Money Matters
hoffse
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.
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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.
Monday Accountability Post
1) How MM was your weekend?
2) Any progress toward goals?
3) Do you watch the olympics? What is your favorite sport?
2) Any progress toward goals?
3) Do you watch the olympics? What is your favorite sport?
Re: Monday Accountability Post
2. Nothing this week.
3. Nope. And I don't care to watch any sports. But I do like to play softball.
2. Not this week.
3. I love watching the Olympics. Track is my favorite but I will watch any Olympic sport with nearly equal fascination.
1. Good! $18 Walmart, $13 Grocery store
2. $100 to our home depot CC, $300 to our long weekend in Sept. We put in our new toilet this weekend, and I ordered the last of our bedroom curtain panel's that were on sale and I had a coupon. It feels good to be back to saving!
3. I don't really watch them but I like gymnastics and swimming/diving
2) Any progress toward goals? Nothing new financial. We have all of the half wall tile up on the bathroom. Shower will be this weekend, then the floor. The built in linen cabinet is being built now and will be installed on Sept 2nd.
3) Do you watch the olympics? What is your favorite sport? Yeah we do- love to watch swimming.
Saturday was great - we went to the zoo as planned and I spent $36 on four adult tickets to take our best friends and our niece using discount passes from the library. We got to see the newborn baby goats!! They are the kind of friends that we alternate treating each other with the assumption that it will all wash out by the time we're dead and it's perfect for us. Saturday afternoon was the big shop for our annual family summer party and we spent about $450 on food and drinks (plus a few things for ourselves that we needed at Costco).
Sunday was the big party and we pulled it off without a hitch! It was a blast. Everyone is so excited that the younger generation has taken over the party planning and keeping the now far-flung family together. People have always given some cash to the person who organizes the party (even before we took over we'd always kick in cash to the cousin that used to do it) and last year we were given a little more than we actually spent but were told "oh don't worry about a few extra bucks you did all the work beyond just what you spent out of pocket!". Well this year family kept shoving cash into DH's pockets even though he said he had more than enough. We got home and counted it - $825! Plus a ton of leftovers that we couldn't pawn off on people so we'll use them for another party we are hosting next week. DH said he won't take any cash for the next party since they've basically pre-paid for it and I told him good luck with that - they won't let you refuse their money because it makes that old guys feel like they are helping.
2) Any progress toward goals?
The painters are here at my house as I type! It will be so nice to finally get rid of the gross sponge paint done by the previous owner. Otherwise the financial goals are just rolling along as they should be. The next big one will be in October when I am finally eligible for my 401k plan - we've been saving extra in our taxable accounts so that we didn't get too used to having an extra 15% in my paycheck this year that will eventually disappear again.
3) Do you watch the olympics? What is your favorite sport? I'm not really feeling it this year. Although I LOVE that they included a refugee team - I think that's badass.
1) How MM was your weekend?
Good! We hired a contractor for our siding and I talked him down in price by $1,000 to get him more in line with what we had planned to spend. Spent $140 at the grocery store, and another $100 at the hardware store so we can rebuild our front porch railing since it's all eaten up by carpenter bees.
2) Any progress toward goals? Not this week.
3) Do you watch the olympics? What is your favorite sport? I'm not watching this year. I really like swimming and gymnastics though.
2) Yes! We finally have a positive net worth!! The market did really well last week, so we got there a little earlier than expected. It might go negative again temporarily if the market dips this week, but that's OK - I finally saw it be positive, and it will be positive permanently in no time
3) I like watching the olympics, even though I don't enjoy watching most sports. I love gymnastics, swimming, and diving. I like watching track for the sprints and hurdles. I also love watching the equestrian events because I used to ride horses, and my trainer was a former olympian.
2. Not technically over the weekend, but when I got to work this morning I increased my 401(k) contribution 2%. 1% each for pre and post-tax. I always like that. And now when my incentive check come in from last quarter, it'll roll partly into retirement.
3. We don't watch them at all. I used to watch the Winter Olympics, but now we don't watch at all.
@Mustard76 do you have a regular and roth 401k? My firm gives both options (or a mix of the two) and I'd love to hear your reasons for splitting it! Right now I'm leaning towards just doing it as a roth 401k.
@LillibetteV, that is nuts!!! I couldn't even imagine. I'm so glad your H is okay. We had two serious road rage incidents in my city a few months ago. In the first one, a person ran someone off the road, off a bridge! Miraculously, the driver in the car actually survived. Then a few days later, a former Saints player was shot dead when he rear-ended someone and kept driving away.
1) This weekend was a big shopping/stocking up one for groceries. I went to Walmart on Friday, spent $134, and Costco on Saturday, spent $173. My H also bought a battery powered hedge trimmer on Friday for $150. So it was a spendy, but necessary purchases, weekend!
2) I paid my HELOC down $1500 and paid off a few credit cards (I pay them off every month, so not that exciting).
3) I don't watch the Olympics, though I'm sure being bombarded by commercials featuring some of the athletes, lol. The only sport I watch is football and preseason started this weekend.
It was pretty good. We didn't leave the house much so that always helps. $120 at Costco on Friday, which included a new lightweight waterproof jacket for me for this fall/winter, and a body pillow for H. $15 for premade ribs from the heat case, which were just OK, I probably wouldn't buy them again, which is how I feel about most premade foods (except that $5 rotisserie chicken haha). Rest was stuff like toilet paper, paper towels, and food items.
On Saturday, $88 at the grocery store, $25ish for lunch out with friends, and $42 at the liquor store (we were desperately low on beer and wine, not good when there's a new patio to be sat on). Sunday $0.
2) Any progress toward goals?
I transferred a little bit to my savings. It's a tight paycheck because I'm shifting what I'm paying when, and my next check is a "free" check, so I tried to get the entire month's worth of bills paid out of this check so I can use the "free" check for some savings, a few fun things, and to pay my new car tags.
3) Do you watch the olympics? What is your favorite sport?
YES, I am obsessed. I don't think I have a favorite, I like to watch pretty much anything but have a short attention span for the long stuff like bike road racing, or tennis match after tennis match. But yesterday, I had it on all day long. I had never seen handball before, I thought that was pretty fun to watch, it wasn't at all what I thought it was going to be, I was thinking it'd be like raquetball but with hands LOL Women's rugby sevens was fun too. I like watching the stuff you don't normally see, like fencing, shooting, archery and the equestrian stuff (although the dressage event yesterday was a little snooze-worthy, beautiful horses though). And yeah, we have a TV in our lobby here at work where I sit, so guess what's on?! More Olympics, I control the remote so that's what I say we are "watching" here too. The TV is behind me though so I mainly just listen and turn around occasionally.
So lucky! I once had a job that keep CNN on all day long. No choices. At first I thought that was pretty cool. I could keep up on major news events while working.
I soon found out what "water torture" it really was. The same stories over and over and over again all day long. Sometimes multiple days long.
When Pope John Paul II died and they were choosing a new one, for days on end all they primarily talked about was the color of the smoke. Hours of "The smoke is still grey," and "Wait?!?! Did the smoke just change color? We are trying to get a confirmation from the Vatican. Oop, nope. It's still gray." (banging my head against the desk).
Forgot to mention! I invented a new cocktail this weekend, lol.
I've been under a lot of stress and dubbed Sunday "Mimosa Day". Except on my Costco run Saturday, they only had gallons of OJ and none of the individual bottles. It's a smaller than normal Costco, but I still found that shocking and irritating. Figured I would scrounge with some Izze sodas I had at home (real juice and carbonated water).
I did buy pure Watermelon Juice, because I thought that sounded interesting. Sunday morning, I mixed my champagne with the watermelon juice. I actually didn't expect it to taste good, but it was awesome! I have named my concoction "Summer Morning."
Pretty good! $100 for groceries which included food for the weekend. We did a weekend trip with some fellow firefighters and their families.
2) Any progress toward goals?
Yes! First payment made since doing the refi on my car. We really weren't thinking about doing one but we happen to be at the bank and I hated where my current loan was through. I got a lower rate and shortened my loan by about 5 months.
Also if anyone remembers our property line drama from last summer... So we had tossed a number at the neighbor to make our fence the property line, if a survey proved that our fence was encroaching, and she said she would discuss with her husband. We never heard back from them but they had a high $ amount in mind - double what we had suggested (our offer was pretty generous). Fast forward. Our city has implemented a new blight ordinance this summer. A local police officer that H knows actually called him to see if he could stop at the station after work. H went. The officer asked if we had any problems with them. H had said no, that we just mind our own business. A few city officials have been complaining about the neighbors yard and someone filed a complaint stating that someone is living in a RV parked in their yard. The officer asked H if we thought anyone was living in it; we can't tell from our yard. The officer commented to H that he's been to their home a few times now regarding complaints about their yard, etc. Fast forward to this past week, I spoke with our realtor and he asked about the property line and I explained that we haven't really seen the neighbors around much (outside) but that the new ordinance must have them somewhat cleaning up their yard. The previous owner's son knows us and H ran into him this weekend. He said that his mom has been getting a ton of mail from the City; it was a land contract and somehow they still have the previous owners address attached to the property tax. The neighbors have barely paid on the taxes over the past two years and the home will be going up for auction this fall! They technically "lost the house" as of March 31st for not paying their 2013 taxes. H and I have casually talked about snagging the lot if/when the opportunity ever came up. The previous owners two sons actually want it so they are planning to bid on it. H asked him about the property line and he said his parents never mentioned there being a problem (they helped maintain the home/yard previously and knew about the fence, etc) and that they didn't think the fence was ever an issue. If they do acquire the property, they are more than willing to work with us to resolve any issue after a survey is done. H wants to attend the auction and commented that if the sons don't purchase it, he wants too.
3) Do you watch the olympics? What is your favorite sport?
Usually - yes. Haven't been able to catch much this year. I love gymnastics!
1. It was good! I spent some gas to go to the beach with a friend, but parking was free and he treated for lunch. I went to Kohl's but used a $50 gift card from Christmas. Sunday we went to the Pearl Jam concert at Fenway, and parked for free thanks to our willingness to walk 2 miles each way. Tickets were paid for long ago. We each used a little fun budget for a souvenir, H spent $10 on one beer (!) and I spent $9 on two bottles of water (!!). All within fun budget.
2. No progress will be made during August. The goal is just to not lose any ground and save $20 here and there by underspending our fun budgets. We got the bill for last year's insurance deductible from our insurance which was eaten up by a few "non-routine" aspects of my pregnancy early on which are fine now. (Turns out my year runs July-July. Odd, but advantageous in my case). Also, I am in a wedding on 8/20, and all the costs just really snuck up on me. The bride has been great and made everything optional, but I agreed to do pretty much everything (hair, makeup, co-host bachelorette, etc.) like six months ago before I really realized the implications. I'm also bringing my dress back for Round 2 of alterations. I have a weird hip size, and the salon talked me into ordering my hip size even though it's a flowy skirt and the top is much more important. Alterations dude #1 was, I think, too shy to alter it properly since I'm pregnant, and it's still falling off. That was just a vent, not really important.
3. I love the Olympics! The AppleTV app has been great this year. We had a random state holiday yesterday and I got to watch the equestrian cross-country phase all day and I was in total heaven. Other favorites are diving and women's gymnastics. Can't wait for tonight!
In fact, currently, I have the TV on behind me on NBC, it's men's beach volleyball. And then, on my phone, I'm streaming the equestrian event. I tried to stream from my kindle but apparently there's no app for that on Kindles.