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.
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.
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.
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)