September 2020

 I'm not even sure what happened to August.  This summer has been very busy with everyone in the house.  Hardly anything has gotten done off the goals list (turns out to be a good thing as our plans have changed).

We've made some progress in the saving arena, not so much in the debt paydown.  I'm going through the Fynanc classes again, and one of the things we've agreed to do is put $2500/month in savings at the beginning of the month, so that saving is automatic and not an afterthought.  Anything that's leftover can also be put in, but this way we're constantly increasing.

Q3 Savings

We'll won't quite hit our Q3 target of $6000.  However, we will by default hit our $7500 target for Q4.  We'll hopefully end the year with almost $20k in savings, which is half the yearly goal, but still pretty good.  We'll be set to hit $30k by mid-next year, and that's with working part-time hours on my part.

The debt has only moved by regular payments, since we're focused on savings.  Still, this year has seen a lot of accomplishment.  Early next year will see the Malibu paid off (February) and us figure out something with the Alaska Visa.  Hopefully the business will have picked off that.  

Total Debt Payoff since Jan 2019

July 2020

So June happened.  I promise it did.  It just flew by and I didn't stay on top of things. 

We didn't make a lot of progress for our debt.  The new photography business is booking along.  A new mentor has been hired to deal with marketing and specifically growing the photography business.  

I started with the mindset mentor that T had been using.  So our savings has gone in the crapper.  I'm also still working with cut hours/pay at the W-2 job, but that should be changing in August.

In good news, the note business (Magpie) is picking up nicely.  I've done 2 joint ventures, one in the 401k on a 50/50 split on a performing lease option, and the other a non-performing in Baltimore with a capital partner.  I'm very excited.  I've also spoken to 3 other people about doing capital JVs.  The mindset mentor should also help get me out of my comfort zone and ask people for money.  I have a good personal network, so we'll see what happens.

For the debt, we just paid the minimums for the past 2 months.  Savings has also been decreasing with the purchase of the mentoring for both T and myself.  We should start building things back up this month as I have 3 paychecks.

Also....CHICKENS!

Meet our newest family members.  They are about 4-5 weeks old at this point and mostly done with their gangly, teenage look.  The big summer project is building them a coop.  They've been pretty entertaining.

Stay safe and healthy!

May 2020

The new goals are causing some churn.  We have been doing things in the business that are costing money.  But they should be good investments in the business.

For TBD, we put some money in marketing.  Which means we'll be advertised on a horse trailer turned mobile Beekings store.  Pretty excited about that, as once things open back up, our name will be all over the farmer market scene.

For Magpie, we're going hard into notes.  I've signed up for a program that provides hands-on, 1-1 attention to buying a note.  I'm excited to have training wheels and definitely feel like this will accelerate things.  They say my goals are 'reasonable', which is causing me to re-examine them.  While I want my goals to be achievable, I don't want them to be easy.  I want to reach for the stars and at least hit the moon.  Thankfully, one of the mentors loves goal setting and we'll be figuring out the path forward.

To that end, Q2 is going in the wrong direction.  It'll start growing again, but it's pushed the estimated goal completion from August to October.   

Stay safe and healthy!

April 2020

Further changes due to the pandemic.  My hours and pay have been cut.  Bonus, I have every Friday off which I'm using to build the business.  But that means that our goals have changed, again.

The plan is to put everything into savings until we hit $30k, then throw everything at debt.  If things stay exactly the same, we should hit the savings goal by August and will payoff debt by January.  Which is frankly ahead schedule.  So laser focus is a good thing!

Q1 is done and we blew our savings goal out of the water.  Our debt paydown goal didn't do as well and didn't move from March.  I won't be reporting on debt until we start paying extra again.

But savings:

We're more than halfway to the $30k.  The tax refund is the main reason for this, but we've been putting everything we get extra there too.

Hope all is well and healthy. 

March 2020

There were some goal readjustments and subsequent spreadsheet updates for this month.

As expected, the HELOC was paid off as part of our primary home refi.  So that brought our overall debt payment down by a lot, but not the actual goal of $30k extra for the year.  The refi is great because we changed to a 15 year mortgage and lowered the rate.  I doubt we'll ever have to refinance again. 

The Venture card was also ending it's 0% in March, so we moved $25k over to another card that has 3.99% until next April.  That makes a monthly payment of $1975 to pay it off in full on time.

So in March, we only paid off $1988.  That makes a total quarterly payoff of $6538 which is less than the $7500 goal.

Going forward, because we're paying it off on time, we shouldn't have a problem meeting the quarterly goal, which is updated to $5925.

The plan is to build up savings to $60k.  The current world situation is showing that we don't have enough saved to be comfortable (only 2 months if we bare bones the budget).  That's where the tax refund went as well as the cashout from the refi.  The goal there is to save $5k per quarter.  We beat that by a bit in Q1.  Yearly goal is $20k which I think like we'll hit.

Stay safe everyone.  We're hunkered down at home trying to balance home school and work.  It's an interesting balance. 

February 2020

February had some good progress.  We paid $4500 extra to the HELOC.  I'm also going to start including the quarterly bar chart I'm using.  It's pretty motivating.

We do have some costs this month (plane tickets and lens purchase for Travis Bolton Designs (TBD)), so I don't know how successful we'll be in hitting the first quarter goal.  But we should be getting our tax refund, so that should help April if not March.

February 2020

And here's the quarter bar chart.

I'm hoping that incremental goals will help us get to the year goal easier.  We'll see.

We're also refinancing the primary, which is where the HELOC is.  The HELOC will be paid off as part of that. 

January 2020 & 2019 Goals

So the end of the year vanished and I didn't post updates after August.  A good friend passed away, one of the dogs had surgery with complications, and the husband decided to start a new business.  

But all that aside, 2020 is a new year and we have new goals and plans and ways for achieving both.

We met two out of three of 2019's goals.  The real estate business will be self-sufficient starting in March (we are closing on the Tacoma land at the end of the month which will provide monthly income that will cover all Magpie's expenses at this point...it's running really lean).  We also purged every room in the house.  There were two spots need more organizing, but we squeaked that goal in over the holiday break.  Although it doesn't feel like we purged much of anything.  I still think we have too much stuff (and yarn...it's leaked out of the bedroom and into another room).

We didn't meet our debt payoff goal.  We were going to pay $25k extra to the debt, and we managed $20.5k.  We lost momentum mid-year and never recovered.  It's nothing to sneeze at, but it wasn't the goal.

For 2020, we're aspiring more.  The husband has goals related to his new business (photography...he takes amazing pictures).  And we have new family goals.

1) Pay off $30k extra in debt.  We're going to keep track and meet quarterly goals, instead of the whole year, to better track.  We're not taking any big trips this year, and with my income, we should be able to achieve this easily, but we thought that last year too.

2) TBD grosses $40k (that's the photography biz)

3) We finish the yard - this will divert some money, but not a ton, from the debt payoff, but should still be obtainable.  

4) Be done with selling Lego.  I want it out of the house and our investment back.  That has always gone to boosting the vacation fund.

We also changed up YNAB a bit, made the parent categories more descriptive.  It's bigger, but better organized.  We just started that, so we'll see how it goes.

Now for the monthly update.  We didn't put anything extra yet for January.  We essentially need $2500 each month to meet the goal, and we have that sitting and waiting.  The plan is to have big Feb payment and then settle into the monthly routine.  So here's the Jan report.

January 2020

The Malibu will be magically paid off on schedule at the end of this year.  That'll be nice.  Venture gets moved back to the 401k in March, and I think for simplicity we'll just keep it there rather than balance transfer again, but that might change.

We're also doing smarter savings things, like automatically building up the long-term savings, putting money away each month for the girls, and maxing out T's 401k.  We'll see how that impacts things for the year.

Cheers!