Live Real, Now

The no-pants guide to spending, saving, and thriving in the real world.

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Regret

Life

There comes a time when it’s too late to tell people how you feel.

There will come a day when the person you mean to talk to won’t be there.  Don’t wait for that day.

“There’s always tomorrow” isn’t always true.

The Luxury of Vacation

Finance, Parenting

This was a guest post I wrote last year to answer the question posed by the Yakezie blog swap, “Name a time you splurged and were glad you did.”

There are so many things that I’ve wanted to spend my money on, and quite a few that I have.  Just this week, we went a little nuts when we found out that the owner of the game store near us was retiring and had his entire stock 40% off.  Another time, we splurged long-term and bought smartphones, more than doubling our monthly cell phone bill.

This isn’t about those extravagances.  This is about a time I splurged and was glad I did.   Sure, I enjoy using my cell phone and I will definitely get a lot of use out of our new games, but they aren’t enough to make me really happy.

The splurge that makes me happiest is the vacation we took last year.

Vacations are clearly a luxury.  Nonessential.  Unnecessary.  A splurge.

When we were just a year into our debt repayment, we realized that, not only is debt burnout a problem, but our kids’ childhoods weren’t conveniently pausing themselves while we cut every possible extra expense to get out of debt.  No matter how we begged, they insisted on continuing to grow.

Nothing we will do will ever bring back their childhoods once they grow up or—more importantly—their childhood memories.  They’ll only be children for eighteen years.  That sounds like a long time, but that time flies by so quickly.

We decided it was necessary to reduce our debt repayment and start saving for family vacations.

Last summer, we spent a week in a city a few hours away.  This was a week with no internet access, no playdates, no work, and no chores.  We hit a number of museums, which went surprisingly well for our small children.  Our kids got to climb high over a waterfall and hike miles through the forest.  We spent time every day teaching them to swim and play games.   Six months later, my two year old still talks about the scenic train ride and my eleven year old still plays poker with us.

We spent a week together, with no distractions and nothing to do but enjoy each other’s company.  And we did.   The week cost us several extra months of remaining in debt, but it was worth every cent.   Memories like we made can’t be bought or faked and can, in fact, be treasured forever.

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Net Worth, April 2016

Finance

Net Worth

Last year wasn’t a good year for my net worth.  It came with a $7000 drop.

Q1 2016, however, was a great quarter.

In December, we had $13,271 in credit card debt.   At the time I took this screenshot, it was down to $3836.43.    As of this moment, it’s down to $2640.91.   If things go as expected this week, I should wake up on Friday to a paid-off credit card.  I had to raid some of our savings accounts to make it happen, but it’s happening.    Some of it was a tax refund, some of it was the fact that my mortgage payment went away in December.

That’s seven years of hard work, almost to the day.   Seven years ago, I was researching bankruptcy, and stumbled across Dave Ramsey.    Seven years ago, we were drowning in debt.

Next week, we’re free.   No more debt, hanging over our heads.   We’re free to take vacations.   We’re free to finally save for college, when my son is 16, and stand a chance of being able to pay for it for him.   We’re free to do…whatever we want to do.   Our monthly nut after the debt is paid–only in fall/winter/spring when my wife is working–is roughly 1/3 of our take-home pay.

That’s how hard we’ve cut to make sure we can pay our bills and make debt die.  We do have some things that would be considered extravagant.   We’re not savages.   But my car is 10 years old.  My wife’s is 7.   My motorcycles are 35 and 30; one of them was purchased before we cared about our debt.

Back to the net worth….

The biggest change came from our property values, which sucks.  That was $36,000 of the difference, which comes with the painful tax bump to go with it.   A large chunk of the savings increase was the money we set aside every month to cover the property tax bill, and that will go away next month.

Still, $641,000 dollars is a long way from nothing.   I’m pretty happy.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-29

Misc

Birthday Parties are Evil

Finance, Parenting

This is a post from my archives.

I hate birthday parties.   Well, not all birthday parties.  Not even most parties.  Just the expensive-for-the-sake-of-expensive parties.  The bar-raising parties.  The status-boosting parties.  I’m done.

My son is seven years older than my first daughter.  In those seven years, with only one kid, we managed to spoil him regarding birthday parties.  Every party was big and there were a lot of presents. That’s an expensive way to run a birthday and it is a lot of stress.   We even moved the parties home, but still invited all of our friends and family.   It was much too stressful.

A good friend used the pizza and game place, buying tokens for everyone at the party.  That’s incredibly expensive.  Even if I  wanted to, I couldn’t afford that for three kids.   There’s an element of keeping up with everyone around me, but I just can’t make myself care about that anymore.  They aren’t paying my debt or cleaning my house.  They don’t get a vote.

My  plan this year was to have a sleepover for my son.   He had five friends spend the night, playing games and watching movies.  They giggled and squealed for eighteen hours, all for the cost of some take-and-bake pizzas and snacks.  It was a hit for everyone involved. The other parents got a night off and all of the kids had a blast.

My girls are one and two.  We’re done with parties for them, too. They got big parties for their first birthdays.  Those are parties for the adults; the kids don’t care.  In a few years–even a few months–they won’t remember the party.   My older daughter’s birthday will be a trip to the apple orchard, followed by cake and ice cream.   She’ll get presents.  She’ll get “her day”. She’ll remember that her birthday is special, without costing a lot of money.

We want them to have fun.  We want them all to feel special. We also want to manage their expectations and keep the parties from breaking the budget.  So far this year, it is working.

How do you run a birthday party on a budget?