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$13,440 left on my student loan, down from roughly $20k at the start of the year. It's going to be such a huge boost when I get that thing under 10k. Looking forward to the day when Mint tells me one day that I have a networth of $0 
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Nov 3, 2014 14:36
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Down to less than $15k on mine this month! 
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Nov 6, 2014 02:12
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Under $40K now, Started year at $72K. 1 year and 23 days to get rid of them on my goal.
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Nov 6, 2014 02:18
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A tiny thing in a sea of debt, I finally paid off one of my loans. Now to nix the others.
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Nov 6, 2014 14:19
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Just sold my last two quarterly lots of ESPP stock for the year and put a good chunk in my taxable account (tax advantaged retirement accounts are already maxed, no debts). I also put about a third into an additional payment to my mortgage principal -- equivalent to the P portion of 4 months' worth of regular payments. Lastly, the somewhat large remainder of the cash is going to checking so I can give my brother a big gift to go on a musical tour next year with his chorus, possibly buy a new console and PC over the holidays (still on the fence, not entirely convinced on the truevalue of any of it... depends on holiday sales), and maybe do a little remodeling and renovation around the house. Plus with the modest raise I got last month, I can start maxing my retirement accounts from the get go in 2015 and still come out like $20 ahead per month on my paychecks compared to today. Edit: all just before I turn 30 next week. 
SpelledBackwards fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Nov 8, 2014 |
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Nov 8, 2014 14:57
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Started a Roth IRA and non-retirement long term investments at 27 years old. I wish I'd known about this stuff when I was just entering the workforce, if I had been contributing to an IRA instead of eating out so much when I was younger, I would be much better off. 
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Nov 8, 2014 15:14
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surc posted:Started a Roth IRA and non-retirement long term investments at 27 years old.
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Nov 8, 2014 17:29
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surc posted:Started a Roth IRA and non-retirement long term investments at 27 years old. I wouldn't get too worried. When I entered the workforce there was no equivalent retirement scheme where I live and I turned down a private work scheme. Although at that point I had student loan and a debt consolidation loan to pay for so there wasn't any spare money. Now I'm really starting my investments and retirement saving at 39. My getting ahead side of things is I now have a house (a large interest expense) and I am allocating a minimum of $2000 per month into investments. e: I also went from 20% equity when I bought my house in May to 30% this month. Devian666 fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 02:49
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Slowly overcoming my risk aversion to transfer more of my bloated savings account into VTSAX. I'm going to transfer about 5,000 per month until I've got about 8k left in there, then that and my ~5k checking should be enough to cover any emergency that comes my way. After that, just let it sit and forget it.
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Nov 11, 2014 14:25
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Just paid off the last bit of credit card debit that I have. 30k in student loans left to pay off (thanks CPA exam requirements!) and I'll be completely debt free. This year sucked for me and unexpected expenses, but it set me up really well for the next few years. I'd like to knock the balance down on my loans at 10k a year.
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Nov 16, 2014 04:38
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After floundering around and failing classes left and right as a late teen (I blame WoW+absenteeism), I've finally gotten back into college and am getting high aces in all of my classes. Earlier this year, I finished off my student loan from that initial mess and am working 60+ hours a week to squeeze past the poverty line and barely pay my tuition out of pocket. I just hope an AS in CS + CCNA cert will be worth something by the time I finish... Zerstorung fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Nov 16, 2014 |
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Nov 16, 2014 15:33
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pig slut lisa posted:In May 2013 I finished my education and started my first adult job. I signed up for our 457 plan and deferred $100 a pay period into it out of a vague sense that "you gotta save for retirement" but I didn't think about it beyond that.  
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Dec 9, 2014 06:48
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Congrats! Did you get low enough to worry, or did it go as planned?
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Dec 9, 2014 06:57
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Inverse Icarus posted:Congrats! Thankfully I didn't come close to bottoming out. I'll owe roughly $4,500 on my credit card for the statement period that ends on Nov. 10th (I always pay off in full), but about $3,500 of that is carryover from my wedding about a month ago. Normal spending is much lower. Meanwhile, I have about $9,500 split between two checking accounts. So after paying this large credit card bill I'll still have approximately $5,000. More, actually, since I'll have at least one paycheck with no retirement deductions, so that's gonna be another $1,500 after taxes/FICA/etc. Additionally, that checking balance would be higher except I saw how well we were doing so I chucked $3,500 at my wife's Roth IRA to max it out. So for 2014 we maxed out two Roth IRAs ($11,000), my 457(b) ($17,500), plus chucked $10,000 into taxable investments. That's...nearly $40,000  Granted, we're not going to be able to do quite so well next year, since some of that cash came from uninvested 2013 earnings. Still though, I am very proud of that number. Meanwhile, we're carrying about $9,500 of wedding gifts in an Ally savings account. My plan for January is to fund both of our Roth IRAs to the tune of $3,300 with a combination of maybe $3,000 from my checking and $3,600 from the Ally account. Then we'll each set up monthly $200 contributions for the rest of the year. As for my 457(b), I will be contributing $750/paycheck which gets me to $18,000 with two pay periods to spare. A significant portion of the Ally account remainder will be used to fund our honeymoon to Japan and Hong Kong in six months.  There's no one person I can thank in this subforum for getting me on the right path, but I'm really glad I sought out BFC eight months ago. I feel incredibly confident about my financial future. I have financial goals and a plan for getting there. It feels good, man. Here's to saving more money in 2015 
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Dec 9, 2014 07:29
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pig slut lisa posted:There's no one person I can thank in this subforum for getting me on the right path, but I'm really glad I sought out BFC eight months ago. I feel incredibly confident about my financial future. I have financial goals and a plan for getting there. It feels good, man. Here's to saving more money in 2015  Congrats!!
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Dec 9, 2014 18:33
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Another student loan is no more. 5 down on the year and 4 to go.
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Dec 9, 2014 18:37
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So, I just had about the best run of luck financially I've ever had in my life. Started out very, very badly. Monday morning I got a call to from my tenant that the heat was not working. Drove out to the house and checked the panel, checked the gas, checked the pilot light, checked the thermostat. Couldn't figure it out. Called the first plumber listed on Angie's list and met him at the house tuesday morning. He looked at the boiler and tole me I had to replace it. Gets on his phone, tells me a few minutes later that I'm looking at $7,600 all in parts and labor. They can do it the next day. I'm devastated. That knocks out any profit from the unit for a whole year, even if nothing else breaks. But what can I do? I sign the ticket. This is where it turns around. I get back to my cube at the office, and it's gnawing at me. $7,600 just seems WAY too high. I'm talking to a coworker and whatdaya know? He had a boiler replaced less than five years ago. And yeah, it was a lot cheaper. I get the name of his plumber and call him up. The guy ballparks $3,600 on the phone. I tell him about the $7,600 quote and he says it's straight up insane. He agrees to meet me at the house in just 45 minutes. I drive back out to the house, lead him down to the boiler. He opens up the circuit board and shorts the thermostat out. The boiler fires right up. I've just gone from a $7,600 boiler, to a $3,600 boiler, to a $50 service call. I joke that I probably won't call that other plumber again. He half jokes that I should probably call the cops. I also mention to him that the downstairs loop is not heating up even though I had tried to bleed the air out. He showed me how to do it the right way. So my other project for the day was putting together a rental application (with me as the renter). I grabbed a paystub from our HR online website, and as I'm scanning it over, I notice a line item for Philadelphia wage tax. If you live in Philadelphia, which I do, you have to pay about 4% of your income to the city. I had assumed that my job was not setting the money aside because I work in NJ, and I had even checked the deductions, but I must've missed it because it was right there on the patsy. So the $2,400 I had set aside for that liability became mine again. Today, I went online to pay the property tax bill on my rental property (the same one with the "broken" boiler), and the citiy website said I had paid it already. I must've just forgotten. I called the city to confirm and they did. Wow! Finally, I've written off a debt. Not a debt owed to me, but money I owe a plumber. I've been calling this guy and leaving him voicemails asking where I can send a check, and I've finally given up. I'm just not going to spend anymore of my time trying to chase the guy down so I can pay him his $600. My number is in his phone, and he knows my tenant, so he can reach me that way too, but I have a feeling I'll never hear from him again. So I went from being out $7,600 to up $3,500 in barely 48 hours. Feels incredible. I was in such a good mood earlier that I started looking at prices for computers and monitors on amazon. But then I closed it all down and just went ice skating instead. I'm keeping the drat money.
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Dec 11, 2014 08:25
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Blackjack2000 posted:I was in such a good mood earlier that I started looking at prices for computers and monitors on amazon. But then I closed it all down and just went ice skating instead. I'm keeping the drat money.  That was the most beautiful story I've ever read, what an ending. *sniff*  *holds back tears*
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Dec 12, 2014 21:12
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Pro: - I opened a 529 educational savings plan for my 4 week old daughter today Con: - My son's 529 monthly recurring deposit is now halved thanks to his sister. Sorry dude! - It's not "no student loan worries" kind of money. Sorry kids! This might get you through a year if we're lucky.
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Dec 12, 2014 22:24
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I decided to reassess why I'm spending so much money lifestyling recently. I ended up with a new server for home and buying some deals on some flight, plus clocking up spending at an airpoints mall. It's added up to some heavy spending. I'm on track for everything so the spending wasn't an issue. I'm made some changes to other spending and food spending. By just managing my spending and considering things more I somehow managed to halve my monthly spend this last month. If I keep on track for this I'm going to end up with a lot more money invested. I'm not going to go crazy MMM style but less spending is going to help me a lot if I maintain my current approach.
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Dec 15, 2014 00:10
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Holy woot, just broke a quarter million dollars in income for the year! If you had told little kid me that someday I would be writing novels for a living, I would not have believed it. I doubt I'll pull it off again next year since I'd like to work less, not more, but saving most of this year's money should last me a while 
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Dec 17, 2014 17:56
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Great work! That's pretty amazing.
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Dec 17, 2014 18:05
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moana posted:Holy woot, just broke a quarter million dollars in income for the year! If you had told little kid me that someday I would be writing novels for a living, I would not have believed it. I doubt I'll pull it off again next year since I'd like to work less, not more, but saving most of this year's money should last me a while I'm genuinely curious and I know you've talked fairly openly about your writing in the past, but how many titles/published works is that in 2014?
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Dec 17, 2014 18:15
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7 novels/novel-length series. A couple of those were co-written, though, so it's not as much work as it seems. I'm hoping to write a novel each month for 2015 and alternate between my old pen names and new ones. All of them in romance. I'm going to try romantic comedy this next year, crossing my fingers that takes off since it's really what I love to write. edit: it's really stupid because I hang out with all these amazing writers (including a few goons) who put out much more stuff and have been making much more than me. So even with all the success I have, I look at them and think I'm a total loser because I can't write 40k words each week, ha!
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Dec 17, 2014 18:30
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I can't imagine anything more difficult that writing 40k words of fictional dialogue and situations, my mind being the way it is. I cringe at the thought of 400 words of fiction, or even just a plot outline. Good for you merging career and personal interests.
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Dec 17, 2014 18:37
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moana posted:Holy woot, just broke a quarter million dollars in income for the year! If you had told little kid me that someday I would be writing novels for a living, I would not have believed it. I doubt I'll pull it off again next year since I'd like to work less, not more, but saving most of this year's money should last me a while  Nice work moana
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Dec 17, 2014 21:43
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moana posted:Holy woot, just broke a quarter million dollars in income for the year! If you had told little kid me that someday I would be writing novels for a living, I would not have believed it. I doubt I'll pull it off again next year since I'd like to work less, not more, but saving most of this year's money should last me a while gently caress yeah, it's a good milestone to pass and also a good decision to give up your job. I managed to fail in my task of writing my first short story this year but that's because my business has been exceedingly busy. In the mean time I'll dream of making my first  in book sales.
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Dec 17, 2014 23:47
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Got a job. Pay sucks, but it's better than being unemployed. It's a pretty incremental improvement, but at least it's something to do while I look for something better, and it gives me a reason not to drink all night and sleep til noon. I'm not good at being unemployed.
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Dec 21, 2014 03:20
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Maxed out my Roth IRA a couple of days ago, and requested paperwork to set my 401k contributions to $346/week, which will very nearly max it out for 2015. Making $30/week is gonna suck, but overtime should help make up for it. Total retirement savings at age 28: $37,950.2 Not super impressive, but I passed the "have the equivalent of your yearly salary in retirement savings by age 30" mark early.
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Dec 21, 2014 16:03
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moana posted:I'm going to try romantic comedy this next year, crossing my fingers that takes off since it's really what I love to write. This is against your own advice in the Self Publishing thread; I guess you earned it
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Dec 21, 2014 17:46
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Scheduled last payment for our long term debt (wife's car), now just have monthly revolving debt. We knocked out student loans, a house, and two cars. I'm sure it would have been smarter to invest all that instead, but we have two kids now and having cash flow and not worrying about debt payments is nice.
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Jan 9, 2015 06:58
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TwoSheds posted:requested paperwork to set my 401k contributions to $346/week, which will very nearly max it out for 2015. Ending up $8 shy of the max would drive me bonkers
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Jan 9, 2015 07:19
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+ Last month we paid off our new car we bought in August (2015 Hyundai Sonata) + My wife and I received 4.5% raises which will be an additional ~$240/mo net + I bought YNAB to get us away from looking at our bank account and instead assigning jobs to dollars + (Non financial) Work is finally slowing down a bit so I can enjoy keeping my work to work hours. - Next month two kids will be going to daycare to the tune of ~$1100/mo, but at least my wife will start getting paychecks again soon and if we're YNABing better we'll be fine.
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Jan 9, 2015 17:50
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Aliquid posted:This is against your own advice in the Self Publishing thread; I guess you earned it no, poo poo, you're right. I actually got so far as making the cover before realizing that I should be shooting for the FSOG audience with my new one, a billionaire dating reality TV show premise. It'll be funny, but that won't be the angle I use to market it. Another writer friend of mine hit the top 10 on Amazon with a romantic comedy marketed as billionaire romance, so it looks like that's where I'm headed (the marketing, not top 10. Although, crossing my fingers!) I popped in here to say that I just maxed my roth for this year. It sucks not knowing what I can put in my solo 401k until I get my taxes done so hey, gotta get my taxes done!
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Jan 9, 2015 19:53
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moana posted:Yeah, well-- How do richy riches like you even get to fund a roth?  Nevermind, AGI limits for Roth is like $181k and you're probably getting boned pretty hard for taxes on your sales.
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Jan 9, 2015 20:56
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Crossing my fingers that I get so ballin I have to go back and undo my Roth contributions for the year, haha! But now that I'm married I have a bit more leeway, too.
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Jan 10, 2015 00:02
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pig slut lisa posted:Ending up $8 shy of the max would drive me bonkers Well I can't set the contributions myself (have to go through HR, which is a huge pain in the rear end), and I told them I wanted to contribute the max of $18,000 this year, and that's what came of it. I don't want to make too much fuss about it lest I become known as "that annoying paycheck guy" to a person that can fire me on a whim, and I've already made two changes to my contributions in 2014 alone. $8/year seems like a small price to pay. And actually, even if I split hairs and added 15 cents to each contribution I'd end up 20 cents short of the max. There's no way to split it evenly. TwoSheds fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Jan 10, 2015 |
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Jan 10, 2015 00:57
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My bank account hit 35 dollars today and I was rightfully terrified. Fortunately I also got paid and interviewed for a second job that went well, so little steps I guess?
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Jan 10, 2015 02:26
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TwoSheds posted:Well I can't set the contributions myself (have to go through HR, which is a huge pain in the rear end), and I told them I wanted to contribute the max of $18,000 this year, and that's what came of it. I don't want to make too much fuss about it lest I become known as "that annoying paycheck guy" to a person that can fire me on a whim, and I've already made two changes to my contributions in 2014 alone. $8/year seems like a small price to pay. I address this by setting my biweekly contribution at a level that tops me out around the beginning of December. It works out really nicely this year actually, what with the increase to $18,000. I contribute $750 per paycheck which divides neatly into the first 24 pay periods. Then my last two pay periods will have no contributions since I'm already topped out. It's fun to see a larger paycheck at the end of the year, and I plan on setting aside a lot of that "extra" money for the 2016 IRA contribution. But even if the number didn't divide neatly into $18,000, my payroll person would still automatically readjust everything once I hit the max.
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Jan 10, 2015 05:36
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pig slut lisa posted:I address this by setting my biweekly contribution at a level that tops me out around the beginning of December. It works out really nicely this year actually, what with the increase to $18,000. I contribute $750 per paycheck which divides neatly into the first 24 pay periods. Then my last two pay periods will have no contributions since I'm already topped out. It's fun to see a larger paycheck at the end of the year, and I plan on setting aside a lot of that "extra" money for the 2016 IRA contribution. But even if the number didn't divide neatly into $18,000, my payroll person would still automatically readjust everything once I hit the max. This may work, but is company dependent. At some companies you'll lose matching by doing this as the match is on a per paycheck basis, also you can contribute more than the limit to a 401k as after tax contribution so you need to be sure that your company will cut off your contributions instead of just changing them to post tax if you go over the limit.
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Jan 10, 2015 16:40
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