYMENTS are required! We will pay it off with our usual mortgage payment next month and BE DONE!!!!! So we’re a month late. I’m counting it as a win.

Investments have tumbled considerably to $204,539. I heard the market was falling, but I was too busy to actually look at my numbers until this update and was quite surprised to see how much we lost in a month! At least we’re ending the year above $200,000. And hopefully money can start being shoveled toward this next month!

2018 Financial Goals Update:

KILL THE MORTGAGE – $1,900 – I’m counting it as a WIN because we won’t have to put any more extra money toward this and we’ll only have to make one more regular payment. Then it is DEAD!
Merch Challenge Update (paying for our 27-night Europe trip and our extra mortgage payments with t-shirt sales) – -$1896.40 – Earned (with just shirt sales online): $19,216.46, Spent: $10,412.86 (Europe Trip) + $10,700 extra mortgage payments – So it looks bad now, but since this includes all of the “spend” and we still have December’s shirt payment coming in January, this might still happen!
Max out Mr. T’s 401k – Automatic – however, limits rose to $18,500/year which makes it messy if you get 24 paychecks a year. But, we’ll hit $18,000 anyway, so pretty close.
Stretch Goal: Put $5500 into My Roth IRA – Nopety nope.
Market-Based Goal: $250,000 in investments by the end of 2018 – Markets down. Not looking possible this year. Oh well.

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:

$1.08 – Two ice creams for the girls after using the rest of a McDonald’s gift card. I took them to ice cream and told them about Santa. I was sure to tell them that magic is created and they are now part of Santa’s team. It ended up being adorable. They came home and helped Lui write a letter to Santa and they were the most enthusiastic Santa trackers on Christmas Eve!
$16.85 – We were able to find the two books Florin wanted for Christmas at the best little book shop in town and I was so excited to support local.
$103.95 – Tire changeover for Mr. T’s car. He did it before we got our big snow dump, luckily. Yay for winter tires!
$209.11 – Medical bill for some tests they ran when I had bronchitis back in the summer. The insurance finally paid some and they finally sent me the final bill. Why is healthcare so expensive?!

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 have a secret shopping problem!”
Spoken on the Saturday before Christmas by a friend: “This afternoon, my husband is taking the kids and I get to go shopping.” My reaction: “NOOOOOOO!!!!”
“I think the pressure of getting his wife amazing gifts motivated his career.”

Baby It’s Cold Outside: Don’t Have to Be Old to Retire

By MaggieBanks

On December 18, 2017

In Goodness

Here’s our annual holiday hit and follow-up to last year’s song. This year’s is to the tune of Baby It’s Cold Outside, but our version is called: “Don’t Have to Be Old to Retire.” Mr. T wrote the words and they are a very exaggerated version of our usual conversations around the Banks house (he’s the spender). I will reiterate VERY EXAGGERATED. But he wrote it and he’s singing this year, so everyone is very excited! Enjoy!

Happy Holidays friends! We’ll see you in 2018!

Love, the Banks