Unexpected money found October:
Interest earned on checking/savings accounts: $16.17
Related to buying the house: $450
Money Highlights:
Open Enrollment happened this month at work for both of us and we opted to switch to high deductible plans. My HDHP at work is actually set up so I don't have a premium at all if my family is covered elsewhere so we split off with me alone on one plan and everyone else on my husband's plan. We kept the dollar amount that used to come of his checks almost the same to the dollar but we're getting $104 put straight into the HSA this year. As the Millionaire Educator would say, it gets to stay on our side of the ledger.
My check on the other hand is comical for all good reasons. It's so SO tiny. They did a 2.5% bump across the board (first raise in 2 years!) I honestly couldn't tell a difference because my check is so heavily being put into retirement. I signed up for the FSA for child care expenses so it'll be even smaller in 2018. All of these things mean progress so I'm happy.
Since I was in the husband's work retirement page anyway, I went ahead and bumped his 401k contributions up to 10%. We're not at a point yet where we can max every account but a few percentage points here and there feels good.
A gal made a Facebook page for local people with an interest in FIRE and I think we might go. I have no idea what to expect out of these people but it could be fun.
This is the first month with my 529 set up for my MBA. I'm routing books and housing through it because my state will allow deductions for any 529. My employer is paying for my tuition so I'm trying to soak in all of the tax benefits I can for my portions. We'll see how it all turns out when tax time rolls around.
I've been dragging my feet on tossing money at the mortgage for some reason. We made enough on the sale of our last house to have our mortgage start out under $120k and I just can't bring myself to hit submit on the payment. I guess I like having a little cash on hand. I tossed $2500 at it this month but I'm having a hard time committing to the last $3900 I had planned to throw on it. It would knock an entire year off the back end of the mortgage so it would be like a 14 year mortgage from the beginning.
Until next time!
17 Years + 7 Months to go.
