cmonkey's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
jacob
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by jacob »

@FBeyer - The worms get everything while it's available. Due to the population expansion, I've had to add another floor to the bin. It's made out of 2x4s and 2x6s, squares which are IIRC two feet on each side. They usually overwinter in my basement in a big plastic container (rubbermaid). This winter I handpicked them out and restarted them in the rubbermaid on a bed of wet newspaper and toilet rolls (the cardboard center)---similar to my original worm farm described in the blog post I once wrote. This was a good move. Before I'd just dump the contents of the compost, worms and all, into the winter container which did not work as well. Another thing I did was to dump some of them in the garden beds under a bunch of leaves I collected (held them down with sticks and withered plants). They survived that under a foot of snow and ate the leaves.

cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Sun May 13, 2018 9:04 am
Well, there are no more exemptions under the new tax code, right? I wonder if IL will take that as an opportunity to wring more taxes out of you?

Good point, I have not seen whether IL will eliminate them too. Ugh.

I realized after I had thought about all of this that a couple needs 16K in income just to qualify for healthcare subsidies anyway. If we have a child or two it jumps to 20K and 24K. So I'll probably end up paying some tax despite my best efforts.

Fish
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by Fish »

cmonkey wrote:
Sat Mar 31, 2018 7:02 pm
So we have decided we are selling our house and moving closer to family. This means small-ish town Minnesota. Think 10k-15K population.

The only problem we need to figure out is how to do it and when to do it. But we aren't getting younger, and DW's folks are approaching 70 already. :?
Is there any chance you could live with family for a few months/years(?) to 1) build savings, 2) get familiar with the area, and 3) validate your desire to live there? Might be too close for comfort though :)

cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

Fish wrote:
Mon May 14, 2018 5:30 pm
Might be too close for comfort though :)
Definitely! ;) I also don't wanna seem like we "aren't making it" as dumb as that is.

George the original one
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by George the original one »

cmonkey wrote:
Mon May 14, 2018 3:19 pm
I realized after I had thought about all of this that a couple needs 16K in income just to qualify for healthcare subsidies anyway.
Isn't that supposed to be 24k for a married couple?

cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

George the original one wrote:
Mon May 14, 2018 9:01 pm
cmonkey wrote:
Mon May 14, 2018 3:19 pm
I realized after I had thought about all of this that a couple needs 16K in income just to qualify for healthcare subsidies anyway.
Isn't that supposed to be 24k for a married couple?
I pulled those numbers from a quick search, and it looks like they are outdated. I guess it depends on your state. In Illinois it is 22K for a couple and 28K if I have a kid. Minnesota has their own marketplace, so I guess I'll have to look into it.

cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

May 2018 Update

May was a pretty good month, but it's been really hot and dry here. The back half of May got up into the 90's and was very humid and miserable. Despite this our gardens are doing well. I think I've got the least bit of 'bare soil' ever and we are finally eating from our dirt again.

Grocery expenses were way too high and I don't know why other than I might have rolled some from April into May because I bought them on the last day of the month.

TTM Expenses look much worse than they actually are because all of our 'high spend months' seem to be clustered together. We spent 200 more this May than last, but still only spent $950. It's hard to beat a really good month!

We are chugging right along though!! 49% of our TTM is covered by FAI.

FI Investments ended May at 203K and net worth sits at $365K. I feel like we are getting into "serious territory" now that market noise is +/- one month of expenses on a regular basis. I think the biggest swing has been about 7 months of expenses.


401K Fees!!!

I'm becoming very disgruntled with the fees being charged in my new 401K. The rate looks like it's about 1.5%, of which .04% is the fund fee. The rest is the "intermediary fee" because "they are managing it for me". :evil: :evil: :evil: To put this in perspective, my balance last month was about 7.8K and they charged $10 in fees! At my last employer, I paid $2 (yes TWO DOLLARS) per QUARTER on a 60K balance!

I've been watching the increase each month and if this keeps increasing at the same rate in about 4 years I will pay more in fees than I'm saving in tax breaks if I keep maxing out the 401K (I put about 22K annually in between my deposits and the match I get). I don't know what to do about it either because there is no "cash" option. I'm sure they'd charge for holding cash too. :evil: Good thing I can roll it over at that point!



Expenses/Savings

Total Spend - $948.24
Total Savings - $6,861.14 ; 88%

Years Saved - 13.35
SWR - 7.49%

TTM Expenses - $15,266.70 (+ $204.25)
Total FAI - $7,536.03 (+ $261.01)


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cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

June 2018 Update

June of 2017 was a tough month to beat but we managed to do it by $12 ! We had a very good month expense-wise, spending only $477.71 outside of our first property tax payment of the year. Grocery expenses were down a lot as we ate a lot from the garden.

We looked at one house in MN via virtual tour but it turned out to have a major water issue in the basement. They had gotten 4 inches of rain the night before and the whole basement had an inch of water in the basement. We were super bummed because the house was super cheap and really unique. DW claimed she could have lived in it even as we had to do some cosmetic work. It was well under my upper price limit ( the number I'm expecting to get for my current home ). It also had a large sunny yard. But neither of us want to deal with a wet basement. I fixed the wet basement in my current house, but this one had mold and stuff too.

Our FAI is over 50% of our TTM now and our investment income is creeping closer and closer to covering our expenses for at least one month. In fact, our income this month easily covered all of our non-property tax expenses. I did make a correction to our TTM from last month, it was a little higher than I had updated actually.

Starting in July I have the ability to shrink our TTM value as high months roll off from last month. DW has been warned that I am going extreme. :lol:

FI Funds are at 215K as of today and net worth is 374K. FAI covers 51.06% of TTM expenses. I love seeing the remaining amount of TTM smaller than my FAI!


Expenses/Savings

Total Spend - $1,028.47
Total Savings - $6,761.52 ; 87%

Years Saved - 13.88
SWR - 7.20%

TTM Expenses - $15,459.79 (- $12.63)
Total FAI - $7,894.12 (+ $358.09)


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George the original one
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by George the original one »

cmonkey wrote:
Fri Jun 29, 2018 9:54 am
We looked at one house in MN via virtual tour but it turned out to have a major water issue in the basement. They had gotten 4 inches of rain the night before and the whole basement had an inch of water in the basement.
Ah, you bring up my memories of house-hunting where one house had an open stream flowing through their basement/crawlspace. It even had a concrete channel for doing so. Came with an acre of swamp. Otherwise a nice house, LOL.

cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

George the original one wrote:
Fri Jun 29, 2018 10:11 am
Ah, you bring up my memories of house-hunting where one house had an open stream flowing through their basement/crawlspace. It even had a concrete channel for doing so. Came with an acre of swamp. Otherwise a nice house, LOL.
Hehe yea. A lot of places in that area get water in the basement and they either get a LOT or none at all. We are looking for a none at all.

We got super excited too....

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

I fixed the wet basement in my current house, but this one had mold and stuff too.
Did you put in drain tile and a sump pump yourself? How bad was it as a DIY project? Did it work?

cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

Gilberto de Piento wrote:
Fri Jun 29, 2018 12:11 pm
I fixed the wet basement in my current house, but this one had mold and stuff too.
Did you put in drain tile and a sump pump yourself? How bad was it as a DIY project? Did it work?
I put in both of those, yes. If you have an unfinished basement its not too bad. You need a jack hammer rental and need to dig a big hole for the sump. That's the hardest part because it needs to be 2-3 feet deep.

Our water would come down the wall and so doing a trench with drain tile around perimeter of the basement solved it. What get's more difficult is when water comes up from cracks in the floor, which appeared to be the case in this house.

cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

July 2018 Update

July was an excellent month, probably one of the best I've had in a while! The weather has been fantastic for 2 weeks. 75-80 F during the day and 60 F at night with NO humidity. It's been amazing. The first half of August is looking to disappoint, however. :cry:

Gardens!

The garden has had it's good spots and bad spots. We have had about 2 inches of rain over the last 4-6 weeks, so things are suffering/stagnating at this point. I hate watering, so I do it maybe once a week or two. Despite this a number of things have gone well. Our beet crop has been fantastic, the best I've ever known. Beans were good, we canned about 15-20 pints. Corn is coming along and we're starting to eat fresh tomatoes. Almost everything else has been a disappointment, however. Potatoes were tiny, the peppers are not setting fruit yet, carrots were VERY tiny and just didn't grow.

I really hate the climate here! Looking at historical records, it's been like this for at least 10+ years too. Just very dry/hot summers here in the Quad Cities. Northern Iowa/Southern Minnesota is a bit cooler and much wetter. You wouldn't think it would be much different, only being 300 miles apart, but it is.

I'm starting to disconnect from our gardens a bit. I've realized that I don't want to spend 6+ hours tending gardens anymore. Something like 1-2 hours a day is enough for me and so we have starting pondering ways to shrink our garden space (flower and veg). We've started moving things closer to the house. As it is, our veg beds are about 150 feet behind our house, so it's a slight chore to walk out to them. We are also discussing ways to close down our fruit beds and move them closer/remove them since when we move we want to take a lot of stuff with us and make the place more "consumer friendly". This will help with selling the house.


We didn't look at any houses in July, but I did inquire about a foreclosure. Apparently the previous owners had issues with the sewer system in the house and didn't have the funds to fix it. Our realtor couldn't tell us more than that, as they don't have any details on it. I'm not sure where I could find out either, maybe county records? If it's still for sale next summer and has come down more in price, I might start digging. The house is currently priced about 40% under value according to numerous sites. Even if it required 15K for a sewer repair it would be a decent investment.

Chickens!

I sold half of my hens. :cry: Just too many eggs and they were ultimately a money sink as we were basically giving the eggs away. So now I have 5 hens and the rooster left. A good level!

Craigslist!

I've been selling a lot shit on craigslist in preparation for moving down the road. So far I'm over $600 in cash. :twisted:


Money!

We had a good month financially. It was one of my highest months for capital gains as growth stock money started flowing into my value holdings. FI funds ended the month at just shy of 226K, up 12K since last month. Our expenses were at a good level, despite needing to buy a lot of our staples for the month. FAI topped 8K, WHOOO HOOO!

We topped 15 years of expenses, and SWR is now under 7%.

I funded about half of my HSA for the year this month which is why FAI growth was lower than average. FI funds also would have been nearly 230K without the HSA contribution.

Also, TTM expenses dropped off significantly because Jul 2017 rolled off and we underspent by a wide margin. August will be pretty close to last year so we might have a small drop off next month.


Expenses/Savings

Total Spend - $880.88
Total Savings - $6,909.11 ; 89%

Years Saved - 15.07
SWR - 6.64%

TTM Expenses - $14,973.92 (- $485.87)
Total FAI - $8,080.82 (+ $193.32)

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jennypenny
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by jennypenny »

I must have missed a post ... why do you want to move after doing so much work on the house you're in?

cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

jennypenny wrote:
Wed Aug 01, 2018 10:08 am
I must have missed a post ... why do you want to move after doing so much work on the house you're in?
See "Stuck in Limbo" section viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5803&start=660#p164077

I think it mostly comes down to us never really feeling like we were at home here, but tried to make the best of where we were in life.

cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

August 2018 Update

Just a boring financial update this month. Not much going on just the usual routine of reading, gardening, working and enjoying life. We are making great progress on our goals. FI Funds increased by just over 10K and sit just over 235K for month end.

FAI increased a little slower as I invested in lower yielding stocks.

Expenses/Savings


Remodel Spend - $168.51
Normal Spend - $1,204.48
Total Spend - $1,372.99
Total Savings - $6,416.99 ; 82%

Years Saved - 15.67
SWR - 6.38%

TTM Expenses - $15,010.83 (+ $36.91)
Total FAI - $8,231.66 (+ $168.23)


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cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

September 2018 Update


Things have changed a bit with regard to my work situation. The previous project has ended now (or rather my involvement with it) and I'm now a developer on a scrum team. I spent a week in Boston (last week) for 2 days of training and 2 days of planning for the next 10 weeks of dev work. They expect us to be in Boston every 10 weeks from here on out, but there are exceptions for personal situations you can't get out of. The next two events I won't be attending in person (more on that later). But next spring in April and then in June and Sept I will likely go out again unless something changes.

It was absolutely exhausting to say the least, but I think it was good for me to meet the team and get outside my comfort zone a bit. Boston is pretty awful as far as I'm concerned (way too many people, too much concrete, etc...) but now I've been there and can say I have. It made me appreciate my place in the midwest a lot more.

I am officially 12 months away from 4% which I regard as soft-FI. At that point I'll likely stop the traveling and let them respond how they will. They will likely not care at all*. If they have any problem with it, it's only about 10 months beyond 4% that I hit 3% so I'd likely be at like 3.5% WR by the time they notice and/or have an issue with it and I could just quit and likely be fine.

Our accounts have been doing very well over the past quarter. FI funds ended September at 246K, up 11K from last month. I still haven't had a month where my money worked harder than me, but the past 3 months have been creeping closer. We'll likely cross a quarter million in October. TTM expenses dropped a chunk as last September of 1800 in expenses rolled off. The next 3 months should see some more declines.

As I enter the final 12-18 months of this journey I need to decide what my end point is. I really think 3% is a good target, but I haven't totally decided yet. Sometimes I'd like to be done sooner, other times I want to stash away another half a point worth.

I'm also not sure if I like using my current TTM expense value or if I should use something else. Max TTM value? But max over how long? Maybe my average TTM over the past 4 years.


Expenses/Savings


Total Spend - $1,454.39
Total Savings - $6,337.46 ; 81%

Years Saved - 16.83
SWR - 5.94%

TTM Expenses - $14,616.45 (- $394.08)
Total FAI - $8,465.85 (+ $234.19)


* I've been given the OK to come once per year by the scrum master director, but that could always change.

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prognastat
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by prognastat »

Congrats on getting within 12 month of hitting 4%, it's right around the corner now. Definitely understand looking forward to that point and the relief to know that you'll be so close and that no matter what happens getting to 3% then won't be hard. Even worst case scenario and they do have a problem with you not going sooner than expected you can easily coast to 3% even if you end up in a slightly less lucrative position temporarily.

Quantummy
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by Quantummy »

Great posts cmonkey and very motivating - thanks! Couple of questions: 1) I did not notice a response to prior inquiry on healthcare costs if there are any beyond HSA - are there other monthly expenses or are health insurance premiums covered by employer? 2) How do you expect monthly expenses to change with child(ren), and what does that do to your forecasts?

cmonkey
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Re: cmonkey's journal

Post by cmonkey »

@prognastat, Thanks!
Quantummy wrote:
Sat Oct 06, 2018 11:01 am
Great posts cmonkey and very motivating - thanks! Couple of questions: 1) I did not notice a response to prior inquiry on healthcare costs if there are any beyond HSA - are there other monthly expenses or are health insurance premiums covered by employer? 2) How do you expect monthly expenses to change with child(ren), and what does that do to your forecasts?
Thanks Quantummy - My premiums used to be fully covered but we switched insurance in June to a much better plan. Now they pay over 80% of the premiums leaving me with about $170/mo. It's still an HSA plan and so I'm able to fully fund it this year and going forward. The deductible is individual based at about 2700 each so if one person is having a lot of bills, it starts paying for that person once they reach that amount regardless of the other folks on the plan and their status. Beyond that it's 100% covered.

For children, I don't expect a drastic change but there will be additional expenses, mostly for some additional food and the cost of clothing since they will outgrow everything quickly. DW and I are in alignment on garage sales and clearance racks on this though. Those expenses should be offset by the income tax cut and moving to MN which doesn't tax clothing. A couple of years of dividend growth and I'll be all set on this. It doesn't change anything with forecasting.

Remember - children themselves don't actually spend any money, it's the parent making the decision to spend money on them, justifying it as "well children are expensive" because "that's they way it is". No they aren't and I will prove it. ;)

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