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Archive for September, 2014

the worries...

September 26th, 2014 at 02:03 pm

I like this blog better than my old one because I don't feel constrained to only talk about finance and money.

So I've been worried about my best friend, I don't say that lightly, my maid of honor and friend of 30 years is sick. She's so sick she hasn't been able to work. She is using Quest health insurance. So of course she put off going to the doctor. She has stomach pains and can't walk, eat, or anything. Yesterday she finally got an appointment with an GI specialist after over a month. They are going to do a endoscopy next week.

The real issue is that she was calling around everywhere and MOST doctors say they don't take quest. It's health insurance for the poor/welfare in Hawaii. Of course with the super low reimbursements many doctors won't see you. So without a job she's unable to go to the doctor but she's been in too much pain to work. I truly believe she is sick. She's never been someone to not work or complain. But now what??? I've always been a firm believer in single payer/socialized system. I married someone from a single payer system. Now more than ever I think the US needs a change. It's not working our system, we're failing to provide basic care for people.

Another interesting update, one which okay I'll admit the people involved are STUPID. My DH's best friend, best man/30 year friendship has gotten his wife pregnant. Sounds good? Nope. They live on two opposite coasts and have been married since the horrible wedding in May, and haven't decided where to live. They are 11 weeks pregnant and have no plans on where to live or even give birth. I suggested making a decision because at 38 years old she's a high risk pregnancy and finding an ob/gyn at 30 weeks pregnant (they were thinking she'd move to our city for birth then back to her city) would be a good idea. What happens if she goes on bed rest? Or can't fly? Actually at that far along she probably shouldn't be flying. The idiocy makes me wonder why they got pregnant? Truth is neither wants to move and compromise but they thought the baby would make one of them change their mind.

Life and it's crazy. I can't obviously say this in real life and my DH would be upset for me calling his BFF an idiot, but he is. FWIW he used to be the trustee/executor of our will. Now with all these idiotic decisions we're revisiting the issue.

It's been awhile

September 19th, 2014 at 01:55 pm

It's been awhile since I posted and I really need to write a bit more. Right now we are wrestling with whether to do a Roth 401k. It would mean we can save tax free but there is a 34% hit on savings. We'd have to save an extra $6k/year not a big deal, but I am more looking at the tax implications.

What if we withdraw it and it's lower? Should we have taken the tax break now? What if brackets go up? Obviously the tax brackets will get larger, but our deductions will go down as we age and the money will grow tax free. That means if we let it grow 15 years it'll double 2x by the rule of 7. So potentially we'll have another $750k saved or more. This is counting doubling of savings and assuming we are done working in 15 more years or by 50.

I'm leaning towards the Roth 401k for a couple of reasons. At most my DH has 2 years working for this company and where he moves to we may not have it offered. I don't know what the future hold but I suspect we might make more in the future since we are on one income.

Anyway though on a positive note our retirement accounts are at $515k so we reached our goal of the year to break $500k. Our taxable accounts have broken $220k and increased $25k/year and we've paid off $20k in debt. We paid off $4k car and $3k on the other (only $4800 left) we had the interest rate of 1.9% but decided we were tired of seeing the payments. We also paid off a CC we put my dental work on that was 0% $4k and still am paying on the lasik also at 0%. Both were on 24 months interest free but again I got tired of payments. Finally we paid off the last tiny bit of my super cheap 0.9% student loans $8k that I left hanging around.

Life is pretty good.