I am terrible when it comes to maintenance, which is why it has been about 12 years since I sealed our deck (or even cleaned it). Sealing a deck isn’t hard, I’m just really good at not maintaining things. As our two readers know, I am also not good at documenting home improvements. Luckily, this…
Category: Money
Working Toward Retirement – June
Hooray! We are back in the black this month – up $3,882. Anytime we have positive growth, it’s always a good feeling. One of these days I’ll get around to sharing my financial spreadsheet. More specifically, my compound interest calculator for retirement. Until I get the time to figure out how to record my screen…
The Cost of Remodeling a Kitchen Revisited
In January, Christy broke down some of the costs involved in remodeling our kitchen. There was a lot of work that went into this 4 month project, so I wanted to get a better view of our total cost. I went back through our credit card statements because I wanted to capture every thing from…
Saving for the future – June
I missed last month, but we are finally back up above $20,000 in our savings. With our federal tax return and the $1,000 of our normal savings we are up to $21,255. We earned $9.82 in interest. Only $18,745 left to get to our $40,000 goal to cover non-emergency emergencies (new car, etc.) In vacation…
Working Toward Retirement – May
It’s been a turbulent month since my last retirement post. Last month we were $4,020 ahead and this month we are $1,908 behind. All in all though, we are gaining. We did hit a point where my work 401k dipped down to $98,000, but I’m glad to see that it is back up above $100k….
Working Toward Retirement – April
We finally did it! We surpassed $100,000 in my work 401k. We are close to the edge still and that could dip down under if the market takes a turn for the worse, but for right now I’m celebrating. Currently, my work 401k is showing a 25% return since October, which is up 4% from…
Saving for the future – Lottery Edition
We had an incredible week last week. I can’t believe I’m even saying this, but after 20+ years of playing the lottery, we finally won!!! After taxes, we ended up with a little over $120 MILLION! I haven’t even told Christy yet. It just hit our account last night, so now it actually feels real….
Working Toward Retirement – March
It was a rocky month in the stock market, especially today. Collectively we are down $1,423. Due to the market being down, we were not able to meet the benchmark of having $100,000 in my work 401k. Even with that loss, my work 401k is still showing our rate of return over the last 5…
Kitchen Remodel: Behind the scenes – Peninsula Cabinets
In this post, I’ll review our peninsula cabinets and the guides we used for the doors. This was one of the many firsts on this project for me, so it was nerve racking at times. The nerve racking part wasn’t so much the work itself, but the work coupled with the cost of the cabinets….
Saving for the future – February
With the remodeling out of the way (for now at least), it’s good to see a month where all of our accounts have grown. This month in Savings we were able to save our usual $500, plus an additional $186. We earned $7.59 in interest. In our Vacation fund we saved our typical $200 and…