MM and dreams and goals

hoffse

I've been travel hacking with CC points.  We've been spending so much the last few months on house remodel stuff that hitting the spending minimums has been no big deal.  For the Belgium/Germany trip I used the Chase cards because they enable you to transfer points to travel partners, usually instantaneously - and it just so happened that United had flights at their economy rewards rate over Christmas week.  I couldn't believe it, but we managed to get those seats locked down.  Then we used Chase points to transfer to the Hyatt in Cologne (which is where we planned on visiting/staying anyway), and I used Hotels.com rewards to score a free night in Brussels.  I think we're paying for 4 nights total.  Our paid nights are through Hotels.com, and we got them during a pretty good sale.

We also plan a year out - so we're starting to look at 2016. I'm looking at the Barclay card for their sign-up bonus, and I'm continuing to accrue Chase points.  We don't plan trips around credit cards, but we are willing to open cards if they make sense for the trip we are planning.  Figuring out where we want to go a year in advance gives us time to track prices, develop a budget, and then rack up points before we have to pull the trigger.

We also fly out of Atlanta, so I track Clark Howard's website.  He posts all the major airline deals out of Atlanta, and his website is updated daily.  It's an amazing resource.  We're going to France (Provence) this summer, and I snagged tickets for the end of July at about 65% off during a flash sale - I learned about the sale from Clark's website.  They were stupid cheap for that time of year - cheap enough that I wasn't willing to burn any of our points on them. 

Basically, we budget one full-priced trip per year.  I do my best to bring the cost down with points or good deals so that we can swing a second trip within the same budget.  Sometimes I can make it work, sometimes I can't.

UncleL1228

als1982 said:

hoffse said:

UncleL1228 said:

What are some things you have done to flex your frugality muscle?  We have cut cable, negotiated wireless internet bill, got a phone plan with republic wireless and have been really pleased

We travel hack, and I've been getting better and better at it over the last couple of years.  I recently scored a deal over Christmas week to visit H's grandma in Belgium (she's 94!).  Less than $850 for two round trip tickets to Europe, 7 nights in a hotel, and trip insurance.  The trip insurance was more than a quarter of the total price.  We're spending 3 days in Germany to visit the Christmas markets, then 5 days in Belgium (including Christmas Eve and Christmas Day) to see Mamina.  

We also do a pretty good job scoring deals on necessities for our jobs.  We both have to dress professionally - lots of suits for H, dresses, heels, etc. for me.  We wear these clothes 12 hours/day, so they wear out quickly.  Whenever we run into a great deal on work clothes, we jump.  I've also learned to sew a bit, so we can make clothes last longer when seams come apart.  And I own a sweater shaver and put it to good use few times a year.  That was probably the best $8 I've ever spent.  

I shop through portals.  We are about to remodel our kitchen, and I bought appliances through a shopping portal.  I have a $150 check coming from ebates in August.

I like reading Mr. Money Mustache, but we aren't as minimal as he advocates, and I'm fine with that.  I've said this before - at some point money is meant to be spent, whether now or in the future.  We are usually thoughtful about our purchases and rarely spend impulsively.  I used to be a pretty bad impulse shopper, but I've managed to reign that in a lot over the last couple of years.  Our primary spending areas are the house and travel.  For us, both of those are worth it, even though both tend to be pricey.  The house is our living space.  Travel gives us amazing experiences.  Both of these matter a lot to us.  H and I also like our jobs and will probably never fully retire - just because we like what we do.  So we don't have to get as super minimal to achieve our financial goals as the true MMM followers do.  

What are some travel hacking techniques?  I have an airline miles credit card but that's about as far as my knowledge goes lol

Check out boardingarea.com I'm personally a big fan of mommypoints.com

Awesome thanks

Xstatic3333

I've never really thought much about specific long term goals. In general terms, I want to be comfortable. I want to retire in our 60s with plenty, and send a future child to at least our state school (which is really good!) Someday we'd love a vacation cottage in Maine or Cape Cod (which can pay for itself with summer rentals if you put enough down). I'd like our SLs gone and our house paid off. And, I'd love the ability to work part time, which in my field can be done without losing status if you can afford it.

I read MMM too. He's a great writer and the forums are entertaining. I am all on board with him about stuff, big cars, etc. The reason I'm not pursuing FIRE is that I have an expensive hobby that brings so much joy and meaning to my life that it's not worth it to me to quit it. I'm also not willing to wait for retirement to travel. I always giggle when people give "spend on experiences" as financial advice, because I probably spend way too much on experiences! On the other side of the coin, I loathe shopping and just went over a year without a haircut.

Mustard76

We're saving to a particular dollar amount in our general savings and our retirement accounts. Other than that, we have a few short-term goals (1-10 year goals)
- pay the last installment of my SL in full
- find our forever home
- furnish said home (we bought cheap furniture after we bought our condo 8 years ago)
Longer-term goals:
- travel
- retire comfortably by 60
- mortgage paid in full by retirement

We have pretty basic goals, but we prioritize as things come up, so our ST goals shift regularly.

short+sassy

als1982 said:

What are some things you have done to flex your frugality muscle?  We have cut cable, negotiated wireless internet bill, got a phone plan with republic wireless and have been really pleased

It may sound silly, and to some, extreme, but we just don't spend our money on stuff. If it isn't absolutely necessary, then we don't spend the money. No new furniture, home decor, appliances, etc. It if still works, there's no need to replace or upgrade. I think many people today don't understand the difference between a need and a want. When we do spend money, we always make sure we're getting a deal plus maximizing our purchase, often through a points portal. My philosophy is spending money on experiences and memories, not physical items that will be forgotten quickly.

Amen, @als1982!!  I spent my early/mid 20s acquiring "stuff".  And that "stuff" took over my life and still drags me down.  I was the shopaholic girl who would buy clothes and things because "it was on clearance", "it was such a good deal, how can I resist", etc.  Without much thought to if I would even use any of it.

It didn't help that one of my good friends was my partner in crime.  She was even worse than me and would buy sale items for her "future children and household"...even though marriage wasn't even on the horizon at that time.  She ended up with so much stuff she rented a storage unit to store it all.  All those "great deals" aren't so great when you are spending $100/month to store them.

Fast forward to now.  I give a lot of thought to every physical item I purchase...not so much because of the cost, but because of the space.  My H and I are able to keep our monthly expenses to a bare minimum because we rarely buy anything.  We also don't spend much on entertainment because we are pretty homebodyish and would rather just stay at home than go out (with the exception of travel).

We go out to dinner about 1-2x/week and that is about it for entertainment.  At least half the time I am mystery shopping the restaurant anyway, so that is money that gets reimbursed back to me.  And the other half of the time, I usually have a Groupon or some other kind of discount.

hoffse

Fun fact: my mom has decided to set up an ebay shop to entertain her in her retirement and to start clearing the house of junk.  This is a HUGE step for her because she has always been a "collector."  Her friends have heard about it and are now just giving her stuff to sell.  Between her stuff and their stuff, she's bringing in a pretty good chunk of change each month.

She's also selling a bunch of stuff for me - she is very kindly giving us the money from it, and we're asking her to take a cut for her time.

Today she listed my old Polly Pockets - apparently they're "vintage" and so they are going for like $15-$25 each.  I had a couple dozen of them.

Next up: My Little Ponies.  I learned yesterday that a couple of the ones I have are now going for $40-$50 because I kept all the accessories intact.  I had no idea she had even saved all this stuff.  But she wants it out of her house, and I certainly don't want them!

This blows my mind.  But hey, if it gets rid of the stuff and we can make some money, I'll take it!

JoanE2012

hoffse said:

I agree it kind of sounds like you're doing research.  Nonetheless, I'll bite.

Short-term (within 10 years)

-Student loans paid off

-Babies (hopefully)

-Probably in our forever house

-One or both of us partners in a law firm - definitely this path for H, I might end up going in-house since I do corporate/tax work

-Finish my LLM degree in tax (will be completed next year)

-Continue to travel, even once we have kids.  We hope to travel with them and without them.  We will probably focus more on domestic/North American destinations for the first few years once we have kids.  No worries about that, there are lots of domestic places we want to see that we are saving for kids.

Long-term

-Mortgage on our forever house paid off by retirement

-Buy a vacation house, possibly in Europe (H is a dual citizen and can own property without a bunch of loopholes), which we would likely rent while we weren't there

-Eventually live 6 months of the year over there and 6 months of the year over here

-Kick off retirement with an around the world cruise - we would both like to circumnavigate the globe.  They're pricey though so will require some planning/saving. 

-Increase our charitable giving, pick a couple charities that we write into our estate plan (sorry kids, you aren't getting all of it)

-Convince my parents to leave the US and see Europe with us at least once - I would love to do a family trip with them.  My dad has only been to London and my mom has never been over there at all.

---Boxex----

Yes!  I want to do one of those world cruises too.  That would be a great way to kick off retirement!

vlagrl29

hoffse said:

Fun fact: my mom has decided to set up an ebay shop to entertain her in her retirement and to start clearing the house of junk.  This is a HUGE step for her because she has always been a "collector."  Her friends have heard about it and are now just giving her stuff to sell.  Between her stuff and their stuff, she's bringing in a pretty good chunk of change each month.

She's also selling a bunch of stuff for me - she is very kindly giving us the money from it, and we're asking her to take a cut for her time.

Today she listed my old Polly Pockets - apparently they're "vintage" and so they are going for like $15-$25 each.  I had a couple dozen of them.

Next up: My Little Ponies.  I learned yesterday that a couple of the ones I have are now going for $40-$50 because I kept all the accessories intact.  I had no idea she had even saved all this stuff.  But she wants it out of her house, and I certainly don't want them!

This blows my mind.  But hey, if it gets rid of the stuff and we can make some money, I'll take it!

My mom gave me my old My little ponies for DD.  She also gave me back my vintage barbie house and said it is worth $1500 right now so I should keep ahold of it and use it to pay for DD's college. lol.  I hate "stuff" and can't wait until I can purge all the kid clothes and toys out of our basement.

hoffse

vlagrl29 said

My mom gave me my old My little ponies for DD.  She also gave me back my vintage barbie house and said it is worth $1500 right now so I should keep ahold of it and use it to pay for DD's college. lol.  I hate "stuff" and can't wait until I can purge all the kid clothes and toys out of our basement.

****STUCK IN BOX********

My grandpa has always done woodwork as a hobby, and I have some beautiful toys he built me - marionettes he carved, a cradle, even a baby carriage that's built from real carriage parts... it's wood and metal and the wheels are actually sprung with shocks on them.  

I also have a great puppet theater my dad built - full sized with a bunch of puppets to go with it.  Those kinds of things I will keep to pass down.

The plastic toys though... nah.  If/when we have kids, I know our parents are going to lose it with toys anyway.  No need to double the amount of stuff with everything my mom kept from my childhood.

vlagrl29

yep, when we have a 2nd kid I don't want anyone buying us any more toys.  I've pack up DD's in the basement to reuse when the time comes.  I'm thinking family can donate money in her savings or the further babies savings.  To me that's so much better than toys.

formerlyGDaisy09

I'm so with you guys on being over the "Stuff". when H's parents moved last year their house was full of stuff, I'd come home from work to find that H's mom had dropped of another box of junk, which all had some sentimental story about it. H's grandmother was crafty, his mom had saved all these different hand painted (read: dated and ugly) tchotchkes that had at one point decorated his nursury (I'm talking things with clowns, stuffed animals that spent the last 25 years outside in their garage storage space, baby clothes likely purchased from walmart 30 years ago that had also been sitting in paper bags in their garage...) H is attached to this stuff, for some reason, but I am itching to find a way to get rid of it! 

I'm hoping with our baby to keep the stuff to a minimum, I know that some amount of stuff is required, but I'm hoping to keep it to only the required stuff. 

hoffse

Update on the Polly Pockets - my mom has sold over $200 worth since Friday afternoon.  And yesterday she sold a My Little Pony for $47.

People are crazy.

TravelJunkie1234

formerlyGDaisy09 said:

I'm so with you guys on being over the "Stuff". when H's parents moved last year their house was full of stuff, I'd come home from work to find that H's mom had dropped of another box of junk, which all had some sentimental story about it. H's grandmother was crafty, his mom had saved all these different hand painted (read: dated and ugly) tchotchkes that had at one point decorated his nursury (I'm talking things with clowns, stuffed animals that spent the last 25 years outside in their garage storage space, baby clothes likely purchased from walmart 30 years ago that had also been sitting in paper bags in their garage...) H is attached to this stuff, for some reason, but I am itching to find a way to get rid of it! 

Sounds like my husband...I have moved most of those types of things into boxes that are now taking up our den/garage/under bed space. DH wants to rent out a storage closet and keeps saying we need a bigger house for all our stuff...no dude, we need to get rid of a bunch of our stuff!

formerlyGDaisy09

TravelJunkie1234 said:

formerlyGDaisy09 said:

I'm so with you guys on being over the "Stuff". when H's parents moved last year their house was full of stuff, I'd come home from work to find that H's mom had dropped of another box of junk, which all had some sentimental story about it. H's grandmother was crafty, his mom had saved all these different hand painted (read: dated and ugly) tchotchkes that had at one point decorated his nursury (I'm talking things with clowns, stuffed animals that spent the last 25 years outside in their garage storage space, baby clothes likely purchased from walmart 30 years ago that had also been sitting in paper bags in their garage...) H is attached to this stuff, for some reason, but I am itching to find a way to get rid of it! 

Sounds like my husband...I have moved most of those types of things into boxes that are now taking up our den/garage/under bed space. DH wants to rent out a storage closet and keeps saying we need a bigger house for all our stuff...no dude, we need to get rid of a bunch of our stuff!

I'm making H get rid of stuff, I think that makes me sound a little horrible, but it's all junk. he's attached because his grandma painted these items, in reality they look to me as if they were part of some paint by number craft kit, fun, but not valuable. Since we're finishing 300 sqft of space in the basement this summer we're loosing all that storage, that is going to be my justification for getting rid of all the stuff. WE're still going to have a small storage space down there but the plan is to use it for pantry items and off-season clothes/sports equipment/tires. 

Erikan73

To have all debts & loans paid off within 5 years & to have our house paid off in about 16 years (we are only 3 years into a 30 year mortgage). Then in about 5-6 years, start buying homes to fix up & rent out.