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.
David
Congratulations, you are really doing great.
For the husband’s retirement contribution slider, have you tried just nudging the slider up just one notch too big (or at least just adjusting it up there for only December so it slightly overshoots)? I had the same issue when the max was $19,000 a couple years ago and the number of paychecks was not evenly divisible by whole numbers. I can modify contributions to whatever dollar number I want, but only whole dollars, no cents.
I discovered that the system would only accept a contribution of $19,000 (like it’s supposed to, right?), so that even if I “tried” to overshoot on the last paycheck it would just cut off the last contribution short by a few dollars.
Because my contribution was only slightly too large, I still was able to contribute from every paycheck, meaning that I still got the employer match that for me only gets paid out on a per-paycheck basis (so that if I were to contribute my entire paycheck for the first few months of the year until I hit the max employee contribution I would miss out on the last several months of employer match contributions).
Anyway, you should see what happens if you try to overshoot in December. I bet the system might cut you off at $19.5K and you’ll get the rest as regular pay. Or if you over contribute it’s the employer’s problem to fix and it’s only a few hundred dollars at most!
MaggieBanks
Great point. My employer doesn’t allow an over contribution which makes things easy, but I’m pretty sure Mr. T’s does and I’m worried about the implications of overcontributing. But may be worth a shot!