Education
Done with MPA this April. Also applied to a 30-credit MS in geosciences and a re-up to the fellowship that would pay for it and give me 15k. It’d be a good way to upgrade my geo undergrad and give me more options for working at state or national park, either as an admin or geologist (who speaks four languages lol).
Career
An AC friend roped me into building a startup with them, so I’m doing that. He got a few wealthy alums a to give him 100k for us to start something, so we’re starting something.
Another AC friend got me back into finance, except this time as a remote financial advisor selling insurance & mutual funds to middle class people, which is arguably much easier than high net worth financial advising (where they expect you to be perfect all the time). I do end up giving financial advise to friends, colleagues, and family anyway, so what the hell. The biggest selling point here is that it lets me use multiple rare skill sets remotely. I think theanimal is doing this too, so there’s that.
I need to ramp up my applying for state and national park roles in UT and CO part of the plan, but I also need to finish my 6 classes and screw around with the gf.
Romance
Things with thin Blondie gf are going well. Lots of (consensual) fun rope stuff. :p Also still practicing day game since we’re still open and it’s an entertaining hobby. Bars and clubs suck, grocery stores, cafés, and other public venues is where it’s at. Still, I’m only going up to the pretty ones that look for a while and maybe even smile.
Parents
I convinced one of my parents to trade in their leased SUV for a used reliable brand and model car. Now I just need to find such a car on CL and finish watching how-to-buy-a-used-car videos on CL. This parent is super on board the finance train.
My other parent bought a 30k new van and doesn’t want to change it for a used reliable van ever, so that sucks. This parent is passive aside from this massive chunk of $.
Parents still have 160k in the mortgage and a 50k annual income, so I feel like they should be able to pay this shit off in a few years. One parent is trying super hard to finish learning English and study some practical 2 year program that leads to a better income/quality of life. The other is pretty much done with work/trying and wants to do their current job until they can draw SS in a few years.
They both paid 6k together in federal income tax in 2019, so I should be able to get them most of that back by them filling both their IRAs. We have one tenant spot (of two) filled upstairs, so that’s ~7k/yr coming in. But we also only have a max of three car spots, and they’re all taken by parents’ cars and tenant’s car.
My only question is this: how can they both reduce their federal income tax and pay off their mortgage as fast as possible? If they put 10-15k in an IRA, yes that’s money that reduces their taxable income, but that’s also money they could’ve put to the principle on their mortgage.
