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I did a 2026 tax projection and so was able to finalize my net pay and 2026 goals.
My entire raise will go to taxes and healthcare.  😒 I had wanted to eke out some extra money from bigger raise, to cover expected tax increases in near future.  I couldn't cover any of that, so I made a note in my budget spreadsheet.  I need to come up with an extra $400/month (taxes) at some point in the near future.  The obvious solution is to just move it over from the...
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The year has ended. Well, technically it ended 10 days ago.  Health insurance ended up being 22% of annual expenditures for 2025, medical expenses were 14%, and taxes (property and IRS) another 14%. Altogether this was 50% of annual expenditures. It's a little disheartening. 
Our health insurance premiums increased by $286.76 per month for the two of us for 2026. Lots of Ideas and Rob have suggested that I check in with an insurance broker, so that's on my list. Late...
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MM(22) Nov 2025 'Gifted College Fund': $9,115 (+$5K ROTH)
MM(22) Dec 2025 'Gifted College Fund': $7,900 (+$5K ROTH)
Rent is paid through 1/31.
Nothing much to report.  Will pay MM's final tuition payment in February.
& I have some extra cash set aside to cover MM's last month or so of rent in college town.  Didn't have much of a plan before, but I officially told MM(22) not to worry about it.   I just did some rough math and it's still crazy how...
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O.M.G.
Disaster company sale did not go through last Friday.  😭  I just couldn't even with that.
Of course the final chapter of disaster company was a total disaster.
The buyers planned to pay cash.  But they don't understand how money works?  I was fed juicy tidbits from multiple people along the way.  The whole thing is just bonkers.
I was still optimistic we could make this work.  I think in most cases this would be a major red flag or just...
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I'm very excited about this.  I had heard rumors a few months ago about a gym being constructed on the fifth (top) floor of the building where I work, but I had heard it in the context of another firm's paying for their employees to have access.
Then this week, we received notice that the gym is open to anyone who works in the building, in exchange, for now, for a $100 access payment.  They note that they may apply monthly charges eventually, but for now, it's a one-time...
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If you want to know how my week went, you just need to know I live in south Minneapolis. I was actually being an observer when I got an alert on my phone that another observer had been shot about 10 minutes drive from where I was parked keeping an eye on a suspicious vehicle idling. I rushed to that scene probably minutes after Renee Good was taken away. Ever since then everything has ramped up. Schools were closed the rest of the week after Border Patrol invaded a high school...
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I have not written a blog post in nearly two years.  We have been so busy and once I quit my job, I wasn't on a computer very much any more so blogging was the first thing to go... but I have missed it and I have missed reading other people's blogs and stories so I'm back.
I didn't work for the first year and 3 months that we lived in TN and just started working this past September, but in a very different field than teaching. I started doing payroll for my brother's company....
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I don’t really know how to start this, so I’m just going to write.
It’s January, it’s cold in Alaska, and today I finally admitted to myself that I can’t keep doing this anymore. I’ve carried my financial mess quietly for years, not because I’m embarrassed, but because talking about money feels like handing someone my diary. It’s personal. It’s vulnerable. It says more about me than I sometimes want to admit.
But I’m...
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As a part of my 2026 goal of rebalancing my portfolio to something more sane, I just sold my Merck (MRK) stock today.  My gains here are more than six figures so I am clearly not complaining.
However, and this subject came up as I was on my Jollibee road trip with this buddy of mine, where I said if I am being completely honest, I don't know which Dumb and Dumber character I was channeling when I bought MRK, because I clearly had no idea what I was recklessly buying into....
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So in my posts I've definitely talked about flipping a switch or turning the page this year financially.  What that meant is I stopped worrying about the future and our savings and our finances.  I don't mean I am spending wildly but I just stopped tracking our spending and I stopped worrying about the savings rate.  I knew mentally in 2021 that we had sort of hit coast fire where we could just not save and be fine.  But mentally flipping that switch is really...
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I've been tracking heating oil prices for a while now and I think I made the right decision buying on Dec. 22 at $2.85 a gallon. After that, prices rose to a high of $3.12 a gallon on Jan. 2, but have since been dropping with the warm weather we're enjoying this week.  Today's price is $3.01.
I used to call around to different suppliers, but have found a site that lists daily prices of many different heating oil suppliers, so it's much easier to use that site, and they consistently...
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Yay, with aggressive extra payments, the balance on my car loan is now down to about $6,000. I see the light at the end of the tunnel and plan to have it all paid off this year. I financed about $20K exactly one year ago.  
Yay, FedEx finally picked up my recalled EcoFlow for a software update.
Yay, did some pruning today with the winter thaw, cutting down a Japanese maple and some big branches of a large viburnum, but only half done with the Japanese maple; need to...
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Ok, this isn't exactly financial.  Just warning you upfront, so you can skip it if you want.
For anyone else still reading, remember I blogged earlier about how I had buddies that wanted to take road trips, but none of that ever really panned out?  Yeah, real life happens, and I get that they're busy, so it's not like I am holding them to the fire over this or anything.
Well much to the surprise of even yours truly, one of them actually happened yesterday! This buddy...
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For 13 years, I’ve been paying on my student loans—13 long years.
What started as a $33,000–$35,000 loan turned into nearly $90,000, because my income couldn’t keep up with the payment plan.
Some people will say, “Don’t take on debt.” I hear that. But here’s my story.
At the time, I was making $36,000 a year. I was debt-free. Then I lost my job. I went back to school because employers wanted higher education. Since I wasn’t...
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Finally my $780 payment hit my student loan, I'm officially under $10k. My new balance is $9,991.01. The daily interest is about $2. Next week is pay day with the first job so I'll be able to throw another $250 on it.  
Side-note, I'm learning to keep my mouth shut with the second job. I know that there are a ton of things that's going wrong, but I need the money so I'm just going to keep my mouth shut. Make my two grand a paycheck so that I can pay this thing off, hopefully...
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This is what I started to write re: 2026 Financial Goals.
I am trying to minimize IRA contributions.  But I think we will need to contribute $5K to IRAs, in order to avoid the next tax bracket (22%).  Which feels pretty steep after paying ~$0 taxes for two decades.  & also factoring how complicated taxes are and how this means an effective tax rate of 35%+.
I ended up preparing our 2025 tax return this week (state software isn't ready but I have good IRS numbers). ...
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Pay cash for college ✔
Just one more tuition payment left for MM(22).  Crazy!
$10K to Savings ✔
Final tally was $13,185. 
Saved at the last minute, by a cash gift.  Which made up for a wild spending year.
$7,500 to Investments ✔➕
Final tally: $7,900
Was able to surpass the stretch goal with my bonus.
$1,700 to mortgage ✔
Mortgage goal is non-negotiable.  I will not have a mortgage for more than 30 years on this house (while...
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I had a couple of outstanding non-mortgage loans (mostly arising from my beautiful Buffy cat's illnesses).  I paid them off this morning, so now the only debt is my mortgage (down to $19,500 so the end is in sight) and credit cards, which are a rolling balance.  I typically use the first paycheck of the month to pay down loans and the second to pay down credit cards, so the CC balance is around $3k right now and that will come down when the next paycheck arrives on 1/16.
Banks...
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Well almost a week into the year and we have paid all of January's bills already and put money back into our ice account and put $800 into house savings....we still have 2 pay checks to go. It is my birthday month but not sure what we are doing yet if anything we will see what the weather is doing this week its 100-106 all week so if its like that won't be doing anything. Feeling positive in 2026
That my word for this year Positive...I am going to try stay positive all year in...
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I received a 2.55% raise. I wasn’t initially excited about this; I thought it could have been higher. However, it is what it is, and I have to remember that some people don’t have jobs right now. 
 
What really changed my outlook on things was that I increased my 401(k) contributions by 2% because (I can’t enter 2.55%). I didn’t realize I was at an 8% contribution rate; I thought it was lower. I must have bumped my contribution last year when...
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