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Archive for January, 2015

Our wills

January 15th, 2015 at 07:05 pm

Okay we have life insurance, disability insurance, and have somewhat ironed out what we want to do with our kids. BUT we are again stuck.

We've never written a will. Go ahead smack me hard across the head. We have two kids soon to be 5 and 2 and nothing down. I deserve a hard smack right now.

But I can only justify in saying that we've struggled to find the right guardian and settled on my mom finally. Mostly because while she is older now than before, we are in a better place financially to allow her to hire/outsource whatever help she needs with the kids. Before I was worried about my parents finances and affording my kids. Now we are set to pay for everything 100% and my mom has organized better her finances as well.

But now again we're stuck with naming a trustee or executor. We had orginally named my DH's best friend. My mom is terrible with money, my in-laws are too cheap, and my BIL is awful too. So the guy who has been like a godfather to my oldest was who we trusted. But in the past year he's gotten married, pregnant, and bought a house and made a lot of bad financial decisions.

So we've pulled back from naming him executor/trustee. And once again we're stuck. What are we going to do? Our insecurities are making delaying us from making the right decision and we need to do something. I can honestly admit that my goal for the year is to have a will/trust done and set up for my kids.

Advice SA?

2014 a review and 2015 Ideas

January 15th, 2015 at 06:31 pm

I probably should write goals but what I think we need to do are not really goals but ideas I'd like to see through. It's been a very interesting 9 years living where we live. Like Monkey Mama we've changed a lot. How much?

Net Worth
12/31/2005 $131,762.00
1/1/2014 $878,472.00
1/1/2015 $1,073,474.80

So in the 9 years we've lived where we are we increased our net worth 8 fold. This past year has been particularly good to us as we increased our net worth by 22% or $195k. It was a combination of decreasing our debt by $30k and I valued our house $50k more. We wiped clean the last of our student loans, we had around $8k hanging around at 2%, and $8k 0% CC debt. We also paid off one of our cars and the second car will be done in July.

Account 1/1/2014 1/1/2015
LAL IRA $62,327.00 $77,254.24
DH IRA $132,924.00 $148,527.37
DH 401k $244,399.00 $287,059.53

Fid Tax 1 $86,847.00 $85,389.30
Online Check $1,000.00 $8,642.11
Online Savings $42,510.00 $55,542.43
Fid Tax 2 $54,000.00 $50,959.49
SB 1 $10,788.00 $34,493.33
College 1 $11,239.00 $12,251.00
College 2 $6,369.00 $6,831.00
House $650,000.00 $700,000.00
Subtotal Assets $1,302,403.00 $1,466,949.80

Debts
Car 1 $7,900.00 $3,045.00
Car 2 $3,900.00 $0.00
Sallie Mae $8,000.00 $0.00
CC #1 0% $4,000.00 $1,867.00
CC#2 0% $4,000.00 $0.00
Mortgage $396,131.00 $388,563.00
Subtotal Debts $423,931.00 $393,475.00

Net Worth $878,472.00 $1,073,474.80

So we got close to my last year "goals" of increase NW by $200k, break $1M net worth, and break $500k retirement. But where does that put us?

Well my DH just came back from a job interview out on the west coast. We'll hear back in a month but they contacted him and said he hadn't filled out a formal application just resume and cover letter. So he's guessing they are going to do the background check, credit check, etc and are interested. He also has a second interview to be scheduled on the west coast.

We are still wavering on whether to move this year without a job or wait until 2016. If we wait until summer 2016 we'll have 18 more months of job hunting and potentially a lot more money saved.

As it stands we have I would guess about 1 year in cash living expenses at our current budget and no income. After the sale of the house we stand at closer to 8 years without income, not touching our retirement.

I guess our goal is to continue saving and break $200k net worth increase this year and see if we can't make a big push in saving cash since we don't have to pay down $30k in debt.

I'll write more as the story about jobs unfolds.