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AUGUST 2016
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SPENDING: $1,700
- * Bike $790
* Food: $300
* Gas: $210
* Van Insurance: $134
* Dating: $80
* Entertainment/Hobbies: $80
* Miscellaneous: $80
My road bike wasn’t working well on roads with washboard bumps and deep/soft gravel. I was checking Craigslist for the cities I would be going to and found a good cyclocross bike in Spokane. It works way better for non paved roads, grass, singletrack, etc.
Spending Vs. Possible income:
INVESTING
I moved my 401k money into a Traditional IRA. Here’s the asset allocation I decided on for the money:
Here is the forward dividend income, after getting most of the 401k rollover money invested. I lowered my theoretical income because with these new purchases, I’m not getting as much yield as before. That was sort of an assumption error from before. The stock prices were going up a lot and I was still using the same theoretical yield.
The last thing to do is to get my pension money in there and invested too. That will get me another $1,500 per year bump, bringing my dividend income to about $16,000 per year. The main purchase left is the REIT fund, and maybe prices will drop and I’ll get a bit more yield.
Don’t ask me many questions about my asset allocation choice
. I don’t have good reasons for what I chose. I expect to get $6,400+ dividends per year in the traditional IRA. I’ll probably be converting about $9,800 to my Roth IRA each year. So I just need another $3,400 per year, which I expect I’ll get by selling whichever of the funds went up over the last year, or if they go down, by using the cash (S.T. bonds) portion. If the stocks and gold just keep going down and down, I have enough cash in there to last for 12 years. So I should be able to avoid selling at stupid times. The question is – will I decide to invest the rest of the cash after drops?
TRAVELS
Still going wonderfully.
-- Went west through northern Washington
-- Hung out in Seattle a couple weeks (half of that with an old friend and half in the city itself). Seattle is cool. I could spend a whole summer in the city. I like it because the water blocks off the city edges so there isn’t sprawl or much reason to leave the city once you’re in it. Real estate is too expensive. One woman I went out with had a TWO MILLION dollar house, with huge property taxes.
-- Went camping and hiking in Olympic National Forest
-- Came down to Portland (Also visiting old friends and bumming around the city)
These are not in chronological order.
FREE CAMPSITE! Spent 4 days here
(this was in northern Wyoming)
FREE MOVIE!
FREE BEACH! I spent three afternoons here.
What’s next? I’ll be in this area in September and into October. I’m expecting to go down through that string of national forests in the right side of the ellipse.