My Open Wallet

Re-Diversifying My Investments

2026-02-01T13:24:00.000-05:00

I haven't talked much about my investments recently. Over the years, my 401k, Roth IRA and other investments have grown nicely. My strategy has been to pick a variety of mutual funds, mostly, and leave them alone. But I do keep an eye on them and in the last few years I've started to be more conscious of rebalancing my portfolio as I get closer to the age when I'll fully retire and start having to use that money.

I've been more heavily weighted to stocks than what is traditionally recommended for someone my age, so I've been nudging things towards more conservative investments a bit, but it's been hard to do that in the last few years, when bond funds haven't been doing very well. Meanwhile, stocks have continued to hit new heights, despite some bumps in the road-- that makes them hard to give up. But today I read a very interesting article that made me decide it was time to take more action:

Your "Safe" Stock Funds May Be Riskier Than You Think

The gist of it is that even if you think holding mutual funds means your investments are diversified, you actually probably have a lot of eggs in just a few baskets because of the gains in tech stocks due to AI. I'd been aware that several big tech stocks were becoming a bigger and bigger share of the overall market, but reading this article was the impetus for me to dig deeper into my own portfolio to see how much of it was based on Nvidia, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet/Google, Microsoft and Meta. I dug into every fund I hold and looked at what their top holdings are, totaled up the percentages held in these companies, and then applied that percentage to my total dollar value in each fund. I totaled that up and calculated what percentage it was of my total investments, and found the result a bit scary:

Over half a million dollars, or about 19% of my investments!

To me, at my age (late 50s), it's too much to have riding on these 6 companies, even if they've been doing really well. (I probably should also have added Tesla into my calculations, as it appeared in many of those top holdings lists, as did Broadcomm.) I was also concerned when I read some recent analysis about circular investments among these companies. Bloomberg had an article about it, which seems to be paywalled, but you can see a graphic from the article here, and there's another interesting visualization of the situation here. Some people think there's enough fundamental promise in AI that this will all be fine, or that if things go south, it will hurt smaller startups the most, but it feels a bit too Ponzi-scheme-ish to me. If I was younger, I'd be more inclined to ride it out, but I'd rather play it a little safer.

Most of my exposure is in one big Fidelity fund where I have almost $600k invested. So I decided to just lop some of that off, and move $200k of that into 5 other funds I already hold in smaller amounts, a mix of international stock funds, mid-cap stock funds and bond or blended funds. Even this probably doesn't rebalance me as much as I need, but it's a start. I'm harvesting some gains now, and maybe I'll miss out on even bigger gains to come, but my gut tells me we could be heading for a time when some of this bubble may burst.

I also can't help thinking of the classic advice to invest in what you know and like. I know Amazon and while they seem pretty world-conquering, I don't like them and don't want to support them any more than I have to. I use Apple products and love them, but I'm worried they are losing their way a bit. I HATE the "liquid glass" redesign. I'm getting really sick of Facebook and Instagram, and more and more of my friends seem to be leaving these platforms-- or else I can never find their posts because they are buried under so many ads. And I have yet to find any instance of AI that I can really embrace-- mostly it seems like an inaccurate annoyance, and where it actually has powerful applications, it will just kill jobs. I've seen AI summaries of meetings I was in, and was impressed at how well it captured most things, but it wasn't good enough for me to not take my own notes, so what's the point? Though I will admit it could have been handy to be able to speak to my computer and say "exchange $200k of my Fidelity Growth fund and reinvest it in $40k of fund X and $40k of fund Y..." etc.

Anyway, that's where my head's at today on a very chilly Sunday! We'll see how it goes.

And as usual, all caveats apply that this is not financial or investment advice, I'm not a finance or investment professional, etc. Just sharing my personal thought process.

"It Just Doesn't Seem Attainable."

2025-08-29T18:32:00.000-04:00

For as long as I've been writing this blog (yikes, I never commemorated its 20th anniversary last month!), I've tried to counter a certain negativity about "making it in New York." New York City has always been a very expensive place to live, and has always had a culture where rich people and their predilections kind of set the scene-- old money, greed-is-good Wall Streeters, all the arts and design and fashion and media people. New York is the subject of so many books and movies and TV shows that some people feel like they aren't living the dream unless it looks like an episode of Sex and the City. It can seem like an expensive lifestyle is just what's normal, so if you can't afford that lifestyle, you might feel like you haven't "made it." Or you're so busy spending money on some aspects of that lifestyle that you can't afford basic things like owning a home or saving for retirement. Some people kind of give up, just deciding that they might as well live paycheck to paycheck and get into debt since they won't be able to attain those long term goals no matter what.

I've tried to counter that attitude-- my years in NYC were tight financially at the beginning, but I found a balance that allowed me to save money, buy homes and build wealth. I allowed myself some treats, but I also set limitations and adjusted my expectations about what was reasonable and possible. I was willing to make some sacrifices, but not some others. And things ended up working out for me-- I feel like I "made it" in the sense that I had a decent life, and could have continued to have a decent life in NYC if I'd stayed. And my attitude on this blog has always been "you can make it too," at least to some extent. I can't claim that someone making minimum wage is going to be able to buy a home and retire in comfort in NYC, or anywhere else for that matter-- that's a different issue. My point was always more that all the college-educated middle class professionals needed to stop being crybabies about not being able to make ends meet in NYC.

But I'm not sure I can really say that anymore.

I recently had dinner with some young women who are living in Brooklyn, not too far from where I lived in the late 1990s, when I was about their age. We talked a lot about how the area had changed and how expensive things are, and I reminisced about the neighborhood during my time there, which was the first time I became a home owner. One of the young women looked at me with a somewhat wistful expression and said "that just doesn't seem like it will ever attainable for me." I wanted to say "no, have faith, you'll start making more and if you just watch your spending, you can do it!" But when I did some math in my head, the comparisons were striking.

That first apartment I bought (with a partner) was about $135,000 in the late '90s, and that same apartment sold in 2019 for about $1,300,000. My partner's and my combined salaries to afford that apartment in the 1990s were maybe $90,000 or so, maybe even less. I think the mortgage and maintenance payments came out to maybe $1,500 a month, maybe a little more, so we were spending maybe 25% of our combined income on owning a home. (You'd think I would know all this for sure, but my record-keeping was different back then, and the spreadsheets I could find didn't mention housing costs for some reason!) The interest rates would have been lower in 2019, but the monthly cost (assuming a 10% down payment, which is what we did in the '90s) would probably have been almost $7500. So you'd need a salary of about $360,000 for that to be 25% of your income. I'm not sure what percentage of New Yorkers earned that much in 2019, but the median income today for NYC for a single person household is about $113k, and for a 2 person household, it's about $145k.

Even if you take overall inflation into account, and adjust for how the desirability of that neighborhood has changed over the years, there's no question that it is just so much harder to afford to buy a place now. The equivalent of the $90,000-ish we were making might be around $130,000 today. 25% of that would give a budget of about $2700 a month. Depending on the maintenance, that might cover the payments on a $350,000 home. According to Zillow, there are only about 39 2-bedroom homes in that price range on the market in the NYC area right now-- and whoa, one is in Manhattan, right near Central Park! And it's actually only $189,000! But it looks like the walls might be covered with mold, and it needs a gut renovation. And the maintenance is $3500, plus an assessment of almost $1000, so it's actually not in the budget after all. The rest of the 39 possibilities are all in the furthest out neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens and the Bronx, and even then, they're often over budget when you see the maintenance costs. The pickings are slim for anything that might be affordable, and the commute would be a lot longer. I don't mean to sound snobby about the idea of living outside the most desirable areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn-- there are lots of great neighborhoods around the five boroughs that are safe, close to public transit, full of amazing restaurants and parks and interesting sights. But ALL the neighborhoods are expensive now, with affordability being limited to a smaller and smaller set of high-income people.

The young women in this story are currently paying $4500 in rent for a very small 2-bedroom apartment. One is making somewhere over $100k working for a tech company, and the other is a grad student. Their neighborhood is great-- Brownstone Brooklyn charm with shops and restaurants galore. (In my day, the brownstones there had the potential to be charming but were mostly grungy, and there was one "nice" restaurant and maybe a fried chicken place on their block, while the neighborhood I lived in nearby was already more gentrified.) The average rent for a 2-bedroom in that neighborhood is about $6000 so their apartment seems like kind of a bargain. They are splitting the rent unequally given their different financial circumstances at the moment-- a generous move on the part of the tech worker, but they are old friends and she knows the value of having a roommate you can trust. The tech worker also has access to some money from her family, but happily, she seems quite focused on saving that for later and living within her means now. The grad student's family is less well-off, but I don't know more than that. I'm not sure what the salary prospects will be in her field but it at least seems like something that won't be replaced by AI.

Whatever happens, I'm sure these young women will be fine. They will have a roof over their heads and they won't starve. They've benefited from stable childhoods and good educational opportunities and have had advantages some people can only dream of, even more so than I had. People like them (and me) have always been part of the gentrification that makes cities get more expensive in the first place, but when I first moved to New York, there was still more diversity in the income levels and employment types of people who could afford to live in the city. Now it seems like all the working class and middle class people have fled, to be replaced by finance bros and homogeneous hordes of young people whose parents are willing to subsidize their life style. (See this very sad New York Magazine article: It Must Be Nice to Be a West Village Girl.)

Maybe my young friends will stay in New York and maybe they won't. But "making it in NYC" will look very different for them than it did for people my age.

Always Striving to go Above and Beyond...

2025-06-07T16:38:00.002-04:00

... Above and beyond any previous record set for length of time between posts. It's been more than a year but I'm still here! Keeping my head above water, keeping on trucking, keeping on keeping on, and keeping track of my money.

Whoo boy, how about that stock market? How about this tariff shitshow? How about all the death and destruction and disaster in the world? Where does one even begin?

There is too much to even try to cover so I'll stick to a few brief personal updates.

I continue to work part time. I like feeling productive and getting health coverage, to say nothing of having income, though my salary can seem almost insignificant vs. the affect of my investments on my net worth. But the great thing is that my after-tax take-home pay more than covers all my expenses, not counting a few little extras that Sweetie pays for.

My mom's financial situation has stabilized now that I manage most of her money in trusts. She rents rather than owns a home, so she can't go nuts renovating things. She still wastes some money on things like ordering shoes and clothes and then missing the deadline to return them, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the crisis we were approaching 10 years ago. Sadly, a lot of the reason she's spending less is just that she's getting old. She doesn't get out much, and she has some health issues. She's also getting forgetful. I'm starting to think about how we'll use her money to maybe hire an aide for her, or at some point maybe move her to some kind of assisted living. If we had more money, I would probably just want to move her to an independent living facility so she'd have more social opportunities and wouldn't have to cook-- Sweetie's mom was in one for a little while, and it would be just what my mom needs, but I'm not sure she's totally comfortable with the idea yet. Also, unfortunately, there aren't great options near where my mom lives, and it is of course breathtakingly expensive. I don't think we could afford the costs for 10-15 years she may have left, which could end up involving the even higher costs of nursing home care.

This is a really sad and hard calculation to be making-- how am I supposed to know how long she has left? If she died in the next couple of years, I would feel bad that we hadn't splurged on giving her the most comfortable life possible. But if we ran through all her money too fast and she lived much longer, that would be a massive drain on my sister and me. My sister's kids are in college and will probably have big debts when they graduate. I sometimes feel like it's selfish of me to worry about preserving my own resources when I am pretty well off, but I have no kids of my own and don't want to burden my sister's kids if I can't take care of myself in the future.

But aside from my mom's living situation, my more immediate concern lately has been making sure she doesn't fall for scams! She is very gullible in a lot of ways-- she's always clicking spammy ads on Facebook and getting pop-ups that claim her phone has been hacked. Even worse, she recently asked my sister to help her set up Telegram-- when my sister asked why on earth she'd need it, it turned out that she had been exchanging messages with someone pretending to be Bradley Cooper, who suggested they take their conversation to someplace more private. Like so many other seniors who get scammed, my mom really struggled to believe it was not Bradley Cooper she was chatting with semi-flirtatiously. I'm not sure if she just keeps forgetting everything we've told her about how these scams work, or if she just wanted to believe it was really him because he's cute and she's lonely. She didn't send him any money but I could see her easily falling into giving out details that could lead to identity theft or who knows what else. We may get to the point where we have to get her one of those stripped down phones, but in the meantime, I don't want to cut her off from her Facebook connections to her family and friends. So I set myself up to get copied on all her security alerts for Facebook, Gmail, etc, and got myself logged into her Facebook account on my own computer. I check it daily to block all the fake Bradley Cooper profiles that try to message her. She had even given "Brad" her email address but I think I've managed to send his messages to spam before she's seen any of them. It feels a little sneaky but Meta obviously has zero interest in doing anything to protect people from these scams, which are rampant. There's plenty of focus on protecting kids online, but no one seems to have any solutions for elderly adults who enjoy the internet but may be losing the ability to make wise judgments about how to use it.

What other quickies can I give you? Sweetie and I had combined non-tax expenses last year of about $105k, which included some fun travel. Our budget has been pretty consistent, and we're allowing for increasing our travel budget over the next few years while still staying comfortably on track with our retirement projections-- though the last few months make it seem like you can't count on anything anymore. My net worth got slightly over $2.7 million at one point, though it's now at about $2.65 million after having dropped below $2.4 million a couple of months ago. I have a list of lots of other money-related topics I've been musing about but will save them for another day, hopefully less than a year from now.

As always, it is heart-warming to see comments and know that there are still some loyal readers who keep tabs on this site. Sorry I don't have more regular updates for you, but I hope you are all doing well and making the best of your own financial and family issues. Thank you for sticking with me.

The FIRE is Still Burning

2024-05-13T19:03:00.000-04:00

Reading the retirement issue of the New York Times Magazine this weekend reminded me that I still have things to say on these topics, despite the lack of posting! The "FIRE" acronym has been around for years, but now, beyond just "Financial Independence Retire Early," there are subgroups like Fat-FIRE for people who retire early and have luxurious lifestyles, and Lean-FIRE for people who are managing their early retirement by being extremely frugal. Coast-FIRE means you save a lot early on so you can kick back later. Barista-FIRE means you are sort of retired but working part time in some sort of job to get health insurance.

Now I feel like I'm at the supermarket looking at all the different types of yogurt. I guess it wouldn't be America if we didn't figure out a way to expand every concept into a million different flavors!

I guess my FIRE flavor is a bit of a smorgasbord. I'm probably least aligned with the Lean people. While I have always valued fragility and spent many years trying to live well below my means, I've never felt really hard core about that approach, as I allowed myself plenty of little splurges. Coast sounds a lot like me: I wouldn't be in my current financial position if I hadn't saved big chunks of my earnings starting in my 20s and 30s. Barista doesn't seem like quite the right word for my current work status, but I do feel like I'm off the career track, working rather lightly so I can feel productive and get benefits.

How about Fat? I've never felt particularly fat. But now there's that pandemic and perimenopausal weight gain that has forced me to buy more new clothes than usual in the last few years. I'm NOT enjoying THAT kind of fat. But I'm feeling a little chubby in the other way too, in terms of living well. In the last couple of years, I've felt secure enough to start spending more money. Some of those new clothes were at price ranges I never would have even imagined before. If I told my 35-year old self I'd someday spend $350 on a scarf, she'd have been horrified. But I did, and it's a gorgeous and unique scarf that goes with everything and elevates any outfit and I wear it a lot and feel like it's worth every penny for how happy it makes me. Maybe it even makes me look thinner???

And Sweetie and I have decided that when we do our next big trip, hopefully to Asia sometime next year, we're going to stop torturing our bodies and fly business class. We're also going to upgrade one of our cars sometime soon-- not to a Maserati or anything, but something with more comfortable, power-adjustable seats for both driver and passenger. It's shocking how hard it is to find a sub-compact SUV with a power-adjustable passenger seat-- many brands just don't offer it, even in the top-level models. So it looks like an Audi, BMW, Lexus or Volvo is in our future, for probably somewhere between $40,000-50,000. This feels so splurgy to me, but then I found out that my sister and her husband have two new (bigger) cars that have each cost more than that, all while they have two kids in college who will be graduating with some big debts, it sounds like. Auntie X will try to reserve some funds to help the kiddos out, of course, but I'm prioritizing my spinal health for the moment! Being able to do this feels like true luxury to me. But I don't think I'll ever quite fit in with the true Fat-FIRE adherents, as they seem to mainly be Silicon Valley entrepreneur types who cash out of a start-up and have more extreme lifestyle goals. (Or else, as one person in the NY Times article points out, they are people who are raising kids in expensive places like San Francisco, and therefore have huge budgets for lifestyles that might seem not that fancy elsewhere.) I still have a lot of Lean moments of watching for what's on sale in the supermarket, using coupons, and picking up coins whenever I spot them!

Anyway, that is my little flicker of FIRE for today! I haven't posted in forever but life is good! I continually resolve to dump all my money thoughts in this blog where they belong, so maybe one of these days I'll start posting more again. Thank you to those of you who still stop by and leave comments!

Duplicated Securities in Quicken

2023-03-17T14:44:00.003-04:00

When I was working on reporting my net worth to you the other day, I was surprised to see that it was about $3.3 million! I immediately knew I shouldn't get too excited, though. It wasn't the first time I'd had Quicken duplicate the securities in my 401k account, thereby artificially inflating my account value.

It's a very annoying problem to have-- Quicken has a "merge securities" feature that lets you combine the assorted versions of a security that have been downloaded under different names. But sometimes the problem is that you still end up with the wrong number of shares for each security-- usually double what you really have. I did a little online searching for solutions but didn't find much. I tried just deleting one version of a security, but Quicken wouldn't let me do that, since both versions were active. I probably should have just removed all the shares for the duplicate securities, but from what little I did see online, it looked like merging the securities would be the best way to go.

Merging the securities was a little complicated. The securities in Quicken don't all have 5-letter symbols, and even ones that did have those symbols had been downloaded under various names, so my security list was looking rather cluttered. A few others seemed to have changed ticker symbols.(The downside to just letting Quicken add all these transactions automatically is that I don't pay as much attention to what's going on. But my old method of entering them manually was a big drag.)

As I was merging the securities, I noticed that it might be duplicating the number of shares, but I figured I'd just have to adjust that afterwards. Once the security list was cleaned up, I went through my 401k statement to check the true number of shares vs. what was showing in Quicken, and then entered some "remove shares" transactions to correct the balance. And voila, I'm back to being $1.5 million poorer!

The really annoying thing was that the inflated numbers somehow populated my past years' net worths in Quicken. I'd never really played around with restoring from a backup in this version of Quicken, but I decided to try it and see if I might be able to correct the past years. To make a long story short, I ended up restoring an older backup, having more problems, then going back to the more recent version I'd fixed, then having doubts, then installing a Quicken update, and doing a couple more rounds of adjusting transactions, merging securities, etc. What a mess. At this point, I do have the past years fixed and my current share counts are pretty accurate, but my most recent 401k contribution seems to be missing 3 mutual fund purchases, so something still isn't working right. UGH! I'm going to sit on it for a bit and see what happens when my next contribution goes through and whether my balances and share counts match my next statement.

The main thing that came out of this is that I'm going to be more vigilant about recording my net worth at the end of every year in a separate spreadsheet, and probably on paper somewhere too! Just in case.

2022 Income and Year-End Net Worth

2023-03-15T09:00:00.001-04:00

In a previous post, I gave a run-down on all my 2022 expenses, in the form of a total for Sweetie and me. It's a more accurate way to do it, otherwise it might look like my food budget was shockingly high, or some other expense shockingly low because Sweetie paid for it.

As for income, I don't have all Sweetie's numbers handy, so you're going to have to settle for just mine!

I earned $82,660 in gross salary from my job. I also got $4,058 in 401k matching contributions.

I earned $575 from website stuff. (Amazon affiliate commissions and Google Ads)

I received cash gifts of $400. ($200 for my birthday and $200 for Christmas, from my mom.)

I earned $317 in interest on cash in bank accounts.

And I received $77,204 in assorted dividends and capital gains in my various investment accounts, including retirement and non-retirement accounts.

So that's a total of $165,217.

I'm always kind of amazed at how the investment income has become so large-- almost half the total this year. In 2021, it was even larger! About $150,560 vs. $80,116 for all the other income. But that was an extraordinary year.

Either way, it shows the power of all those early years of saving and investing. That snowball effect is really happening now, especially when the markets are doing well. Though it also looks more significant because my salary is less than half of what it was before I retired, down-shifted, took a sabbatical, or whatever you want to call it. With all the craziness of the past 3 years, I have to say I'm really glad I'm working again. I feel more secure knowing I have income covering my expenses, and decent healthcare coverage.

As for my net worth:

This was a bit annoying to figure out. I've just had some annoying Quicken problems where various securities were duplicated, and even though I've now fixed everything, the errors somehow are going backwards and throwing off my net worth for year-end 2022, and even back through earlier years as well. Luckily, I did post on this site that my 2021 year-end my net worth was $2,232,684.

Unfortunately, 2022 was not kind to my investments. I ended the year at $1,779,292, which is the biggest net worth decline I've ever had in one year. In percentage terms, it's even worse than I did back in 2008 during the financial crisis. But I have a lot more money in the markets now, and I had some pretty big gains in 2021 and 2020. With my lower salary, I also can't save as much as I used to, which would have helped offset some investment losses. But luckily, I'm still ahead of where I was at the beginning of 2020.

It's a bit weird to realize that I'm basically saying "Yeah, I lost half a million dollars in a year, but no big whoop!" Part of me is really freaked out by that! But this is what investing is all about, risk and return, ups and downs. I will take a look at all my investments a bit more closely to make sure I still feel comfortable with how they're allocated and whether I should maybe be a little more conservative since I'm getting closer to traditional retirement age. I'll keep controlling what I can control, like spending, and try not to freak out about the rest.

My net worth is at $1,857,838 as of this writing, so I'm riding some pretty big waves. I still feel good about where I am, especially given that I had a couple years when I had to spend down some savings while I had no income from a job. As shown in my last post, my expenses aren't exactly bare bones frugality, but I'm living within my means, and my shared means with Sweetie. But 2023 isn't looking all that promising, so I don't even know how to guess at a goal for the end of the year. Let's say $2 million. We'll see...

2022 Expenses

2023-03-10T15:14:00.000-05:00

The commenters have been clamoring! I know I've been delinquent, I keep meaning to post here more often and for some reason always put it off. But yes, I'm still alive and still earning and spending money! So let's talk about that.

This year I thought I'd share the total household expenses that Sweetie and I share. Throughout the year one or the other of us will always pay for certain things, but at the end of the year, I do a reconciliation of all our expenses, break out what is truly individual vs. shared, and then make sure the shared expenses are shared equally. Usually it works out pretty well, but if not, we'll pay each other back as needed.

Here's the combined breakdown.

Category	TOTAL 2021	TOTAL 2022	var %
Auto	-$3,634	-$4,958	36%
Bank Charge	-$395	-$633	60%
Charity	-$1,837	-$1,033	-44%
Clothing	-$2,803	-$1,843	-34%
Dining	-$16,030	-$17,637	10%
Education	-$4,007	-$4,482	12%
Entertainment	-$1,652	-$1,864	13%
Gifts Given	-$3,897	-$5,686	46%
Gym & Fitness	-$1,380	-$1,248	-10%
Hair and Personal care	-$2,136	-$2,260	6%
Household & Garden	-$11,354	-$4,994	-56%
Housing	-$8,873	-$8,103	-9%
Medical	-$8,869	-$8,372	-6%
Misc	-$1,934	-$6,141	218%
Subscriptions	-$1,250	-$1,376	10%
Taxes	-$1,861	-$18,976	920%
Travel	-$449	-$6,618	1374%
Telephone	-$1,444	-$1,615	12%
Cable TV & Internet	-$1,704	-$1,672	-2%
Electricity	-$800	-$955	19%
Propane Gas	-$1,560	-$1,900	22%

TOTAL	-$77,869	-$102,366	31%

Auto: we have 2 cars, both fully paid off, so this is just gas and maintenance.
Charity: I don't know why our charitable giving went down so much-- oversight, I guess, or maybe some things that were last minute and ended up in 2023 on our credit cards.
Clothing: I've been buying my favorite jeans on eBay, and investing in foot comfort with some expensive Hoka sneakers. But otherwise, working from home makes me so much less concerned about my wardrobe.
Dining: we don't eat in restaurants very often, and order takeout even less frequently now that we're not in the city. This line includes all meals, groceries and liquor. We do enjoy our wine, but have been cutting back in recent months.
Entertainment: this includes books, Netflix, and things like museums and concerts.
Gifts: this was high due to one of our nieces graduating from high school.
Household: in 2021 we still had some "settling in" expenses of furniture, etc. This line includes getting the gutters cleaned, some small tools, cleaning supplies (at least any that don't end up combined with a grocery bill), gardening supplies, and a new electric lawn mower that Sweetie just loves! I've been growing a nice little crop of herbs and tomatoes each summer, and invested in a raised planter so as not to have to do as much weeding down on my knees.
Housing: we have no mortgage, just property taxes and HOA fee.
Medical: we're both covered under insurance from my job, so this reflects those premiums and a few co-pays. I'm surprised it wasn't higher in 2022 as I was doing physical therapy for several months due to back problems.
Misc: this is very high for 2022 due to a few one-off things like a new iPhone for Sweetie, and a painting that I fell in love with, which cost just under $2,000. I've never spent that kind of money on art before! But the painting makes me really happy. I actually had been interested in a different piece by that artist that turned out to be priced at $20,000! It would not have made me ten times happier, so I'm glad I chose what I did.
Subscriptions: I still love getting a physical newspaper but I cut back to 4 days a week delivery. I also subscribe to several magazines.
Taxes: neither of us was working in 2020, so we owed very little in taxes at the beginning of 2021. But then 2021 was such a huge year for the stock market, we both had some significant capital gains taxes, and I was also paying estimated quarterly taxes.
Travel: we finally got on a plane for our first real vacation since COVID! Now we're itching to do more traveling again.

Everything else basically reflects our existence as creatures of habit living in a world with some inflation.

I'll share more details in another post soon!

2021 Year-End Update

2022-01-02T16:13:00.001-05:00

What a year... as I write this, I'm on the mend from my own mild case of COVID, having been finally been hit by Omicron despite being vaccinated and boosted. (I got it from extended indoor, unmasked contact with a family member who turned out to have been not as "careful" as they thought they had been.) I know a lot of people are in the same boat. It is disheartening to have such a huge spike in cases after feeling optimistic over the summer, but I am trying to focus on the lower hospitalization and death rates. If vaccinations mean COVID becomes something that has less serious long-term health risks, like the regular flu, that is good news.

I've been using this low-energy post-holiday time to start getting year-end accounting in order. A few facts and figures:

The investments I manage for my mother had returns of about 20% this year.

My year-end net worth was $2,232,684.

My income from investments was approximately $145,000, while my income from work was approximately $72,000.

My spending on "Arts," a new category I started breaking out last year for museums and concerts, was up from about $100 in 2020 to over $1,000 in 2021 because I was so excited to enjoy live music with the reopening of local venues. (Most of the concerts I went to were outdoors, but a couple were indoors, with masks required.)

Sweetie and I had let our gym membership expire during the height of the pandemic, but we re-joined this fall, at a cost of about $1,100 for a year. I also spent about $250 on some apps and equipment to try to get myself to exercise more at home.

My travel expenses were an all-time (or all recent memory, anyway) low of $356 in 2021. All we did was visit family using our own car. 2020 would have been almost as low but for an international trip for a wedding early in the year, before the pandemic blew up.

I spend about $1,800 on clothes in 2021, vs a little over $800 in 2020. I bought a couple of expensive fleeces from Patagonia and expensive Hoka One One sneakers since they are the only shoes I can really walk in anymore, but otherwise much of my spending was on very inexpensive jeans and shirts on eBay, some of which were for Sweetie. I love working from home and being able to prioritize comfort!

When I did my 2020 taxes with my accountant and she heard I was working again, she suggested that I not do pre-tax 401k contributions anymore. She did a quick calculation of how my savings might be likely to grow over the next 15 or so years and said "you're going to have a lot of money when you retire! Your tax bracket is likely to be higher then, so you should probably focus on Roth IRA contributions now." So I immediately switched to doing Roth 401k contributions in my employer's plan.

I'm still enjoying working again. During the summer, I did find myself missing the freedom I had the last couple of years, and Sweetie is itching to travel again when the pandemic subsides. I'm hoping there will be an opportunity to scale back my hours. Occasionally it has crossed my mind that I could get a better-paying job that would still allow me to work from home, now that my entire industry has become more flexible about remote work and is likely to stay that way. But I'm not feeling greedy about the money. My current salary has more than stabilized my cash flow. I could cut back my hours somewhat and still get benefits, so that is a plan that is in the back of my mind for whenever it makes sense.

Thank you to anyone who still checks back in and reads these posts. I wish you all a very happy and healthy New Year! Onwards and upwards in 2022 (as long as we're not talking about COVID hospitalization rates!)

Things I Thought I'd Write About

2021-01-06T11:30:00.001-05:00

I was going through a notebook that I've been keeping for the past couple of years that has a page in it where I jotted notes about things to write blog posts about. Obviously there is a lot I didn't get around to! But here's the list so you'll have at least some cryptic idea about things that struck me as being interesting from a money perspective:

Babbitt (the book)
The Manticore p 21-22 (a rather fascinating book, with some interesting observations about wealth)
p.154 Murder Must Advertise (another book! I don't remember what the money connection was, exactly)
Elizabeth White Faking Normal (I haven't read the book but saw something on TV about her, I think. A 55 year old woman talks about how she hid her financial problems.)
HDFC coops
"Hard Work"
Social Security projections
XX Finance advice (this related to a friend of mine who invested an inheritance with a financial advisor who had been recommended by some other friends. They put the money in a ton of different funds and did a lot of trading, and then the market went down. XX freaked out and ended up pulling out all her money and taking a loss. She then used the money to pay off her mortgage instead. The whole thing was just a series of mistakes in my view. XX couldn't handle the idea of risk and waiting for longer term results. The advisors were not investing her money efficiently, I don't think. I kept telling XX she could just put her money in Vanguard funds and do better but she was more comfortable playing it safe, even though her mortgage interest rate wasn't that high and she didn't have much of a savings cushion left after paying it off.)
Musicians, $600 (a friend of ours performed in a club, a big career step for him. But he had to pay backup musicians. The club was slow in paying his share of the ticket proceeds, the musicians wanted their cash, and he ended up borrowing $600 from Sweetie to close the gap. Sweetie never got the $600 back, though the friend more than made up for it in other ways later. But it just got me thinking about how many musicians seem to live on a thin edge financially. And that was way before the pandemic.)
Fred Bass $25 mil estate (this was the owner of the Strand bookstore in NYC, who amassed quite a bit of wealth. More recently his daughter caught some flak over her appeal for people to buy books from them during the pandemic, which some people took as a wealthy woman crying poverty.)
Wild (again, the book.)
Baby shower (someone I know spent an insane amount on a fancy baby shower party)
Near misses (__layoffs, __ layoffs, could have changed my luck) (I've worked a few places where other people got laid off and I somehow didn't, at a point where my finances weren't really solid enough to handle it. There but for the grace... etc.)
Investment results
Optimism vs pessimism/distrust
Healthcare, mom's $3k meds, medicare (yikes. now I can't even remember what those $3k meds were!)
Gala (a swanky fundraiser I went to, where the ratio of expense to benefit was probably questionable)
Mom's apartment move
Virus!

That's the whole list. At some point I'll elaborate more on some of those later items, perhaps! Or maybe I'll just keep accumulating notes and sketchy comments!

Another 2020 Update

2020-12-31T11:07:00.003-05:00

I have been so checked out on blogging and hadn't even seen the comments on my last post until just now. It is good to hear updates from longtime readers-- some sad news, unfortunately, but also some positive news. Deaths and births and life ongoing, as everyone adjusts to the pandemic.

I lost a dear friend this past week, to old age and unrelated to COVID, but it made me think about how much I value spending time with loved ones, which has been difficult these past months. I saw this friend a few times this year, always a bit worried about the risk to her of any outing, even a tiny, socially distant, mostly outdoor, or at least well-ventilated gathering. She had lived a very long life, and wanted to keep living it fully as best she could. We went to a museum together a few months ago, and she came to my house for Thanksgiving. She was hoping to visit Paris again when travel resumed. She was 94 years old.

On a more positive note, the pandemic has had a silver lining for me. I got a job! I used to sometimes hear from friends in my industry who thought I might be interested in certain openings, but when I said I didn't want to commute into NYC at all, things fell apart. But now that everyone is working remotely for the near future, that all changed! The perfect job kind of fell into my lap-- a more junior, less stressful position than I've had in a while, with a flexible schedule and decent benefits. I can work from home permanently. I wasn't sure I wanted a "real" job again, but I feel like this is something where I can be useful. It doesn't pay much in comparison to my past jobs, but it's more than enough to cover the costs of my current lifestyle and put me back into the mode of saving money instead of depleting my resources. And I figured with everything pretty much shut down because of the pandemic, I had nothing better to do anyway! Sweetie is a little bored while I'm working away upstairs, but when the time comes that we want to travel again and do other things, I'll see what I can work out in terms of reduced hours. So far I am happy enough that I think I'd like to continue part-time work for the longer term, but if that isn't possible, I can always just retire again, and be in a better financial position than the last time I tried to retire. One thing I've realized is that I am very good at working, but not very good at managing my own time in a productive and creative way. I need some kind of project to organize-- for a while it was moving, and home renovations, but once those things were past, I was getting bored again and COVID left me feeling even more aimless. So even if it's not quite the post-retirement plan I'd envisioned, I'm in a good place.

I have lots more money stuff to talk about-- how much I invested in home office ergonomics, Sweetie's new car, my mom, my investments, and a recap of my 2020 budget and net worth. I'll try to get to it before summer! Happy New Year everyone! Wishing you all a joyous and healthy 2021.

2020 Update

2020-09-21T09:00:00.004-04:00

It has been another good long time since I’ve posted… and what a strange time it’s been! I feel like the world has totally changed. COVID-19, baby!

First of all, I am very lucky to be able to say that my family and I have all been healthy. But I do have several friends who have had the virus, with varying degrees of seriousness. Thankfully all have recovered, but friends of friends have died, so I don’t feel too far detached from the real impact. My unlucky friend Mortimer, who I’ve written about here from time to time, had the virus in early April and barely avoided going to the hospital, which is a miracle as he has asthma and some other health issues. He still doesn’t feel totally recovered even all these months later.

My life has been very hunkered down. Travel plans were canceled. ALL plans were canceled. I’ve mainly only left the house to go grocery shopping once a week. From mid-March until now, I have gotten maybe 3 take-out lunches and 4 take-out dinners. I ate in restaurants with outdoor seating for lunch a couple times over the summer, and exactly once for dinner, a couple of weeks ago. I went to visit my mom and sister once, and have entertained friends or family at home 6 times during the summer, always staying outdoors for most of the time. But groceries have definitely gotten more expensive, so I’m somehow still spending more on food. (This may be because Sweetie was the one tending to pick up restaurant bills while I paid in the supermarket.) My gym membership was on hold for a few months and I have yet to go back since they reopened. I spent about $45 on a new yoga mat and a resistance band for exercise (which, to be honest, I haven’t used much), and $60 on two sets of workout videos, which, again, to be honest, I haven’t used much. But I’m going to. I swear. Otherwise, I’m lucky to have outdoor options for walking and swimming so I haven’t been a total slug during the summer months. But once it gets colder again I’m going to have to try to go back to the gym. This will probably be my biggest risk factor for getting the virus. It’s also a big nuisance as attendance is very limited and you have to make an appointment, and you can’t take a shower. So I’ll have to weigh whether the motivational aspects of going to the gym outweigh the negatives, or whether I just have to find some other way of getting myself to exercise at home, instead of just fantasizing about it.

I spent some money on plants for my garden, which has been getting a bit more ambitious. This summer’s tomatoes were phenomenal, actually, though my attempts at growing peppers and eggplant were a bust. I also spent some money on books— not a ton, but I wanted to support a local independent bookstore so I placed a couple of orders for things to read while the library was closed. Strangely, I haven’t had the concentration to get very far in reading these books.

Since I haven’t been working, I at least haven’t had to worry about losing my job in the pandemic, as has happened to several people I know. If I’d stayed in my old job, it could well have happened to me, I suppose, though most of my former colleagues are still employed and adjusting fairly well to working remotely. I had been looking into possibilities for part-time work close to my new (not that new anymore) home, but these were all jobs at shops and cultural institutions that had to close down for a while. And now, with so many people out of work, I feel like I don’t want to take a job away from someone who might need it more. Because here’s the weird thing— or maybe not the “weird” thing, but the kind of disgusting thing: I have more money than I’ve ever had right now, over $1.65 million. When the stock market plunged on the initial coronavirus panic, my net worth dropped to a bit less than it was when I left my job. But since then, the market has recovered, and my net worth is currently more than 25% higher than it was when I stopped working. I’ve sold some mutual fund shares to replenish my cash savings, but my cost of living is so low, I can gain or lose more in market value in a week— or even a day— than I spend in a whole year. This may not be the case forever, of course.

(And in fact, it's been a couple of weeks since I wrote everything above, and now my net worth is only about $1.63 million due to recent declines in the stock market!)

Right now the stock market seems pretty disengaged from broader economic conditions. It is hard to see how COVID-19’s massive impact on the travel, hospitality, restaurant and arts industries won’t have a devastating effect on our economy for years, especially in the NY area. Eventually that will affect the stock market too. But in the meantime, it really is a glaring example of the rich getting richer while the middle class and working class and poor struggle to keep their heads above water. “The rich” is not usually a group in which I’d include myself, but the reality is that only a very small percentage of US households have a net worth of more than $1 million. I’m probably in the top 10-15% for net worth on my own, even adjusting for my age group, and taking Sweetie into account, probably top 5%. (I haven’t found good recent statistics but there are calculators where you can see where you stand based on 2016 figures. The continued recovery of the stock market since then would I guess mean that I’m a bit lower percentile-wise. Using my 2016 net worth would put me around the 90th percentile.)

Anyway, I'm hanging in here. How are all of you, dear loyal remaining readers who still check in? I hope you are healthy and doing well. Thanks for sticking with me!

Spending Money on Clothes

2020-01-27T18:38:00.000-05:00

Clothing is one of the areas where my spending has really decreased since I stopped working. I used to work in an environment that was relatively casual by corporate standards, but I still had to wear suits sometimes. Even when I was wearing jeans, I was conscious of wanting to look halfway decent, so I'd try to buy good quality jeans and not let them get too faded, and keep things interesting with sweaters and jackets. I also was always willing to pay for good quality shoes and boots that would last a while and not go out of style.
New York City brought lots of temptation at times-- there used to be some great shoe stores near my office, though they'd closed by the time I left. And when I moved in with Sweetie, my walk home from work often took me past a really nice little boutique. They had a well-curated selection of casual sweaters, jeans, work clothes and dressier things for evening wear, most of which I would just admire and walk past, since their stuff was quite expensive. But I eventually did buy a few things there.

One day, I passed the shop and noticed their signboard outside was offering a 15% discount if you spent $1,000. I just laughed and thought "oh my god, this neighborhood is getting so bougie for them even to post an offer like that." But a few days later, I went in and fell in love with a sweater. Then I tried on some pants. Then the salesperson, who was really nice, started suggesting things. I usually don't like being sold to, but this woman had a nice way of doing it. It was like having a personal stylist-- she suggested things, some that pushed my boundaries a little, some that made me say "no way," but others that made me think, "huh. This is something I can actually wear!" It wasn't long before I was at $900-something and then I threw in a t-shirt to get over $1,000 and get the 15% off. I couldn't believe I'd actually become the bougie customer taking advantage of the offer! I have never bought sweaters that expensive any time since (one was over $300) but I still wear all those clothes sometimes and love them dearly. I never felt like it wasn't worth it.
Other than that, most of my work clothes were purchased at chain stores like J. Crew or Banana Republic, and I'd order the occasional pair of boots or sneakers from Zappos. I'm not sure what my biggest ever year of clothing spending was, but it might have been 2016, when I spent a little over $5,000.

After I stopped working, all that changed. Without needing to dress up for an office, I find myself wearing a pretty basic uniform of jeans, t-shirts and a sweater or fleece top most days. In the summer, it's shorts and t-shirts or tank tops. I wear either sneakers or basic casual boots, and finally gave in and bought a pair of Birkenstock sandals. For a while, I bought no new clothing at all. Then I realized some of my jeans were getting a little worn out and decided to refresh them-- but to my horror, my favorite style from J. Crew was no longer available. I also had a favorite shirt from J. Crew, and was wearing it one day when my sharp elbow suddenly poked a hole through the threadbare sleeve.
I don't even live near a J. Crew store anymore, and their website didn't have any similar shirts anymore. So I turned to eBay, where I was able to find exact replacements for the jeans and shirt I already had for extremely low prices. And this is now my favorite way to shop! I'm in a phase, or perhaps the prevailing fashions are in a phase, where I just don't like or want most of the current merchandise that is out there. So since little of my wardrobe was ever particularly unique, and since most items still had tags where I could find style numbers to use in eBay searches, I've just duplicated some of the things I already own and love, for a fraction of the original cost. In 2018, I only spent $900 on clothes, and that even included a couple of things for Sweetie.
In 2019, I ended up spending a bit more, but that was mainly because I had some weddings to attend that required a bit more dress-up. I thought I'd be ok with stuff that was in my closet, but discovered that some of it dated back to when I was thinner, which was pretty depressing! But I still had outfits that worked, and I was able to jazz them up with some super cheap stuff from a local department store. Retailers seem so desperate these days, there are sales on all the time, and there seems to be so much cheap, low-quality "fast fashion." It kind of went against my natural impulse, but spending $20 or so on a colorful top to liven up an "oldie but goodie" black suit was just what I needed, even if the top ends up disintegrating in a year.
So this is my new clothing reality-- comfort and value, and a degree of minimalism in my daily attire. It's working for me, and for my budget!

Still Alive, Still Spending, Still Saving!

2020-01-16T18:29:00.000-05:00

It's been almost a year... yikes. Where to begin?

I actually don't have any major news. I'm still kind of adjusting to my "new" life. That has involved some higher than usual expenses as we decided we wanted to do some work on our house after being there for a while. And we've continued to take a couple of trips per year, though nothing super-exotic. But we are basically settled into a new pattern of life where we don't eat out very often and are generally enjoying a much lower cost of living than we had in the city. I've been mostly getting books from the library, so haven't been spending much in that area. I've gotten a couple of tickets for local performances and even a couple of things back in the city-- this kind of reminds me how much I miss being able to go to BAM in Brooklyn and be home within half an hour. Now staying in the city means having to time things right with trains and we always end up getting home really late. Sometimes I tell myself we can afford to just splurge on a hotel room but we've yet to actually do that. Our semi-retirement budget left room for a lot of splurges that we haven't yet allowed ourselves, but we've ended up spending more than we thought on household stuff, so I guess it balances out.

So how about some actual numbers?

My net worth as of Jan. 1, 2020 was $1,563,067. The stock market has been so strong, I think I've gained about $200,000 since I stopped working, even though I've had very little income since then. My goal has been to basically break even, but even if the market wasn't as strong, I think I'd be able to manage to spend less than my likely gains most years.
In 2019, my total income was about $70,000-- this includes all dividends, interest, blog earnings, gifts, EBay selling, etc. (I would be more precise, but Quicken does this weird thing where it shows realized gains from selling an investment as the total proceeds of that sale, rather than subtracting the cost basis to truly show the investment gain, so I've estimated what the real gains were without going back to accurately check.) Lots of that income is from my 401k, so it doesn't show up as taxable income. When I break it down to the actual taxable income, it was just under $20,000.
My total expenses in 2019 were about $27,000, not counting some additional one-time stuff that went towards our home renovation projects, most of which was actually paid for by Sweetie. My largest expenses were about $11,000 for food/groceries/liquor/eating out, as I usually pay for most of that for both of us. This still seems high to me but we did eat out more than usual for about a month while our kitchen was under construction. My next biggest category was "Misc" at about $2,300, which included a new Apple Watch and a new hard drive and battery to keep my old laptop going for a few more years. Also some art supplies, tax prep fees, postage and other random stuff. I spent just under $2,000 on clothes, which included a few things for Sweetie, and about $1,900 on education for a couple of classes. I am very lucky to have only had to spend about $1,100 on medical stuff-- this included my very low premiums for New York State's "Essentials" health insurance-- $45 a month including vision benefits, since I knew I'd need new glasses. The glasses themselves ended up costing a total of $370 for two pairs-- a thick single vision pair that was basically free, and a 2nd, half-off thinner pair with -- gasp -- progressive lenses, since I'm getting to that age where I'm not only terribly near-sighted but also need reading glasses. I will write more about the health insurance stuff, but the thing that really sucks about not being in the city is that my insurance plan, which is through United Healthcare, barely has any providers in my area. Having to drive 18 miles to an urgent care center that takes my plan is a bummer. I'm currently procrastinating about making that drive even though I probably need a little something to get over a case of bronchitis. I'm assigned to a primary care doctor who's only about 12 miles away, but I keep assuming it will be a nightmare to get an appointment. We'll see!
A few other expense lines: Travel $1,300, State Taxes $1,021, Gifts $1,476, Entertainment $958. Someday I'll have to do a post with my combined budget with Sweetie to reflect things I don't directly pay for myself, like our combined gym membership, auto maintenance, and utilities. etc. Sweetie's share is a bit larger, in proportion to the difference in our incomes.

Anyway, thanks for still reading and sorry I am so delinquent about writing. I make lots of notes about things I want to write about, and then for some reason I never get around to it! Terminal procrastination... happy new year to all of you, and hope you are enjoying the roaring '20s so far!

Cash is a Stranger to Me

2019-02-25T18:42:00.001-05:00

I was recently in the city to have lunch with some friends, and I think it may have been the first time I ever went to a credit-card-only restaurant. There was some confusion as we tried to figure out how to split the bill with one person wanting to chip in cash and two people being willing to use cards, but then not having enough small change to appropriately share the cash. I suppose we could have asked the server to just put different amounts on each card but that seemed even more complicated!
Later that afternoon, I stopped in a cafe to grab an iced coffee. (It was one of those weird hot days and I was getting rather parched walking back to the train station.) Again, no cash was accepted. (I was also a bit shocked that a small iced coffee cost $4.75. I think I am already becoming unaccustomed to the ways of NYC. But it was very good coffee.)

Whether or not I'm going to places that don't accept cash, I find that I almost never spend it anymore. Every couple of months, I get my hair cut, and pay for that in cash. Once in a while, Sweetie and I will go to the local pizza place for lunch and we'll pay cash for a couple of slices. And occasionally there will be some other little thing. It used to be that I might buy a copy of a newspaper. But I get home delivery of the New York Times 4 days a week, and now I read the Wall Street Journal at the library. Even parking meters always seem to take credit cards now.

The Times just published an article about the backlash against this phenomenon: This Legislation Could Force Stores to Take Your Cash. I can see both sides of the issue. People argue that going cashless shuts out poorer people, who are unlikely to have access to credit and bank accounts. But businesses like the safety and administrative ease, and governments like having a data trail to prevent tax evasion and corruption.

I hope paper money doesn't disappear completely-- like postage stamps, paper bills are almost works of art, and I've always like collecting unusual ones from my travels. But I can't say I'll be using it very actively myself.

My Quarterly Blog Update: What's Up with Mom

2019-02-18T20:57:00.004-05:00

That seems to be about the frequency I'm posting with lately! I really appreciate the comments from longtime readers and am glad to know you are still checking in! And it is good to hear from you about how you are doing in your own pursuits of financial stability and independence.

T'Pol, thanks for asking after my Mom. She is actually doing quite well. I invested the money in her two trusts (one revocable trust that is all hers, and one irrevocable trust, where she only gets the income but can't touch the principal) in Vanguard funds and they have been doing well enough to generate over $13,000 of income for my mom in 2018. She has been living on what she still gets from my father's pension, and her social security payments. In 2016 and 2017, she asked me for $5000 from the trust income to pay for other expenses. One year, that included my grandmother's funeral. The other year, she was moving to a new apartment. In 2018, she ended up asking me for two $5000 checks, as she had some expensive dental work. I was a little worried at first that she needed that much more-- it came at a point where she was fantasizing about moving to a larger and much more expensive apartment, and I sent her a slightly stern email querying the amount to make sure she wasn't somehow going behind my back to rent the new apartment. This was in December, and I explained to her that things were generally going well with the trusts but that the markets had just plunged and that we should be careful. I had another conversation with her where I reminded her how stressed out she had been when she was drowning in credit card debt, and that we had things under control now.
I worry that my mom doesn't understand the concept of building up a cushion for emergencies. I'm legally required to report to her on the trusts every year, and I've come up with a nice little template where I paste in a lot of charts and numbers from Vanguard showing what the assets are, how they did, and how much is being paid to her. (I do this by transferring the income from the irrevocable trust into the checking account for the revocable trust, which I also control. When my mom needs money, I write a check from the revocable trust made out to her personally.) My mom always just seems to glaze over on the overall details of the investments and just wants to know "How much did we make? How much more do we have than when we started?" Right now, the value of the trust accounts is over $130,000 more than when we started in 2015 (with about $450,000), and I worry that a number like $130,000 just makes my mom think "woo-hoo, we won the lottery!" So I keep reminding her that the funds go up and down, and that the money has to stretch itself out over quite a few more years, and that the more money we have invested, the more income we make, etc etc.
Some of that sinks in, some doesn't. Even though she is basically spending all her income except for a few thousand dollars of the trust income some years, she was on the verge of signing herself up for an apartment that would have cost her about $900 more a month! She said "oh, I'll just cut back on my budget somewhere," but she doesn't have any big areas she can realistically cut.

So overall, I would say things are pretty good, and we haven't had any fights about money, which is the best thing of all. But I'm always wary of what could go wrong! We are lucky to have the resources we do have, and as long as we are careful with them, everything will be fine.

And I do have more stories to tell, and hope to get around to posting again soon!

Embarrassment

2018-11-26T09:00:00.000-05:00

I should be proud of my financial situation, right? I've worked hard, saved and invested, and reaped the benefits. But one thing I left out of my post the other day about some of my friends who remind me how lucky I am, is that I can't help feeling a little awkward or embarrassed sometimes when I talk about money matters with them. For all that I can empathize with their struggles, my own life is totally different. I don't have their fears and worries right now. And I wonder if they resent my situation or feel envious. I've realized that I share a lot less about my life on social media now because I worry that I'll sound like I'm bragging or rubbing people's noses in my good fortune. Perhaps that is also why my writing on this site has lagged so much in the last few years (though I have no excuse for losing momentum several years ago, well before I retired!). It's one thing to be striving and working and in the fray of trying to get ahead. But once you just stop and say "I have enough money and I'm just going to chill out for a while" it's not very relatable!

On this site, I can be quite open about things-- that's always been the whole point. And in "real life" I have always tried to be realistic about finances, if not totally transparent. Because our culture can be so caught up in materialism and keeping up appearances, I felt like I was doing a civic duty in a way whenever I'd say "I can't afford that" or "I've been saving a lot of my paycheck so I can afford that" or "I've been maxing out my 401k since a very early age." So many people fall into cliches when talking about money, somehow reinforcing the idea that it is okay and normal to be constantly spending money on nice things and having lots of debt-- I don't want to be part of that. But sometimes it's easier to tell little white lies about one's situation. I've met a number of people in our new community that have asked if I'm retired, with a sort of doubtful look, like "I don't want to insult you by implying you are older than you look but you don't seem to be working and you're not at home with children and I also don't want to insult you by asking if you've been laid off..." In a couple of these conversations I've ended up downplaying my financial freedom and talking more about being "between jobs" or "trying to change careers" or "doing some consulting projects" or "hoping to start a new job soon but it's dependent on funding..." The latter is basically true, but all of these things are easier to say than "well, I don't really have to work right now and yeah, I've basically retired 20 years before most people do, but no, it's not because I've inherited great wealth, I'm just a normal person who was fortunate enough to have parents who could support most of her education and give her a happy childhood while imbuing her with a lifelong penchant for saving money, and I've never been afraid to invest..." That's all kind of a mouthful, a bit TMI!

Ultimately, I can't control what people who don't know me think about me. The truth is too long a story. But I wish there was a way to convey it. Some of my situation is due to luck/privilege, but a lot of it is due to controllable factors. I suppose what would embarrass me most is to be seen as someone who has benefited from pure luck and doesn't "deserve it." But I feel proud if I can serve as an example of someone who has made good choices-- choices that anyone can make.

Tech Check

2018-11-19T08:30:00.000-05:00

Back in my Palm Pilot days, I was such a junkie for the newest and latest device, it became a pretty significant part of my spending, even if I did lessen the blow by selling unwanted devices on eBay before they lost too much value. But nowadays, my relationship to tech toys is quite different-- I always seem to be holding on to whatever I have, and buying a new one only when it is absolutely necessary. Not just because I want to save money, but because the new things somehow don't seem as nice as the old ones. For instance:

In 2015, I posted about my decision-making process for buying a new iPhone. Seeing that post made me realize that I've now been using my phone for over 3 years, so the value I've gotten out of paying the full price up front for it is even better. It still works fine and I'm planning to hold on to it as long as I can. I don't like the even larger size of the iPhone X and newer models, so I might have to keep an eye on whether any future models will be produced in the size of the 6/7/8, and at least upgrade to an 8 before that size goes away.

My other electronic tool is a MacBook Air. I bought it in 2012. It pretty much works fine, at least when it's plugged in, but the battery tends to conk out on me when I least expect it, going from 35% or 40% to 0% without warning. They've just announced a new MacBook Air, so that's starting to make me think about an upgrade. But maybe I could just replace the battery on my current laptop? Would that be a good investment at this point? One other factor I have to consider is that I have the prospect of some work in the coming year. If I'm using my computer for work, it would make sense to get a new one, to have something more reliable. And I'd be able to deduct that expense when I do my taxes. I'm not totally sure if this job will pan out, so I will hold off on any purchase for now and see how things go.

One other technology-related purchase: I finally upgraded my Quicken software. I've ranted many times on this blog about how Quicken for Mac upgrades have SUCKED for years! I was still using Quicken for Mac 2007 because none of the upgrades seemed like an improvement. But a few weeks ago, it finally started acting up and my file got corrupted. I was able to salvage enough from backups to import most of my data into the new Quicken for Mac 2018, though I lost a few months worth of net worth data. I was able to export some snapshots into Excel so I have the last few years of income/expenses by category, and net worth as of year end. And eventually I will have enough data in the new Quicken for year on year comparisons to be valid again. The new software actually seems to do most of what I want, but I'm still pissed off at Quicken. They've gone to a subscription model, so I'll have to pay for it again on a regular basis instead of being able to stay with the same version for years. Oh well-- I guess I had a good run there with the 2007 version!

I just don't find myself tempted by any other tech toys right now. The Alexa and other such devices hold zero interest for me. I might get Sweetie an Apple TV for Christmas. Someday I'd enjoy having a really nice stereo system, now that we live in a house where loud music won't bother any neighbors. But otherwise the kind of tech that's on my mind these days is a lighter snow shovel or battery-warmed mittens!

Life Goes On...

2018-11-13T14:46:00.000-05:00

I continue to enjoy my leisure as a "retiree." I'm healthy, I feel relaxed, I go to the gym a lot, I read a lot of books. I continue to feel incredibly lucky, especially when I hear about other people's struggles with money. Such as...

A friend who I don't think I have written about here before, so I'll call her Sally. She's been divorced for many years, and for almost that entire time, she's been chasing her ex-husband to try to get him to pay child support. She has often been working multiple jobs and is willing to do pretty much anything to make money, however menial or physically demanding. Her ex-husband works on and off, mostly for cash. He hides income via his girlfriend. He complains that it's "not worth it" to look for a job sometimes. He may or may not be using drugs at times. He owes her over $50,000. Meanwhile their two kids are in college and racking up huge student loans, even while attending state schools. Sally has a full time job with benefits now, which has helped her a lot, but they have crappy health insurance, so every time she or her kids have to go to the doctor, she is trying to get the doctors to not order too many tests, and questioning every prescription to see if they can stretch it out to a lower dosage. With regard to one medication, her doctor said "It costs you $900? I had no idea!" I guess it's a good thing to make sure doctors don't just over-prescribe and over-test, but I think it is better for medical decisions to be made on the basis of what a medical professional thinks is best, vs. what a consumer thinks they can afford. I just hope Sally will eventually get to a point where she doesn't have to worry so much about money.

And then there's Mortimer, who has appeared in my posts from time to time. Mortimer has been unemployed for almost 2 years now. His COBRA ran out and he's on Medicaid. He's kind of tapped out the friends who were able to help him find jobs in the past. I think he feels a bit paralyzed when it comes to next steps-- he's taken some classes to develop new skills, but I'm not sure if he'll be able to parlay them into a new career. Mortimer used to make around $75-100k, I think, and I think he is struggling with the idea of starting over at a much lower level in his late 50s.

Another friend, let's call her Tory, who has been dealing with the aftermath of divorce-- not her own, but her husband's, who she married relatively late in life. I'll call him Todd. He pays a large amount of alimony to his ex-wife, and unlike Sally's ex, he pays it regularly and on time. In his late 50s, his finances hadn't totally recovered from the divorce settlement, and then he lost his job. He set himself up to do some consulting but wasn't able to make much money. Then, fortunately, he got another job. But then Tory lost her job. And then Todd lost his new job. Todd is by now in his early 60s and Tory is in her late 50s. They have a 10 year old daughter. (Tory didn't mention it but I know it took her a long time to get pregnant so that was probably another big expense.) They lived in an upscale suburb of NYC, and after a couple of years with no success at finding new jobs, they realized they weren't going to be able to stretch out their assets long enough. So they sold their house and moved to the midwest to start a new, cheaper life. Just to kick them in the shins a little more, they ended up taking a loss on their house sale, since they'd bought it at the top of the market. Tory is happier now and seems optimistic, but I can't help feeling like there is an undercurrent of disappointment. For a few years, everything was falling into place for her, with a new husband, a new baby, a career and a nice lifestyle, and then she had to give it all up and move far away from family and friends. A tough choice.

I'm glad I have friends who are open about what is going on in their lives financially. I don't really know all the details of their savings and income and expenses, but they are honest about their difficulties and what they are doing to try to survive, rather than just pretending everything is fine. It's a good reality check.

A Millionaire Can Get Medicaid

2018-07-20T16:22:00.000-04:00

So here’s an interesting development: I just found out I qualify for Medicaid, at least for the moment.

Now before you jump all over me saying I’m a greedy conniving cheat who shouldn’t be leeching services from the government, I will just say that it is very likely that I will never actually cost the government any money for using Medicaid. I’ll explain below. But I do think this is a great example of some of the perversity built into our current healthcare system.

I currently pay over $750 a month for COBRA coverage from my former job but in a few months, it will run out and I’ll have to buy my own insurance. I’ve been researching the plans offered through NY State’s marketplace under the ACA, otherwise known as Obamacare. I was going back and forth about what kind of plan to get and which insurance company to choose, but then realized that I shouldn’t be agonizing over it for just the last month of 2018— I could just pick the cheapest Bronze plan for that month since it was unlikely that I’d use medical care that month other than in an emergency, and then I could wait until the 2019 open enrollment period to decide on a plan for next year.

I decided to see what the application process was like— I didn’t think I’d finalize and submit it right away, but I wanted to see what info was needed. The process is actually pretty straightforward, though if you aren’t sure what all the lines on your tax return mean, you might want to get some help. You basically have to give identifying information to be sure you qualify, and then income and deduction estimates for the year of coverage to see if you are eligible for any subsidies.

The system is linked into NY State government data, so it knew I wasn’t earning any wages (via a paycheck with withholding) this year. For my estimated income for 2018, I just used the business income, interest, dividend and capital gains numbers from my 2017 tax return. (The business income is a little trickle from blogging, plus a consulting project I did last year, which is unlikely to be repeated this year.) They then ask about certain deductions that affect your adjusted gross income— again, I pulled this information from my 2017 tax return and extrapolated for what they would be in 2018. One of those deductions is what you pay for health insurance premiums if you are self- (or un-) employed.

So here’s the thing— my taxable income this year is only likely to be around $20,000. When you subtract from that what I’ll pay in 2018 for my health insurance, which is over $8,000, boom, suddenly I’m at poverty level. Assets are not taken into consideration at all. It is also worth pointing out that the dividends and capital gains produced by my 401k and Roth IRA accounts are not taxable, so while I factor those in as “income” in my planning for the future, they don’t affect my eligibility for Medicaid. While I hadn’t originally planned to finalize my application, I sort of inadvertently did: a screen popped up saying I qualified for Medicaid, and that it would be effective as of July 1! I was very confused by this so I called the helpline and talked the whole thing through with someone to see what it would mean.

Since I will still be paying for my COBRA coverage through November, any medical costs I have will still be covered by that primary insurance, but apparently Medicaid will become secondary coverage, if the provider I use accepts Medicaid. (That's a big if-- one of my doctors stopped being in-network for any insurance companies, so I’m sure she won’t accept Medicaid.) I’ll probably get a physical and maybe see another doctor or two before my COBRA runs out, but I’m guessing it may not be anything that Medicaid would cover. There is also a slight possibility that I’ll get some work later this year— in that case I’ll have to go back into the application and update my projected income, and presumably that would put me back in the position of buying a bronze plan, with maybe a small subsidy towards the premium for 2018. And in 2019, without all those COBRA payments, I’ll probably no longer be eligible for Medicaid and will just get a subsidy for purchasing a plan. And depending on my actual income, I may end up paying all or some of the subsidy back when I do my 2019 taxes.

I really wonder how many people fall into a situation like mine. I didn’t do anything to “game the system.” I just happen to benefit from a quirk in how the laws are currently designed (and yes, they should fix that quirk). If I had more investible assets, my dividends and capital gains would probably be high enough to disqualify me. And if I wasn’t paying for my platinum level COBRA, my adjusted gross income would be too high for me to qualify-- that, to me, is the most bizarre detail. But for the next couple of months at least, I am a millionaire who qualifies for Medicaid.

My Early Retirement Calculations

2018-03-07T15:36:00.000-05:00

A commenter on the previous post asked if I'd share the calculations that made me feel confident about retiring early. I'll give you a simplified version!

There are a few different ways that people tend to look at retirement readiness. One of the simplest is the 4% rule. The idea is that if you can live on spending only 4% of your savings each year, you don't need to add to those savings, as investment gains should generally outpace what you are withdrawing. This is also sometimes expressed as a 25X rule-- multiply your annual spending by 25 to see how it compares to your savings.

My total net worth at the point of deciding to quit my job was somewhere around $1.2 million. (It has since been between $1.3 and $1.4 million due to stock market gains.) 4% of $1.2 million is $48,000. My lifestyle while living in NYC was costing me more than that, but by leaving the city, it was possible to realistically budget for a lifestyle where my half would be less than $48,000. And that doesn't include Sweetie's net worth, which is a little over $2 million (not counting the equity in the house we just bought and paid for in cash, as well as some money set aside for renovations). When taking both of us into account, 4% of $3.2 million is $128,000 and our combined yearly budget is well under that. (My current calculations have it as around $92,000 a year, including a generous travel allowance. We'll see how it plays out in reality as we adjust to our new life in the country!)

This method of calculation doesn't factor in Social Security benefits or other retirement income. My Social Security will end up being less than what they project because they don't take into account that I won't continue to make what I was making last year. (It will be interesting to see if the projections will update in the next year or two when my income goes way down.) Sweetie will get Social Security, as well as a defined benefit pension starting in about 7 years. The pension, which appears to be well-funded and safely on track to be able to pay out in full, will be additional income of about $87,000 a year. That obviously makes a HUGE difference in our projections for the future.

I also used the retirement calculator that is part of the Fidelity website (not sure if it's publicly accessible or if you have to have an account)-- it is a fairly complex tool that allows you to input all sorts of info for yourself and a partner, including life expectancy, assets on hand, sources of income, one-time events, budgeted retirement spending, and other goals like paying for college. It then uses a Monte Carlo simulation to model how things will play out under different market conditions, and projects your savings and spending until your "end of plan," which is their delicate way of saying "when you drop dead." You can see 3 versions of the results-- one assuming a "significantly below average" market, one "below average," and one "average." I plugged all our numbers into this, assuming we'd both live til 95, inflating our expenses (by about 50% over what they currently are budgeted at) to allow for plenty of fun and expensive healthcare, and keeping expectations of any future inflow from earnings or inheritance to an absolute minimum. When really pushing this to the absolute worst case scenario, it says I might run out of money in my early 90s after Sweetie is dead. But even by just changing the parameters to "below average" market instead of "significantly below" brings us back to having over $2 million left over after both of us are dead.

No prediction is 100% confident, and a lot of things could happen that would change these calculations, so of course I still have my moments of worrying about whether it will all work out as planned. But we're also allowing for so much leeway in our budgeting that there will be room for us to cut back if needed. And we'll naturally cut back on some things like travel as we age. The biggest worry is that we'll decide we hate living in the country and want to go back to NYC-- we wouldn't be able to afford to live as we did before, but we could most likely make it work if we really wanted to. I feel incredibly fortunate to have this kind of freedom-- Sweetie and I have worked hard and made good decisions, but I also know that pure luck is a lot of what separates us from the half of all Americans who say they can't come up with $400 in an emergency, let alone retire early.

A Whirlwind of Volatility

2018-02-09T18:34:00.001-05:00

I'm not just talking about the stock market these last few days-- I'm talking about the last few months of my life.
You would think I'd have spent more time blogging lately, given that I quit my job and at least in theory have plenty of time on my hands. But the end of 2017 got a little crazy as we had to do a lot of work to put our apartment on the market, and then we sold it so quickly, it was a hustle to get ourselves packed up and moved out by the beginning of January!
I think we had pretty great timing, actually. We hit the market at a point when there weren't a lot of comparable listings in our price range. Within days we had multiple offers and a bidding war, and ended up with an all-cash buyer at above our original asking price. Seeing what's been going on with the tax bill and now the gyrations in the stock market, I'm very glad we weren't trying to sell now or later this spring.
The buyers wanted to close fairly quickly, but luckily we had also managed to find a house in an area that we liked, so we knew we'd have someplace to go-- sort of, anyway. The timing didn't totally work out and we couldn't move in right away, so our stuff (what's left of it after purging and donating and selling a lot) had to go into storage for a little while, but beyond that, the closing on our house went pretty smoothly too, since we were also paying cash. We also had good timing in that during our storage limbo, we decided to get away for a little mini-vacation in January when it got so cold and nasty in the Northeast, and not move into our new house til later in the month when it was better weather. And now we (by which I really mean Sweetie, whose apartment it was) are sitting on a big chunk of cash that we luckily didn't invest right before this stock market correction.

So we are just now settling down to the next phase of this new life, but still feeling a little at sea. Our expenses are going to be so much lower, it's kind of blowing my mind. Our HOA fee is a fraction of the maintenance on the apartment. The car insurance is cheaper, and parking is free. Even joining the local gym, which we did today, is going to be about half what we used to pay in NYC. The local grocery stores tend to have somewhat lower prices than in the city. Our utility bills may end up higher since we have electric baseboard heating. And at some point we may need to get a second car, depending on what we end up doing with ourselves in terms of jobs or other activities. So far, our main activities have been unpacking, exploring the area, and marveling at how beautiful and quiet it is here.
We'll see how it goes. I do miss the urban vibe of being in Brooklyn and going into Manhattan almost daily-- we drove back into the city for the first time the other day and ended up in a neighborhood I didn't know well and I kept thinking how nice it seemed and wondering what it would be like to live there if we someday decide we want and can afford a pied a terre. I kind of miss just watching people on the subway. It's weird to have to drive everywhere. But life also feels very peaceful now, and all the stresses of our former apartment, former jobs, and former expenses have just-- poof! -- gone away.

Another Down-to-Earth Heiress

2017-11-13T09:00:00.000-05:00

Consider this a sequel to my last post, in which a woman's family money seemed to be funding some luxuries for an otherwise frugal couple.

This time, the story is about a childhood friend of mine. I hadn't really kept in touch with him for years, but some years ago I was at a party in my home town and met his wife. She was a lovely person who taught in a local nursery school, just really sweet and friendly and exactly the sort of person you'd want your child's teacher to be. My old friend worked in what sounded like a mid-level corporate marketing job. They had a child and another on the way at that point. They were renting a house and hoping to find one to buy. It all sounded totally typical for a young married couple of my general world, which I'll again describe as mostly people who have had a stable, middle-class to upper-middle class upbringing, college grads-- people with many advantages in life but who would not be seen as particularly rich. People who probably aren't living paycheck-to-paycheck, but who have worries about the bigger financial goals in life such as helping kids pay for college, and retirement. People who can't take money for granted.

As in my last story, an offhand remark by the wife made my head spin-- I was telling a story about my own job, with an example of a regular task I had at that time, and I referred to a company name. The wife said "oh! That's my family's business! [Things associated with this company, one of which I had just cited,] are named after my sisters and cousins and me!" This company is not a household name but it's one of those things that is actually pretty major in a behind-the-scenes way, which you notice everywhere once you know where to look. I didn't pry into all the family tree, but from doing a little research afterwards, it appeared that the wife's grandfather was at that time the richest man in the country where this company was founded.

Being the richest man in that country is not like being the richest man in the US-- our billionaires are way richer. But still... he's a billionaire! I guess there is no law that says grandparents have to provide money to their grandchildren, and maybe this woman doesn't get a thing, but even if she is one of lots and lots of grandchildren, she would surely inherit something someday. And at that level of wealth, I'd be surprised if there wasn't some sort of trust fund distributing some money already.

At some point after that party, I asked a mutual friend if he knew about the wife's background. He was aware that she came from money, as apparently a group of this guy's friends always joked about how he must have sold his soul to the devil because he'd gone from being kind of a nerd in high school to marrying this beautiful and wealthy woman! But they didn't even realize exactly how wealthy her family was.

I was just looking up this couple to see what they are up to lately, as I haven't seen them in a while and don't know much more about them other than what their kids are doing in photos posted on Facebook. The wife is no longer a teacher, and has what sounds like a management job at a tech company. My friend seems to still have more or less the same job. When the wife was a teacher, I thought "ok, that is the sort of job that is emotionally rewarding if not remunerative, so it makes sense that she would do that." Obviously I don't know any details about her current job, but it sounds more like the kind of thing people do when they need to make money-- she may find it satisfying in other ways, but I guess it is my own bias showing that I think anyone who has some family money would want to be an entrepreneur, or work for a non-profit, or teach-- in general, do things that are too risky or low-paying to do if you really need a steady income. I wish I could ask her a lot of questions....

Enough About Me...

2017-11-08T12:06:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I wrote about other people's money! I've been jotting down some notes over the last year or more about various situations I've encountered with friends or family whose finances fascinate me. The first one I'll tell you about is someone in my extended family. He and his wife are pretty down to earth people-- no fancy cars, no fancy clothes, and no expensive hobbies that I'd ever heard of until recently. They did do some nice travel with the wife's family, but nothing that seemed out of the ordinary for upper-middle-class people that wanted to treat their kids to a special experience. All in all, I'd describe them as people who certainly had lots of advantages in life and lived comfortably, but not someone that most people would look at and say "whoa, they are super-wealthy and have way more money than me."

But then one day, the wife casually slipped something into a conversation that did make me say "whoa." Without revealing too many identifying details, I'll just say that someone in an earlier generation of her family invented something pretty major-- major enough that unless there was some sort of unfair buy-out or other business dealing, the entire family would surely have a TON of money for generations to come. I could be wrong about that, as it's hard to know how family wealth will trickle down over generations, whether it's been invested well, etc. But I'm pretty sure I'm right, especially since the husband in this couple recently bought a plane.

Now the plane he bought is not a Gulfstream jet or anything like that-- it's a small plane that probably cost him less than some luxury cars, from what I could tell by googling the model. But still-- how many people just run out and buy planes?! In my circles, basically no one. I know one person who flies a plane because he works for a small local charter airline. And I think one of my uncles might have taken some flying lessons a while back. I myself gave Sweetie a one-hour trial flying lesson as a 50th birthday present-- I think it was about $85, and it was a really fun experience that I'd like to repeat with myself at the controls someday! But other than that, flying seems like a pretty rarified hobby. And to commit yourself to getting and maintaining a pilot's license, as well as fuel, maintenance and hangar parking for a plane that you own? That has to be a huge money pit. If you do certain kinds of travel on a regular basis, I suppose you can avoid paying a lot of commercial air fares, but I would imagine it's extremely rare for owning a plane to work out to be cheaper.

So it was very interesting for me to go from thinking my relative was someone "like me" in terms of finances, in a very broad sense, to suddenly seeing him as being on another planet! I admire him and his wife for their lifestyle in general-- they are both smart and hard-working, certainly not anyone you'd scoff at as the "idle rich." And if the plane is the one crazy thing they want to blow some money on, it's fine with me, though I hope they are extremely cautious flying it!

Have you ever had to reassess your perception of someone's finances like this?

New Life So Far

2017-10-10T10:02:00.000-04:00

I’ve got a few weeks of retirement/vacation/unemployment under my belt now… and I’m still not sure what to call it! But I have already made a few discoveries about myself. Firstly, that I am lazy! I had very good intentions to blog every day and go to the gym every day and be very creative and productive and healthy, but I’m not doing a very good job of that just yet.

In my first few days off, I bounced around the apartment doing a lot of little chores like washing windows, organizing my sock drawer, and repairing a lamp. But having knocked those off the list, I felt a bit at sea. I did go to the gym most days, but that only took up a couple of hours, leaving me a lot of time to spend A) wondering if I’ve done the right thing in quitting my job, and B) staring at my phone. I have an amazing capacity to just loll around and check Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter all day!

Then I got sick, and even my gym routine went out the window. It took a few doctor visits and blood tests to figure out what was wrong with me, and luckily, just some antibiotics to fix it, but not before my brain went off into some anxious (and literally feverish) spins about how much COBRA payments were costing me and what would be happening with Obamacare, and pre-existing conditions, and deductibles and premiums and co-payments, oh my.

The healthcare costs are my main spending these days— immediately upon starting my semi-retirement (I’m just going to call it that for now), I found myself with a hankering for peanut butter sandwiches. That plus some salad greens, cheese and crackers, and a baggie full of nuts and raisins, has been my primary diet on these lazy days, and I get really annoyed with myself if I forget to bring my own water bottle from home and have to buy one. Sweetie and I have occasionally gone out for lunch at pizza places, middle-Eastern restaurants, and Chipotle, but on the whole, I’ve been really good about cutting my spending on food. I also haven’t spent much on any other miscellaneous items or clothes, other than finding my favorite jeans on sale and snapping up a couple pairs since I’ll be wearing them a lot more!

Our basic costs of living— housing, insurance, etc— are a big drain right now, but so far, my net worth has pretty much stayed steady, even increasing a little— stock market fluctuations will have a much bigger effect at this point than any day to day spending, at least in the short term. But it is painful to see all this negative cash flow.

Right now, I’m just giving myself some time to settle into this new life and figure out a new rhythm— it’s more of a challenge than I thought it would be. Although I did not think of myself as wrapped up in my old career as a big part of my identity, I am uncertain about what my identity is now. What I mean is that I didn’t base my self-worth on making a lot of money and being at a certain professional level— I was proud of it, but my career was less about prestige than it was about an inner feeling of competence. I liked knowing what I was good at my job (most of it, anyway) and I felt satisfaction in getting things done. Now that source of satisfaction is missing and I need to replace it with something. I need to feel like I’m good at something, and productive. It’s scary to not have a clear idea what that will be, and to contemplate doing something new where I am clueless and might be frustrated at first because I don’t know what I’m doing and make mistakes. The part of my life that gave me confidence and security has been replaced by doubt and uncertainty.

But this is temporary. I know things will settle down— we’ve got a house to buy, an apartment to sell, and a new life to build, none of which will happen overnight, so I need to be patient with myself. And we have money in the bank to get us through the next steps. I still feel incredibly lucky to have these choices and decisions to make.

It's Done

2017-09-08T10:44:00.002-04:00

In my last few posts, I was working my way towards a big life change... and now I've taken the next big step. I quit my job! It was both a big step and strangely anti-climactic, since I hadn't been at that job for very long and had never really settled into it in some ways. Now I just wish I'd done it sooner so I could have had more time off during the summer, but it's actually kind of nice to go into vacation mode just as everyone else is going back to school/work.

This is going to be weird, though. I haven't been unemployed since I was 21! What am I going to do with myself? More blogging, I hope! And I do intend to find other work, but at the moment we're working on moving out of NYC, which seems like a job unto itself. The main thing I'm going to have to adjust to is seeing negative numbers in my income/expense tracking. I will not be saving money in the short term. I will have to be very strict about sticking to a budget, but spending some of my savings is all part of the master plan. It is going to be painful over the next few months as we'll have higher household expenses while we deal with relocating. But afterwards, our ongoing expenses will be lower. And Sweetie will have a lot more liquid cash after the NY apartment is sold. We are pretty sure that if we play our cards right, we don't really ever have to have jobs again, though we do want to find other work, preferably part-time.

Meanwhile, I keep hearing of more and more people who are also leaving NYC-- some are moving to totally new cities for new jobs, some are moving back to their home towns to be closer to parents, some are doing reverse commutes to jobs outside NYC and planning to fully move later. Others are also leaping into the void of uncertainty: one guy quit his job, sold all his stuff, and moved to Berlin! There is a sense that the city has changed so much from when we ourselves were the young new arrivals, but maybe every new generation feels that NYC is becoming just an over-developed playground for the wealthy and their children and just isn't as fun anymore...

But for me, what I'm doing now feels exciting, inspiring, and a little scary. It's rejuvenating, perhaps, to throw off my very stable routines and enter a phase of disruption and reinvention-- though I suppose some people wouldn't think that a middle-aged couple moving to the suburbs is that adventurous! We shall see...