Wow! It is Saturday and I have very little I have to do! It feels fabulous.
One of the first things we are going to do this morning is go to US Bank to pay off the Rabbit. Woo Hoo!! I paid off the Subaru last week (I could do that on-line. US Bank needs to get with the times!), the credit cards all have zero balances, and the Rabbit gets paid off today. Now the only debt Jack and I have is the house, and I can live with that. We both want to accumulate more of an emergency cash fund, but after that we will need to decide if we are going to pay a little extra on the house every month, or what comes next.
I know money is a personal thing and maybe it is crass to discuss it in public, but money management is one of those things that can cause a lot of stress in a couple's life together and it is on my mind at the moment. I suppose my readers can decide whether they want to read this blog post or not, as it is mostly going to be about money.
When Jack and I decided to get married a little later in life (I was 46 when we got married and he was 52) we knew that we needed to talk finances. We had both been divorced which, as anyone who has been divorced will tell you, sets you way back on that financial planning road. We both also helped our children pay for college educations and still had one child each in college. So once we started talking about getting married we decided we needed to have a financial planning day. I was still living in California at the time, so I put together a spreadsheet showing everything I had spent money on over the last couple of years, by category, gathered together my 401k and credit card statements, and anything else I could think of, and flew to Kansas City. Jack had done the same thing and we just spread everything out on the living room floor and talked. We talked about what is important to each of us; I have a tendency to spend money on memories (think vacations and doing fun things) and gifts for my kids and Jack is a little more conservative. We talked about what we needed in order to feel comfortable with combining our finances and we came up with the outlines of a financial plan. We have had some expected and unexpected expenses come up since we got married and bought our house. An $18,000 home improvement project to keep our basement dry being the biggest one. And we've bought two cars. We bought the rabbit when I moved out here, because my little Nissan (Thank you George, she was a life saver!) just wasn't going to make the trip. Then after we bought the house the Saturn got wrecked. We were a one car family until I started working in Olathe, and then that required the purchase of a second car, the Subaru. Cars have gotten expensive, but given the range of car prices these days, both of these cars would be considered rather economical purchases. And we had one daughter starting her senior year in college and another in her freshman year.
Anyway, a little over three years ago I developed a three year plan to be out of debt by the time Bri graduated from college and, in spite of the unexpected expense on the house, we have achieved that goal a few months ahead of schedule. We achieved this goal by tracking every dollar we spend. I spend the first hours of every Saturday updating our budget and expense log and reconciling our checking accounts and credit card statements. It works out great because even though I am the one paying the bills and tracking everything, Jack is fully informed. The spreadsheet is right there, along with the graph that monitors our debt, and he can check it whenever he wants to see what we are spending our money on. Periodically, we have sit down meeting where we discuss what we want to accomplish over the next few weeks or months. Annually, we develop a new budget. When we realized we were spending too much on "entertainment and eating out" we decided to establish a monthly cash budget for those items. We each get an allowance for our own pocket money and we have a joint allowance for eating out. That really helped us keep our cash expenditures in line. I also maintain a balance sheet where I update our assets, liabilities and net worth every quarter. That, as much as anything, helps us see our progress as we work towards our financial goals. Today, I am relieved that we are out of debt (with the exception of the mortgage) and so is Jack!
I am proud of all six of our kids. This spring, when Bri graduates from college, all six kids will have graduated with Bachelor's degrees and no one has any student loans. I think that is a huge accomplishment. Jack and I both made commitments to help our kids pay for their Bachelor's degrees, as did our ex-spouses. In addition, the kids made huge financial contributions to their own educations, all of them getting jobs and paying for their own living expenses (with varying degrees of assistance needed, along the way). Between their willingness to work to help cover expenses, and Jack's, mine and our exes' ability to cash flow tuition and the rest of the expenses that the kids couldn't cover themselves, we've managed to get six kids through school without any student debt. In addition, two of our children decided to get graduate degrees which they figured out how to fund, themselves. Aaron has his master's degree and Steve is working on his PhD. All of our children are remarkable!! I don't think I tell them often enough, particularly the ones that made the biggest financial contributions to their own educations (you know who you are), how proud I am of them for this accomplishment. Yes, your parents helped, sometimes a lot, but each one of you made it happen. We could not have supported all six of you through college without your help, it would have been impossible without the impressive work all of you did to support yourselves while going to school. I congratulate each and every one of you for this accomplishment!!
I bring all this up because Jack and I are at a new branch in the road, financially. With the dept paid off, college educations all but complete, and both of us fully employed (for the moment), we are on the brink of being able to accelerate our savings for retirement. It feels like it happened all of the sudden, but it has really been like any other transition. The progress has been slow and steady, we have been getting closer and closer to this moment since the day we got married almost four years ago, but all of a sudden, here we are! So much has happened over this last year. My new job, travels to China, getting fit, paying off debt, Carla coming and going, and what else? I can't even keep track. I feel like the solid foundation of financial planning, budgeting, and daily tracking of our expenses has really paid off. Yet it feels like our lives are exciting and unpredictable and I don't know what is around the corner. As crazy as it sounds, I like this combination of discipline (financial and health) and the unknown. The stability of our marriage and love for one another and the discipline in the basics provides a solid foundation for risk taking in other areas. Jack and I are so different in many ways, yet together we seem to have all the bases covered. I don't know why it works, but it does.
OK, this is not where this post was going to go when I called it, "Reboot," but when I started talking about paying off the Rabbit I just got all excited about it. When I titled my post I was really thinking about rebooting my exercise regimen. Week 5 ends today. I have not yet made my exercise schedule for the 2nd four weeks of Phase II. I need to do that today and make sure I start Week 6 off on the right foot. Today I will swim, at the very least, but all in all, Week 5 was a light week. Fine. I will step it back up in Week 6!!
Go, Fight, Win!!!
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