MOVIES:

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$100 Fandango

$  20 Regal

RESTAURANTS:

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$50 Cracker Barrel (small balance left)

$ 15 x 1 Jamba Juice

$ 10 x 1 Jamba Juice

RETAIL:

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$50 Target

REGIFT:

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$10 Starbucks

Note: Edited over time to remove used gift cards. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I had a couple of big gift card years at work, which was nice.  But this year they went in more of a gift direction.   My only haul was the Target gift card.  

I am not 100% sure if we got through these movie gift cards, so I will leave them in my post.  But I think we should be getting through them at this point.  

I was just thinking about it because MH did a Target order and didn't use the gift card.  I decided I better write it down so that I don't forget that we have this gift card sitting in our online account.  If it's not going to be obvious when I make a purchase, then I will likely forget about it.

I have a good idea where things will land this month.  

Pay cash for college ✔

$10K to Savings ❌

Final tally was $7,633. 

The plan was to use this money to pay cash for college.  At the end of 2024 we had roughly -$0- cash plus emergency funds.  So that's about how it sorted out.  That we had just enough to cash flow college.

We most definitely failed at this goal.  But I just copied the commentary from last year and it still held true.  So I am happy enough to squeak by (with what we need).  

(We did not fail enough to say no to anything that we said yes to.  As long as we had the cash, we were fine with falling short of our goal.)

$7,500 to Investments ❌

Final tally: $5,500

I am trying hard to make taxable investments more important.  But it's the second year in a row that we fell $2K short of our goal.  I probably could have made this a higher priority if I wasn't trying to manage income for a college grant.  On the plus side, this is the only tax year that we have to be careful about our income re: college grant money.

I will keep the $7,500 goal for next year.  Will keep trying.

$2,025 to mortgage ✔

I didn't have any cash available for this goal.  I ended up moving money over from DL(19)'s college rent fund.  I saw my blog title today and that sums it up pretty nicely.  Over prepared (re: college rent money we probably don't need), and now going with the flow.  

Mortgage goal is non-negotiable.  I will not have a mortgage for more than 30 years on this house (while healthy and well employed). 

9% Income to Work Retirement Plans ✔

MH and I both contribute the minimum for 401k match.  The 9% includes employer contributions.

$14,000 to IRAs 2024 ❌

We put $12,000 to 401Ks, instead.

We didn't make this goal but I am fine with it.  I had decided at some point that taxable investing needs to be a bigger priority.  & that I would let go of these arbitrary IRA max numbers.  The $14K max was too stressful. 

Then I wondered if we would put anything into our IRAs.  Most especially because my in-laws told us a week ago that they won't be doing big cash gifts any more.  We shouldn't need a big cash gift to make this goal.  But I am running through the math and it's maybe not realistic to fund college (x2) and also max out IRAs. 

In the end, I got a large work bonus.  I basically have to put to the entire bonus to my 401K.  So we got about 90% of the way there ($12K out of $14K extra to retirement). 

SUMMARY

MH and I were feeling like we need to rein things in a bit.  We were more loose with MH's income this year (after a lifetime of saving everything MH makes).  But we know we were a little too lax this year and were in 'rein it in' mode.  Then we got the in-law cash news which put us into further 'rein it in' mode.  Then I saw that our net worth was up $130K.  So...  Who cares if we spent more money this year.  Clearly we are doing just fine.  Then I got a bonus.  More of the same.  Then I realized I literally can't spend any of this bonus.  (I thought I could at least eke out a few hundred dollars.) 

I think we were mostly in 'relax and live a little' mode (going into 2025) until I remembered that our cash balance is literally $0 (in addition to emergency funds).  It's complicated because we have all this college cash and probably have more cash than we have ever had before.  I am not stressed about it.  But anyway, our personalities are screaming "CODE RED" at us about the cash situation.  We've been treading water since 2022 (big mortgage paydown) but I expected to make more forward progress this year.   Not stressed about it, but clearly something else has to give.

So yeah, I feel up, down, all over the place.  But that's just how everything is any more.  My bonus (an extra $5K) doesn't replace recent in-law cash gifts.  But it leaves me confident that we can keep aggressive savings goals.

I'd say that falling short of cash and investment goals was all about investing in MH's movie this year.  (It's almost done!)  & falling short of retirement goal was due to inflation, and unrealistic new IRA limits.  The increasing IRA limits are arbitrary and just aren't serving us.  I will probably set very similar goals in 2025.  Just because it would be the most efficient to max out IRAs and it's a good reminder if we have unexpected windfalls.  I am still going to set the goal. I swear that thinking it is always 90% of the battle.  Seriously, crazy crazy year and it all somehow worked out.  We will see how 'writing it down but not taking it too seriously' works out.  I think that's why it does work out well to even think it.  I don't know how I am going to come up with $14K IRA money (in 2025) re: income and college expenses.  But the goal will be a reminder if any unexpected money comes our way.  I can see the mechanics of why it works, as opposed to the alternative of not even trying.

Life has not gotten any better since my last life update.  This past week was particularly exhausting.  

I am not going to bore you with the details, but I am compiling a list of 2024 'crazy' that I will share at the end of the year.  The one thing that I do appreciate is at least there was some (big) good things thrown into the mix.  

Which I guess is what this post is about.  The good and the bad all rolled into one.  I am just seperating this out so that I don't have one long monster post.

FIL stopped driving, which is long overdue.  It's obviously a difficult thing.  But my in-laws wanted to make lemonade out of those lemons, and so they gave their older car to my kids. They wanted the car gone ASAP.  MH and I told them to give it a minute and that we could sort it out Thanksgiving week.  The car is a 2014 with 135K miles.

MM(21) picked up the car Thanksgiving week, on his way home from college.  I got all the paperwork signed Thanksgiving day and submitted the title transfer to the DMV this past Wednesday.  On Thursday the car died.  It's DEAD.

For a while Friday, I didn't know what in the heck.  We will take a gamble on repairing the car.  But one of the first things they threw out was helping us sell the car.  I am just, "But I don't even have the title!"  Even if we just decide to donate it, what a big hassle this whole thing is.  It's not why we are repairing the car, but I do think it works out nicely that we have a couple of weeks for the DMV red tape to sort out.  It's a no brainer to repair the car that was free to us.  But it is a gamble because the engine might not be salvageable.

Silver lining:  This would have been a much more expensive repair in our parents' high cost locale.  It could just work out for the best.  Fingers crossed.

It seemed obvious to give this car to DL(19), who has a college commute.  He was enjoying the smaller and more fuel efficient vehicle.  MM(21) will just drive his car home a handful of times per year; it will mostly sit in his garage.   So the other silver lining is that we didn't give this car to MM(21).  At least he's not stranded in the middle of nowhere, or we aren't dealing with this 300 miles away.  

Note:  The kids were sharing a car before.  

One more positive thing.  We have never had a catastrophic car repair.  It's eventually bound to happen, something like a transmission or engine rebuild or replacement.  We were lucky we made it this far. 

I knew the car was likely dead when DL(19) arrived home with an overheating car.  My first car (also a Toyota) suffered the same fate.  It was a 20yo car that I had gotten 7 years out of.  I don't count that as a 'catastrophic repair'.  I count that as the obvious end of its life.  Because of that past experience, I was able to prepare my household for this possibility.  It wasn't too shocking.

I guess we will be in car limbo for a couple of weeks and then will go from there.  Plan B is to just go back to the way it was.  We were doing just fine with 3 cars.

Edited to clarify:  They are attempting to repair the engine (thousands of dollars) but it's possible the car will need an engine replacement.