I have to tell you, I'm feeling good. And now that I don't have to worry about supernatural forces working against me, I can say that and not feel like I'm going to "jinx" myself.
I feel amazing. I woke up in Seattle. Yesterday at 9p I cooked one of my meals from Blue Apron. I was worried because I thought it would give me heartburn, but I'd already wanted to eat it since leaving the house around 7p so I was mentally kind of wanting it and not wanting to wait.
So I made it when I got home, and it was so yummy! I'd been eating snacks all day so I wasn't sure I was all that hungry. It was just so tasty. It was warm on a cool day and it wasn't too much flavor. I like Blue Apron because I always get to try something new or that I don't normally eat. But it was a one pan meal and they provided the pan! So a lot of the ingredients were pre-made so there was no chopping.
I prefer Blue Apron's meals hands down over any of the meal kits I've tried but because it's so delicious, it can be quite labor intensive. So you get the delicious meals without the labor!
It was chicken with like Middle Eastern spices, some cous cous with currants and a mire poix and tomatoes. It was just everything I could ever want in a meal. I love oven meals because it's set it and forget it!
That's why I've been hesitant to fully cancel the plan. If I can squeeze one more meal kit in in October, I would prefer a meal from them.
Anyway, that's part of my good mood. I went to the vegan queer murder mystery party, and that was nice. It was nice just to exist around other people. It was also nice to take the observer role again and not feel any great need to be the interesting one or to keep the party going. Getting comfortable with my own silence.
I had another event at the Lake that coincided with a goodbye party of a girl I met recently. The lake thing didn't really work out. It was very dark, and there were people, and I just started to feel uncertain and a bit worn out.
So I sat on a bench for about an hour, and then finally left. I'm proud of myself for not forcing myself to meet up with this girl. I don't know. I just was kind of tired and didn't want to be walking around in the dark. Even though there were a lot of people, it was just very dark.
Anyway, yesterday was cool too because I spent an unexpected 5 hours doing budget stuff. I rarely can wait until the end of the quarter to do a check-in.
And honestly with the budget aggregator app, the manual filling out of the spreadsheets is not that exciting because I can already check-in on my balances anytime I want. I can check balances and expenses with just a few clicks vs manual updating of the spreadsheet.
If I can find a way to download that data, I may not need to keep doing this manual spreadsheet nonsense.
I think just for posterity I guess? I imagine at some point, I'll stop actively checking expenses and income. So it's nice to have the data. But yeah, at this point, the app pretty much does what my spreadsheet was intended to do.
I do like with the spreadsheet though that I can look back from 2017 and see how far I've come. The app just doesn't have that data.
And boy I've come a long way! Ugh, reading through all my mental anguish over the last few years, I'm glad I have this bright sunny moment to celebrate these victories!
Here's a quick snapshot:
Dec 2017 balance: $80k
Sep 2022 balance: $442k
That's amazing. I love a good graphic, but I don't think that's happening today.
Notes on 2022 Q3 Finances:
Expenses:
2022 YTD: $36k
Top categories:
Travel: $14k
Home: $7k
Sending Money Overseas: $3.8k
As for travel, yeah that was pretty much all trips to Seattle including my current one. No other real surprises or else I'd go into more detail. I am planning to increase my food budget from $200 to $250/mon for next year since that's where the government is for a Family of 1.
I have mostly been ruminating on Seattle.
The shortest version of the story is that living in Seattle full time is estimated to cost $66k (with tithe, and carrying my NC house). While living in NC full time is estimated to cost $32k (with tithe).
In my initial estimations, I'd thought be able to do both, 6 months in NC and 6 months in Seattle (still carrying NC house) for about $45k which seemed like the best of both worlds. I wasn't really ready to double my expenses from $30k to $60k. But when I plugged real numbers in, doing a 6/6 mon split while carrying my NC house was closer to $50k. And that's just basic routine expenses. When I add a $10k supplement for fun and large non-routine expenses, I'm still back at $60k. I'm having trouble with that. So we shall see.
I guess I could consider a 7/5 NC/Seattle split with an $8k fun supplement, that would put me closer to $54k. I don't know.
Surprisingly with more money and less aggressive savings goals, I'm having trouble figuring out how to budget. I was even struggling to figure out where my direct deposits should go. So much of how my money is spent and saved has changed since I started this journey. I feel like I'm back at the beginning, except my goals are little more fuzzy.
I'm not as financially desperate. But my mental health and overall "quality of life" is more of a metric. But it's the most unstable metric ever! So much messaging around how humans can't reliably predict what makes them happy.
And I don't know why I'm having so much trouble figuring out how much money to leave out for an emergency fund. I was getting so caught up in a mental tizzy, I looked up what the heck an emergency fund even is!
That's how lost I felt.
So the consumerfinance.gov site defined it as unplanned expenses such as home/car repairs, medical bills, loss of income. That's exactly what I had in mind! But for whatever reason my thoughts were getting muddied!
I think because I'd always had a bit of a cushion but my budget just isn't working that way anymore.
I was also focusing a lot on using the words unplanned/ unexpected...because it's like... car repair isn't necessarily unexpected... I mean you expect some level of maintenance on your car and home and your person (ie, medical bills). I just don't know how to plan for it I guess? I mean one year I had a $5k surgery, and another year $400 in physical therapy.
Same with car repairs and now house bills. And ultimately the FIRE Cash Stash is there for job loss, but I think I can still use this emergency fund for job loss because I would want to have that time to decide if I'm fully transitioning into FIRE.
So much of finances is mental for me. Even what to call my savings account. I wasn't sure if it was better to just have a pot just for the Seattle Supplement and another pot for the Fun Supplement?
I think for now I'm working a little backwards.
The default savings goal is just to max out the 401k. So that's a no brainer. And then after that, I looked at the max spending for these Life Options.
That left about $9k left. I think for that I'll still just do auto-contributions to my 401k that way something can be set and forget.
And I'll just keep the old CDs I had in a savings account for what they were used for: an emergency fund. The move to the savings account is because my old credit union is offering almost 0% rates for CDs and these online banks are offering higher rates as CDs.
There's about $8k in old CD money; and my goal each quarterly check-in is to have about 3 mons of expenses total across my regular checking and savings accounts.
I think where it gets tricky is that there's no real plan for how these will be funded? They're there now just as a matter of fact.
But how do you divert money for an Emergency Fund that's fully funded? That's where I'm lost.
Anyway back to my financial check-in.
My investments are down about 20% since their peak in March 2022.
I think for next year, lots of things are going to change.
I want to close all my accounts that still use my old name.
I think my direct deposit will change. Now that I have an allowance card that is a Master Card I can have one central bank for: Daily Spending; Checking Account for Bills; Savings Account.
I'll still have 3 banks:
Bank 1: Regular Checking and Savings for daily life
Bank 2: Churn Hub for churning Bank Bonuses
Bank 3: Savings Hub - where I manage all my pots of savings (eg, Home maintenance fund, emergency fund, etc)
I guess I'm just strangely nervous about replenishing my emergency fund, but technically I only really need 3 months, which I'll have in Regular Checking and Savings. And I have the Emergency Fund as backup for an additional 3 months.
Just not sure what happens if it runs out?
I don't know why I have this aversion to having too much Cash on hand?
I was going to say that's what the $10k Fun Supplement is for?
I don't know. But I'm done thinking about this for now.
The sun is out and I'm trying to soak up every last piece of this day!
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