I sent a third of the condo escrow to the line of credit, and this time it did decrease the amount I owe, by $60. That takes May debt payment to $484 down, $16 to go. Every little bit helps! Actually, I'm hoping to pay off all the non-mortgage debt in one fell swoop next month if/when the WV money comes through. But whatever I pay now saves us a bit of interest, plus I might have a bit of WV money left over if I pay some debt now. I figure any WV money left after taxes, charitable contribution and debt payoff, I'll split 50/50 between retirement and fun money.
Speaking of retirement, I figured out I had my 6/15 paychecks mislabeled as 6/16. What it means is I can do AS's first-quarter SEP contribution now instead of waiting until mid-June. But when I went to the new Vanguard account I just opened, it was called a traditional IRA and it had a $5500 limit. SEP retirement funds are supposed to be up to 25% of income. I figure I made a mistake when setting it up. I emailed Vanguard as AS so they'd contact her and hopefully convert it to an SEP. I'm not going to send her first-quarter payment to it until we get that figured out, even though it wouldn't be over the limit.
I'm a bit too keyed up to go to sleep just yet. I think I'm excited about my five-day weekend!
The kids are home Friday through Monday, and then us grownups took an extra day Tuesday to hang out together. We don't have any big plans, just some rough ideas; the playground and park if it's nice weather; going to the movies if there's a rainy day (which there will probably be a couple of).
We do have a plumber coming out tomorrow to look at this basement bathroom and see what's not up to code about it, and hopefully estimate how much it would cost to bring it up to code.
Also, NT and AA are going to the university to participate in a father-daughter study tomorrow.
Oh, and NT is at an all-day music festival Sunday. Nothing big for me to do, though. I just want to hang out with my family and relax.
Maybe I'll do a little shopping; I do need a couple pieces of clothing for work and I have some big client meetings coming up. And perhaps we can look at fridges and a few other smaller household needs.
Debt progress and SEP confusion
May 22nd, 2015 at 05:14 am
May 23rd, 2015 at 04:38 pm 1432399129
Have you decided you want/need in a fridge? The choices and price points in the stores can be overwhelming and pressure from sales staff adds stress. I didn't fully appreciate the benefits of an automatic ice maker until I visited someone with that feature.. I checked but realized how difficult/expensive hook up would be in this condo. We were restricted to size by measurements plus pantry door one one side and counter on the other. Can open one when other is open. Personally, I've mixed satisfaction with the large, pull out lower, freezer drawer. Whenever DH rummages around it's a toss. I can't find items easily. No amount of labelling helped. Just now I'm experimenting with plastic shoe box , small zip boxes , green lid for cheese brick + zipbag for shredded and even colored duct tape etc.,
Difficult to locate long, flat, thin Rubbermaid containers that fit the length of the bottom left drawer. No one makes freezer storage containers it seems.
May 25th, 2015 at 05:07 am 1432530473
At first I was taken aback by the price difference to get a bottom-freezer french-door fridge with a water dispenser -- especially considering top freezers are still the most energy-efficient overall. But then I started looking at cubic footage. The other features don't matter as much to me -- really not at all -- but we could use more space. We keep a lot of stuff in the fridge (and we use almost all of it, so it's not going to waste) -- and are always struggling to fit it all in. You can get top-freezer models with up to 24 cubic feet, but by then they're over a thousand bucks on sale, so if AS wants a bottom freezer and water dispenser, and NT would like French doors, and I would like the most square footage possible -- well, then it doesn't seem so extravagant to pay (on sale) $1700 vs. about $700 for a top freezer fridge with none of those qualities. Or if we got everything we wanted except the water dispenser, we could get a $1300 one on sale.
We may head to a store or two tomorrow and check out the Memorial Day and clearance specials on fridges. I'm still torn but now leaning toward just paying 2x as much but getting what everyone wants.