Thanks Seppia. Minnesota does indeed have nice people.
We bought a house!
We've spent the past week negotiating an offer on this house and as of today the offer letter has been signed by both parties. Closing is at the end of the month. We talked them down by nearly 6%.
Effective immediately our expenses are going down by a lot. Property taxes are dropping to ~800 annually, down from 2250 previously. Insurance is dropping to ~375 annually, down from 765 annually. Chicken expense is going away (although we might keep a couple of them, hehe). So going forward our plan is using an adjusted TTM Expense metric.
Once we sell our current house, depending on the equity we unlock, we will cross 3% in the range of July-September. If we don't sell it this year, we'll now cross 3% in November.
As a part of this move we are also looking into care options for bmonkey going forward and are looking into the Mayo Clinc system. They have a campus in Mankato, MN and we might be able to go there.
Balance Sheet Update
I've been playing around with investing in brokered CDs through my brokerage for the past 6 months or so and its been going well. There's a variety of CDs available at any one point ranging from 3 months to 10 years with interest payments ranging from monthly to at maturity. The monthly interest payments get put into my brokerage account and I can use them immediately. They can be auto-rolled into another equivalent CD once they mature. Also, ZERO fees.
Rates right now are 2.3% for a 3 month up to 3.2% for a 10 year CD. I've been investing in 3 and 6 month CDs.
The best part is that there are dozens of institutions to invest in, so you spread out the risk.
I've had a 23K CD with a local institution for the past 7 years or so earning 2.3%. I've started feeling uneasy about it because the money is just sitting there earning interest and giving me a tax liability, but doing nothing else. I cannot use the interest with the CD in it's current form.
So once it matures in a couple years, I'm moving it to my brokerage and investing in such a way that I can actually use the capital to live off of.
I'm now including it in my FI Funds/FAI values because it will be moving there in a few years anyway. There is the risk that rates might drop, but I've also been learning to invest in different bonds with my brokerage and these are an adequate alternative.
As of today, given the balance sheet update and reduction in expenses -
Adjusted Expenses* - $10,855
FAI - $10,646.15
FI Funds - 298K
SWR - 3.62%
Years - 27.59
This won't affect my end date at all considering I won't move it for a couple years, but due to other factors, Dec 31, 2019 is looking like my end date for this round of employment. I'll post an explanation and plan later this month I think.
* Adjusted Expenses are defined as Current TTM expenses - Old Property Costs + New Property Costs. I'm not including any other estimated savings we might have such as groceries and gas. Living in a small town I think we'll have some of this too.