January 2014 Monthly Review

This month H and I finally decided that if we wanted her to stay home with our daughter (still undecided) that we would need to live off of one income and bank the other. We gave it a trial run for this month, and aside from doctor bills that we paid related to our now deceased son, everything went well. We lived on a fairly low amount (subtracting savings) and still had a pretty enjoyable month.

I didnt get an elk this year, but H’s dad did, and since I helped him pull it out (~4 miles) he gave me quite a bit of it, which was really nice. We were running low on meat since I’ve had an awful hunting season. I’ll be spending quite a bit of time coming up here processing all of that.

House

Mortgage $111,993  (-551).  Just the normal payment here. This note goes down by about 550/mo, which for now is acceptable. H and I talked about goals and savings for 2014 and once we meet our emergency fund goals, we can start paying this down more aggressively.

Student Loan

Great Lakes Loan $ 6,211   (-$169) After talking with H, we decided to get rid of this last bit of non-mortgage debt. I bumped up the auto-pay to $400/mo, and if things go well with our increased savings goals, may make it $500 per month.

Total Debt: $ 118,204

Savings

I’ve decided to add our savings accounts to the mix. Currently, We have 4, and I have a Roth IRA. Both H and I (s0rt of) expect to get pensions if we stay with our current employers and retire with them. That being said, I’m not really one to trust all that, so we are looking at having a significant nest egg when we do end up retiring. We keep our savings accounts with capital one 360. We’ve used an online bank for over 5 years, and have had no problems with the at all. They pay the best (meager) rates of all the accounts we’ve found, so if you’re interested in getting a bit better rate, sign up with capital one now.

Kid Savings $6,077 (+$254) – This account is for expenses incurred related to the birth of our daughter. Honestly, I dont really know when to stop contributing to this account and move those contributions elsewhere, so for now this is going to continue at this level (or more, I may have bumped it up earlier this year)

House $1,525 (+$175) – This was probably the biggest loser (and the only loser) during the savings reshuffle. I knocked $50 per month off the contributions to this account, because right now we really are not doing many house projects, and dont have anything big planned (yet anyway). H is talking about finishing the basement, but since she’s pregnant, that means I’ll be doing it. Not sure when i’ll make time for that.

Emergency Fund $5,708 (+107) – This was one of the big winners when I redid our savings levels and withdraw rates at the beginning of the year. I increased contributions to this by 3x. Once this gets to 10-12k, we will call this done, and start directing funds to

Vacation $176 (+25) – Savings account for vacations – it grows very slowly at the moment, and when we went to alaska, it was fairly depleted. This was another big winner, with the contributions to this account increasing by 5x. Hopefully, it will grow fast, but given the fact that we have a child on the way, we probably wont be tapping this anytime soon.

Health

This is going pretty good. I’ve been getting back into going to the gym after taking most of december off, and I’ve really started getting better at eating better. Something that I’ve always tried, and pretty much failed at wholesale. Soon, I’m going to do a whole30 challenge. I’m looking forward to the results from that to see where to take it in the future. I’ll start writing about the challenge, the parameters and why I’m doing it in the future (I’ll be starting in the middle of next month)