Friday Check-In

 It's a little after 4p on Friday and I'm feeling happy! Reason - I'm hopped up on Tahitian Fruit Punch and McDs and fries.

I think after this last bag I'm going to cool down on the fries for a little while. 

I actually have enough food in the house to not buy anything for awhile. Since COVID and moving I haven't been as successful with cleaning out the freezer and pantries as in previous years. I think I just have more pantry space. So while a part of me wants to do that now, I won't even make that a serious goal.

I really need more descriptive words for my goals - I've heard soft goal, reach goal, target goal, stretch goal, but none of them really fit my situation. I have a lot of secret goals. You know the ones you don't dare say out loud lest they don't come true.

Still on the waning front of outside contacts.

The Thing I did

After wanting to and then not wanting to, I deliberately told the OverAchiever some of my complaints from Old Job. I had to air it out. I was feeling mean-spirited this morning.  I am proud of myself that I was able to keep it to just 3 main bullets.

Then I said I felt bad and deleted it. 

I have to say it didn't feel bad.

But naturally, now I think something bad is going to happen to me. Work is going to get crazy. I'm going to be super lost and all the doomsday things will happen. I am not bad to the bone.

I think I could enjoy this life if I could just find more things to occupy my time. 

I'm still working through how much I spiral after unanswered text messages and email, but I do think it's mostly a me issue.  Although I think it's a bit of a power move on the sender's part, I like to downplay it by responding to their silence anyway - just act dumb...like I'm mentally slapping your power move away. 

Investment Choices

One of the good-to-great things that have been on my mind is to simplify my mutual funds. When I first started working, I think I just picked a target date fund because I didn't know what else to do. It was the easy choice. When I first started tracking my spending and thus my assets, I noticed that the Target Date Fund just had these amazing returns. 

So as I became for active and aggressively saving I've opened up several more brokerage accounts and kept going for the target date fund. It was easy and really all I knew as a novice investor. I figured my "diversification" was with the robo advisor. Then when I reached another level of madness...must've been end of last year... I finally swung for the hills. I started funneling new money into the much lauded VTSAX on advice of my favorite bloggers.

It felt so risky.

Then Fidelity opened their own stock market index fund with zero expense ratio. So I tried my hand at that. In the same account it didn't seem to be doing as well as the target date fund so I started to doubt myself and moved more money into the target date fund.

Now the the index funds are doing really well and it's making me want to just clean up my strategy. I still have some loyalty to the target date fund because at the end of the day, it's a strong horse in the race. 

I think I forgot to remember that the index fund is not like investing in a particular stock. I think because one of my favorite bloggers always just stays she has 100% stock portfolio, I just got it in my mind that I'm investing in stocks and individual stocks are bad.  

But the more I've been watching my numbers and paying attention to share prices, I think the more comfortable I feel. It's still just a fund like the mutual fund, at least in my mind. I am very much a novice and a lot of this for me is a mental game. 

That being said I immediately wanted to just pull the trigger and push all my taxable brokerage money into VTSAX and its Fidelity counterpart. But then I  thought waaait...  I would lose the potential benefits from my current target date funds because I bought them at a lower price than what I would pay for new index funds today. 

So I think I'm going to ride out what my allocations are now until the end of the year. The stock market obviously doesn't care about the date Dec 31, 2021, but to me it's like starting new. I feel like I'm banking any last potential gains for this year and then can start fresh with the new prices next year.

Remember, in my mind I'm in some sort of Cruise Control to FIRE. And this next quarter is just me trying to aggressively save to reach my next FIRE number.  Now, remember I haven't actually reached my original FIRE number, but I think to help withstand all my feelings, I decided that wherever I am when I've had enough will be my FIRE number. The pressure was getting to be too much and there were too many feelings. Let's not dwell.

The point is, after going back and forth and looking at my numbers, I feel more settled with just continuing with my allocations as is. Then at the turn of the new year, just put the new set-it-and-forget it strategy into play. 

So for now:

- Still continuing with the 3 brokers

- Still keeping all my target date funds

- Still pumping new money into stock market index funds

Other than, I'm about to log-off. I did some bank bonus errands today and have some actual real life errands to do next week when everyone is off holiday brain. Namely, I have to figure out my mortgage stuff.  Toodles!