Financial Update - April and May Spending and Some Life Notes

 I don't know what it is but the last 2 months I've been checking my balances more often than usual. Maybe I'm bored, anxious - who knows?

I identified early on that checking my income and expenses more often than every 3 months was not beneficial to my mental health as I often felt pulled to make a change - which ended in some sort of downspiral enough of the time. 

I think part of what motivated me the last 2 months were intermittent feelings and angst about my job, getting a new job, leaving this job. So, in summation - some perceived job instability. 

Anyway, as you may know, at the beginning of this year, I dipped a toe in the world of budgeting apps. Less so for keeping me on budget and more so for tracking purposes. I started to lose interest in manually updating my spreadsheets and wanted something more visual.  Plus all the cools kids were doing it. 

And then in the last couple of weeks a colleagues shared some of her numbers with me and it took me in a spiral because I thought her investment choices were outperforming mine! So it gave me cause for pause. Basically, her 401k after 4 years seemed to be doing better than mine after 4 years and she was contributing less. Her financial advisor was picking and rebalancing her allocations, so it made me wonder if my target date fund was letting me down.

There were a few misconceptions though.

- For whatever reason, I had it in my head that I left Call Center #1 with $100k balance in 401k - that turned out to be false. 

 I left it with $71k and so the fact that it was at $100k with no additional contribution was actually pretty awesome! 

- And my colleague was saying she'd only been contributing the minimum to get the match, and I felt like I'd been working hard to max out my 401k, so why did we have the same balance?  

In reality, her company match of 6% played a big part. So we had similar contributions for similar end of year balances - that part was key.  But I did have more of my hard earned cash in there vs hers was quite heavily padded with company match money.  And her general higher salary over all helped her get to the same place. 

So I was comparing her 6-10% contribution to my 20% contribution and wondering how we were getting the same returns.  That was an inaccurate comparison. The dollar amounts ended up being closer. 

It was eye opening to see what a higher salary and greater match can really do to the bottom line!  I mean you know it intuitively but to see the actual dollars was...as I said... eye-opening. 

- And at 12% contribution to her 401k, her financial advisor had her projected to $2.25 million in 25 years, and it felt like I was never going to get there. 

I still actually don't know how those projections were made, based on a lower starting balance. But I ran my numbers using the projection tool on Personal Capital, the Vanguard retirement income calculator, and my trusty friend the Compound Interest Calculator on investor.gov.

So I feel better about my numbers and potential projections.

I appreciate my friend for being open. It is one thing I've wanted on this personal finance journey - more open talks about money. Then I remembered, that's what blogging and reading other people's blogs offers me. Virtual insight into other people's financial plans. 

Anyway, after that chat with my colleague, I really considered signing up with her financial planner for a couple reasons. One - I was needing a little boost and just a financial check-in. Other than the internet, I haven't really had anyone asses my financial plans and offer any advice or optimization strategies. I really don't know what I'm doing most of the time. I just kind of click and hope for the best! 

Secondly - I was interested in his projections and rate of return. But that has dissipated significantly. I also generally just have questions of what happens next. Say I reach my goal, what then? 

So there is a desire to meet with a professional, but the urgency is not where it was Friday night! What a difference a day makes! 

Anyway, I really intended this to be short and sweet, but here we are.

Anyway, as I said in the beginning, I tried the apps. The first few months, it didn't really do much, but the more I log-in, the more useful I've found them.

I love the Snapshot.

Here's my spending for April 2021

 

Here's first 30 days of May 2021.

 

So for May

- Yes I paid State Taxes

- And I've been hitting the FL pre-packaged food aisle and hot bar a little hard the last couple months.

- Had to get my license plate renewed and car inspected.

- And I could easily just click the "Shopping" category and see what that $2.25 was.

- And then of course those pesky robo-advisor fees. 

That was easy!

And some good news

And I just crested my Flex FI number in assets this weekend!!!  It's amazing. So if I did 5% withdrawal, I could technically be okay for a looooooooooooong time. Then, this lady I'd been following-up with wants to move forward with the hiring process for a clinical Medical Writing job. It's early days, but it was the nicest boost after the triggering effects of pursuing an internal Med Info Mgr role. 

Anyway, being this close to my FI number is amazing. It's definitely shifted my focus a bit more on what exactly does life after FI look like? I've thought about it, obviously, but mostly been laser focused on saving all the money! 

I still click around to find volunteer organizations. 

I still think about reading and walking and personal health. 

Nothing has really changed but I am a tiny bit hopeful that I will eventually start making moves in the right direction of harvesting a life to "retire to." I don't know. No big moves, I'm not ready.

Right now, I'm still just trying to do one day a time. One task a a time.