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Hoping for the Best, Preparing for the Worst: Planning Our Finances

My husband is not really a "financial planner". He's not much of the "be prepared" type. He likes to keep things stocked up for work projects or to use to build something from for the kids, but he's not one to think of worst-case scenarios and prepare for it. I didn't realize I was that way, until we had children. I guess that's mother-hen or mama bear coming out, because it came out with a vengeance!  We've been fortunate that we've never been in a position where we couldn't pay something since we've been married. But, much of that was because I was paranoid about not being able to pay something. I had a credit card bill being sent to the wrong address one time, on a card I had forgotten about, from a well-known department store, to get the discount. Well, that late fee made me realize I never wanted to feel that on a larger scale, ever. Again. It was a minor fee and was really not a big deal. I canceled the card after paying the fee
Recent posts

Money That! Why We Don't Carry a Mortgage

 As we are all quarantining during a twilight zone pandemic, having to remain inside due to smoke haze darkening our skies and lungs, teaching our own children at home during virtual school (or not for some areas) and quarreling about how is the best way to move forward during this unique time, most of us are wondering how our financials will stand up to the immediate and next few years of economic and social recovery. Twilight zone times indeed! We are so relieved we made the "bad" decision to pay-off our house a couple of years ago. The process began about 7 and a half years ago, when I became pregnant. We set our annual goals, reached for the sky, and paid it off in almost exactly 6 years. And, we now sit in our dream home, knowing we will not have to pay another mortgage or rent payment, ever. The security and peace of mind this brings is priceless. Times like these are exactly why we did it. Since the Great Recession, after the recovery, it seemed we all became accustome

Let's Money That! What This Blog is About

 We married in 2012. I believe our current financial status is partially a result of the timing of our engagement and marriage. The housing market had bottomed out in the Bay Area and the timing was such that as we bought, we rode the wave of appreciation for the last eight years. The same happened with the stock market. However, intentionality, goal-setting and monitoring our expenses played a crucial part in growing our wealth and using the bull markets to our advantage. This blog is to share our experiences and to give insight into strategies that have worked for us. We have not hit our absolute FI Number in liquid investable assets yet, for the standard of living we would like to have, but we are well on our way. This blog explores where we've been and will explore and analyze strategies to continue to the finish line.  The commencement of our intentionality is when the wealth really began to grow. As we witnessed this by tracking our expenses and net worth, we realized what is

Let's Money That! Setting Ourselves Up to Live the Dreamy Things!

 During Covid Lockdown/Armageddon, we moved into our dream home, to do dreamy things in the dreamy mountains, on dreamy lakes, in the dreamy woods and to dream the dreams! Granted, we were already planning on moving, but we moved it forward by two or three months to get out of our little 1950s shoebox tract home with a small lot in a fairly densely populated Peninsula town in the Bay area to a resort mountain town in North Lake Tahoe. We had been dreaming for a couple of years of moving to the Sierras and enjoying all the beautiful mountains have to offer. We love to camp, kayak and stand-up paddle, hike, backpack, ski, sit under the trees or next to a rushing river, go hunting for waterfalls, etc. We find it exhilarating, energizing and life-giving. Our minds slow down and live in the moment, taking in every smell, sound and breath of wind. Our bodies reward us after a hard paddle or tough climb up the trail. And all of the worries and angst of society, melt away with the snow rushing

Let's Money That! My Financial Education

  I grew up in a small town in Texas, my mother was a stay-at-home mom and my father began as a hired-hand for his uncle, progressing to leasing farmland to farm, then finally a seed salesman for farmers, later expanding that business to a farm equipment servicer.   I never knew this while we were little, but mom told me recently we qualified for free lunches at school in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. I never felt like we were that poor. I knew things were tight, but I don’t remembering feeling poor. There was always talk about “thrift”. We would go with mom and my grandmother to garage sales on Saturdays (they loved it!) and we found some good hand-me down toys that way. We didn’t need much, anyway. We had bikes, roller skates, rollerblades, a dog, some cats and kittens, so we were plenty entertained. I loved watching the baby kittens being born and mama cat cleaning them up. I loved watching them stumble around with their eyes closed for several days. We had a great childhood. We would

Let's Money That! How We Paid Off Our $670,000 Mortgage in 6 Years!

I moved to the Bay Area of California in the fall of 2009. I had been a nurse for about two years in Texas. Just as I was launching my new career, the financial world and real estate worlds would come crashing down. I remember reading headlines about the stock market crash, bankruptcies, Lehman Brothers going under, mortgage defaults and foreclosures and layoff after layoff. I left my first nursing job in Texas to become a travel nurse and explore the great big United States in order to scope out different areas and find a place to settle down (at least for a little while ; ). My first job was at at a university medical center in the Bay Area. I worked there for a few weeks, worked in Sacramento for a few weeks over the Thanksgiving holiday, then waited for another job at the university medical center to open up, because the Bay Area was a world of adventure, beauty, innovation, academia and so many different varieties of brilliance I had never encountered before being from the desert