You actually put your savings into real categories right? Or like Nicole Deiker puts her budget like 9 months out in the future?
In line with my inability to budget rather than track expenses, I can’t go more than one month out in YNAB, because it makes no sense to me. I just shovel everything into an emergency fund category, and my new category which I literally labeled “lol wtf”. I also tend to cash flow unplanned things rather than save up in sinking funds. I have a sinking fund for car repair, but not for clothing or travel for example. So I’m not used to seeing the on budget categories increase all that much month to month.
I do my cash savings in these categories, but my investing
Accounts are off budget so they aren’t reflected in them anymore. I used to have to contribute to my IRA from on budget accounts so at least I saw it at all
I try not to pull and $ out of these categories for other short term sinking fund categories like travel, that’s my basic strategy?
I find following simplicity and minimalist blogs etc helpful. I’ve been following Courtney Carver on and off for years, her “project 333” (33 items of clothing for 3 months) is quite a fun exercise.
This was very eye-opening. The part about being tired after work and just scrolling and buying…I definitely spent less money during grad school when I jumped right from work to homework. Obviously the solution is getting another degree. KIDDING but I need non-consumptive activities, and less screen time overall. Thanks for sharing. Going to watch this a few times today…
Yep… for me, these days, money is all about “OMG, milestone birthday, I am old AF, how much more time do I have for travel and fun?”
Especially after denying myself that sort of thing for literal decades out of fear of pissing off/hurting my family.
Meanwhile, now that I’m old AF, I also value security and am vaguely thinking of buying rather than renting but I don’t see how I can save a down payment in a reasonable time frame. Right now I’m saving about $800/paycheck, for a car (that’s about 50 percent of each take-home paycheck after all deductions and does not count my 401k). That sounds like a pretty good savings rate on paper but…That’s $19,200 a year, which is nowhere near a down payment these days.
So, yeah, blargh, money, values, priorities… blargh. I often don’t know what the right thing to do is.
I don’t think there’s one “right” way. Personally I feel like my targets are going to keep moving. For the longest time it was digging myself out of debt. Then it was figuring out how to autopilot savings. Now it’s considering longer term goals like children, buying property, retirement. I do know that my calibration feels off at this moment, I think because so many of those goals feel nebulous? And pandemic. Digging into the resources on this thread have helped so much already. Once I can figure out my why, the what and how become much clearer.
Just want to thank everyone on this thread for the resources shared and accountability and judgement-free space to work all of this out. Keeps me coming back to this forum!
Yeah… I guess where I was going with that is, I can’t have everything, so what is it that I want? And I DON’T KNOW.
Would love tips on how to get clarity around that. I know, therapy, but I have so many other huge things to tackle in therapy that this is way way down the list.
My husband’s father died at the age of 62. It would be awesome if we could max our time together by retiring at like 55!
I have teased the Boy sometimes that it’s expensive for him to use the PlayStation because I tend to do online shopping when it’s not my turn . But now I have taken up knitting and cross-stitch which are perfect for when someone else is watching TV!
So, I affirm you around your goals, and I’m going to share some down payment numbers in case it’s helpful. Putting under a spoiler bc I know this was unasked for.
Summary
We spent $70K on a down payment and closing costs, but could have gotten away with $35-40K if we needed to. And that’s in Denver, which I understand is more $$$ generally than NOLA. We were told 5-10% down is very common for the Denver area, so I imagine you could easily get away with it in NOLA. Even with only 10%ish down, our mortgage payment (with PMI ) is still pretty comparable to our former rent payment.
So cool reading about where everyone is at! Just thought I’d leave a note because I’d really like this thread to keep going. I saw the concerns about this thread in terms of what type of space it will be and I just want to reassure people it’s for anyone who is mulling this stuff over, not just people doing extreme cutting. High spenders are welcome too! This place is definitely for the “money as values” discussions too! I just want to reassure people this is not a face punch zone! Everyone is welcome to post here.
Update on the Instagram dress: The seller wasn’t willing to refund me, but she’ll ship it and hopefully I’ll love it. Or at least I’ll be able to figure out how to modify it so that I love it. (I recently got a shirt from a different Instagram seller and I love the fabric but it doesn’t fit at all the way I expected, so I’m trying to figure out what to do about that.)
One thing I need to remember is that, when we bought our condo a million years ago, interest rates are way higher. We had nearly 7% on the first mortgage and 8.25, I think, on the second. Which, obviously, affected how much we could buy.
$35-$40k feels more do-able… but, I fear that our income’s too low to qualify for anything we would want to live in, which is why I was shooting for a higher down payment and, thus, less borrowed.
Oh well, this isn’t happening any time soon. Hope it happens before we are retirement age!
. But now I have taken up knitting and cross-stitch which are perfect for when someone else is watching TV!
