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Yearly Update

March 18th, 2016 at 02:04 am

I admit we're not doing much with our TMM right now given me being in school. But I still feel the need to post occasionally given how prevalent our long-term financial situation still sits in my mind. And besides, I only have 9 months of school left! My goal is to be working by Feb of next year, and I am pretty sure I will be starting around $59K.

I want to dump as much of that new income as possible into my student loans so that we can finally be done with them once and for all. Even still, I'm guessing that's going to take about 5 years. Because I owe A LOT. Currently $121K and counting. Thankfully, there is a union work program I will qualify for that will pay off about $25K of that over 5 years, starting after 1 year of work. But, that's still $96K and I'm barely keeping up with the interest payments right now.

We could probably get it done in 4 years if we were really strict about it. But then I would lose $10K of the tuition repayment benefit. And we're going to be trying to save for a house down payment for part of that time as well. The boys are in kindergarten right now, and by the time they're in middle school (6th grade), we want to be in a better school district. So that again gives us about 5 years. (2021 should be an interesting year for us!) We have a fair amount of equity in our current home right now, but I don't want any PMI next time and who knows what the market will do by then.

Right now we're kind of treading water financially. I'm not working anymore now that I'm in school fulltime. And we have new before/after school care expenses on top of it. Medical expenses have gone down a little, but tuition/fees have gone way, way up. I managed to avoid taking out more student loans while doing just my pre-reqs part-time, but at this point its costing about $12K/semester and there's just no way around it. Ugh, ugh, ugh.
On the bright side, the amount I paid/borrowed for this career change is equal to or less than the gross amount I will make in just one year of working. And I will have a pension. So I think it will all be financially worth it in the end. And emotionally it's not even a question. A change was necessary.

Hubby got a nice bonus again this year, but not a very nice raise. We had kind of figured that due to the job hopping he did this year (3 different positions within the same company in 1 year). He seems happy now in his new position and hopefully next year will be a little better. But this new position is not as demanding as before, and therefore it is unlikely to come with the large pay increases he was getting for a few years while working his butt off. We'll manage though. Work/life balance is more important to us than higher paychecks.

This year, the bonus money was spend in some fairly unexciting ways. A lot of it just went into our emergency fund, to top it back up after the dips we had been making into it since I quit my job. Hopefully a combination of hubby's pay increase and some further belt tightening will keep that from happening again this year.
We also got a new water softener, which has been sorely needed for over a year now. We set aside some money for summer daycare since it will be double what we're used to paying during the school year. And then with the remaining amount we bought new deck furniture (our last set was about 14 years old and in poor shape) and new beds/dressers for the boys. They were finally getting too big for all their old toddler/preschool stuff. Now they have big boy beds and are no longer sharing an old dresser. All grown up!
Oh wait, and I got a new laptop. My old one was about 5 years old and died. The new one is nothing fancy, but a must for school. But that reminds me, the boys broke our old TV so we got a new one of those too. So I guess we did get a few fun things after all, even if they were mainly replacements. Hubby wanted one that was about 10 inches bigger than our last one, but I think TVs that big are just ridiculous. We compromised on one that was 5 inches bigger and it seems like a good fit for our living room, even though I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to use it. (Gosh that makes me sound old.)

Looking ahead to next year, a "new" car for hubby is on the horizon once I get a job. His car is about 12 years old now and is starting to show it. I know I had posted previously about planning to pay off my current car loan with last year's bonus, but somehow that didn't happen. Probably because of all the medical expenses we had for the boys back then. It's hard to remember now. By this time next year, I think we will still owe about $7K. Which, after taxes, is going to eat up most of hubby's next bonus, but so be it. I don't want to take out another car loan until we have that one paid off.

Someday, somehow, I really, really want to be able to take an awesome family vacation together to someplace like the Grand Canyon or Disney World. Not to mention a romantic vacation with just hubby to someplace like Greece or Machu Picchu too. But it's really hard to picture that being in the cards anytime in the next 5 years. Especially when I start thinking about retirement on top of it. None the less, I need to at least throw that wish out there.

We're both turning 40 this year, and should have at minimum about 2 years worth of income saved at this point. Instead, we have more like a quarter of 1 years income. In 5 years, I think we'll finally be ready to start tackling that head on, but by then we should have 3 years saved! Pretty sure retirement is going to have to be closer to 70 than 65 at this point. Just need to stay healthy so that I can still enjoy it!

4 Responses to “Yearly Update”

  1. creditcardfree Says:
    1458303804

    You've got a plan! Keep forging ahead. Make sure that 'new' car fits into your budget. And a bigger home isn't always a necessity...less stuff in your home can make it feel more spacious.

  2. LivingAlmostLarge Says:
    1458318596

    Good luck! What are you going back to school for that reimburses you in 5 years?

  3. Anne Reese Says:
    1458321134

    Nursing! It doesn't reimburse me for the whole thing. But it matches up to $5K for up to 5 years, as long as the expenses are from the last 15 years.

  4. tripods68 Says:
    1458321580

    I definitely avoid any new car loan until you can save enough to pay for a new car. I drive a 14 year vehicle but its maintain well. So if you can hold off until you can save enough. The EF of $5K appears to be in the low side, maybe 2 months of expenses I'm guessing. I would add and try to make to at least 6 months.

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