Money Matters
als1982
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
June/July monthly check-in.
June
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
July
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. If you're married, how do you work together with your spouse to handle finances as a team?
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. Any fun 4th of July plans?
HeartlandHustle | Personal Finance and Betterment Blog
Re: June/July monthly check-in.
June
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
We wanted to get back on track with our student loan payoff after a month hiatus. We were surprised mid-month by H's mom, who gifted him with her 2011 Camry after buying a new car with a recent inheritance. We were then able to sell H's 2001 Corolla and put that toward the loan. In all, never as much as we wanted, but we were able to put about $2,500 extra toward the loan.
July
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Those pesky student loans! I sold 80 vacation hours and will receive that payout this month. H also has an annual review, which *fingers crossed* will include a bonus. All of that should go directly to student loans. Our balance is now around $13,500 and by the end of the month, we'd like it to be under $10K.
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
Short term is the student loan, middle is doubling our mortgage payment and having no mortgage by 2020 or a sizeable down payment on a new to us house, long term is keep maxing out all our retirement accounts in order to retire as early as possible!
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. If you're married, how do you work together with your spouse to handle finances as a team?
We do everything together. Our budget (we budget by the paycheck, so 3-4 mini budgets a month), paying the bills, deciding on which stocks or funds to buy, etc. we do it all together and we make it fun. We go on a 3 mile walk together most days during which we talk, then on the weekends, we grab a nice coffee and sit down in front of the computer to update the budget and pay bills. We do also have "mad money" accounts and get $300 a month to spend without question. Mine goes mostly to clothes, sushi and happy hours with friends. And H's goes to sports tickets and beer.
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. Any fun 4th of July plans?
We're headed to Boston next Wednesday through Sunday, so I'm actually going to work on Monday (we work on a PTO system, so we have to use our vacation days for holidays). Boston is one of our favorite US cities, so I'm really excited to take my mom there. We're going to hit up a baseball game, walk the freedom trail and explore the incredible cemeteries throughout town, and eat all the seafood! We're staying at the Intercontinental by the aquarium if anyone has any suggestions for things to see, do or eat nearby!
June
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
July
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. If you're married, how do you work together with your spouse to handle finances as a team?
--General discussions and joint decisions. We have a joint emergency savings account and just opened our first joint checking account about 3 weeks ago (though we do not contribute to it yet). We have been together for 13 years, married for 3 years, and though we haven't had joint accounts our finances are considered joint. In general, we prioritize savings, retirement and debt payoff (student loans, car loan, mortgage) together. We do not make purchases larger than $100 without consulting each other, it just a habit now.
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. Any fun 4th of July plans?
4th of July is two days before my 28th birthday (yay!) and we are currently on our East Coast trip. We will be spending 4th of July in Philadelphia, so we are excited to see the local celebrations.
June
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
Save $1,000 (retirement and 529 plans are automatic), start gutting the upstairs bathroom. Yes- savings is auto withdrawl, the bathroom is gutted (thank you DH!) and we're cash flowing the expenses so far.
July
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Get the plumbing work complete (we have 1 estimate and another company is coming on Tuesday), keep the bathroom reno on track (time-wise), and save $1,000.
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
Short: cash flow the bathroom, get estimates for the exterior with work probably done in fall/winter, possibly get a HELOC/cash out refi to pay for that, fully fund roths for 2016.
Middle and Long: 401k/403b contributions, Roth IRA each year, girls' 529 plans, keep adding to vacation fund.
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. If you're married, how do you work together with your spouse to handle finances as a team?
We're open and honest each other, go over big purchases, figure out what we want to do now/what we want for the future and for the girls. Now that we have only 1 checking account, we keep saying "we're officially married". We'll be married 10 years this summer, have 2 kids, and a house... but the 1 checking account has made it official..
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. Any fun 4th of July plans? We go to DH's aunt and uncle's house for a party every year. Then get the girls to bed, DH's parents come over, and we go see fireworks. There's no way they could stay up that late and we enjoy the time just for the 2 of us.
June
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
No major goals, just stay the course with being frugal but loosening that up a bit and working on the new budget based on H's new job. We did pretty well going to a lot of free activities but had some big expenses with medical bills and some other things coming up.
July
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
We will work on retirement by maxing out H's 401K now that he is eligible for it. Something like 57% of his check is going to 401K so we will have to work out a new budget around what he is able to bring home.
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
We need to do a new budget this month, continue to build up retirement and savings and establish some of our short term goals like vacations.
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. If you're married, how do you work together with your spouse to handle finances as a team?
I put the plan in place and then nag H to talk about it with me at least once a month. He is coming around and now needs less nagging and appreciates the goals we have decided on together, especially early retirement. We have friends that are older than us and not in position to retire for several years and we have motivation to be close to retirement when we are their ages.
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. Any fun 4th of July plans?
We had a fun weekend seeing family and friends in H's hometown. We got back to our house on the 4th and saw some fireworks from our house where we had a partial view of about 6 different fireworks shows.
June
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
-Continue to pay down the balance on my car. I made two extra payments last month and plan to do the same this month. We also did a lot better at tracking and staying on budget in YNAB.
July
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
- Stick to the budget by consistently tracking, eating out less, etc. Otherwise, continue to pay off my car so I can focus more on our retirement and vacation goals.
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
-Short at this point since we're three months away is pay off my car. I purchased it in November and have been working hard to pay it off. My initial estimated pay off date was first in December but I've managed to accelerate my payments enough to move it to September.
- Middle - Save money for our 2017 trip to Norway. We have an annual vacation budget but we think this trip is going to exceed it so after paying off my car I need to focus on stashing away some extra money for the trip.
- Long - Max out my Roth IRA. Open a Roth IRA for H and also max his out for 2016.
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. If you're married, how do you work together with your spouse to handle finances as a team?
We use a budget app called YNAB so we can see in real-time what our expenses have been that day/that month and can stay on budget. We sit down together every month to review the budget and make sure we've tracked everything. Otherwise we just talk pretty frequently about savings goals, major expenses we want to make, stuff like that.
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. Any fun 4th of July plans?
- Yesterday I ran the Peachtree Road Race. It's a 10k that takes place in downtown Atlanta...I think this was my 6th time running it. I didn't train at all before the face so I only managed to run just over half and walk the rest of it (the uphill parts). Afterwards H and I had a bbq with my family and we watched some fireworks at a neighbor's house.
June
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
Just the usual amount into retirement, costs with opening up the pool, etc. It was just a cash flow month.
July
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
- Cash flow vacation
- Stretch the grocery budget enough to accommodate 2 weekends of having people staying with us.
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
- Cash flowing a lot of stuff this summer
- September we'll start putting aside for a winter vacation (need to figure out what we're doing)
- Likely going to start banking money for fertility treatments.
Mid-Term:
- Staying out of debt. So putting aside for a couple of house projects, replacing H's car in the next 18-24 months in cash, hopefully getting pregnant and cash flowing the treatments to do so, and setting ourselves up financially so I can stay home.
- Put aside money to update our kitchen.
Long Term:
- Continue our 15% toward retirement. We're on track to put in 18% this year. My commissions and bonuses should be substantially more than previous years, so those are going straight into retirement for now.
We are also looking into putting some money into a rental property or 2. Mostly so that we can have a bit of income from those if/when I stay home. We looked at 1 property last week and are looking at another this week.
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. If you're married, how do you work together with your spouse to handle finances as a team?
Oh man, we work together a ton. We live Dave Ramsey's principals. Like, drank the juice and are 100% living it. So that really helps us to team together with finances and so many other things in our lives.
We discuss our goals and dreams about everything but especially financials. We have an ongoing list on our fridge of things we want to do/buy and we work monthly toward achieving the next thing on the list. We also sit down twice a month to go over our budget. Once at the end of the month to see what we spent where and to plan the next months' budget, and once mid-month to see where we stand with that months budget and whether or not things need to be adjusted.
We seriously discuss money at least weekly, if not multiple times a week. It's a big deal in our house and we are very open about it.
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. Any fun 4th of July plans?
We just went to the fireworks. It was DD's first time going and she absolutely loved them. It was very humbling to us after losing the pregnancy last week. We both cried while she kept pointing at the fireworks and saying "pretty." My H commented that he's grateful we're able to have this memory with our child since just 2 years ago we weren't sure if we'd ever get to experience things like this with kids.
TTC since 1/13 DX:PCOS 5/13 (long, anovulatory cycles)
Clomid 50mg 9/13 = BFP! EDD 6/7/14 M/C 5w6d Found 11/4/13
1/14 PCOS / Gluten Free Diet to hopefully regulate my system.
Chemical Pregnancy 03/14
Surprise BFP 6/14, Beta #1: 126 Beta #2: 340 Stick baby, stick! EDD 2/17/15
Riley Elaine born 2/16/15
TTC 2.0 6/15
Chemical Pregnancy 9/15
Chemical Pregnancy 6/16
BFP 9/16 EDD 6/3/17
Beta #1: 145 Beta #2: 376 Beta #3: 2,225 Beta #4: 4,548
www.5yearstonever.blogspot.com
TTC since 1/13 DX:PCOS 5/13 (long, anovulatory cycles)
Clomid 50mg 9/13 = BFP! EDD 6/7/14 M/C 5w6d Found 11/4/13
1/14 PCOS / Gluten Free Diet to hopefully regulate my system.
Chemical Pregnancy 03/14
Surprise BFP 6/14, Beta #1: 126 Beta #2: 340 Stick baby, stick! EDD 2/17/15
Riley Elaine born 2/16/15
TTC 2.0 6/15
Chemical Pregnancy 9/15
Chemical Pregnancy 6/16
BFP 9/16 EDD 6/3/17
Beta #1: 145 Beta #2: 376 Beta #3: 2,225 Beta #4: 4,548
www.5yearstonever.blogspot.com
June
1. What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
I kind of fell off the budget and goals for the month of June. I was able to keep enough in savings to cover any costs due to a change in job and unsure of what my paychecks would be. On the bright side, DH has FINALLY gotten on board with debt payoff and Dave Ramsey stuff. It only took him 2.5 years. I'm thrilled!
July
1. What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
I want to continue paying off my last credit card. The balance is just under $1900. I also want to stop using it. I didn't use it for the longest time then for some reason started using it recently. It is being cut up today.
Status of Ongoing Goals
1. What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
Short term: Payoff my last credit card, should be complete by the end of the year if not sooner. I would also like to get my 3 smallest student loans paid off by December.
Middle: Continue paying down my student loans. Discuss our family plans for the future. Start saving up for a down payment.
Long Term: Save for retirement, pay off student loans, purchase a house.
GTKY Bonus: MM Lurker Advice
1. If you're married, how do you work together with your spouse to handle finances as a team?
It has been difficult. We keep our money separate because DH hasn't been onboard with debt payoff until a few weeks ago. Most of the debt is mine due to my student loans. We have talked about getting a joint account for the mutual expenses such as rent, daycare, utilities, and food. We have also been discussing our spending habits more with each other.
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
1. Any fun 4th of July plans?
We went to a BBQ at my in-laws but were home before dark. It was good and mellow.