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.
November/December monthly check-in
November
What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
December
What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Status of Ongoing Goals
What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
How do you, your spouse and families handle holiday gifts? Do you buy lots of little things for every aunt, uncle and cousin, do a while elephant exchange, or buy big ticket items for your nearest and dearest?
HeartlandHustle | Personal Finance and Betterment Blog
Re: November/December monthly check-in
November
What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
Stick to the budget. Lol. We did not do well last month AT ALL in multiple categories. Hopefully things will start to improve now that we've finally finished all of our projects and done nearly all of the Christmas shopping.
December
What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Stick to the budget, track our expenses in YNAB like we're supposed to.
Status of Ongoing Goals
What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
Short - Finishing funding my Roth IRA for 2016, fund one for H for 2016. Middle - Fund a ROTH IRA for myself and H earlier in 2017. Long - Fund a secondary e-fund for 6 months of expenses.
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
How do you, your spouse and families handle holiday gifts? Do you buy lots of little things for every aunt, uncle and cousin, do a while elephant exchange, or buy big ticket items for your nearest and dearest?
Our family is spread all over the country so we don't do aunt/uncle/cousin/grandparent gifts. For the last few years we've done gifts for our siblings, parents, and the kids but as we get more nieces and nephews we may cut that down to a token gift and only do gifts for our parents and nieces and nephews. It's starting to get to be too much to buy a gift for 10 adults plus 3 kids.
November
What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
Save $1,000, keep working on the bathroom. Both were accomplished. Splurged on a 4 day getaway to NYC with DH in the summer- it's all paid for with our vacation fund ($2,000 including Hamilton tickets!).
December
What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Last payment on sewing machine (had 12 months at 0%), finish bathroom, add $1,000 to vacation fund, go to bank to get $250/month added to mortgage principal. I can find a way to do it online but I want to make sure it's actually applied to the principal.
Status of Ongoing Goals
What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
Short- add $6,000 total to our Roth IRA accounts be the end of December. Finish bathroom, sign outside renovation contract. Look at HELOC/cash out refinance once bathroom is complete. Get everything ready for outside work to start in July. DD#2's last day care payment is June 2017 ($1067/month average).
Middle- Pay off mortgage (includes HELOC or new one if that's what we decide on) and cars by 40th birthday (have a little over 4.5 years). Cars are only 48 month loans, so they will be paid off in 2019 and 2020. Continue to save for vacations (Disney February 2018.. already promised the girls!), 529 plans, Roth IRA accounts, continue to increase my 401k/DH's 403b 1% per year.
Long- keep saving for retirement, still try to leave current career after 20 years of service (in about 7 years).. find something new to do.
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
How do you, your spouse and families handle holiday gifts? Do you buy lots of little things for every aunt, uncle and cousin, do a while elephant exchange, or buy big ticket items for your nearest and dearest?
DH and I just get each other small things we don't normally buy. For me, it's fabric bundles, expensive thread, needles.. for DH, it's books and music. For the girls, we usually get them 4-5 things and I make them something- this year they got a kid kindle, art supplies, a few small things (water bottle, the cutest pair of pink winter boots for their dolls, shopkins surprise pack, cross stitch kit, shrinky dinks), and 18" pillows that match their quilts I made them last year. I hand embroidered their names on them too and they're already done!
We have 4 nieces- I am sending down 4 handmade 18" pillows and shipping pillow inserts right to their house from Amazon. DH's parents will get a gift card to a place for dinner, shutterfly calendar with pics of the girls on it. My parents will probably get the same thing. Everyone else is getting a note that a donation has been made in their honor to a charity that we value- for us, ACLU, PP, The Trevor Project, City Mission, City Animal Shelter, WNED/WBFO, NPR.
November
My main goal for November was to finish or come close to finishing the reno on my newest duplex. I call that accomplished. We aren't quite done, but should be by mid-next week and will start showings.
My other big goal was to figure out a solution for my job ending soon. With my real estate investing, I've gotten a strong taste of independence and I'm having a hard time reconciling spending a lot of time and effort...just to get another job like the one I have now. I'm strongly leaning toward becoming a real estate agent and have an interview with an agency tomorrow. I'm hoping to better figure out which way to turn at my fork in the road, after I talk to them tomorrow.
December
-Finish that reno
-Get tenants
-Start my cash-out refi. I found a few non-bank options that only look at the "deal" and my credit score. They don't care if I have a W-2 income or not.
-Get a new job or start the licensing process for my real estate license.
Ongoing goals
Short-term, I've taken some steps back
. The reno has caused me to go back into credit card debt, whereas I used to pay them in full. But, after my refi, I will pay them all off again. It just bums me out in the meantime.
Medium - Get one more investment property, probably mid-year. I don't know what next year will bring, so I can't plan too much right now.
Long - At least $5K/month in cash flow from my rentals (not including my personal duplex) so I can live independent from a job, if I choose to.
GTKY
My H and I don't do much for gifts. It's not nearly the budget crusher that it is for a lot of people. I spend around $30 each for my niece and nephew. Around another $70 total for my mom/stepdad and grandma. No other adult family members exchange gifts.
My H and I only exchange a few small things. But we're more the type of people to get each other surprise gifts throughout the year, whenever we come across something the other person would like. Rather than "hang on" to it until Christmas.
November
What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
Our were keeping the Amsterdam trip in check. We accomplished it.
December
What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Hit bonus (did that yesterday), then end 2016 with several new "funds" funded and a plan for 2017.
Status of Ongoing Goals
What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
Short - going to start to saving for a master bath remodel through 2017, hopefully for 2018 reno
Middle - I am 3 years away from being up for partner. That will do some crazy stuff to our cash flow because income tends to be seriously back-loaded during the year, but I will have to start paying taxes quarterly. So we need to start thinking about how we will manage that. It's a good problem to have, don't get me wrong. We will probably open a HELOC as a back-stop, but work to build a savings account over the next three years to help us even out our cash flow when the time comes.
Long-term - After looking at some numbers we have finally set the goal of $1M in non-real-estate assets by 40 and financial independence by 50. I don't think either of us would fully retire at that point, but it would be nice not to have to work.
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
How do you, your spouse and families handle holiday gifts? Do you buy lots of little things for every aunt, uncle and cousin, do a while elephant exchange, or buy big ticket items for your nearest and dearest?
We buy for immediate family and several close friends. Those gifts tend to be in the $25 range for friends and $100 range for family. We don't really buy for each other, but we each get to take a small percentage of our bonus and buy something frivolous with it.
November
What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
We were going to have some electrical work done to the house, but decided to wait until next year sometime. We did save money to our e-fund and vacation account though
December
What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Just keep saving!
Status of Ongoing Goals
What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
Short- Keep saving to pay off vacation, and bring our e-fund back up to par. Also, keep adding to our Roth accounts
Middle- We have started planning all our house projects for next year so hope we can get a lot of them done
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
How do you, your spouse and families handle holiday gifts? Do you buy lots of little things for every aunt, uncle and cousin, do a while elephant exchange, or buy big ticket items for your nearest and dearest?
We only buy a $50 joint gift for our parents and that's it. If we need to gift a party host we will do that as well. Sometimes H and I do gifts but usually not. I did find him some neat sports coasters for his cave but I'll see if I can find some other small things this year. I do miss having things to open on Christmas day but we pretty much buy what we want when we want it
November
What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
I think to stick to our new savings plan, which we have done, and stop using credit cards for day to day spending, which we have also done. I'm loving going debit-only. I always feel like I have more money somehow.
December
What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Stay on budget for the holidays, which is off to rough start, and stick with the savings plan.
Status of Ongoing Goals
What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
Short-Save enough to cover medical bills OOP. This should be complete if I'm reading my insurance policy correctly, but we'll keep padding the account.
Middle-Refinance to get rid of PMI and perhaps do some renovations. This will wait until spring.
Long-Full six month e-fund
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
How do you, your spouse and families handle holiday gifts? Do you buy lots of little things for every aunt, uncle and cousin, do a while elephant exchange, or buy big ticket items for your nearest and dearest?
We just switched to a yankee swap with a $10 limit for the extended family and it's so much fun! H and I usually get each other gifts in the $50-$100 range, and we do each other's stockings with little food-related or practical items. For my parents we need to spend a little bit because they tend to spend a lot on us, but this should be the last year of that. For H's parents mutual gifts are exchanged in the $50 range. We have no siblings, so that's easy.
November
What were your financial goals for the month and were you able to accomplish them?
Our goal was to build savings. No, we didn't accomplish it. Our other goal is to max out 401Ks for retirement and we have been doing that but it is leaving less for savings.
The November totals are affected by the October credit card statement and that was a little high because of a vet bill. The good news is that spending was low for November so the credit card bill we pay in December is going to be much better.
December
What are your financial goals for the month and how will you accomplish them?
Max out 401K--we will do this since we did some accurate calculations of what H needed to contribute when he started his new job.
Build savings - I think we will be able to accomplish this in December with my extra pay and keeping spending in check.
Status of Ongoing Goals
What are your short, middle and/or long term goals, and what are you doing to accomplish them?
Retirement and savings are our main goals. We will work on the 2017 budget and goals in January when we have a feel for what H's paychecks will look like with a more normal distribution going to 401K instead of the current over half of his paycheck.
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
How do you, your spouse and families handle holiday gifts? Do you buy lots of little things for every aunt, uncle and cousin, do a while elephant exchange, or buy big ticket items for your nearest and dearest?
H's family gets together on Christmas and that consists of FIL, MIL, BIL. We exchange with all of them. We only see them every other year.
My family we only see every other year and it consists of my parents, brother and wife with 3 little kids, and aunt. We buy gifts for the kids and/or send cash but no exchanging with the adults (but my parents usually give us cash anyway). I used to exchange with the adults but a few years back (pre-H) I quit. I believe my aunt is in the process of quitting with adults too because she said she was but since I wasn't there last year I'm not sure if she did or not.
November
Our goal was to hold savings steady and try to cut back on eating out. Our regular savings has been cruising along no problems even with my paychecks shrinking due to my new Roth 401(k) contributions so I'm pleased there. We did cut back on meals out, but I still think we can do better.
December
Avoid a major holiday hangover! And to continue being more mindful of our wasteful spending. The food has been getting trickier as I never know what's going to make me want to throw up so we sometimes order in because I can't stand the sight of anything in the fridge. Damn you first trimester!
Status of Ongoing Goals
Our goals have all sort of been reshifted to make it possible for an extended maternity leave should I decide I can't go back to work after 3 months. Right now we are on track to be able to afford at least year off for me, but that would put some of the house project goals on hold even longer. January we're going to try living on just my husband's paychecks to see how realistic it would be (and pad the savings account) and if it makes us totally miserable.
GTKY Bonus: Seasonal
My husband goes way overboard while I spend most of the season telling him I don't want presents. And then he buys me so much stuff I forget half of it within 10 minutes and gets offended that I can't remember one pair of earrings in a pile of 40 items. He also buys all the stuff he wants for himself on sale and then is upset I didn't buy him as many gifts as he bought me because I had nothing left to buy him! It's an ongoing battle and I freaking hate it. Celebrating Christmas and Hannukah only makes it worse. I'm trying to get all of the family to scale back big time and so far it isn't working. So I look like the brat that doesn't want presents and has no holiday spirit, when really I'd rather spend our time decorating and cooking big meals and just spending the season together. I have been doing the same yankee swap with a set of girls since high school so that's always a lot of fun at least!
I would much rather skip gifts most years and then every few years get one really big thing I want (like diamond earrings, a designer purse, etc).