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Bobbie Wickham
Apr 13, 2008

by Smythe

Knyteguy posted:

I'm George Costanza, aren't I? "Every single instinct I have is wrong".

Sort of. You're very impulsive, so you need to check those impulses and turn them into researched and considered decisions that have purpose.

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Knyteguy
Jul 6, 2005

YES to love
NO to shirts


Toilet Rascal

Bobbie Wickham posted:

Sort of. You're very impulsive, so you need to check those impulses and turn them into researched and considered decisions that have purpose.

I'll think on that some more. Thanks for your input in the thread so far.

Nocheez
Sep 5, 2000

Can you spare a little cheddar?
Nap Ghost

Knyteguy posted:

I'll think on that some more. Thanks for your input in the thread so far.

My wife had a breakthrough in therapy recently. She didn't look at life choices through the lenses of "things that are most important to me."

For example, she heard about a similar job in Boston that would be at a bigger hospital. We don't live near Boston, and Boston is not a place I would want to make a lateral move to. Even worse this job was barely a raise, and would actually make life harder for us as we'd lose my awesome health insurance and not-insignificant pay. Basically, we'd be moving into a smaller home, with a much worse commute, and would have less money overall. She made my life hell for pushing back on going for this job. She was very angry towards me, and it caused a few arguments. Then she started therapy for unrelated reasons.

After therapy, she realized that she was only looking at the situation from the "advance my career" lens. That was the only thing that mattered to her, and she thought I was trying to stifle that. Now, she realizes that consequences of moving did not improve our lifestyle in any meaningful way.

I don't know what your lenses are. I don't know what things in life you would say are most important, but I would imagine that financial security is something you would kill for. That's what we're trying to do to help. You can't fix this with spreadsheets or flipping couches, you have to change your fundamental relationship with money. Like losing weight has diet and exercise, you can only reduce spending or increase income.

Colin Mockery
Jun 24, 2007
Rawr



Bobbie Wickham posted:

Sort of. You're very impulsive, so you need to check those impulses and turn them into researched and considered decisions that have purpose.

Yeah, I actually didn’t initially see why people were pushing back so hard on the idea of flipping the couch (“$3800 list price? You could probably easily get rid of it for the $600 you said used ones were going for!”), and it’s definitely something I’d consider personally.

But you already need a couch, don’t have a ton of free time for hobbies (“flipping a couch for profit... eventually” is effectively a hobby), and need to work on curbing your impulses right now. So it’s just not a good time right now for you to let your attention drift in that direction and for you to pick up a new distraction that can be used to validate bad spending habits (“I got a windfall this month so I can go over budget!”).

Dwight Eisenhower
Jan 24, 2006

Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
FWIW I think that quitting smoking is a net good idea. IF YOU CAN, doing it cold turkey and not buying smoking cessation products will be the least costly way to quit.

But remember that we're making strategic decisions to also manage your Imp of the Perverse: when things get stressful, you turn to spending as emotional relief. Quitting cold turkey is insanely stressful.

Here's a plan that acknowledges and plans around your difficulties with behaving according to your higher level plans:

I (Knyteguy) will try to quit smoking cold turkey right now since I don't have nicotine paraphenalia.
I will research what other no-monetary-cost options are available to me right now (support groups, exercising when cravings get difficult)
I will research what smoking cessation products are available to me on short notice.
I will think about my thought process that entertains things that I could spend money on. (Not deliberately think about spending money, but be mindful and a) catch yourself doing it, and b) start analyzing why you're doing it)
I will think about my current level of stress.
If I have a lot of stress, and I'm thinking about buying things, I'll think about buying smoking cessation products.

qmark
Nov 21, 2005

College Slice
I also support the decision to quit smoking, but it is worth considering that discipline is a finite resource. So if you're spending all of your energy fighting off a craving, you might lose ground elsewhere, and that includes making poor spending decisions. This is based on recent studies, but I have also seen anecdotal evidence of it.

I think it is possible to do both, but it might not play out the way you would think (conjuring up a ton of willpower and making a big change by sheer force of will all at once). I think it looks more like banking small wins here and there and gradually expanding your capacity for self control until it covers quitting smoking and spending wisely.

I mention this not to question your decision but more so you have it as a tool going forward to help perceive how it's going and interpret results. It's good to be mindful of your limits.

That said, I strongly agree with the posters warning that this is an impulse. If you want to still go with it, put some time into studying it and making a plan that fits with your other goals. Then it would be less of an impulse.

Knyteguy
Jul 6, 2005

YES to love
NO to shirts


Toilet Rascal
Hey thanks for the posts. I found an old vape setup I had from years ago, and it should be enough to get me through until I'm ready to take this on with full resources (when we have insurance at a minimum), at which point I'll follow the plan that's set out with our healthcare, and becomeanex.org. The becomeanex.org goes into a lot of what Dwight and others mentioned (finding a support group, smoking cessation methods, devices, triggers and how to separate yourself from them, etc), so I'll be reading into that more and then formulating a personal plan.

I think a strategy like this could help with finances as well, but I don't have time to get into it right now - I'm slammed at work with an emergency project. But the budget is still safe this month. Here's to no more strange surprises like theft messing things up again for the rest of the month.

Actually I'll do a plan like this:

Dwight Eisenhower posted:

I (Knyteguy) will try to quit smoking cold turkey right now since I don't have nicotine paraphenalia.
I will research what other no-monetary-cost options are available to me right now (support groups, exercising when cravings get difficult)
I will research what smoking cessation products are available to me on short notice.
I will think about my thought process that entertains things that I could spend money on. (Not deliberately think about spending money, but be mindful and a) catch yourself doing it, and b) start analyzing why you're doing it)
I will think about my current level of stress.
If I have a lot of stress, and I'm thinking about buying things, I'll think about buying smoking cessation products.

For my finances.

I'm starting to get what you guys are saying about impulsiveness and how it potentially affects more than just buying something. I'm now seeing that this going to be really loving hard to crack because I don't even notice a lot of the time, but my wife caught me once last night and we talked through it (kind of like you guys do). I encouraged her to keep doing that (she has a problem with even potential confrontation). I'll also be keeping an eye out as best I can of course.

As I said slammed! I'll get to more posts later when I can. Hitting post.

Knyteguy fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Jul 10, 2019

klafbang
Nov 18, 2009
Clapping Larry

qmark posted:

it is worth considering that discipline is a finite resource

That is actually super contested. Doesn't hurt to be careful (especially given the risks), but ego depletion should not be used as an excuse to do nothing.

zaurg
Mar 1, 2004
*nevermind*

Thumbtacks
Apr 3, 2013
ban

zaurg posted:

This is actually a good idea. Thanks. zaurg will remain confined to 3 threads in all of SA (BFC thread, Running thread, and TFLC thread). If I venture out anywhere else, ban me.

qmark
Nov 21, 2005

College Slice

klafbang posted:

That is actually super contested. Doesn't hurt to be careful (especially given the risks), but ego depletion should not be used as an excuse to do nothing.

I did not know that. Thanks!

Sorry for the outdated advice, KG. For what it's worth, the concept has played a significant role in my own approach to goals up to now with some success. Might be time to re-evaluate it now though.

Knyteguy
Jul 6, 2005

YES to love
NO to shirts


Toilet Rascal

qmark posted:

I did not know that. Thanks!

Sorry for the outdated advice, KG. For what it's worth, the concept has played a significant role in my own approach to goals up to now with some success. Might be time to re-evaluate it now though.

No worries I thought that was relevant too, good to know.

Nocheez posted:

My wife had a breakthrough in therapy recently. She didn't look at life choices through the lenses of "things that are most important to me."

For example, she heard about a similar job in Boston that would be at a bigger hospital. We don't live near Boston, and Boston is not a place I would want to make a lateral move to. Even worse this job was barely a raise, and would actually make life harder for us as we'd lose my awesome health insurance and not-insignificant pay. Basically, we'd be moving into a smaller home, with a much worse commute, and would have less money overall. She made my life hell for pushing back on going for this job. She was very angry towards me, and it caused a few arguments. Then she started therapy for unrelated reasons.

After therapy, she realized that she was only looking at the situation from the "advance my career" lens. That was the only thing that mattered to her, and she thought I was trying to stifle that. Now, she realizes that consequences of moving did not improve our lifestyle in any meaningful way.

I don't know what your lenses are. I don't know what things in life you would say are most important, but I would imagine that financial security is something you would kill for. That's what we're trying to do to help. You can't fix this with spreadsheets or flipping couches, you have to change your fundamental relationship with money. Like losing weight has diet and exercise, you can only reduce spending or increase income.

I'm not sure yet what my lens of things are, but I'm trying to figure it out.

See I think previously, and probably to some extent now (I'm acknowledging old habits die hard), financial security isn't something I would kill for. The biggest things that have happened since I'd say the last thread to now is we ran out of money once on the RV trip; just once. Our plans got screwed up due a tropical storm chasing us away from a place we'd planned to stay for a week for free, and we ran out of money. And we were stuck basically in the middle of nowhere, and had to borrow some money from family to get out of the situation. That's really when we started to at least make sure that we could afford to do X thing/go to Y place and to make sure to carry some small buffer for oh-poo poo situations, and to track all of our spending and to budget for big expenses to make sure that was the case.

And then we got pre-approved on a house a few months later - it wasn't much of a house budget by any means, but it told me it was possible, and all of a sudden financial goals started to make some sort of sense. If we get out of debt we can get a decent house.

And then I started looking around at the discussion more and more, and I realized I don't have to spend the rest of my life with a fun money/restaurant combined budget of $75/mo; if we get out of debt that's more money we have for things we actually want to do and want to spend money on. We can max our retirement savings automatically from our paychecks or with an automatic withdrawal, take x% (what's needed or wanted) of take home and throw it into an index fund/towards a mortgage, and then like I've been seeing around BFC we can actually use what we have leftover for something like saving for a vacation, or to save for hobbies relatively guilt free as long as the aforementioned things are taken care of. Whatever the hell, just as long as we have enough to get by and we're actively working towards and meeting our savings goals.

My finances and how I've approached them all along have been all-or-nothing (and let's face it heavily on the nothing side over and over), because I've been thinking like for one that "more money will come". And that's not factual, that's emotional/feel-good and non-preparatory. And the other thing is, well I want a [thing], and if the budget will never let me get [thing] then gently caress I'll just get [thing]. But the budget will let me get [thing], just not right this minute, and not at the expense of our goals.

tl;dr
What I'm feeling is just, handle business. Get a small buffer (1 month of expenses) to handle an absolute emergency, get out of debt and stop gifting banks interest money and spending a sizable chunk of money on depreciating junk, get by on some minimal fun money and restaurant money over the next 12-24 months until we're done with the debt, setup automated retirement savings to meet what we'll need in the future, autopilot my finances, maybe buy a house maybe not, and at that point it's OK to have some planned fun (i.e.: budgeted for and intentionally thought out).

I've always thought that the advice preached in here meant the last two points of the above would never be possible; but that's not the case. I was thinking about things incorrectly. I don't have to go full survival-budget for the rest of my life, (at least if I start preparing now and not "tomorrow"). It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing.

e: and to clarify I'm not thinking we're on a survival-budget right now. We're not.


Couple quick notes:
- Credit score up to 690. Woohoo! I don't plan on doing anything with it, but it's a personal achievement for me. Yes I know credit scores are dumb.
- We owed $85 in utilities that we had no idea about (it didn't show online), but we don't have a utility deposit because we signed up for autopay. $70 going into next month's budget that we can use to help the emergency fund. Good dang call MRC, I would have missed that for sure.
- We're still way under on furniture (not that we've been shopping), but I'm glad I gave us the buffer on it. I spaced that we need sheets, some bathroom stuff, etc. My bad. We'll keep this cheap here. We'll absolutely be under budget, but not as much as we were going for.
- Sister said that $65 we spend on internet/"child care" (our thanks for the free day care) for her is unnecessary. $65 freed up month over month.

Small stuff, but something.

Knyteguy fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Jul 11, 2019

Thumbtacks
Apr 3, 2013
lmao so that RV trip across the US wasn't made with a buffer in mind and you straight up ran out of money?

Knyteguy
Jul 6, 2005

YES to love
NO to shirts


Toilet Rascal

Thumbtacks posted:

lmao so that RV trip across the US wasn't made with a buffer in mind and you straight up ran out of money?

It cost significantly more for us as newbies for sure. We left with a buffer of like $4,000 but it went quick because we had no idea how to do things, and we were adjusting to losing an income.

From about 5 months on we had few problems because we learned to stay places cheap or for free, and to not move so much which is where most of the expenses were (gas, maintenance, etc). And we started making sure that we were at least paying attention to things we needed as I mentioned above.

But yeah we straight up ran out of money.

My Rhythmic Crotch
Jan 13, 2011

How would you say your July budget progress is going? We're about 1/3 through the month, have you spent 1/3 (or less) of your discretionary?

Knyteguy
Jul 6, 2005

YES to love
NO to shirts


Toilet Rascal

My Rhythmic Crotch posted:

How would you say your July budget progress is going? We're about 1/3 through the month, have you spent 1/3 (or less) of your discretionary?

Discretionary is going be tight, we kind of screwed ourselves by making the budget/combining categories into discretionary into the month (7/4) and didn't kick the restaurant devouring until the budget was made. 25% left.

As long as weren't not dumb about it next month again, then it means this month will be a bit tight, but next month will be good. We cancelled going down to the California State Fair with my wife's family this month, and have refused a couple 'hey let's go out to eat' offers already to stay on track and will continue to do so. We'll manage the 3 weeks.

Other than that, the budget is great. I underestimated my wife's paychecks for the month and overestimated our expenses, so we'll have (scribbles on a napkin) about $500-800 left over after moving in, which will be going into our emergency fund ahead of schedule, which means we get to start to paydown debt maybe a paycheck sooner than we would have been able to. The budget planned on only having about $50 leftover, so cool.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

Knyteguy posted:

It cost significantly more for us as newbies for sure. We left with a buffer of like $4,000 but it went quick because we had no idea how to do things, and we were adjusting to losing an income.

how could anyone have ever forseen this

My Rhythmic Crotch
Jan 13, 2011

Knyteguy posted:

Discretionary is going be tight, we kind of screwed ourselves by making the budget/combining categories into discretionary into the month (7/4) and didn't kick the restaurant devouring until the budget was made. 25% left.

As long as weren't not dumb about it next month again, then it means this month will be a bit tight, but next month will be good. We cancelled going down to the California State Fair with my wife's family this month, and have refused a couple 'hey let's go out to eat' offers already to stay on track and will continue to do so. We'll manage the 3 weeks.

Other than that, the budget is great. I underestimated my wife's paychecks for the month and overestimated our expenses, so we'll have (scribbles on a napkin) about $500-800 left over after moving in, which will be going into our emergency fund ahead of schedule, which means we get to start to paydown debt maybe a paycheck sooner than we would have been able to. The budget planned on only having about $50 leftover, so cool.

I definitely don't expect perfection, I know it's going to be an adjustment coming from the previous adventure.

My one piece of advice would be to revisit the budget, adjust the income up and the expenses down as you have indicated, and then budget that $500-800 right into the e-fund (or savings, whatever).

In other words, be prepared to hold yourself accountable for actually saving that $500-800, you definitely need every spare dollar and you don't want to have to explain to us what happened if it "goes missing".

Knyteguy
Jul 6, 2005

YES to love
NO to shirts


Toilet Rascal

My Rhythmic Crotch posted:

I definitely don't expect perfection, I know it's going to be an adjustment coming from the previous adventure.

My one piece of advice would be to revisit the budget, adjust the income up and the expenses down as you have indicated, and then budget that $500-800 right into the e-fund (or savings, whatever).

In other words, be prepared to hold yourself accountable for actually saving that $500-800, you definitely need every spare dollar and you don't want to have to explain to us what happened if it "goes missing".

Alright. I want to give some more thought to the expenses before committing to that though. I know at the very least the unplanned income can go in there, but I'm not 100% confident on the rest yet.

I'll do some non-napkin math after work and post an updated budget when I'm sure.

Knyteguy
Jul 6, 2005

YES to love
NO to shirts


Toilet Rascal
Meh I forgot I adjusted the income up on the 3rd when my wife got paid; not as drastic as I was thinking. My wife got a bit of overtime, but I'm not going to bother getting exact with it and I'll call it $50 post-tax.

$378 -> $652 = $274 more saved is what we should be looking at. We'll shoot for better, but I'm not comfortable committing to it yet.



I'll post my YNAB at the end of the month along with this to compare, and throw in the actual spending values into the spreadsheet.


This is my second draft of August. Not final. This will be our standard budget (2 paycheck month) moving forward so I have to make sure it's right. I'm concerned particularly with fuel and utilities since I don't have spending data on those.


Knyteguy fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Jul 12, 2019

My Rhythmic Crotch
Jan 13, 2011

Kept meaning to ask, what is Registration for $50?

Knyteguy
Jul 6, 2005

YES to love
NO to shirts


Toilet Rascal

My Rhythmic Crotch posted:

Kept meaning to ask, what is Registration for $50?

Truck registration. We have Texas plates but we're planning on needing to transfer that to NV at the end of the year. $600 is what the DMV is estimating.

My Rhythmic Crotch
Jan 13, 2011

Ouch, drat. Good job planning ahead for that expense though.

In general I think I like the budget. I'm seeing expenses that BFC threads normally ignore planned out on a monthly basis, which is good.

Now ya just gotta actually stick to it.

My Rhythmic Crotch fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Jul 12, 2019

Knyteguy
Jul 6, 2005

YES to love
NO to shirts


Toilet Rascal

My Rhythmic Crotch posted:

Ouch, drat. Good job planning ahead for that expense though.

In general I think I like the budget. I'm seeing expenses that BFC threads normally ignore planned out on a monthly basis, which is good.

Now ya just gotta actually stick to it.

Thanks, I'm glad to hear that. I'm trying to be realistic and to plan better. We're doing a good job sticking to the budget this month.


Semi-Final August (barring BFC input):



Changes:
- Renter's insurance will only give us the option for quarterly payments.
- Cut discretionary by $15. Goal: $200-$250 so something to work towards.
- Added home goods (August only). Won't spend if not needed.
- Cut groceries by $25. We'll see if that's comfortable or not.
- Cut RV insurance by $20/mo. Already done.
- Dog requires a blood panel that will cost $90 in August. Category will be $120 moving forward (~$33/mo should rollover for future vet appointments). Do never pet.
- Budget for winter tires and monthly car washes +$150. If it's a mild winter we won't need tires.
- Budget for trailer registration +$60. Likely won't need this, but just in case.

Notes:
- Leftover discretionary (if any) will go towards the emergency fund to help offset August's increased costs.

Any thoughts on the above?

September+ draft 1:


RV Debt schedule based the above budget:

My Rhythmic Crotch
Jan 13, 2011

Just a couple things:
- How are the "Combined debt paydown 2825" and "Combined debt paydown 3029" being calculated? Just curious.
- In general I really like that you're budgeting for truck expenses which may or may not happen.
- I'm guessing the reason Registration jumped from 50 to 110 is because the RV needs tags on it as well?

Knyteguy
Jul 6, 2005

YES to love
NO to shirts


Toilet Rascal

My Rhythmic Crotch posted:

Just a couple things:
- How are the "Combined debt paydown 2825" and "Combined debt paydown 3029" being calculated? Just curious.
- In general I really like that you're budgeting for truck expenses which may or may not happen. As long as you have a way of earmarking those funds so they don't go into a slushfund and get spent on other things, for example.
- I'm guessing the reason Registration jumped from 50 to 110 is because the RV needs tags on it as well?

- How are the "Combined debt paydown 2825" and "Combined debt paydown 3029" being calculated? Just curious.

Combined = additional monthly debt payment + minimum monthly payments. My get out of debt planning tool uses this figure, so that's why I'm including it.



- In general I really like that you're budgeting for truck expenses which may or may not happen. As long as you have a way of earmarking those funds so they don't go into a slushfund and get spent on other things, for example.

Cool, I just hope I covered everything. The funds will be allocated into its own maintenance category YNAB, so there will be no wiggle room to use that money without the budget being obviously affected.

- I'm guessing the reason Registration jumped from 50 to 110 is because the RV needs tags on it as well?

Right on the registration jump. It will only need tags if we take it onto a public street again, but I can think of a few ways that could need to happen. That would cost around $400, so once we reach that we'll be good to stop contributing extra there.


I guess side note: my boss is leaving the company we both work for in August. He mentioned that this is a good opportunity for me and will talk to me me more later (IIRC this week, but maybe next). I'll make a career update post with what I want to do there after I hear back from him. He did say that it was very good for my job security.

My Rhythmic Crotch
Jan 13, 2011

Huh, okay for August I'm adding 1584+756+375 = 2715, and for September 1788+756+375 = 2919. That's all I was curious about.

Knyteguy
Jul 6, 2005

YES to love
NO to shirts


Toilet Rascal

My Rhythmic Crotch posted:

Huh, okay for August I'm adding 1584+756+375 = 2715, and for September 1788+756+375 = 2919. That's all I was curious about.

Oh whoops, nice catch. I'm terrible with spread sheets and I guess I had it incorrect after a data sort.

It's easy to miss but the student loans @ $87 are in there as well.

August:
$1584 + 756 + 87 + 375 = $2,802

September+:
$1788 + 756 + 87 + 375 = $3,006

The amortization schedule is still good luckily.

My Rhythmic Crotch
Jan 13, 2011

Oh right on, I missed the $87.

Actually one little thing and one bigger thing comes to mind:
- for any loans, it might be cool to have the principle remaining listed in the notes section.
- a column for negative or positive rollover from the previous month would be great to have, I don't use YNAB but I was under the impression it could do that automagically?

Knyteguy
Jul 6, 2005

YES to love
NO to shirts


Toilet Rascal

My Rhythmic Crotch posted:

Oh right on, I missed the $87.

Actually one little thing and one bigger thing comes to mind:
- for any loans, it might be cool to have the principle remaining listed in the notes section.
- a column for negative or positive rollover from the previous month would be great to have, I don't use YNAB but I was under the impression it could do that automagically?

Will do - YNAB doesn't rollover a negative category into the next month's category, it just rolls over negative spending into the next month as a whole.

I'm going to hold off on finishing August's budget until the last week of the month, but I'll add those columns.

Budget Update:


Notes:
- Credit cards will be paid off on July 30th. That spending is all budgeted for this month. I won't pay any interest here.
- Pets are good until next month.
- Groceries are good until next month. We just did our two week grocery trip two nights ago.
- Parenthesis in category name ($xxx) is the budget from the beginning of the month. Actual budget reflects the adjusted predicted amount.
- Thousand Trails: We're shored up on this for the next month or two. I want to sell it before dues become due again (they just went up on us). I'll be working on selling the membership after we move to the apartment.
- Tracking is updated with today's balances.
- Hidden category: We had a rollover from June (cigarettes or something I can't remember) so I pulled the $4.61 from that category.
- Went over with a car wash in the maintenance category (why I wanted to account for car washes moving forward). I'll roll that negative into next month from the auto category or discretionary.

Stuff we've learned so far this month:
- Stop buying snacks/drinks from mini-marts. poo poo's expensive. We can stretch our grocery budget much further by cutting that expense.
- The fuel budget needs to increase moving forward until we know what we need.
- Next month my goal is to work on spreading out spending more.

Any thoughts/things we should look out for?

Quick retirement Q:


My wife's 401k from her former employer through Prudential. I have no idea how these contribution %s were set up. The fees go up to 0.87%. Any changes needed? Is there anyway I can just move this to Vanguard? Should we?

Knyteguy fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Jul 20, 2019

Duckman2008
Jan 6, 2010

TFW you see Flyers goaltending.
Grimey Drawer

Knyteguy posted:

Will do - YNAB doesn't rollover a negative category into the next month's category, it just rolls over negative spending into the next month as a whole.

I'm going to hold off on finishing August's budget until the last week of the month, but I'll add those columns.

Budget Update:


Notes:
- Credit cards will be paid off on July 30th. That spending is all budgeted for this month. I won't pay any interest here.
- Pets are good until next month.
- Groceries are good until next month. We just did our two week grocery trip two nights ago.
- Parenthesis in category name ($xxx) is the budget from the beginning of the month. Actual budget reflects the adjusted predicted amount.
- Thousand Trails: We're shored up on this for the next month or two. I want to sell it before dues become due again (they just went up on us). I'll be working on selling the membership after we move to the apartment.
- Tracking is updated with today's balances.
- Hidden category: We had a rollover from June (cigarettes or something I can't remember) so I pulled the $4.61 from that category.
- Went over with a car wash in the maintenance category (why I wanted to account for car washes moving forward). I'll roll that negative into next month from the auto category or discretionary.

Stuff we've learned so far this month:
- Stop buying snacks/drinks from mini-marts. poo poo's expensive. We can stretch our grocery budget much further by cutting that expense.
- The fuel budget needs to increase moving forward until we know what we need.
- Next month my goal is to work on spreading out spending more.

Any thoughts/things we should look out for?

Quick retirement Q:


My wife's 401k from her former employer through Prudential. I have no idea how these contribution %s were set up. The fees go up to 0.87%. Any changes needed? Is there anyway I can just move this to Vanguard? Should we?

Yes you should move to Vanguard.

https://investor.vanguard.com/account-transfer/how-to-transfer-money

Vanguard fees are 0.04% for the VTSAX total stock market. Obviously you can get all into diversification, but it doesn’t have to be complicated at all. The ratio alone is worth it, and doing some blend of total stock market, S&P, etc is def lower risk but way bette ratios than what you are getting there.

My Rhythmic Crotch
Jan 13, 2011

Always go Vanguard.

I don't know if you guys count places like Walgreens as a mini-mart, but holy poo poo those places are a ripoff. $4 gatorade, no thanks.

Couple random questions:
- For the apartment deposit, have you basically already paid them $400 or something?
- On the goal column, what does the T, M, D, U mean? I'm guessing that's something YNAB does to indicate how you're doing on that line item.

If you can stick the landing for this month, it'll be a good month, especially considering it's your first month back on the wagon.

SlyFrog
May 16, 2007

What? One name? Who are you, Seal?
Yes. Fees are one of the killers of retirement savings that a lot of people don't see. They pay fees to their brokers, fees for the funds they broker puts them in, transaction fees, etc. All amounting to a major drain on their retirement savings. Because when you're talking about average annual returns of 6-7%, losing 1-2% of that (and the compounded value of that) just kills you.

And the best part is, those fees go toward nothing of real value. Good brokers will just put you in the same broad range of equities and bonds (asset class allocation appropriate for your age) that you could get for zero or near zero fees at Fidelity or Vanguard.

I prefer Vanguard over Fidelity, but for an admittedly silly reason. I believe Fidelity does now have a number of no fee basic funds, but only because they were forced into that to compete with Vanguard, which was basically the original "We're not going to gently caress you over with fees" brokerage. So I'm oddly loyal to Vanguard, given that the cost of Vanguard funds is usually a fraction of a fraction of a percent.

WithoutTheFezOn
Aug 28, 2005
Oh no

My Rhythmic Crotch posted:

Always go Vanguard.

I don't know if you guys count places like Walgreens as a mini-mart, but holy poo poo those places are a ripoff. $4 gatorade, no thanks.
You can get awesome deals on cashews and trail mix, though.

SiGmA_X
May 3, 2004
SiGmA_X
YNAB should have an option to roll negative balances over but maybe they took it out of the web version. I thought it was there when I demo’d it.

Car wash is just a subset of vehicle expense IMO.

SlyFrog posted:

Yes. Fees are one of the killers of retirement savings that a lot of people don't see. They pay fees to their brokers, fees for the funds they broker puts them in, transaction fees, etc. All amounting to a major drain on their retirement savings. Because when you're talking about average annual returns of 6-7%, losing 1-2% of that (and the compounded value of that) just kills you.

And the best part is, those fees go toward nothing of real value. Good brokers will just put you in the same broad range of equities and bonds (asset class allocation appropriate for your age) that you could get for zero or near zero fees at Fidelity or Vanguard.

I prefer Vanguard over Fidelity, but for an admittedly silly reason. I believe Fidelity does now have a number of no fee basic funds, but only because they were forced into that to compete with Vanguard, which was basically the original "We're not going to gently caress you over with fees" brokerage. So I'm oddly loyal to Vanguard, given that the cost of Vanguard funds is usually a fraction of a fraction of a percent.

This is not a silly reason imo.

Move the 401k into an IRA and drop the money into either a ~2055 target date fund or simply a total market fund and forget about it.

Knyteguy
Jul 6, 2005

YES to love
NO to shirts


Toilet Rascal

My Rhythmic Crotch posted:

Always go Vanguard.

I don't know if you guys count places like Walgreens as a mini-mart, but holy poo poo those places are a ripoff. $4 gatorade, no thanks.

Couple random questions:
- For the apartment deposit, have you basically already paid them $400 or something?
- On the goal column, what does the T, M, D, U mean? I'm guessing that's something YNAB does to indicate how you're doing on that line item.

If you can stick the landing for this month, it'll be a good month, especially considering it's your first month back on the wagon.

Yeah Walgreens was a smaller part of it, along with the only grocery store within 10 miles being outrageously expensive. Mostly though 7-11 and whatnot killed us this month though.

1) We've paid $400 yes. The other $510 is due at move-in.
2) T = target (no set date), M = monthly funding target, D = money needed to hit date goal, U = upcoming scheduled transaction.

T = ex Clothes, we won't in the next year or two need more than $300 in clothes at once, so stop funding at $300. Start funding again if we get below.
D = ex Emergency fund, we want this to have $4,000 by September so we can move ahead with additional debt payments.
M = ex Holidays/Birthdays, fund this with $40/mo no matter what.
U = ex Hulu is scheduled to be coming out, make sure you can cover that with your category balance.

Just a little extra data so I don't have to click a category to see the full details.

It's nice to hear some positive feedback. I'm pretty confident we'll be hitting out budget this month, but I think we can do better next month too.


I'll look into rolling that 401k into a Vanguard IRA in August. The new 401k will be with them as well so we'll have all retirement accounts with them; nice.

Thanks.

Motronic
Nov 6, 2009

SiGmA_X posted:

This is not a silly reason imo.

It is not. Also, Vanguard funds are member-owned (you have voting rights based on how much you have invested). As far as I know, no other brokerage has this arrangement. They are also all completely separate legal entities from Vanguard the company.

Knyteguy
Jul 6, 2005

YES to love
NO to shirts


Toilet Rascal
Alright, so I got August 2019's budget done a day or two early. Rollovers might change (higher than posted I'm almost sure), but allocations won't.



Budget = allocation + rollover
Rollover next month = budget - spending

October is when things start rolling on the debt pay-down as expected. At that point we'll be in the spot we need to be for the goal $3,000/mo combined monthly debt pay down.

Knyteguy fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Jul 23, 2019

Veskit
Mar 2, 2005

I love capitalism!! DM me for the best investing advice!
Ummmmmmmm.


Does it track spending????

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Knyteguy
Jul 6, 2005

YES to love
NO to shirts


Toilet Rascal

Veskit posted:

Ummmmmmmm.


Does it track spending????

I'm using YNAB for that. Spreadsheets are easier to communicate/make a plan a month ahead with though.

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