It's been a great year. I'm doing it now a little late because as of September 1st we spent a whole year in our new life. It's been amazing for all of us. We got to get closer as a family with DH not working for 11 months. He pretty much did not get a paycheck for 12 months. But he was unemployed from August 15 2015 to July 25 2016.
We burned through $91.5k. Yes you read that right in 11 months. Granted $17k was tuition but still that $74.5k. We spent around $6700/month including our fees for renting our place which was $8k up front costs. So we spent around our normal $5500/month rate we had budgeted. Lucky for us a signing bonus helped bump our spending for the year up to $71.5k including the $17k tuition.
Was it worth it? Yes. We had a great time. I think perhaps our spending will force us to delay "retirement" by 1 year.
I forgot that from our $91.5k we direct $4k to college for kids, $11k to Roth IRA so I guess we "saved" $15k out of the $91.5k. Also we're maxing out Roth IRA and 401k this year on a compressed 5 month paychecks. So we're still on track to save for retirement even if we aren't saving our normal cash cushion.
But the real goals were met. Move and be able to be closer to family. Get job that DH loves. Buy a house. Check on first two and working on the third.
Sometimes in life as I'm reflecting on the past year you have to spend money to make money. You have to invest in yourself, maybe start a business, buy a rental property, go back to school and retrain to get to where you want to be. It's a HUGE risk and it can cost you a lot of money. But the rewards can be significant, not just financial but pay dividends in other ways.
I suspect our net worth might be able net zero with gains in our retirement accounts. But back to regular programming of saving now. I have to admit it was REALLY daunting spending all this cash without any income. To go from being a saver to a spender. This could be why my DH and I are not meant to be true early retirees, we are too nervous nellies and risk averse to pull the trigger. We're actually very close to being able to do it but would rather pad our accounts.
a year in financial review
October 8th, 2016 at 02:56 pm
October 8th, 2016 at 03:47 pm 1475941641
October 8th, 2016 at 05:35 pm 1475948103
October 8th, 2016 at 06:28 pm 1475951296
PS it is hard. I think we "need" according to calculators $1.5 and we're close. I think we'll likely be happier with $3M and even then I don't perceive us retiring with that much. It'll still be too risky. I am going to guess we'll be exponetially growing our savings now and the first part is a lot of cash savings. From here on out I'm expecting some gains to make up a good portion of our savings.
October 9th, 2016 at 01:11 am 1475975496
October 9th, 2016 at 04:38 pm 1476031096
October 9th, 2016 at 08:51 pm 1476046280
October 10th, 2016 at 12:49 am 1476060569