Reaching For Financial Security

or payment #2 since refinance.

The regularly scheduled payment of $407.58 happened today. It had been 6 days since the last payment, so 6 days of interest came to $32.60, leaving $374.98 to go towards principal.

If I never pay another extra cent, the last payment will happen on 3/3/31. The total interest paid will be $13,735.76, a savings of $14,118.80 from the originally scheduled interest of $27,854.56.

I am including a snip of my spreadsheet here, since it is not showing up in "My Pages".

Here is a new spreadsheet I have been working on. As you can see, it is a bit more detailed than the one I have used in the past. It is basically showing a summary of every transaction in my checking account for the month of November 2019.

So it begins with an area labeled "Income" and colored yellow. "Income" is a bit too narrow, as it also includes money transferred in from other accounts, and the beginning balance of my checking account, labeled "Buffer".

The second area is labeled "Cash" and is colored green. This is the cash I withdraw on paydays.

The third area is labeled "Fixed Expenses", is colored purple, and includes the monthly bills I am currently paying.



The fourth area is labeled "Sinking Funds" and is pinkish-red. This shows the money being tucked away into sinking funds. The area extends to the right to show a summary of the transactions in the particular sinking fund and its balance.

The fifth area labeled "Other" and colored blue is for transactions not included elsewhere. The yellow line on the bottom is a grand total.



And then the last section labeled "Checking" and colored green is the amount I need to leave in checking at the end of the month. Everything left in checking above that amount can be thrown at my current goal, which at this time is debt.



I'm liking this spreadsheet. It is pulling all of my current, relevant info together in one place.

Today is payday and that means it is time for another principal payment. They never seem to be as large as I would like for them to be.

Today I calculated that I had $208.82 available to send off to principal. I logged on, scheduled the payment for today, and voila, I am somewhat less in debt.

The final payment moved up a month to 3/3/31.

I have now eliminated more than half of the originally scheduled interest. Mostly by refinancing, but still.

It snowed yesterday evening and more is expected. SB took our travel trailer and Bella and headed down to my mom's yesterday, to avoid pulling it in the snow. I will head that way too directly from work tonight. The snow should be gone before we go home, probably Sunday.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend with your loved ones, SA friends!

I applied for, and was assigned, 3 more secret shops this evening. One for next Tuesday (Jack in the Box), one the Tuesday after that (same JitB location), and one the Tuesday after that (a phone shop for tire stores). Still looking forward to being paid for the first one, at the credit union.

I did not calculate the interest exactly right, so did make an adjustment to my 5th wheel loan balance, in my favor. I was using a banker year (360 days) to calculate the interest, but Bank of the West uses a calendar year (365 days), which is A-OK with me.

It is looking likely we have another power outage coming up. Received word today that if it happens, our power will be going out at 2pm this Wednesday, will stay off Thursday, and turning it back on to commence Friday. This is subject to change.

Because of the Thanksgiving holiday coming up, this Thursday is a payroll processing day. That means I will be working in the afternoon, in a different county building, for time and a half.

Today is payday, and my paycheck is received via direct deposit. My checking account balance this morning after my cash withdrawal was $2,454.54. From this, I need to subtract my sinking funds transfer ($230) and my dentist bill ($393.40, charged to Citi double cash MC yesterday) and then leave 1k in checking. That means there is $831.14 available.

I logged on to my bank account and transferred $831.14 to my 5th wheel loan. I have calculated the interest due* and updated my spreadsheet and my sidebar. I will check in a few days to see if my calculation is correct or if I need to adjust.

*Bank of the West deducts accrued interest first from any payment, then applies the remainder to principal. This is not as advantageous as what I have previously experienced, that interest is paid only from the regular payment and any extra payment is applied 100% to principal.

My final payment date is now 4/3/31, 6 months ahead of schedule.

For me, this was the deciding factor in how big a priority paying off the 5th wheel loan needs to be.

If I were to retire NOW, I calculate that I could draw $1,456 per month from my nest egg. Here is how that budget would look:



Everything I need, but not much fun. Without the 5th wheel loan payment, I could increase those sinking fund contributions and have more discretionary dollars. In short, my financial situation would be greatly improved.

Plus, I intend to cancel my life insurance policy once the 5th wheel loan is paid in full, freeing up a few dollars there as well. No one depends on my income any longer. However, in the event of my death, I would want SB to be able to have the 5th wheel free and clear. My children are both self-supporting and will inherit my investment and bank accounts.

So, I am happy with this plan. It makes sense to me.

I have been mulling over how I want to prioritize paying down my 5th wheel loan. Do I not fund my Roth? Do I cut my sinking funds? Do I cut my 457 plan contribution?

I have decided the answers are yes, yes, and no.

I calculate that in 24 months or sooner, I can get the balance down to where I can pay in full from savings. This is what I am going to do.

I have cut both my travel sinking fund and car replacement sinking fund contributions to $0. I have trimmed both my car r&m and car ins/reg sinking fund contributions slightly, but they should still be adequate. This brings my bi-weekly transfer to sinking funds from $380 to $230.

I will not fund my Roth IRA for now. I will leave my 457 plan contribution where it is, 10% of gross.

(I will still take the Panama Canal cruise with my mother. She is looking forward to it and I am not going to take that away from her. She is turning 87 next month, so who knows how much longer she will be able to travel. Currently, there is almost 4k in my travel sinking fund which will more than cover it.)

24 months from now, the 5th wheel loan balance should be under $16,962.08, the current balance in emergency fund + car replacement fund. At that point, I will use as much of them as needed to pay the loan in full. (But not sooner, as I don't want to be without them PLUS still have a loan payment to make). At that point, I will turn my focus to re-building savings.

So last Sunday, a friend of mine from my old area came up for the day with her mom and her 23 year old son. This particular friend and I met when we were in the same 3rd grade class. That's been a few years back at this point! She is a country girl; grew up in the country, has horses, etc.

They came in the late morning and stayed until early evening. It was her first time up here to visit me. We had a very pleasant day.

Yesterday morning, she texted me that she and her husband (who has yet to visit here) talked about it and decided that they would like to purchase one of the houses in disrepair and 2 acres from SB. For now, they would come up on the weekends to work on the house. Eventually, they would move here. I said I would pass that on to SB and they would have to discuss it.

Apparently, they had decided they will not retire in the beautiful home and acreage they have now, but will sell to their son and move elsewhere. (They would never sell out of their family, she lives on property her great-grandparents purchased way back when. At this point there are multiple family members in homes on land which was once part of the original property purchase).

It turned out, SB is not opposed to the idea. He said they would have to talk about a lot of details first, to be sure everyone is on the same page.

I am trying to not get too excited about this idea, just in case it doesn't work out. But my goodness, this would be so great!

Last night I thought, hey, why not check the shopper job boards and see if there are any secret shops around here I can do? (At one time, I did a fair amount of secret shopping, but it had been years since I had last done a shop). So I looked, and I found one for a bank just a few blocks from my workplace. I did the shop right after work tonight, submitted my report when I got home, and voila, I am expecting $20.

Here is my budget for November, a 3 paycheck month. Looking forward to a productive month:

I have known for awhile that my daughter and son-in-law have been looking at different homes and considering both traditional and alternative homes. When my daughter was here a month ago, she shared that they were no longer looking in Colorado as prices have gotten so high, but were instead looking in southern Illinois.

Today I learned...they found a place and are transacting business tomorrow. It is a modest single wide mobile home on a small piece of land (half an acre), and they are paying cash for it. I am so excited for them! They will no longer be paying rent and so will be able to quickly save for whatever they choose to do next. You may remember, my daughter is currently attending college. She will be able to continue online, so this move will not disrupt her educational goals.

In other news, our power went out Wednesday afternoon, came back on Thursday evening, went out again on Saturday. It is crazy windy today; unsure at this point when power will be restored.

We went to my mom's yesterday and spent the day. I had cousins visiting from out of state. When we returned home last night, it was surreal driving on the highway through towns with no power. It was so very dark.

I have seen video footage of fires on the side of the road next to cars lined up to cross the Carquinez bridge in Vallejo, a bridge I have crossed myself many times.

Tomorrow is a payroll processing day, a task which is deemed essential. I am to report for work at 1pm to a county building (with a generator) which is not my regular workplace. Three others from my department have received the same instructions. My little piece of payroll processing takes 3-4 hours to complete. We will all be paid time and a half for our worked hours; everyone receives straight time for their missed work hours. I did not work last Thursday at all; this coming Tuesday is still an unknown.

Early this past Wednesday morning, a sheriff's deputy (in our county) was killed in the line of duty. He was only 37, had a wife and 3 children. I did not know him, but some of my coworkers did. It was a very emotional day.

Anyone here on a plant based diet? Frugal Texan is I believe, any others?

Looking for some information resources and will happily take your suggestions.

Thanks!

We were informed today that PG&E will be turning off our power this Wednesday at 2 pm. The plan is to turn it back on Thursday at noon. However, turning it back on is a process which takes 24-48 hours.

So it looks like I will have some more non-working paid hours this week.

I don't mind being paid for hanging out with SB and Bella at home, but it is a frustrating interruption to keeping up with my work.

There are 15 counties affected by this planned power outage.

Budget and spending are going well for the month. Nothing else to report.

or #1 since the refinance.

This month I managed to scrape an additional $224.01 to principal. This brings my remaining payments to 142, or 11 years and 10 months, with one of those being less than a full payment.

If amortization tables interest you, you may notice that I have Frankensteined the old and new loan amortization together. (Amortization table available for viewing under "My Pages"). It just made sense to me to do it that way.

I did receive a refund of $480.88 from my original lender. I am hanging on to $400 of it (in checking) as I have a dental appointment coming up and I expect to owe about that to the dentist. The remaining $80.88 is part of the $224.01. (I have a Health Care Reimbursement Account for medical expenses, but I have just had more of them than usual this year between some dental work and my first ever pair of prescription glasses. The money is nearly depleted for this year).

November is a 3 paycheck month so I expect to pay an additional $800ish next time. That's going to be FUN, I'm looking forward to it.