Mint SIM

I just paid $170.28 to cover the next year of DW’s cell service.  That’s $14.19 pcm for 2GB LTE and unlimited talk/text/2G data.  How?  By using Mint SIM.

Mint SIM is an MVNO – which is basically a service reseller.  They sit on top of T-Mobile’s network – which is pretty good – and offer dirt cheap plans.  There’s no contract, but they do offer discounts for pre-paying for longer periods of time.  You can see their plans here.  If you’re looking to save money on your cell phone bill, I’d recommend you do what we did and get their three-month plan (currently $35+fees – ours was a total of $41.49) to try it out, then pay for the year if you end up liking it.  (Once you have an account, the renewal is on sale, but that’s not shown on the public page.)

If you need more data, they also have 5GB and 10GB plans.  (Most people don’t need this much, but you can check your phone or your bills for historical usage to figure out what you’re likely to use.)

I just asked DW how she likes her service, and she said that she’s happy not to have to track her data anymore.  (She was on Project Fi with me before the switch.)  Her only complaint is that Mint SIM doesn’t support visual voicemail, which is a neat feature she had with Project Fi.  (She doesn’t get that many voicemails, though, so I don’t see that as a big deal.)

Let me know in the comments if you like a different service better.  I know there are dirt cheap options if you don’t really use your phone, but we use them frequently, mostly for data and texting.  I try to keep my usage below half a gig a month, but DW is on Pokemon GO more than I am and likes the freedom of the 2GB plan.

 

Note:  I have no relationship with Mint SIM except as a customer.  I’m not making any money through them or getting any discounts from them; I just really like their service, and I thought you might, too.

March Stats

Welp, guess I let this fall to the wayside a bit.  Let’s dive into the current stats!

	INTEREST RATE	REMAINING	BASE PAYMENT	EXTRA PAYMENTS
Student Loans	3.86%	$22,043.02	$183.54	$0.00
Mortgage	3.50%	$296,835.70	$2,259.03	$0.00
Total		$318,878.72	$2,442.57	$0.00

In interesting news, a bunch of fraudulent American Airlines charges started appearing on my credit card, so thanks to Citi for flagging that and letting me know!  Got contacted Friday and had a new card on Saturday.  Should be a week or two for them to verify that it’s fraud so I won’t have to pay for the charges.

I also had an interesting experience at work.  I get paid on the 15th and last of every month, and I got my bonus on March 8.  I tried to set up my 401k deductions to hit 50% for the March 8 paycheck and then go back down to my normal 6%.  Turns out, 401k deduction changes only take place on the first of each month.. so I’m putting 50% of my paycheck into my 401k for the entire month of March.  Luckily, the rest of the bonus check covers a little more than what I was expecting from my normal checks, so I don’t even have to touch the emergency fund (which is currently woefully underfunded).  I’ll also be upping (though technically lowering) my 401k contributions to 8% starting April 1, since that’s when my 2% cost-of-living increase will hit.

I’ve got our taxes just about ready to go out.  I’m trying out Credit Karma Tax, which is the first software I’ve ever used to fill out taxes, so I want to verify it against a manual calculation to make sure that it’s looking right.  Looks like we’ll also be putting $2,000 into a Traditional IRA to take some advantage of the tax credit.  (Was planning on maxing it, but don’t have the funds; see above.)

January Stats

It’s been a hectic month – during which I apparently haven’t written anything at all (despite having my best day for views and visitors a couple weeks ago).  I had a week off in the middle of this month, which was amazing; I got to rest and clean and take care of some home projects, and then I got the house ready for eight people staying with us for the Women’s March on Washington.  I meant to write during that week, but I just wasn’t able to get to everything.

This week back at work, I’ve been feeling much more refreshed and much less stressed.  I haven’t had a good break in a long while, and my brain is functioning much better now.  I’ve rearranged some vacation time to have another week-long break in April – I’ve started adding four days to weeks where I have holidays in order to get nine days of break out of four days of vacation.  It’s pretty great, since I have limited vacation time.

When I started tracking my stats a year ago, I declared that I would be debt free by the time I turned 40.  I now intend to do that in a very different way than I did then, but let’s see how I’m progressing anyway:

	INTEREST RATE	REMAINING	BASE PAYMENT	EXTRA PAYMENTS
Student Loans	3.86%	$22,264.75	$183.54	$0.00
Mortgage	3.50%	$299,610.08	$2,259.03	$0.00
Total		$321,874.83	$2,442.57	$0.00

The mortgage is under $300k, which is pretty cool.  We’d been paying too much into escrow, so that’s been adjusted and has brought our mortgage payment down.*  The interest rate on my student loans has gone up again, but less than I anticipated, so that’s also cool.

All told, I have paid off $16,618.77, which is 4.91% of my debt when I started tracking.  Not 1/10 of the way there, but I always anticipated paying more after 2016, so that’s okay.

I’ve been getting monetary gifts from my parents and grandparents, but I’ve been donating them to causes in which I believe rather than keeping them.  This is partially because the causes need support and partially because my family won’t take no for an answer when I tell them that I don’t want gifts.  This seems to be a good middle ground.

 

* Not shown in this chart, since I don’t include escrow in the mortgage payment here.  That’s just a recurring expense, not debt repayment.

December Stats

Super quick post, since it is late and I am tired and have to work tomorrow.

	INTEREST RATE	REMAINING	BASE PAYMENT	EXTRA PAYMENTS
Student Loans	3.80%	$22,373.53	$183.54	$0.00
Mortgage	3.50%	$300,991.22	$2,259.03	$0.00
Total		$323,364.75	$2,442.57	$0.00

Happy holidays!  Can you believe it was about this time last year that I started this blog?

Value Averaging

I introduced the concept of value averaging in my how to invest post at the beginning of July, and we started investing a few days later.  Today is our monthly investment day, and I want to delve into value averaging a bit more with you, now that I have some actual experience with it.

So, first, let’s take a look at what our actual investments have looked like over the past five months:

MONTH	CURRENT	TARGET VALUE	INVESTMENT
July	$0.00	$3,000.00	$3,000.00
August	$3,122.04	$6,017.50	$2,895.46
September	$6,065.26	$9,052.60	$2,987.34
October	$8,895.42	$12,105.41	$3,209.99
November	$11,690.20	$15,176.02	$3,485.82
December	$16,024.37	$18,264.55	$2,240.18

These numbers target a $3,000 pcm investment with a 7% pa return (spread out over 12 months, so ~0.57% pcm).  You can see that the actual investment we put in has varied fairly significantly, and that’s just with the small numbers we have right now.  However, the target investment out of pocket so far has been $17,818.79, which is less than the $18,000 that we were targeting to invest.

For comparison, let’s take a look at what the numbers would be if we had just done standard dollar-cost averaging.  Since we’re 100% in VTSAX (originally VTSMX), we can easily calculate the monthly gain/loss percentages:

MONTH	PREVIOUS	CURRENT	CHANGE
August	$3,000.00	$3,122.04	4.068%
September	$6,017.50	$6,065.26	0.794%
October	$9,052.60	$8,895.42	-1.736%
November	$12,105.41	$11,690.20	-3.430%
December	$15,176.02	$16,024.37	5.590%

Applying these percentages to the what-if scenario, we get these numbers:

MONTH	CURRENT	INVESTMENT	FINAL
July	$0.00	$3,000.00	$3,000.00
August	$3,122.04	$3,000.00	$6,122.04
September	$6,608.13	$3,000.00	$9,608.13
October	$9,441.33	$3,000.00	$12,441.33
November	$12,014.60	$3,000.00	$15,014.60
December	$15,853.91	$3,000.00	$18,853.91

Let’s take a look at the progress side to side:

MONTH	CHANGE	VA VALUE	DCA VALUE	VA INVEST	DCA INVEST
July		$3,000.00	$3,000.00	$3,000.00	$3,000.00
August	4.068%	$6,017.50	$6,122.04	$5,895.46	$6,000.00
September	0.794%	$9,052.60	$9,608.13	$8,882.80	$9,000.00
October	-1.736%	$12,105.41	$12,441.33	$12,092.79	$12,000.00
November	-3.430%	$15,176.02	$15,014.60	$15,578.61	$15,000.00
December	5.590%	$18,264.55	$18,853.91	$17,818.79	$18,000.00

So, what do we see so far?

1. DCA has almost $200 more invested but has almost $600 in additional value.
2. VA is investing less when prices go up and more when prices go down, as promised.

This is obviously not enough data to draw real conclusions, but it doesn’t seem super promising on its own.  I’m wondering if VA really shines in comparison to DCA when heading through a recession.  I think I will look for VTSAX values in the 2007 to 2010 period and create a similar comparison.

Stay tuned.

November Stats

(A day late, a dollar short.)

I was distracted by post-Thanksgiving cleaning and rest, and I forgot to make this update.  So, here’s a quick update on our debt repayment progress:

	INTEREST RATE	REMAINING	BASE PAYMENT	EXTRA PAYMENTS
Student Loans	3.80%	$22,490.06	$183.34	$0.00
Mortgage	3.50%	$302,368.34	$2,259.03	$0.00
Total		$324,858.40	$2,442.37	$0.00

Thanksgiving went pretty well – we hosted seven visitors, four of whom stayed the night and through lunch and a movie the next day.  We were able to send everyone who wanted leftovers home with whatever they wanted, and we had enough left over for ourselves that we’re still eating delicious Thanksgiving meals.  We have completely caught up on dishes, which is the best cleanup we’ve ever done; I’m very pleased.

I’m pretty drained, so I’ll cut it short, but I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving as well!

Tell no one

I’ve been talking to DW about financial independence for a while now, and she’s been great and supportive and approving.  But it wasn’t until my recent post about livingafi’s Job Experience series that she really got engaged and excited about it.  I gotta say, it’s been amazing to see her get so interested and involved!

(DW on left.  ttf with poor typing skills on right.)

I’ve been really grateful to livingafi for this change.

Since the last set of links went over so well, I’m sharing another set that I really enjoyed.  This one explores what it’s like to work toward financial independence, especially how the journey and arrival can affect your relationships:

• Should you tell your friends about your plans and progress?  (Probably not.)
• What about telling your family?  (Almost certainly not.)
• Bonus:  What’s it like to keep that part of your life separate?

If you’re anything like me, you really want to share your journey with others.  It’s such a profound, life-changing shift, and you see so many positives to your steadily-lessening consumption and steadily-growing financial stability that you want everyone to join in and reap the benefits!  Well, consider starting a blog instead.  After all:

No Restaurant October: Results

Happy Halloween!  Was your October spending as scary as your costume, or as awesome as mine?  (I’m in a Deadpool onesie this year.)

Well, the challenge has completed, and I’ve gotta say:  though it was certainly difficult at times, this month has been great for our budget!  We both did more cooking, and we’ve recovered a chunk of the damage we did with all the eating out during the renovation.

We ate out a bunch on our Disney trip in the middle of the month, but I mentioned that I wasn’t counting that in the original No Restaurant October post.  Other than that, we haven’t eaten out at all.  There were a few grey-area situations, though:

• I had to travel to the office for a few days this month, and they offered free Chipotle for lunch one day.  I declined, because this challenge wasn’t just about the money for me; I really wanted to see if we could do without restaurants.  I managed to make and bring enough food that I survived and thrived without a single restaurant or grocery trip while I was in town, which was pretty cool.
• A friend stayed with us for a few days and offered to bring some Krispy Kreme donuts.  I figured that these were just a fresh version of the exact same thing that could be bought at Wegmans, so we accepted.  ..This could probably constitute cheating, I’ll admit.
• There was a fall festival on Saturday at the local shopping center, and one of the restaurants was handing out chicken wings with samples of their famous sauces.  I passed – though boy did I want one.

In the post that inspired this challenge, Mrs. Frugalwoods mentioned that having frozen food at the ready is the key to being successful in a challenge like this, and boy was she right!  We loaded up on easy-to-make foods like freezer pizzas and just-add-water mashed potatoes, and they were a lifesaver.

So, how do we keep up the momentum from this challenge?  Well, we’ve decided to limit our restaurant outings to twice a month* from here out.  This seems like a comfortable place for us that allows us to enjoy going out while still limiting its influence.  It does mean that we’ll probably be planning our outings and using our two allowances most months, but that will still keep us from going overboard, which we have a tendency to do.

How was your No Restaurant October?  Having a great / spooky Halloween?  We’re gearing up for Thanksgiving, but we’ve already finished doing our stocking-stuffers shopping for Christmas.**  (Gotta love the Dollar Tree and Five Below!)

 

* We’re allowing an additional outing for each of us if it’s to catch up with a friend in a situation where there’s no easy way to do so otherwise.

** DW’s family picks names out of a hat to fill stockings for each other, kind of like a Secret Santa thing.  DW’s mother (DMIL) doesn’t ever put her name in the hat, though, so we end up making an extra every year so she’s not left out.  She’s surprised every year; it’s fun.

ttf vs Rule One Investing

Today, I came across an advertisement on Facebook for a “financial knowledge” quiz, hosted on “Rule One Investing,” to determine “what type of investor” I am.  Figuring this would be crap, but still insatiably curious, I clicked the ad and took the quiz.  I had to put in fake information for email address and name to get the results (red flag one), and then I came across this gem in the grading:

Let’s dissect this, shall we?  I’ll even ignore Social Security, to give Rule One Investing the benefit of the doubt.

How much does this average American actually spend?  Well, the average American between ages 55 and 64 makes $58,145 pa and saves very little of that.  To give Rule One Investing even more benefit for their calculations, let’s say that this average American pays no taxes and saves no money – they spend every penny of that $58,145 every year and plan to continue doing so into retirement.

The average retirement age in the United States is currently 63, and the average life expectancy in the United States is currently 78.8 years.  Let’s just round that to 79 for easier numbers.  That means that the average retirement last for 16 years, and your retirement funds need to cover you for that time.

Since we’re talking about a traditional retirement age, we should be conservative with our withdrawal estimates; this theoretical person won’t be easily able to go back to work to earn more.  Instead of the 4% withdrawal rate I’ve mentioned in the past, let’s say that a safe withdrawal rate for this retiree is 3%.  That means they would need close to $2 million in their retirement accounts to retire.

But wait!  That’s for a retirement lasting 30+ years – and likely coming out the other end with lots of extra money.  But we already know that our average retiree is only going to enjoy their retirement for 16 years.  For a conservative investor spending 15 years in retirement, Vanguard recommends a 6.2% initial withdrawal rate.  Let’s drop that down to 6% to cover that extra year.  At a 6% safe withdrawal rate, this retiree only needs $1 million to keep their spending levels up in retirement.

Now, several of the answers on this quiz were geared toward convincing me to sign up with this Rule One Investing site to learn to pick stocks and beat the market, so of course they’re going to try to make me think I need more money.  But, even giving them the best benefit of the doubt I can, I can’t come anywhere near that $3 million figure.  And, when you take a more realistic view of retirement – that the average retiree pays taxes and saves while working, and that expenses go down for them even while Social Security starts supplementing their income – you find that the $500,000 number is actually closer to the truth.

So don’t get too discouraged if you don’t have millions in savings.  Stay the course, keep saving as much as you can, and you’ll be just fine.

October Stats

Another quick stats update:

	INTEREST RATE	REMAINING	BASE PAYMENT	EXTRA PAYMENTS
Student Loans	3.80%	$22,605.16	$183.34	$150.00
Mortgage	3.50%	$303,741.46	$2,259.03	$0.00
Total		$326,346.62	$2,442.37	$150.00

We received housewarming gifts from my grandmother and my aunt and uncle this month, so we immediately applied those to the student loans.  Other than that, breathing room is nonexistent, as always, here.

It’s getting colder, so heat’s been running some.  We bought some sealing solutions for the front door, and I’m hoping to install those this weekend so we can stop the enormous air leaks that make it more difficult to stay warm.  I also need to hit a store to get long johns and slippers.

We’re hoping to head to the local Regal on Friday to see The Nightmare Before Christmas in a theater.  It’s my favorite movie, and I’m very excited!  It’ll be nice to get out of the house a bit, too.