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1) Continue to max 401k, Roth IRA, and HSA this year as last (but with new higher limits, and with 100% of the HSA contributions coming from paycheck contributions so that ALL taxes get exempted on it). 401k and HSA are already set; and I want to deposit all-in on my Roth IRA within the first week of January. 2) Maintain my existing cash/savings emergency fund of 9 months current expenses (which will be more like 14 if I have to stretch it and actually change my lifestyle) 3) I spent about $430 per month on all food-related expenses in 2014 (down 5% or ~$20/month from 2013). I want to drop this another $50 to $380 per month by upping groceries by $20 and dropping work cafeteria, restaurants, fast food, and alcohol by $15-20 each per month, and using my groceries more effectively. Maybe it won't be in exactly those ratios, but that's the goal. 4) I told myself through most of 2014 I'd shop around on car insurance. I got some quotes and never followed up, but a friend got me in touch with an independent agent a couple of weeks ago who found a combined auto/home/umbrella quote which will save me around $240 per year. I'm going to switch over on that quote. 5) I'll update my resume by April. If April salary reviews get me any less than a 4% raise, then I will also shop that resume to the tech company in town where a coworker recently went and is an industry that aligns closer to my personal interests (but I don't know if I'm as well suited to it) 6) Earlier I'd said I'd use my ESPP sales throughout the year to cover my Roth IRA, tax burden on ESPP itself, and pay 1-2 payments principal payments on my mortgage (the remainder being fun money). I think I'd like to fix that mortgage portion to 1 payment and put the other toward more charitable giving either toward my usual recipients, or to the STEM nonprofit I've helped start with some other engineers and teachers from the robotics program I work with. Stretch goal: 7) I've been trying to figure out a side stream of income, such as starting a business, but I didn't really know what I could get involved in as far as my interests and skills go. Completely unrelated, I recently got in touch with an old coworker/friend who is willing to train me up in his own unique martial arts style completely for free. It's the real deal like I've never even seen, with some feats you only see crazy monks able to do and not at all what you find in your everyday dojo or MMA gym. He wants to teach me and document his methods so the knowledge isn't lost, and he also wants to develop a handful of students and start doing in-studio consulting for various martial arts teachers in town and show them how to improve their techniques, regardless of their martial art type or style. I want to learn anyway for my own fitness and physical enrichment, but my stretch goal this year is to help him develop it into a small consulting business by year's end. Best part is that the startup costs wouldn't require pretty much anything in the way of capital equipment/structures/utilities, just clothing and a few martial arts supplies most likely (and we each have plenty of savings to cover that or anything administrative several times over). The other beauty of it if it works out is that it would be completely independent and diversified from our day jobs as engineers, so there's no conflict of interest or strong correlation where a loss of opportunities in one would also mean drying up business in the other job. Edit: Got better food cost numbers after checking for previously-uncategorized expenses. Even higher than I thought. Also added paragraph breaks to the stretch goal (which was an awful block of text before as quoted below), and line breaks between list items. SpelledBackwards fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Jan 2, 2015 |
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Dec 29, 2014 07:32
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Pompous Rhombus posted:If you wanted to document it, maybe video equipment? For PoV filming, you might look into something like a GoPro with a chest or head mount, or Pivothead glasses. Great idea, I'll float it by him as we progress. I don't know if the fundamental knowledge lends itself well to actual videography; illustrations and/or 3D animation like they used to show on Fight Quest or Deadliest Warrior might be a better fit. Either way that would represent an expense since neither of us have body-mountable cameras or animation experience.
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Dec 29, 2014 18:31
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Cicero posted:- Win more games of Starcraft in the inter-corporate gaming league I play in than I did last season (3). Good luck, UNLESS you're taking about AHGL and you work for a company competing against National Instruments. Then I can't support your endeavor.
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Jan 3, 2015 03:40
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Ok let me amend what I said. Good luck to you in matches which do not hinder NI. I wish I could say I was part of the team, but I suck at games in general, and I'm WAYYYY too nervous and prone to turtling to even play a game like SC2 online against other real live humans. But I do love to cheer the other NI guys on.
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Jan 3, 2015 04:32
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Are monthly updates a regular thing for this thread? No mention of it in the OP. I'm cutting some of my goals down to more digestible versions so the quote block isn't so huge. Click the linked post to read them in full.SpelledBackwards posted:1) Continue to max 401k, Roth IRA, and HSA this year as last... I want to deposit all-in on my Roth IRA within the first week of January. 1) Done and all set. Roth IRA is fully funded, and HSA + 401k will hit their contribution limits on my last paychecks of the year. 2) The funding of my Roth IRA out the gate and some planned payment of backtaxes mean this will drop down to about 5 months from 9 months. With my first ESPP sale expected within the next two weeks, this will be back up to ~7 months soon. 3) January was down to about $330, but it still felt like overspending on lots of days despite vastly exceeding the goal. We'll see how this averages out over the year; I may have just gotten lucky. 4) Switched over, but old insurance company didn't acknolwedge dropping me and I got debited for another month's insurance. I still need to call and complain about that to try and get it reversed. 5) Not yet April, so I haven't done anything here yet. Turns out some people in my staffing level got proactive out-of-cycle January raises (shifted forward from April) in order to prevent the growing problem of poaching/attrition, but unfortunately I wasn't one of them  6) Upcoming ESPP sale will be used to partially cover cash shortfall from funding my Roth IRA, as planned. 7) No movement here; my friend has a heavy grad school semester and won't have as much time as I was hoping between now and end of May. New goals: 8) I had also planned to build a new computer last year to replace my old desktop from 2010, but I'm put that off to later this year. Depending on how busy I get and whether I can make incremental upgrades (or even need to if I'm not playing anything made in the last 2 years)... I may only spend a fraction of the $800-1300 I had spitballed for it. As low as $0-100 quieting my system down, maybe? Sold and gave away some old parts to cover some of those costs. I also sold a rifle but don't yet know if/where I'm going to apply those funds... I could apply it to ammo restocking from December, but I am already considering that purchase and the purchase price of this rifle itself as sunk costs, and treating the sale income as new money. 9) I should eventually establish a budget instead of just doing lookbacks using Mint. Plan to do that by April. SpelledBackwards fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Feb 1, 2015 |
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Feb 1, 2015 23:42
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Manawski posted:I also have a motorcycle that I've been meaning to sell. Come April, I'll have the time to sell it and should get about 2k out of that as well. What do you mean by time to sell? Does it need work first? The sooner you sell it, the sooner you can also drop your insurance for it!
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Feb 18, 2015 02:45
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SpelledBackwards posted:2) The funding of my Roth IRA out the gate and some planned payment of backtaxes mean this will drop down to about 5 months from 9 months. With my first ESPP sale expected within the next two weeks, this will be back up to ~7 months soon. 2) Paid said backtaxes and restored my E-fund through the ESPP as planned. I expect a small penalty, but it should be covered by an overpayment this year I had to run through a 1040X. Should be a wash or I'll get maybe $100 back from that. 3) First 3 months of trying to spend $380 or less have been really good. If I don't count some restaurant gift cards I bought at the grocery store but didn't use (KnyteGuy--style shifting, I know, but I'm not yet sure if they'll be gifts or if I will use them myself in Q3 when I don't have 5% back on grocery like Q1 and 5% back on restaurants like Q2)... then Jan-Mar I spent $321, $348, and $309 compared to $430 last year. This month however, I'm way off track, partly because of an unexpectedly expensive birthday dinner for a friend and some concerts on short notice with slightly more expensive dinner/drink expenses than I'd have liked. $240 spent halfway through the month (63% of budget). But I did get two free large pizza that were leftover from a work event yesterday and made a big ol' batch of my mom's amazing pot roast earlier in the week, so the next week or so should be low expenditure. 4) Got my refunds from the previous insurance company, and even got like $30 back on overpaid premiums from the new company! Guess they revised down from their initial estimate & billing. 5) Based on talk from my boss at a staff meeting last month, I don't expect an April raise either, unfortunately. Not that I ever budget for a future raise, but still. I was worried about my advancement path since the management position I was going for just got filled by another friend of mine, but that means I get out of the slump I was in and under him I might actually have better advancement opportunities with him in between me and my current manager. We'll see, and if not there are some other potential openings for me to fill or create on other teams. The other side of this is that I bought an online self-paced training package for a professional cert so that I can polish up my resume and shop around if I don't feel I'm doing well. I said I'd update my resume by April if I didn't get the promotion, but I haven't done that yet. Changing this goal to having half that training done and finishing a new resume by end of May. 6) Done as far as the e-Fund goes. Decided not to spend another lot or 1.5 lots on spendy travel later this year, so still on track. 7) Still waiting for the friend's grad school semester to finish to get back no board with training 8) Spent about $350 on my computer after buying some new parts and selling some old ones. It's so quiet and still performing well for what I'm doing that that I'm happy enough to not upgrade any more on it this year unless some money falls from the sky 9) No work toward hard budgeting. I look at things like YNAB and don't want the overhead vs. post-analyzing spending trends in Mint and keeping careful track of my food expenditures. I still need to give it more thought, but likely this won't happen at all.
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Apr 17, 2015 16:27
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Original post February Update April Update 1) Max 401k, Roth IRA, HSA this year -- all still on track, including backtaxes I owed from 2011-2013 and an refund/correction I was owed from 2014. I've also increased my withholding so that ESPP and RSU tax burdens are already accounted for by my regular paycheck being diminished, and now I don't have to worry about filing quarterly estimated taxes (Form 1040-ES) to try and account for them or be penalized at the end of the year. The Roth IRA was fully funded Jan 1, 401(k) and HSA will max out at end of the year through level paycheck deductions. The 401k does not do matching "true up", so I would lose out if I tried to max it out early. 2) Maintain existing cash/savings emergency fund of 9 months current expenses -- still good there across checking + savings accounts 3) Drop monthly food spending from $430 to $380 -- despite some close calls toward the end of both May and June, I rallied my frugality to stay at an average of $363 Jan-Jun if Mint's trend tracking is accurate (it was all borked earlier in the year). That DOES include $140 in restaurant gift cards I bought that I'll use later throughout the year but not count them in the month they're used. 4)[Switch insurance companies for car/house/umbrella -- did this in January. A close friend of mine just got into the insurance agent biz, and now I'm looking at possible saving even more by switching over with him next year. He sent me a quote this morning but I haven't reviewed it. Anyway, I have to wait until I'm up for renewal with my new provider before I can switch without incurring a fee. 5) Update resume by April, shop myself around if I don't get an April raise [UPDATED April: Finish resume update and half of PMP cert training by end of May] -- an interesting position opened up at work, so I polished up my internal resume for that in April by coincidence. I didn't get an out-of-cycle April raise  , but I did get some groupon deal on online training for a professional cert in project management (PMP). It probably won't be useful at my current company but could give me a boost if I look externally for a job, or even as leverage for my annual salary review in a few months. Unfortunately I haven't done any of the training I said I'd do by May... or any at all because of June deadlines. I need to pick this up.6) ESPP: Use 1 & 2 to cover Roth IRA and ESPP tax burden, use 3 & 4 to put in an extra mortgage payment and increase charitable giving -- 2 ESPP lots bought and sold, E-fund/Roth IRA are set as per above (see goals 1 & 2) Due to a funding campaign my brother was on, I'm already almost maxed at corporate matching for charity this year, but I'll still use ESPP to give way more than usual this year. I keep getting the bug to sell extra taxable investments and pay down a big chunk of my house, but the numbers at Pay Down Calc show that it just doesn't make sense unless I sell a huuuuuge portion of it. I might forego the extra mortage payment completely and use that money for P2P lending now that Lending Club just opened up for business in Texas last week. 7) Stretch goal: Establish side business for martial arts consulting -- Now that his spring grad school is done, I've been able to work with my friend/trainer a little bit, but right now my assignment is all self-training and I've put absolutely no effort into this since we met in late May.  8) Buy new computer parts for a full rebuild ($800-1300) -- spent 9) Make a budget by April [UPDATED April to be canceled] - nah, I like what I'm doing well enough. Edit 2: The more I think about it, the more I do want to aggressively pay down the mortgage. If I do it over a 24-36 month period vs. the 10.5 years I have left, it doesn't put me out too badly in terms of cash flow and selling off taxable investments. SpelledBackwards fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 10, 2015 10:13
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Original post | February Update | April Update | July Update 3) Drop monthly food spending from $430 to $380 -- I went way overbudget last month to $432 because of a tradeshow at the beginning of the month where I was eating out downtown 3 days for lunch (including at a Churrascaria/Brazilian steakhouse one day) and then another trip to a Churrascaria this past weekend for my friend's 40th birthday. Maintained a $363 average Jan-Aug though since July was way lean (~284). Cooked and froze a lot over the last week that should help reduce the strain in September, but it's also Sept 1 and I bought food in the work cafeteria today.  5) Update resume by April, shop myself around if I don't get an April raise [UPDATED April: Didn't get an out of cycle raise in April. Plan now is to finish resume update and half of PMP cert training by end of May] -- still haven't even glanced at the PMP cert courses. I am a failure. 6) ESPP: Use 1 & 2 to cover Roth IRA and ESPP tax burden, use 3 & 4 to put in an extra mortgage payment and increase charitable giving [UPDATED July: Look at P2P now that Lending Club is in TX, and accelerate mortgage payments] -- I have transferred some money to LC but haven't looked at how to really pick and invest in notes wisely yet. I had made 1 big extra payment to my mortgage in June or so, but the recent volatility has made me shy from doing that again vs. putting more money into a down stock market where I stand to gain more on the eventual rise vs. my fixed-interest-rate mortgage. 7) Stretch goal: Establish side business for martial arts consulting -- Still haven't pursued this any further since May 8) Buy new computer parts for a full rebuild ($800-1300) -- spent
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Sep 1, 2015 21:45
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Original post | February Update | April Update | July Update | September Update 3) Drop monthly food spending from $430 to $380 -- September and October were awesome, wherein I spent about $222 and $240 respectively. Used a lot more home cooking. My average is now down to about $330 on the year. 5) Update resume by April, shop myself around if I don't get an April raise -- Well things got a little worse. I got passed up for a raise this year, so I'm a little disappointed in my own performance. And I still haven't even glanced at the PMP cert courses. I am even more of a failure here than in September's update. 6) ESPP: Use 1 & 2 to cover Roth IRA and ESPP tax burden, use 3 & 4 to put in extra mortgage payments/increase charitable giving/etc. -- I finally started my investment in LC using their automatic investment functions. Haven't made any more extra mortgage principal payments since once in June. I was hoping for a modest raise in October to allow me to put a little more toward charity and taxable investments this year, but since I didn't get one (see #5), I haven't formulated exactly how much I'll be giving during our big fall giving campaign this month to various charities, including the non-profit I helped found. I'll probably give more to my own 501c3 just for the hell of it regardless, because the latest peak into my accounts shows I have a little more cash on hand than expected, even before my last ESPP purchase and sale which will happen over the next week or so. 7) Stretch goal: Establish side business for martial arts consulting -- Still haven't pursued this any further since May 8) Buy new computer parts for a full rebuild ($800-1300) -- spent net $600 now that I sold that last remaining $100 worth of old parts to a coworkers. As I said before, it's not as powerful or feature-rich as I had been planning to get, but the price was right. If and when I eventually get into newer games again, I can look at upgrading video card then. But it may not even happen for a few years, who knows.
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Nov 2, 2015 01:55
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Original post | February Update | April Update | July Update | September Update | October Update 3) Drop monthly food spending from $430 to $380 -- The only month I went over $380 was one where I bought a bunch of food gift cards in Q1 (which I've only used about a third of total), and August where I went to a Brazilian steakhouse twice, once for a work function and again for a friend's birthday. Sept and October were my best months, both under $250. December is on track to be around $250-$300 because I'll probably get more discounted gift cards, but I also won't spend as much on food while I'm home at my parents. I don't expect to go out that much either. 5) Update resume by April, shop myself around if I don't get an April raise -- As I mentioned before, I got passed up for a raise this year. And I still haven't even glanced at the PMP cert courses. So pretty poo poo progress on goals. I think I'm doing better at work, though, and got good feedback on my presentation last week, which was my biggest one in months. 6) ESPP: Use 1 & 2 to cover Roth IRA and ESPP tax burden, use 3 & 4 to put in extra mortgage payments/increase charitable giving/etc. -- Lending Club has invested most of the $2500 I transferred to it, just waiting on some straggler notes to finally go through. Haven't made any more extra mortgage principal payments since once in June, which is according to plan. I didn't get that October raise like I wanted, but I still gave more to charities during our fall giving campaign at work, and also across the whole year (including to the non-profit I helped found), than I ever have before and I don't regret it. I'm all set with recent cash inflow from getting a new roommate to cover my 2016 Roth IRA on Jan 1 without significantly draining my cash savings down from their usual setpoint. 7) Stretch goal: Establish side business for martial arts consulting -- Still haven't pursued this any further since May. Called the mentor/trainer friend up on Saturday when I was in his apartment complex visiting someone else, but didn't hear back. Let's make it a next year thing. 8) Buy new computer parts for a full rebuild ($800-1300) -- spent net $600 or so without any disappointment on performance since I still really don't game much. Now I'm eyeing a replacement for my living room theater PC, hopefully in the $250-350 range, with earmarked cash to cover it.
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Dec 17, 2015 04:19
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Nocheez posted:This may not help you, but when my HTPC died I put the hard drive in my main computer and installed a Plex server on it. Now I just use the Chromecast to access the media. Much appreciated. I got so frustrated with my parents' terrible options while using their Samsung TV's built-in apps that I bought them an Amazon FireTV Stick, and when I go home and set it up next week, I'm gonna see what all the fuss is about. If I like it enough, I'll save myself $$$ and get either the Stick or a full-on a FireTV for my regular streaming needs, and then only break out the computer I've currently got for specialty stuff those devices can't handle. Chances are I'll go that route just because of the annoying frugality I've started to develop over the last year or so. Sometimes I wish I could just let myself spend money, but here I can clearly see potentially more-optimal routes which also use less money, so I'll explore them first and maybe put some of the difference toward improving my wardrobe.
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Dec 19, 2015 06:26
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slap me silly posted:I like! Anyone who wants this and feels they deserve it, post in here with Me me me! I'm phone posting, but my last post has a link to my first post here. Any dropped numbers were accomplished except for the budgeting one, which I cancelled: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3687865&pagenumber=11&perpage=40#post453953123
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Dec 27, 2015 02:53
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BossRighteous posted:3) Release (now partially) completed Android game Wow, that's a huge jump, congratulations! At that rate I'd say you get an easy pass on the Bingo as well, and Vegas definitely seems more reasonable. I lost $100 myself at WinStar on Saturday, but that's what hard cash limits are for. I started with 4 straight roulette busts and was never even close to my starting money after that. My cousin lost more than twice that... neither of which is nearly as good as the time I won $250+ in slots within 10 minutes of walking in. On the whole I think I'm barely at even zero or just slightly negative now for lifetime gambling/lottery/scratch off losses. That'll probably get worse quickly as I started a $5-7 /month scratch off and lottery regular expense for funsies back in September. Maybe it's good that we only have one very remote casino in Texas.
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Dec 28, 2015 17:53
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Cicero posted:Yes, won 4 games. I also lost like 4 or 5 games but that wasn't part of my goal! Way to go. I wish I could've followed along this season since my coworkers (National Instruments) did so well last season, but there was no fanfare around this one and practically no games were casted. I only have WoL, so I don't think I could have even played the replays if I'd wanted to. Lame.
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Dec 30, 2015 05:09
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