Goal: $489,745 by 2019

(As a reminder, this is just an incremental goal along the way to 8x income by retirement. This mini-goal aims to get us to a milestone by the time I turn 45 and AS turns 40.

The milestone (which changes whenever our salaries change) is to get me to 3x my current salary, which is now $66,625, so $199,875; NT to 3x his, which is now $62,100, so $186,300; and AS to 2x hers, which in 2016 was $51,785, so $103,570)

Current balance: $304,883

December 2016 balance: $297,419

Progress: $7,464

Another decent-sized bump this month, though as I mentioned in the previous entry, I take it with a huge grain of salt. However, AS's and NT's salaries increased, so the goal got more ambitious and we actually lost a bit of progress on it.

To reach the goal by our birthdays in 2019, that's 25 months, so we'd need to contribute (or have assets appreciate) $184,862 -- $7,394 per month -- to reach it. Probably not going to happen, but I'll keep doing the best I can!

I finally lost some weight this year--3 lbs. down at my Sunday weigh-in! Very happy. I wasn't perfect with eating but I exceeded my Stepbet goals, so I'm glad it worked out. I'm at 134, so not far from getting below 130 if I can keep it up.

I started the application for the refi last night! Interested to see where we appraise at; nothing would surprise me, whether we're below what we bought for or way above. All the indicators out there give very mixed signals, so I'm not holding my breath.

We tried three new recipes this past week! That takes us to 10 tried, 40 to go.
- Breakfast ramen bowl: AS put this on the list and made it for us. Basically a ramen soup with (veggie) bacon, seaweed, green onions and egg (hard-boiled for AS, scrambled for SL, and tofu scramble for the rest of us). It was deeeelightful.
- Honey sesame tofu: Another of AS's ideas, and I made it. We had it with broccoli and rice. While it didn't knock my socks off, it was really good and easy to make, so I'd do it again for sure.
- Black bean, spinach and quinoa bowl. NT's contribution. The flavors were really good, but I find quinoa doesn't have the satisfying chewiness of rice, so together it was all a bit soft. I grabbed some tortilla chips to eat with it, and that fixed the texture issue for me.

So one of the two guys I'd been working with for estimates got back to me saying he'd cover half the appraisal cost if the home didn't appraise at least 80% LTV.

Talking it over with my partners and neighbors, I realized there was a psychological hurdle about the prospect of blowing $475 on a step that might go nowhere. Bringing it down to $235 suddenly made it seem less foolish.

So I wrote back to him accepting the offer. Now we get to see what our home will actually appraise at! If it's worse than 80% LTV, we're out $235 but at least we didn't regret not finding out. If it's at 80 or better, then we might have to scrape up some funds to cover closing costs, which will be painful in the short term (especially since we have a number of renovations we're saving up for and fun things we want to spend money on) but will be worth it in the long term.

We tried another recipe last night: grilled cheese, sun-dried tomato and spinach sandwiches. Wow, it was so delicious! There was pesto in it too and the whole thing was fried in olive oil. It's a keeper for sure, and it was easy to kid-friendly it by just giving them plain grilled cheese. So that's 7 recipes tried, 43 to go.

I've been doing pretty well with my eating and exercising; I've only had a couple of night snacks and they were related to socializing. I haven't lost weight but at least I've maintained. Hoping if I'm really good this week I'll have some progress on the scales Sunday. So far I've skipped breakfasts and night snacks, done my AM weekday strength training, and kept up with my Stepbet goals.

I've begun setting aside 11% instead of 10% of AS's pay for her SEP retirement fund, so that goal has been reached. I'm waiting to see what NT's new paycheck is before I decide whether to up our retirement a bit more or wait to see if I get a raise this spring. Another thing we could possibly spend his raise on would be life insurance, which I've never gotten around to getting (for any of us).

My bank switchover is nearly complete. I want to see the direct deposits and autopays come through OK next week and then I'll rest easy. I had to mail in requests to change the bank info on the kids' Pax funds, and I'm waiting confirmation that AS has been added to the new checking account so I can switch her bank info in her Vanguard account. I finally closed the old account yesterday and deposited the remaining money in our new one. I'm hoping to get checks delivered today so I can pay daycare tuition and our bathroom contractor. I think I still need to go online and cancel my USBank line of credit. There's a lot involved in switching banks! Hopefully I'll stay happy with my new one and never have to change again.

We've started planning birthdays and travel for the year, although I haven't made any purchases yet. I know AS has a lot of money coming in any day now, but right now our shared spending is a bit in the hole (mainly due to AA's ER bill from when she had strep, and the late fees on that one credit card. Also we've been using Lyft kind of a lot lately.)

Once the money's in the bank, we can start putting money toward our planned birthday and travel stuff, which includes (all estimates, no exact amounts):
Cabin rental for April ($735) + rental car ($250?)
AA's party in March ($200 mani/pedis + $70 lunch?)
SL's party in March ($90 karaoke stand)
NT's road trip in Feb. ($65 car & $75 hotel?)
CJ's NYC trip in March ($300 plane + $400 food & expenses?)
Grownup bday celebrations in March ($100 each for food?)
Family trip to Va. this summer (TBD)
AS's solo trip (TBD)
NT trip to England for sister's wedding in November (TBD)

My tentative plan is to take AS's net pay (and any other windfalls) and save 1/3 for home renovations, 1/3 for travel, and 1/3 for other shared spending (including birthday-related expenses). Currently we've been saving half for home renovations and half for misc. shared spending. Hopefully the money rolls in fast enough to cover all the above things (which are nice-to-haves but not necessities)!

Yesterday and today we tried new recipes. Yesterday it was something called "Roasted & Toasted Things" from my favorite cookbook author. I'd always been a bit intrigued by the name but had never gotten around to trying it.

It was pretty good: oven roasted veggies (mushrooms, tomatoes, onions and I subbed in zucchini instead of eggplant), toasted almonds (recipe called for pine nuts but they're SO expensive), white beans and wild rice blend.

I wouldn't go out of my way to make it a bunch, but if I was in the mood for something tasty yet super healthy and nourishing, I'd make it again.

Tonight it was BBQ jackfruit and pickled onions from the Veggie Sri Racha Lover's Cookbook. Really good, if a bit spicy for the kids. We had it on buns with sliced avocado and wedge fries. I loved the pickled onions. NT says he prefers jackfruit simmered in sauce, vs. baked as this recipe called for.

So that's 6 recipes tried, 44 to go. No other progress to report; the bathroom is getting there slowly but surely, but it'll be a while before it's done.

Well, several things have conspired to make me think the refi thing is just not worth the sweat right now. So my progress on that is, I have my decision for now, unless something changes in our situation.

We got a quote on the insulation and it's quite a lot higher than the ballpark figure the energy audit guy threw out -- our share of the house alone would be over $8K -- so we're going to get a second quote. If we do go with this, that will pretty much rule out saving up much for the kitchen reno this year. But it would be nice to have insulation -- the comfort levels of the house vary wildly depending on where you're standing.

We tried another recipe last night: "Pizza bowl" from the cookbook "Isa Does It." OMG. It was nothing like a pizza, but it was aMAzing. OK, maybe a little too garlicky -- I enjoyed it going down but did not enjoy the strong aftertaste on my tongue for the rest of the night. Next time I'd cut a few garlic cloves and make sure I cook the sliced ones more thoroughly. But other than that it was amazing -- brown rice, vegan sausage, red onion, kale and a red pepper-cashew sauce, topped with olives, fresh thyme and chili flakes. Definitely a keeper with a small edit to the garlic. That's 4 new recipes tried, 46 to go!

Dang. My goal for many years (since I've given the credit card companies thousands of dollars in the past) has been to not give them another dime. Today I had to give them $60 because we accidentally charged a purchase to a credit card that I no longer track.

I've been asking NT to cancel several credit cards for at least a year now, maybe more. I used to remind him every month or so but I'd kind of given up. Anyway, one of them called him to say he was 2 months behind on a payment. I looked into it; it had been linked to Paypal and I must have accidentally chosen it to pay something.

Every once in a while I have a budget tracking discrepancy, so I imagine when this happened, I marked the purchase as going on our regular credit card. Then when the month's payment came I probably had a $36 discrepancy from what I owed and wasn't able to reconcile it, so just altered the budget. My math does fail me from time to time, so I probably thought nothing of a $36 discrepancy.

So we paid the stupid tax. Hopefully this will spur him to close those cards once and for all.

So the place across the street sold at $499K. That's good news because our place is comparable (slightly less updated but more square footage) and we owe $399K, which would give us 80% LTV.

Bad news because a refi is now back on the table, only with considerably less attractive rates. We're currently at 3.5% fixed. The best 30-year rate AimLoan is showing is us 3.75%, and that's with (at least) $9K in closing costs that we'd supposedly have to foot the bill for.

Back in August we could've gotten the same deal for 3.25% interest rate.

The ones we wouldn't have to fork over as much money for would be 4.0% to 4.25%. So we'd actually be going up quite a big from our current rate. That would only save us $154 per month over what we're paying now with mortgage interest. I guess it would pay for itself fairly quickly if it were a nearly free refi. I'm checking again with the AIM guy because I seem to remember when he got me a more "actual" quote, there were no options with zero points and zero closing costs, which the link he sent is currently sending me.

Assuming we could scrape up funding for that (we don't have a ton of cash on hand now that we've committed to the bathroom reno), that would save us about $250 per month. So I guess it would pay for itself in 3 years.

It's just that much more painful because we'd probably have to take out an unsecured loan of some sort to finance the refi. Which would mean it would take more than 3 years to really pay for itself.

I don't know. Interest rates are probably going to keep going up. If we wait longer, it might actually end up being beneficial to hang onto our current mortgage, $260 mortgage interest premium and all, vs. taking a higher interest rate.

I just don't know if it's worth it. I'm so bad at figuring these things out!

We tried a new recipe Sunday that AS found: Korean BBQ mock chicken with peapods and coconut rice. OMG. It was amazing. A little time-intensive (mainly making the mock chicken ahead of time) but really really delicious. I added it to our "favorite meals" list. That's 3 new recipes tried, 47 to go.

Today we had our financial meeting with our downstairs neighbors about the agreement for them to purchase their share of the house (they're calling it the "intentional community agreement"). It went pretty well. They agreed that we need to research the questions I had about tax implications and how to figure out their fair share should we refinance, pay off early, etc. And the need to put in clauses about what would happen if they decided to move and not buy their share, that we should seek aribtration in the case of an unresolvable dispute.

On my concerns about their figuring out their own financial stuff before we become entwined financially, it was a mixed bag, mostly good:
- NJ let me know he has settled up with MN on his back taxes, and plans to file taxes jointly this year with CC (they've been legally married for about 3 years now, so it's high time). He was a bit more vague about when he would have his federal taxes fixed, but acknowledged that it would have to happen before they were legal part-owners so there wouldn't be a lien. (If the agreement goes as planned, they wouldn't become legal owners until they've paid their full share of the home, so I want them to settle it sooner than that. I may bring this one up again to get a clearer sense of when he's planning to fix this problem.)
- He has already started looking into retirement savings, which he hasn't done even though his husband has always put money away.
- I mentioned my family's need to get life insurance. He said his husband has it, but he has a pre-existing condition that makes it harder to qualify. Still, he knows there is insurance out there for people with his condition, so he will start to look into it.
- He has a good deal of student loans and isn't sure they'll ever be paid off. I think as long as there was a clause or something about what would happen if he defaulted on the loans, this would be manageable.
- I need to look into tax implications of remaining a landlord for the foreseeable future (since the agreement would keep them as renters until they had paid their full share). He thinks I should be able to deduct the portion of the mortgage payment that covers their unit; I think it's interest and property taxes only that can be claimed. So I need to look into this.

Overall, they're very happy with the living arrangement and feel good about continuing to pursue this agreement. And so am I ... I want to protect myself financially but I feel good about the communal living part of things. There are minor annoyances from time to time, but overall I feel like we're really good at living under the same roof (albeit in different units) and making it work. Very responsive to each other's concerns, and able to voice said concerns, so I think this is a good arrangement long-term.

We got a statement for NT's UK pension #2 (which I'm going to start calling SW pension because I get them mixed up), and it has increased in value to 20,398 pounds ($25,497).

I also see that UK pension #3 (now to be called FL pension) went up slightly to 5,534 ($6,917).

And UK pension #1 (now AV pension) is at 17,967 ($22,459).

This year I'm going to have NT look into whether these can be rolled into a US retirement account, or at least rolled into a single UK account. I hate having all these weird lingering financial things in the UK. Now that we've started thinking about selling the UK flat, it's making me think of other things we could do to minimize the international business I have to take care of!

Last year was a kind of crazy travel year.

- I made 2 trips (January and April) to Va. to see my and AS's folks (once just with the kids, once with AS and the kids)

- NT, AS and I traveled to NY for my 20-year college reunion at the beginning of June

- The whole family traveled to UK (Exeter) at the end of June for 2 weeks (and NT, AS and I took an extra trip to Oxford & from there to Barcelona without the kids)

Fun, but it really added up! I'd say we spent $15K-$20K on travel alone last year.

So when NT asked me about trips at the end of the year -- even though he was only talking about a weekend at a cabin -- I kind of ran away from the idea. I wanted this year to be focused on home improvement.

But now that the sticker shock of last year is wearing off, I've quickly warmed to the idea of some travel this year -- albeit nowhere near what we did last year in terms of cost!

So vague plans include:

- A cabin trip somewhere in MN or WI -- maybe 5 days or so?

- A family trip to Va. with maybe some day trips for NT (and maybe AS and the kids) to other attractions (I'll be planning to spend most of my time in my parents' living room with my mostly immobile mom, but I know that'd drive NT nuts)

- A solo trip for each of the adults?!? This came up kind of weirdly; NT had proposed the idea of an overnight trip to Chicago with some of his friends to see a show, which AS and I agreed to, with me half-joking that I assumed if we let him do that, I'd be entitled to a trip to see my favorite band on tour at some point.

He's now doubting whether he'll do it -- but in the meantime, my favorite band announced they're playing in NYC in late March. I was thinking more like Wisconsin when I said I'd be entitled to a trip in return, but AS suggested I could have my bday gift money put toward an NYC trip, and then it wouldn't cost us as much from shared spending. So I'm kind of thinking about it.

NT was shocked when he learned that we'd assumed his trip would come out of shared spending (and thus why we thought we'd be entitled to trips ourselves). I guess I assumed he'd never be able to afford the trip on shared spending so it was implied in his request. He was more like "What would make me ever assume that it wouldn't have to come out of my own money?" Ha! I guess I am that much of a ballbuster when it comes to frivolous spending. I should be glad he didn't assume that.

What I didn't know at the time he asked was that round trip bus to Chicago is only $40 per person and he'd been planning to go in on a hotel room with his friends. So the trip he'd been planning actually would be super-cheap and probably doable on his spending allowance.

But now the genie's out of the bottle and we're all kind of dreaming of our own solo trips, so we may go ahead and go through with it. We'll see. Dunno -- I've never wanted a trip without them before, but I'm just that obsessed with this band! Plus I have lots of friends in NYC I'd love to see -- and I could probably crash with someone and not have to pay for a hotel.

- Selling lower unit of duplex:
AS and I have a lunch date Monday with our downstairs neighbors where I can hopefully hear their thoughts about my concerns.

- Continue home renovations:
The upstairs bathroom has been completely torn out, down to the wood! AS and I will go pick out sink, tub etc. on Monday.

- Walking and eating habits:
I've been good with my eating habits. I haven't done either of my "stretch" goals this week and already used up my one free day, so I need to hit 7712 steps once and 10,012 twice over today, Saturday and Sunday. Temps are supposed to go up quite a bit tomorrow, so I'm thinking I'll do some walking outside and if not, get down to the treadmill so I don't lose the Stepbet.

- Try new recipes:
AS picked a new recipe this week which I cooked: peanut noodles with vegetarian chicken, cucumber and green onion. It was really yummy! The kids didn't try it because NT got them home late from daycare so I just heated up easy stuff for them while I cooked. I don't think they'd like it, but it was good enough that we might make it again anyway! So that's 2 new recipes tried, 48 to go. We've got two new recipes on the meal plan for next week, one that I picked and one AS chose (but I'll be cooking them both).

- Big picture goal: look into selling the UK flat:
The comparable place that got taken off the market last month is listed again at the same price as before. We'll watch it and whether or not it sells (and for how much) will have a big impact on our decision.

- Selling lower unit of duplex:
I still haven't heard from my downstairs neighbors regarding my email about my concerns about his finances that need to be settled before we can form a co-ownership agreement for the duplex. I'm going to propose we meet up in person about it next Monday, since I have MLK Day off.

- Continue home renovations:
We heard from the contractor that they'll start tearing out the upstairs bathroom today. Just in time, because an unfortunate smell, like stagnant water or sewage, has started becoming noticeable just this week. We think it's coming from the shower drain. Hopefully nothing too serious!

- Walking and eating habits:
I was nearly perfect about walking (hit my Stepbet goals for the week!), skipping breakfast and avoiding night snacks. Unfortunately I didn't lose any weight, but I'm going to keep it up this week and hopefully the scale will be my friend next Sunday!

- Self-publish two novels:
I offered AS $50 apiece (out of my own spending money) to review my two novels and give me her high-level editorial opinion. Hopefully a financial incentive will give these a better chance of happening!

- Try new recipes:
I tried out a new recipe last night, Tofu Swiss Steaks from the cookbook "Friendly Foods." I thought it was really good, and there was a lot of leftover tomato-veggie sauce that the tofu baked in, so I cooked up some pasta and mixed the sauce in to make two days of lunches. Verdict: The grownups liked the new recipe but the kids didn't, so I probably won't make it again for a while. Anyway, 1 new recipe down and 49 to go!

Made small progress of sorts on three of my goals:

- Attempt refi on US duplex if it appears home values are strong enough to give us 80% LTV
Here's where I hit a setback. My realtor who sold our condo called to wish me happy new year, and she asked about our refi efforts. I told her about the pending place across the street listed at $515K, and she did a little sleuthing. Found out it's closing on Jan. 16, and the selling agent hinted that it's going for quite a bit less than listing price. Sigh. We'll have to see how much less, but it seems to put a damper on refinancing.

- Continue home renovations:
Upstairs bathroom (complete redo)
The contractor let me know that he plans to start our bathroom on Monday! I'm very excited to get this going.

- Re-establish nearly daily walking and no breakfast/snacks habits; get weight below 130
I've been good about no breakfast or night snacks, and the Stepbet has kept me honest; I made the active goal of 7700 steps yesterday by dancing with my kids, and today by going on our treadmill after work. It's so cold and dreary out, I have to admit I wouldn't be doing any of that activity without the bet hanging over me!

Yay! My U.S. mortgage payment hadn't posted earlier today, but I just checked again and it had gone through.

The reason I was really anxious to see this one is it brought our duplex mortgage principal under $400K. This may be temporary, if we need to roll some closing costs into the loan when/if we refinance, but it's nice to see anyway. That loan is at $399,535.

US: $687 to principal
UK1: $181
UK2: $37
UK3: $40

Total debt paid down: $945

Had a lazy and off-kilter day today (probably just sad about going back to work tomorrow) but made some progress on 2017 goals:

- Attempt refi on US duplex if it appears home values are strong enough to give us 80% LTV
I checked on a home across the street from us that's sort of comparable (smaller but slightly better condition duplex) that's listed for $515K...status has been pending for about a week. When it sells I feel like I'll know whether a refi is possible in the near future.

- Explore possibility of selling lower unit of duplex to friends.
I posted these goals to a FB group and my friend thought I was talking about selling it to someone else...it gave him a fright and he said it was the kick in the pants he needed to send me an outline of the agreement he's been drafting. In response I emailed him all my concerns (including the ones about his back taxes and no renters' insurance). We had dinner together tonight and he briefly acknowledged that I'd responded to his outline but didn't say anything about the actual contents of the email. Hoping he actually responds and doesn't just ignore the issues I raised...that would unfortunately give me further pause about selling part of the duplex to him and his partner. We shall see...

- Continue home renovations:
Upstairs bathroom (complete redo)
Insulation for whole house
Save up as much as we can for kitchen (complete redo)
I did some brainstorming with a friend and later with NT and AS today about ideas for the kitchen reno. Although it's far in the future, it's going to be complex, so it's good to start talking about it now. We also settled on a color scheme for the upstairs bathroom (white tiles & walls with green accessories & natural wood accents).

- Re-establish nearly daily walking and no breakfast/snacks habits; get weight below 130
On Sunday I did 60 minutes on the treadmill and today I accumulated over 11,000 steps, reaching one of the stretch goals on the first real day of my Stepbet challenge. I was up 4 lbs. (from two weeks of bad eating and no exercise) at yesterday's weigh-in, up to 137, but feeling good about re-establishing good habits and getting my weight down again.

- Self-publish two novels (already written, need editing) and write at least one more
I asked AS if she'd be able to give my first novel I want to publish a quick run-through and give me some guidance, and she said she'd be able to tackle it in February. So I'll kind of set this goal aside until then; I do want someone to look at it (but not ready to show it to anyone but AS yet! although I thank everyone who offered).

I didn't make activism a formal goal but it is one of my focuses this year (and at least for the next four years); after the very ambitious protest at the Vikings game I've decided to leave my bank (which invests in the Dakota Access Pipeline) and join a credit union. I took the first steps today and hope to make more progress tomorrow.

This wasn't one of my formal goals either, but a couple of conversations recently have made me realize I need to start shopping for life insurance for me and my partners soon. I'm thinking I'll wait until Jan. 15 and see how much NT's raise is; that will help me decide what we can afford.

I had some fun last night and this morning coming up with various resolutions and goals for this year! I tried for a mix of financial, practical and creative, and I'll try to post about my progress as I go and maybe a monthly recap.

2017 Goals:

Financial:

- Attempt refi on US duplex if it appears home values are strong enough to give us 80% LTV

- Increase 401(k)/SEP contributions up to 10% for NT, 10.5% for me and 11% for AS.
(Right now NT is at 8% with match, I'm at 9.5% with match, and AS is at 10%)

- Get assets above a million, debt below $450K, net worth to $600K, retirement above $350K

- Explore possibility of selling lower unit of duplex to friends.

Other goals:

- Continue home renovations:
Upstairs bathroom (complete redo)
Insulation for whole house
Save up as much as we can for kitchen (complete redo)

- Re-establish nearly daily walking and no breakfast/snacks habits; get weight below 130

- Self-publish two novels (already written, need editing) and write at least one more

- Try about one new recipe per week (at least 50)

- Declutter/reduce stuff, beginning with boxes of paper

- Take a more active role in garden/yard maintenance

Big picture goals:

$490,175 in retirement assets by 2019
Balance as of 12/30/16: $297,419
(NT $62,100 salary X 3 = $186,300
CJ $66,625 salary X 3 = $199,875
AS $52,000 projected income X 2 = $104,000)
Ultimate goal: 8x annual income by retirement

Explore selling UK flat and buying a rental property in Minneapolis

Completely debt-free by age 65 (2039)

Let's see what progress we made this year ...

Assets end of 2015: $986,118
Current worth of assets: $992,419

Debt end of 2015: $482,768
Current debt: $460,445

Net worth end of 2015: $503,350
Current net worth: $531,974

Emergency fund end of 2015: $0
Current EF balance: $3,312

Not bad, especially considering we had to downgrade the worth of our assets due to Brexit gutting the pound's value.

2016 goals and results
- Fully fund a trip to my 20th college reunion in New York for me, NT and AS. DONE!

- Fully fund a 2-week trip to England late June-early July for all five of us. DONE!

- Fully fund a side trip to Barcelona for me, NT and AS during the England trip. DONE!

- To continue home renovations. NOPE. We did renovate the basement bathroom because we were required to by the County. That and other expenses made it impossible to do any of our desired renos.

- To max out our 2016 Roth IRAs. DONE!

- To get my and NT's 401(k) contributions up to 10%. Not quite: Mine is up to 9.5% including match, and NT's is now at 8% including match. So we did up them both a bit but not quite to 10%.

- To continue exploring the possibilities of selling part ownership of the duplex to my downstairs neighbors, and of converting our garage into an accessory dwelling unit. Not quite. I concluded the ADU wasn't financially or practically feasible, at least not for the foreseeable future. And my neighbor promised several times (but did not deliver) the first draft of the sale document. Anyway, I'm not going to agree to anything until he sorts out his back taxes, renters insurance and other financial issues, and we have not had that conversation yet.

Non-financial goals, Make every month a "do something" month in 2016. In other words, to come up with a creative or outside-the-box goal for each month of the year. SORT OF. Some months were more successful than others, but I did do something extra about 6 of the 12 months.

Other notable occurrences in 2016:
- NT's collarbone surgery (about $3500)
- AS's tooth replacement (first half done, about $1,500)
- Basement bathroom renovation (our share about $2,000)
- Tax bill (about $10,000 more than we expected)
- NT became a U.S. citizen!
- Had TWO trips away from the kids: 3 days in New York and 5 days in Barcelona & Oxford
- Conversely, hosted their first sleepover, with 2 6-year-old guests. Intense!
- NT got 2 raises (1 in June and 1 this month, effective Jan. 1) and a big bonus (net $4,500)
- NT started a hat business that has possibly broken even by now (I don't track his bookkeeping)
- AS got a few $100-an-hour clients; hopefully portending good things for her 2017 earnings
- I completed my 4th novel during NaNoWriMo
- Saved up enough money to do our next renovation (upstairs bathroom), hopefully in January, as well as getting insulation for the house
- Kid milestones: AA graduated from kindergarten, lost three baby teeth and learned how to tie her shoes. SL learned how to read (at age 4!) and write a bit, and has a loose tooth.

Goal: $479,875 by 2019

(As a reminder, this is just an incremental goal along the way to 8x income by retirement. This mini-goal aims to get us to a milestone by the time I turn 45 and AS turns 40.

The milestone is to get me to 3x my current salary, which is now $66,625, so $199,875; NT to 3x his, which is now $60,000, so $180,000; and AS to 2x hers, which this year is projected to be $50,000, so $100,000)

Current balance: $297,419

September 2016 balance: $289,384

Progress: $8,035

Another big bump this month, though as I mentioned in the previous entry, I take it with a huge grain of salt.

To reach the goal by our birthdays in 2019, that's 26 months, so we'd need to contribute (or have assets appreciate) $182,456 -- $7,017 per month -- to reach it. Oh, and when NT's raise kicks in, the goal will get more ambitious so we'll need more per month to reach it. Oh, and I'll raise AS's salary on the next calculation since she made over $51K this year. Yeah, that's probably not going to happen, but I'll keep doing the best I can!

Hello SA friends!

Just checking in to wish you all happy holidays. I've had a pretty good one so far; I got a 24-hour bug Tuesday but it had cleared up by Wednesday, and so far everyone is pretty healthy! First time since like 2012, I think.

I technically had Thursday and Friday off work; I went into work for a bit on Thursday and did some work from home Friday. So work didn't stop, but it did slow a little. I technically have Monday through Thursday of next week off, but I expect to work from home at least a little bit every day. Several projects had inconvenient deadlines and it's stuff that's hard to explain/hand off to a backup person, so I'm going to try and handle it myself.

That's OK. Today I did no work except read a couple documents and respond to a couple emails, and tomorrow I won't even look at my work email. It's a good year to look like a hero because some senior people are semi-retiring at my company, so as people move up the rungs there might be room for me to move too. Or at least a nice merit raise, hopefully!

Friday night I took the kids to the winter festival that's become our usual tradition, but about 20 minutes after we got there, SL gave us a scare by wandering away from my friend who had taken her over to see a display. Another 20 minutes or so went by before she was found talking to a policeman who'd been called over by some concerned fairgoers. So we had to take the kids straight home; A) I wasn't in the mood for fun and B) we had to make it very clear how bad and dangerous that was. Anyway, no harm done except for a spoiled tradition, but we have lots of other traditions during the season, so no big deal.

Today was productive but fun; I ran some last-minute errands, did a lot of cooking, helped AA clean and declutter her room. We got both girls to put a ton of stuff toward Goodwill to make way for the mountain of toys about to descend on their rooms (they have 5 sets of grandparents plus us and some aunts and friends who also like to give them gifts, so it's kind of unavoidable).

We had Xmas Eve dinner downstairs with the neighbors (we all contributed dishes) and they'll have dinner upstairs with us tomorrow. The Xmas Eve food changes every year, but this year it was pasta and related Italian dishes, and that was a big hit with everyone, so we may keep that theme and just switch out the pasta dishes for variety. I made slow-cooked green beans in garlic and tomato and there were four different pastas, plus three desserts.

Tomorrow is more "traditional"; vegetarian tofu turkey two ways, potatoes two ways, parsnips, stuffing, sweet potatoes, and a few more veg. Oh, and AS is going to try her hand at a savory mushroom bread pudding.

We've got the Santa stuff set out, so now I'm just cooking for brunch. Usually we do a breakfast pasta casserole, but I knew we wouldn't want that after pasta dinner the night before, so I'm making refried beans for breakfast burritos. Then all I need to do tomorrow is chop veggies and cook hashbrowns and we can make ourselves burritos pretty easily.

We've been pretty frivolous with the money this year; we kept gifts within budget but spent extra on lots of other things, including snacks and donating and gifts for others and taking Lyft whenever we feel like it (vs. only when it's the only good alternative). Luckily AS had some of the freelance money come in so we've got a good surplus in shared spending.

So pretty good overall. Hope everyone is enjoying their holidays too! (Or at least hanging in there -- thinking of you, Thriftorama!)

Catch you on the flip side!

It was a big'un this year: $7000, of which we netted $4530 after taxes and 401(k)!

We came to an easy agreement on how to use it:
- $450 tip for our daycare providers
- $550 to make up our shared spending money deficit (AS's checks are still slow to come in)
- $200 to get gift cards from our fave pizza place (they have an offer where you get $125 worth for $100, so we'll end up with $250 of gift cards)
- $150 each for fun money ($450 total)
- $800 to partly pay for the CSA shares we prepaid
- $80 for some needed winter gear for AS
- $2000 toward a bathroom renovation

In addition to the $2K toward US renovation savings, NT's rental income hit the UK checking account and I put 400 pounds ($500) into our emergency fund (we're 1/3 of our way to the $10K EF goal!). So now our savings stand at:

US (renovation fund): $8,950
UK (emergency fund): $3,312.50

Total savings: $12,262.50

AS was going thru some paperwork and found two statements from this past summer for NT's pensions. So this is a note for when I update our net worth at the end of the month.

Pension #1 (Aviva): was 17,105 pounds ($21,381)
Is now 17,967
Pension #3 (FriendsLife): was 5,523 pounds ($6,904)
Is now 5,534

NT's company is doing phenomenally well lately. Although we haven't heard confirmation of a year-end bonus, they've gotten big ones on just regular years, so we're hoping for a nice sized one to be announced soon.

But they DID let everyone know they're getting a 3.5% raise in 2017! I'll be upping NT's 401(k) another percent when that happens, so we'll only see 2.5%. I'm conservatively estimating another $30 per paycheck after taxes, or $60 per month.

Also, our mortgage randomly went down $40 this past payment! It looks like the escrow shortage amount was less. Assuming that stays the same until the escrow is caught up, that's another $40 per month. So $100 per month in the 2017 budget just from two random occurrences. Pretty sweet! It doesn't make up for our healthcare increases, but since I'd already factored those in, it feels like a win.

AS is still cranking away at her freelance work; should be a pretty big month for receiving checks. If not, then January will be big. We've now got nearly $7K saved up for the bathroom renovation. We're thinking it'll be $12K-$13K total. So we're getting there. I think 2017 is going to be the year her business really takes off; she's now got a hundred-dollar-an-hour client who sounds like they have a lot of work. She can probably shed some more of her lower-paying clients and less pleasant work.

Let's see; I did finish NaNoWriMo; did I say that already? Despite getting really behind the first part of the month, I finished earlier than I ever have before.

I haven't even looked at Xmas shopping yet. Right after NaNoWriMo I dove into an editing project helping AS out for her class, then was really behind on my regular job so have been playing catchup ever since. Plus we've all been taking turns getting sick for the past month or two. AA was the latest, staying home with strep yesterday.

In between all of that I went to NT's work holiday party, my college alumni holiday party, and our 10-year anniversary dinner. All were a blast! I got such thoughtful anniversary gifts from NT and AS. I didn't set us a budget for gifts for one another, but we each stayed within $60 to $200, so it was really reasonable but felt extravagant because there was no dollar limit.

Now those things are back in balance, we will probably get a lot of Xmas stuff done this week. And walking! I want to get back into nightly walks. Too bad I missed the mild November and early December weather; now it's probably too cold to walk and I'll have to do it on the treadmill in the basement.

Hoping things will be settling down now so I can come back here and participate more regularly!

All our mortgage payments hit:
US: $685 to principal
UK1: $181
UK2: $38
UK3: $40

All told, that's $944 to principal. Total debt is now $460,445

Goal: $479,875 by 2019

(As a reminder, this is just an incremental goal along the way to 8x income by retirement. This mini-goal aims to get us to a milestone by the time I turn 45 and AS turns 40.

The milestone is to get me to 3x my current salary, which is now $66,625, so $199,875; NT to 3x his, which is now $60,000, so $180,000; and AS to 2x hers, which this year is projected to be $50,000, so $100,000)

Current balance: $289,384

September 2016 balance: $280,625

Progress: $8,759

To reach the goal by our birthdays in 2019, that's 27 months, so we'd need to contribute (or have assets appreciate) $190,491 -- $7,055 per month -- to reach it. Yeah, that's probably not going to happen, but I'll keep doing the best I can!

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday. I am very thankful for this community's support, wisdom, criticism and sympathy. I know I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't found a resource and group of people like this.

I promise I'll be participating more in the blogs come December; November has been a perfect storm of stuff and I've barely been keeping up with my budget, let alone blogging about it.

The good news is I think I'll be able to finish my NaNoWriMo; I've been feverishly pounding away at it the past week or so and am almost caught up to where I should be. And I'm starting to come out of my funk and be more creative and productive at work, though I'm still not at my best.

The bad news is that me and AA keep getting hit by illnesses this month. At least the rest of the family has been relatively OK.

Money stuff is up and down; AS is booking a lot of work but we haven't been getting a ton of checks. But we're hanging in there.

I have a cough and the medicine gave me a weird night of sleep, so this is going to be a mellow Thanksgiving for me. Luckily I'm cooking all familiar foods so it'll be an easy year.

It's been a crazy crazy month. Starting with being sick, then a visit from family, then THE EVENT that will reshape our entire world, then NaNoWriMo, a flurry of stuff to do at work, AS being busier than she's ever been, social justice events going on in my city around police issues, plumbing/water issues, AA getting really sick (possibly the flu--kicking myself for not getting her the flu shot yet).

What's fallen by the wayside: my evening walks, my appetite, sleep, my ability to focus, peace of mind, blogging, keeping my inboxes clear, quality time with spouses & kids, housekeeping.

Half and half: NaNoWriMo. I've written every day except Nov. 8, but I'm only about a third of the way to my goal because I've either had work to do, have dozed off over my computer, or have wanted to just turn my brain off and watch The Walking Dead.

What I've kept up with: my 5-minute daily morning strength training, the basics of budget tracking, home-cooked meals, the minimum amount of work and housekeeping required to not live in filth and not get fired.

We were getting pretty far in the red on shared spending because of some expected expenses and AS just hadn't gotten many paychecks in October or the first half of November. She finally got nearly $3K in the mail yesterday and a third of it went to our shared spending deficit so we're less than $100 in the hole, although we have a long-planned date night tonight that will set us back some. But she's got lots of work coming in so we know the deficit will eventually be made up.

I also put about a third of the money into savings for our eventual renovation plans. I was also able to transfer some flat-rental money from UK checking to UK savings for our emergency fund. So we now have $6,250 in the U.S. account for renovations and $2,812.50 in the UK account as an EF.

We got one estimate for the bathroom reno and it came a little over $12K (would be more because we'd purchase the new vanity and toilet ourselves). Still waiting for our regular contractor to come do an estimate. The first one would be a fast job using that single-sheet shower stuff, which won't look very high-end but will be much lower maintenance. And they could do it in a matter of days. Our regular contractor will give us an estimate for traditional tiling, which will take longer and be higher maintenance but will look so much better. It's our upstairs bathroom that only we use, so I'm not as set on it looking high-end. So cost and quick turnaround will definitely be considerations, but until we get the estimate I can't say which way we'll go.

Tonight is a daycare sleepover. Even before we knew how busy and stressed we'd be, we planned a "parents' night in" instead of the usual "parents' night out." NT is going to make us a special cocktail and we'll order food delivery. Really looking forward to unwinding. I need to do a bit of NaNoWriMo on my lunch break today because I don't want to think about it tonight.

So much more has happened, but I've had a couple good nights of sleep and AA isn't sick anymore, so things are starting to turn around I think. Hope to get back on my routine soon though it probably won't really happen until December, when NaNoWriMo is over.

Last thing I want to say is though I'm very distressed by the state of the world, I love and respect all of you and thank you for keeping the discourse relatively civil at a very highly charged and divisive time. (The few trolls I saw on these blogs seemed very out of place!) I intend to do all I can to protect the environment and equal rights for all. I know there are so many good and caring people in America so I won't go it alone. It somewhat heartens me that even some who voted for the T-word don't support the insults and slurs he used. Hopefully they will keep the pressure on him to abandon that behavior and rhetoric and hopefully step up to represent our country in a way that doesn't humiliate us and put us and the rest of the world in greater danger.

I forgot one tidbit of news in my last update. Kind of a funny story.

I went trick-or-treating with the kids Monday evening. When I came home, at some point I realized I couldn't find my work phone, which had been in my jacket pocket.

I remembered checking the time on it during our jaunt, so I retraced my steps to the best of my ability. It was getting dark and tons of people had walked the same streets before me, so I was convinced either I'd walk right past it or that someone had already grabbed it.

I wasn't too upset about the phone itself since I wouldn't have to pay to replace it; I was pretty sure my work would just issue another one, and even if they didn't I still have my personal phone. Obviously I wasn't looking forward to telling work I lost an expensive piece of company property, but I didn't think that would be a huge deal. I was more sad because I use the phone to take pictures a lot, and I don't have them saved anywhere else except on Facebook.

I didn't find it and headed home, trying not to let the bummer of it spoil the rest of Halloween. AS told me about the "find my iPhone" apps and features, but I was pretty sure my phone was about to go dead and wasn't sure it would be detected. Plus the tool I found required an iCloud login, which I wasn't even sure I'd ever signed up for.

But I fumbled through the "lost username" and "lost password" things and sure enough, I did have a login. I searched for my phone, and a map appeared that showed it was somewhere on a corner just a block away!

I went back out with NT, and after scouring the small part of the street (which was dark and covered in leaves), he finally saw it poking out from under a bin of drinks someone had left out on their steps for trick-or-treaters. Either it had fallen and slid under there, or someone had seen it and decided to tuck it into an unobtrusive place so no one would find it but the owner looking for it. I felt like I won the lottery!

When I got it home, I saw that the screen had several spiderweb cracks from its ordeal. Now ordinarily that would have REALLY bummed me out, but compared with the alternative -- not ever finding the phone again -- it felt like nothing. The phone still works perfectly well.

Now I actually kind of smile when I check my phone and notice the cracks again, because it reminds me of that feeling of relief and elation when I finally found it! And it makes me chuckle that something that could have been upsetting didn't bother me at all because of the near-miss I had beforehand.

PS: AA didn't win her primary election for first-grade class president, but she seemed totally fine. Turns out she didn't even vote for herself! One of her friends is in the final election next week, so she's happy about that.

The daycare lady took her to get a donut after school to celebrate her effort. I'm sure that lessened any sting she felt too.

Feels like a long time since I posted ... let's see if I can remember some of the stuff that's happened.

Our CSA farm invited members to a talk; turns out they've had a disastrous year due mainly to the overly rainy summer we had. Lost lots of crops to rot and disease and therefore made far less money than expected. They asked members to help out in various ways, and one of them was to purchase three years of shares now. That one made the most sense because we have no intention of quitting our farm, so we did it.

I already had the money saved up for the 2017 share but not 2018 or 2019. So for now we're floating that money. We typically have $2K-$10K of wiggle room in the checking account at any given time, so I don't think it'll be a problem floating $1575 until such time as we can make up for it in the budget. (Probably will pay off before the money comes up in our 2017 and 2018 budgets, but if not, I think we could easily float it that long.)

I got a voicemail from a farm staffer thanking me for the advance subscription and saying we were the only people at that particular event who signed up. They sent out a follow-up email and she did say that others are starting to sign up too. She also said if they don't manage to keep afloat for next season, they will refund our money.

We love our farmer and his devotion to the land, so hopefully other members will step up. They need $150K to make the changes they think will protect the farm from climate-change effects in the future.

***

Halloween was a bit of a budget buster, with costumes, candy, pumpkins, and Lyft rides to and from a party. So worth it though! October was a very low-income month for AS; she pulled in $1865 and only a third of that goes to shared spending. So I'm actually pretty happy with the fact that our shared spending is only $140 in the red right now.

My sister is coming for a visit this weekend, and this time she's bringing her foodie husband, so we expect to eat out at least 4 meals. I'm sure they'll pick up the tab on a couple of them, but we'll still go farther in the hole unless AS receives some checks soon. It'll all work itself out!

We have one contractor coming out to give a quote on the upstairs bathroom next Friday and a text message in to our regular contractor, so hopefully we can get him in soon. Our preference would be to work with him because he's done such an amazing job on all jobs so far, but we'll take cost and other things into consideration when making the decision. We have $5350 saved and know we'll likely need a lot more than that, but we just need to find out how MUCH more so we can have a goal to shoot for.

We're still waffling about whether to appraise for a refinance of the US duplex. I've got my eye on a similar listing -- a duplex right across the street from us with fewer bedrooms/square feet that's listed for $515K. It just went on the market, so who knows what it will actually go for, but if it does go for over $500K, the refi just might be doable.

I've also found a very comparable flat to NT's UK property that's listed at 215,000 pounds (about $270K). We currently value his flat at 180K pounds, so that's very interesting if it actually sells for that amount. It's been on the market for 4 months and they've dropped the price twice, so we'll see if it ever sells and where the sale price lands.

I started NaNoWriMo last night! I did 1,580 words, which is less than I like to do per day (I shoot for 2,000 per day so I can have a few free days in the month and/or finish early), but I spent most of the day working on my outline, so I was kind of burnt out by the time I was ready to start writing it. I'm not totally happy with the plot I came up with but think I'll find it entertaining enough to keep going through the month. It's mostly a straight-up action novel and I didn't come up with many twists and turns, so I don't think the end result will be very commercial. I'll just look at this year's NaNo as a chance to practice my fiction writing skills. I'll try to write the heck out of my paper-thin plot!

What else? Oh, lots of kid updates! AA has finally graduated from preschool-level swim class and is SO close to being able to swim on her own. She's running for 1st-grade class president and the "primary" is today, so wish her luck! She wrote and gave a speech to her class; it was 3 sentences long. 4-year-old SL has suddenly learned to read! She has trouble sounding out words she doesn't know, but she knows a ton of words on sight, so she can get quite far in reading a new book. She's about where AA was in early-mid kindergarten, so she's about a year ahead of her. But AA was more of a sounder-outer so could figure out more unknown words. They just learn and process information very differently. Both smart as whips though! AA is going to take the gifted tests soon at school, so we'll see if she qualifies for whatever gifted program is available. SL I'm pretty sure will go in the gifted program right away.

Other family news: Today is the 10-year anniversary of NT arriving in the United States!

All of our mortgage payments hit:

US: $683 to principal
UK1: $180
UK2: $38
UK3: $40

All told, that's $941 toward debt this month. We were getting close to having $1000 be the minimum debt paid each month, but that's not going to happen for a long time now. (The amount paid is smaller now because of the exchange rate calculation shift on the UK debt.)