Daily Challenge

Do 100 200 Push-Ups. Acquaint yourself with your finances. Record where your time goes.

My Finances

I’ve been fortunate with my finances. I eliminated nearly all my debt about 10 years ago and have managed to keep it off. The only loan I have on my books right now is our home mortgage. We both make good money and I’m able to stuff a substantial amount into savings. I also get a retirement check and cheap health care from the Army. It is not a lot, but it is enough to survive at the poverty level should it ever come to that. My savings isn’t quite where I want it yet, but with both kids now out of college, I have a lot more extra cash to play catch up with.

I refied the mortgage about three years ago shortly after the remodel. It was a good decision. It’s now on a 15 year loan and with the extra equity from the remodel, I was able to eliminate the mortgage insurance and get a much better interest rate, resulting in my monthly payment actually going down a few bucks.

I run 99% of all my purchases through my credit card. This way I can track exactly what I’m spending and I also get the 1 1/2% cash back. You just have to have the discipline to pay it off each month. Even with an 800+ credit score, the interest rate on my card is 8.5% and it can add up quick.

I don’t hold myself to a hard fast budget. I do check my accounts every weekday and download my expenditures into Quicken. If the card is starting to look high, I reign things in and curtail the spending.

As far as savings, my goal is to have a 6 month CD ladder with $9K in each CD to act as an emergency fund. I’m currently at 65% of that. I want to have at least $1,000,000 saved up between my 401K, the wife’s IRA, and other investment accounts by age 60. I’m currently at 15% of that goal. At my current rate of savings and expected ROI, I am going to fall short of that goal by about $100K so I need to take some time to do some math and tweak my plan.

According to Quicken, this is what my spending year to date looks like:

30% Savings / Investments / Retirement 21% Mortgage 12% Travel 8% Eating Out 6% Utilities 4% Groceries 4% Personal Care, Health, & Fitness 3% Shopping 3% Home Goods / Improvements 2% Entertainment 2% Pet Care / Grooming 5% Misc and categories totaling < 1%

There was a time we would go shopping and buy stuff we really didn’t need just to satisfy some primal urge to hunt and gather. I have largely eliminated that waste and instead refocused spending money on experiences, hence the sizable travel expenditures. That simple redirection of funds has made us much happier.

As far as making cuts, I spend too much on eating out, especially in the coffee houses. I spend about $10 a day at a Starbucks. At a modest 4% ROI, that is over $44,000 by the time I hope to retire if it were instead invested. That is insane when you think about it. My goal for the remainder of this challenge is to cut my Starbucks bill in half.

My Time

Time is my most precious commodity. Money is easy. If I need more I can cut spending, I can sell stuff, and can get another job. But time, once it is gone…..its gone forever.

I don’t know if it is a mid-life thing, that I can now see that my body is aging and my mortality is evident, but wasting time is so frustrating for me. There are moments that I feel that I am letting time slip by, that I’m wasting it, that I am failing to take advantage of each second that ticks off the clock.

I do pretty good keeping myself occupied. Whether it is sitting on the back porch with a cup of coffee watching the birds feed, building a coffee table for my son, going dancing at a club, or gallivanting to the Caribbean to soak in the sun on the beach. But there are many occasions I am occupied, but it still seems like I am wasting time…that what I am doing is pointless and meaningless and it is just busy-work I am giving myself. The issue that I have is that I am at a loss of what to replace such things with…

In Other News

Since I fucked up yesterday’s push-up challenge, I doubled today’s. I am about to knock out my last set of 25. 200 push-ups…done and done. Still fap free. I’ve been reading something everyday, but I haven’t found a book that really engages me so I keep bouncing to a new one.