Our Money Went Where? September 2016 Update

What a month September was for us! It was our lowest monthly spend so far this year – with daycare reduction being a YUGE part of that (couldn’t resist…). Beyond some minor one-offs everything still seems to be on track with usual or even below last year’s benchmarks and the plan is still a go for Summer 2018 for at least me to quit anyway. I’ll discuss how that plan is evolving and more details of our last months’ spending. Enough of that jibber jabber, let’s get into the details!

First off, let’s address the interesting stuff – how is our projected FFLC budget and savings holding up with this new job change, and are we still on track for our Summer 2018 date?  Amazingly, we planned well for the loss of a paycheck until this month, and even compensated enough that we were able to keep investing $3k/month, yeah!! Now that Mrs. SSC is getting a paycheck again we can double that to $6k/month! Alllllright!! While that isn’t as amazing as our high savings target for last year, I’ll take it considering how much our quality of life has improved with this job change. Since we’re looking for more of a Lifestyle Change with a less hectic pace and more family focus, this has been a winning move all around! Yeah, more exclamation points!!

Barring a financial meltdown in November which crashes the market (I wonder what could do that) we are still projected to hit our 25x projected yearly spending need plus ~$200k to pay for a house. However, this assumes a 4% growth in the markets until then. Clearly, this could all change in another month or two or sooner depending on the market. If that’s the case, we’ll keep on keeping on and building our egg until things recover or we decide to move along with our plan anyway.

If things keep moving along as usual however, then summer 2018, I will most likely pull the plug and transition to Stay At Home Dad (SAHD). Our spending will decrease, but so will our income, and Mrs. SSC’s bring home as Prof. SSC will not be enough to cover everything.  So, we would be looking at a spending deficit of essentially our mortgage per month. We haven’t decided the best way to tackle that yet, as in, do we take our “forever home” money and use that to pay off our house and then just use that sale money to roll into the next house? Should we leave it invested and just use the investments to pay the mortgage or some other option we haven’t thought about yet? Feel free to give us your opinion on that.

Lower is always better here!
Lower is always better here!
September Spending Positive Notes

 

Daycare: Yes, our plan is coming to fruition with public school decreasing the cost of daycare. Plus, this isn’t a continued cost that just gets rolled into private school, so yes our plan of not living within 15 minutes of our offices is working perfectly. Lower mortgage, finally lower commute costs, and now lower education costs as well. Wins all around!

House upkeep: Still no word on the fence repair, so it is still at a low compared to last year. Nothing outside the usual maintenance things – insect killer for the yard – darn you sod webworms! More ant killer – so many ant piles…

Groceries, Utilities, Commuting (autos), Pets: Lower is better – no big surprises here.

September Spending Negative Notes

 

Cell, TV, Internet: While this should be about the same, we still keep getting hit with ATT even though we haven’t had service from them since June… I’m waiting another week when their “20 days” time line is supposed to take effect for our refunds back to June, but yes, we got charged again. Thanks for the great service ATT… WTF… I at least have a transcript of our conversation in my email box and as a screen capture to use as ammo that this should have been settled already. Ugh…

Travel: This is higher because of a $180 ticket to FinCon next year – yeah FinCon!! We also have a short weekend trip planned to the hill country to just get out of Houston next month. Otherwise, nothing out of sorts here.

Gym: That’s just our family plan and swim lessons although that will be offset by my company some, but it gets used often so we’re fine with that.

September Wrap up

 

That’s about it for our spending – like I said, no major surprises and I’m sure the December update post-election will be more exciting once we see what happens with the markets based on that outcome. Joy!!!

Let us know if you have any suggestions for how best to deal with the spending shortfall if I pull the plug in 2018 and we’re still in H-town with a mortgage. Is this buildig to be a perfect storm for a “One More Year” scenario? Will the markets be in the toilet and it won’t matter anyway? What are your thoughts, we’d love to hear them!