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Archive for January, 2017

another one bites the dust

January 20th, 2017 at 09:33 pm

So I've been mostly using redfin to find a house. It's slow going, but it is really picking up. I met a realtor I like and she appears to really know the area I am interested in buying. She's been buying and selling since the 90s in the area and can easily name streets and values and locations. Even gave me an honest opinion about schools/location/value and how it affects home prices. We haven't meet yet and are meeting tomorrow in person.

She insisted on showing us 3 homes to see how we react. And she wanted to meet DH and I both. She's basically going to evaluate how we react.

Unfortunately a couple of red flags went up. Sigh. I am probably going to get a lot of hate from realtors from saying this but I have the emails between this realtor and myself proving it.

She suggested that we use her mortgage person because they will help us win in a bidding war situation. She is doubtful we'll be able to be picky because we are only putting down 25-30% cash and to be really competitive we need to be at 50% down or all cash. She said she usually waives the inspection and mortgage contingencies.

These things has already brought out the worse in my DH. I'm wavering. We might have to step back out of this market and rent for a number of years just because we can't afford to do these things. We discussed it last night and the truth is that my DH says we're being responsible by not letting go of things we think protect us. I think we need to hear her explanations of why she suggests these things to people and it's possible we won't work with her. Solely because we can't stomach the terms.

Right now I shudder at the thought of renting for another few years. I already miss having a dog and want another but we had made an agreement that we would wait until after we moved into out house so we wouldn't have to deal with our landlord and another pet deposit. Or finding another rental that takes dogs. And I don't really want to move the kids.

But what should we do? Just look and see if we can win something? Do it our way and hope we can buy and still stick to our terms? How much do we risk? These next six months is going to be stressful.

Spend everything you make

January 19th, 2017 at 04:59 pm

Okay people really do spend everything they make. You think they don't. Or at least I thought they didn't. Turns out people really do spend everything they make and then more.

I've now seen people making incredible salaries, still working, and drawing from a 401k. Paying 30% tax on their 401k withdrawal based on their income and somehow not saving. Being in their 60s and still have a mortgage with interest. I am floored.

It explains a lot about people talking about how will they retire? I mean I work in a tax office where one of the other tax people has admitted to it being too hard to save. So she gets a $8k tax refund to help them through the year make ends meet. She said it was too hard to save for college so they meant to but they never got around to it. Her kids have $8k saved at 16 and 14 and most of it was from her dad's initial contribution into a 529 of $2500. She said everything else just seemed more important.

Or another one said there's no way we'll retire before 65. My husband was hoping 60 but we have so many expenses. Apparently they have a couple of rentals that aren't really breaking even. I wanted to point out that perhaps they should cash in and buy rentals that actually produce income. But they see it as a long term investment of price appreciation. I'm not RE savvy enough but I can't help but wonder if this is a losing proposition? Sure you can write off depreciation and other stuff on rentals, but if you can't cover the mortgage with rent, I wonder if you shouldn't buy a different property?

These are supposedly financially savvy people and the clients who come in are in the top 2-3% of earners in the US. But they have very little savings. They spend it as soon as they make it.

I know we chose to live without income. But I have to wonder don't these people worry? Do they even have 3 months saved in an EF? From what I can the answer is no.

Life is busy

January 13th, 2017 at 07:15 pm

Since I started working part-time things have been crazy. I enjoy it. I love getting away from the kids. But the truth is that the money is good too. I haven't done anything with it but put into our account. But it's nice to be having adult interaction and identity away from the kids.

Next step realtor license. I want to work for redfin doing tours. All this is a long term plan after we buy the house.

a new part-time job

January 3rd, 2017 at 09:22 pm

I did it. I started doing taxes for HR Block part-time. I'm not sure if i'll do this long term. I think I'd like something year round. But this was a break into working again after not working since June 2010. It's minimum wage and I'd have to work next year in order to be able to get the minimum wage and then commission on number of returns done. Thus the high turnover rate of 1st year tax preparers. But with the continuing education prep I've at least made $250 and it's paid for the $149 course.

My next step? I am thinking of studying online to get a realtor license and hopefully landing a job as a redfin touring agent. I prefer doing that sort of realtor work than selling or buying homes.

Perhaps i'll end up doing what I trained for again one day. But for right now I'm liking this part-time gigs. The only problem is I'm trading babysitting since I'm working nights from 5-9 and DH has trouble getting home by 4:45 so a friend is watching the kids for an hour and I'm watching hers during the day. Phew.

2016 Wrap up and 2017 Goals

January 3rd, 2017 at 09:15 pm

So we ended 2016 pretty good. How good? Our NW went up $41k. We are still down from our peak NW $120k, I'm still happy where we are. Our retirement contributions were $29k plus $2552 employer match into the 401k and we ended the year up $73k so we doubled our investment. We maxed out our 401k in 4 months. With income and savings we only "spent" $30k in cash from January to August, we didn't get our first paycheck till August 12th.

Our average spending was $80k for the year. $6500k/month including $2400/month rent. Not terrible to live on $4000/month for a family of 4. It was front loaded that we had a lot more expenses without employer provided health insurance. So we spent more on essentials till August then we splurged a lot more on eating out and stuff since we suddenly had more money. NOT perfect but we were okay.

Anyway our 2017? Save $100k and increase NW $150k. Big stretch goals.