I hadn't mentioned camp in a while.  We have an annual tradition to go to family camp, which I describe in further detail below.  When the kids were little they had a lot of activities planned for them (so that the adults could relax).  We've gone in the past with my in-laws, nieces, SIL and my Dad (often all together).  This year was just us and in-laws.  We paid our own way early on (it's actually pretty expensive, not what I would classify as frugal).  But at some point in-laws were doing well and was their annual treat.  Last time we went, DL brought his friend and so we just payed it forward and paid for his friend. 

I *really* thought my kids would outgrow camp by now.  But...  What the heck do I know?  😁  DL(15) has just been over the moon happy about camp.  By far the worst thing about 2020 was that camp was canceled.  He *needs* this for his soul. 

Post from 2017:

I hadn't thought too much about it, but was describing to a co-worker. It's basically like summer camp for the whole family. The camp is run by our city. Year 1 we tried San Jose's camp (near Yosemite). But Sacramento's camp (near Tahoe) has nice cabins. It's easier to get to, and we all just love it. So as I described to my co-worker the nice cabins, how all food is provided (dining hall) and they serve beer by the patio. The more I described it the more heavenly it sounded. 

So that is a little bit about camp.

In the end, it was a really good camp year.  Everything was actually pretty terrible because of the pandemic.  Mostly couldn't do anything inside.  Huge staff turnover.  Apparently lack of consistent food supply, etc.  While everyone was griping one day, I was just, "Yeah, it's always like this, since we moved to the first session."  I couldn't remember why we did that, but were discussing and I guess it's because they changed the dates around and so we moved from 3rd session to 1st session.  Which just makes us the guniea pigs and practice run for the season.  But anyway, lord forbid we go another time (everyone else's response), but at least everyone stopped complaining after that.  I just remember they had some major turnover 2018 and I am pretty sure 2019 was just as bad.  Except for the food being so much worse this time.  It was actually kind of funny because they went way vegetarian the first couple of things, which I just thought was due to demand or something.  ???  I guess it was the food supply because then they went crazy the opposite direction.  

Anyway, all of that said, I think overall it was one of the more fun times at camp.  Definitely not all bad.  They were only operating at about 1/3 capacity, which I think was due to a little bit of everything.  They were majorly understaffed, I don't think they could have had more people if they wanted to.  In turn, it was kind of extra nice and peaceful.  They also put in a new deck which we largely had to ourselves.

Because there has been so little going on the past year or so, I do think everything was a little extra exciting.  I was telling the kids on the way home that there may have been 3 or 4 mini dramas one day.  Mostly minor stuff, but when you haven't had so much adventure or even been around crowds of people you don't know in so long...  I think the vibe was mostly people were ecstatic to get back to some normalcy. 

The kids had the *best* time.  I know my MIL is kind of over it and waiting for my kids to outgrow.  Ha!  At 13/14, they were not going to do the teen activities.  This year, they did them all and DL(15) wanted to make new friends and be social.   Heck, I think MM(17) did all the sports (volleyball and softball) for the first time.  They both had a blast.   

We also were able to upgrade back to some of the nicer cabins.  They are newer, more well sealed, and have electric outlets.  We got bumped at some point when we missed a deadline and someone took our cabin.  This time went the opposite way, with such low attendance.  Everything opens up on the last day (whatever isn't reserved/claimed for next year) and so we bumped back up to the cabins with electricity.  That will be extra nice next year.

Here is an (older) cabin, that we stayed in this year.

Oh yeah, and we did just take the electric car.  There is a charger right down the road from camp (maybe 1 mile away) and so it's very convenient in that regard.  If we ever did want to charge up, but it was completely unecessary.  MH has been making the drive a lot (we have a family cabin in this area) and so he is very comfortable with it at this point.  I was a little bothered when we drove 100 miles and only had a 70 mile range left showing on the car.  Even though I know logically the car wouldn't use any electricity most of the way home.  (Not only does going down hill take no electricity, but the downhill regenerates electricity).  In the end...  We literally made it all the way back to our city before we used any electricity.  & that included blasting the A/C the entire 100 miles because DL(15) was car sick.  We've never blast the A/C quite that much on that car.  We started to use electricity for the last 20 miles (back to the flat land) and had a 50-mile range left when we got home.  That seems to be our thing, always over-planning by 50 miles.

I usually just keep our cash savings in one big pot, but I do track short-term and mid-term cash.  (Long-term money is invested).  Now I've got a bunch of new buckets popping up that I need to keep track of.

I've added a separate tracker for college start up costs.  Which is probably extra complicated because most of that cash is in MM(17)'s bank accounts.  But maybe all the more reason I need to keep track of that somehow.   

Not too much has changed since I reported the 'college start up costs' plan.   I did redeem my credit card reward already, it ended up being $800. 

My SIL also gave MM(17) $100. 

So here is the current tally: 

MH's Family:  $780

Credit Card Reward: $800

Target Gift Cards: $300

Grand Total:  $1,880

Most of that will be going towards a laptop, the rest for dorm set up expenses.  At this point, I think we are well covered.  

The other bucket is crowdfunding for MH's movie.  It's a long story...  Someone picked up his script and was going to produce it last year.  Just before the pandemic.  Which is pretty much the story of MH's life.  It's not the first time things far beyond our control have yanked the rug out from under him.

Anyway, he's been really anxious to move forward but everyone has been flakey and it's just been drama.  He's just kind of whatever, will do it himself.  I don't know that he particularly wants to self-produce and self-fund, but he's been looking forward to making this movie for so long and is the only way it will get done.

This is a non-financial investment *I* want to make, with stimulus money that fell from the sky.  But I don't know if MH will ever agree.  In the end, he did raise $1,000, and most of that was not from family.  It was mostly from people he has worked with and met in the industry, as well as finding enough people willing to do everything for no pay.  (His dream goal was a few thousand dollars, so that he could pay everyone).  

I am glad he did the crowdfunding because it was so interesting.  Maybe especially because we have always covered everything re: starving artist friends.  We are more apt to treat if we get together for a meal, to pay for script software costs and contest submissions, stuff like that.  Everyone always acts like it's the end of the world to spend $20 on collaborative software (that makes your life 100 times easier).  So I was absolutely dumbfounded when the same people largely gave us $50 or $100.  ???  I admit some of them probably felt like they owed us.  But I really wasn't expecting much from the starving artist crowd. 

{As an aside, MH was invited out to lunch by his biggest donor, someone he didn't really know on a personal level.  Turns out he was very young retiree.  Probably around 50 now but retired a while ago.  It's pretty normal for our long-term friends and family to be financially independent, but might be the first time we met a young retiree out in the wild.  😁  MH is meeting a bigger variety of people in his current professional group, I think a couple of others are probably independently wealthy just based on what we know about them.  I can see how things would sway to either extreme.}

MH's relatives also gave him some money.  A bit of a gimme, being the first time he has ever asked for money for a passion project.

Last we discussed, MH was just going to keep the budget to what he could crowdfund.  $1,000 is plenty.  If everyone works for free, we can make it work.  But I am still earmarking a few thousand and won't sweat it if we do need it to get this project completed.  The hard part will probably be convincing MH, if it comes to that. It sounds like most likely he may want an extra $500-$1000.  He wouldn't pay anyone unless he got funding or was able to make money on the project.

In other news, looks like we won't be touching our savings this month.  I have no idea how that happened.  Mostly expecting to find an error in my math at some point.  I pre-paid some health insurance and double checked and triple checked I got that part right.  I usually wouldn't pay that until August.  That's really the only part I could have got wrong, so I am still finding it hard to believe.  (I use accounting software, so it's difficult to "forget something" or to make a math error.  Impossible might be the better word.  It's impossible.  So I am confused but confident in my numbers).

The major thing working to our favor is that we had a really low grocery month.  Came in about $300 below budget.  Phew!   We were treated to a few meals out, plus vacationed 3 full days with food provided.  MH has gone back to more careful food shopping (with things normalizing) and MM(17) is done with track.  <----That last part is the most of it.  MM(17) did also received some free meals at work.  I guess it all added up.  This was an extremely rare occurence, to have so much grocery money left over.

I still don't entirely understand how we cash flowed the following: printer paper & ink,  blender, pest control, medical expenses.

I did fund vacation expenses and a dental cleaning with short-term funds.

I had a dental crown done but was able to cash flow with that $800 credit card reward.  Just kicking that can down the road, for now.  Will need to deduct that $800 when we pay for MM's new laptop.

While thinking about expenses, I looked up where our medical bills stood and we are up to $500 (that's due in July; will charge and pay off in August).  It's at least trickling in slowly. 

June expenses (charges) will be paid in July, so I have a pretty good estimate through July.   August may be our last one-income month, and we won't pay those expenses until September anyway. 

July might be our last one-income month then (July charges paid in August).   I don't really know what to expect.  I can see that our energy will probably be largely focused on spending down these buckets.  But that's money I don't otherwise have to come up with.  MH & MM will be in Florida for a week, so we might get away with an extra low grocery month again.  Florida is mostly paid for already, their only expense will probably be food.  Is another bucket (short-term funds earmarked for vacation spending) that we will just be spending down.  

In the end, MM(17) finally ordered his college laptop (will take about 6 weeks to ship) and MH spent his first $150 on technology and props for his film. 

I will try to do a brief MM(17) money update.  I never got around to that.

MM(17) had about $30 left in his checking account.  I guess he estimated pretty darn well (he hasn't worked since last summer).  He also had a $200 IRS refund to deposit. 

{This does not account retirement & savings.  Probably $5K+ in his high yield savings accounts}.

In the end, we finally hired a more full-time admin assistant at my job, when MM(17) went back to school last fall.  MM had mostly been filling that role, during our busy summers.  But the admin assistant is a college student and ended up going out of the country for a few weeks.  So MM(17) has worked two weeks already and will fill in next week.  He will make about $1,500.  (He's working part-time hours, and we were also gone a few days on vacation).

The plan is otherwise for MM(17) to take the month of July off.  He has some college orientation stuff and is going to Florida with some of our family.  After that he will be 18 and we are desparate for construction site help, so he agreed to work full time on site during the month of August.  That still gives him 2 weeks (early September) to take off and prep for college.  Usually the kids start school early August, so he is really enjoying the long summer.  He will probably make $5,000, even with 6 weeks off.

The construction job will be terrible, but it will be an experience.  It sounds very likely he will have mega high paying internships in future summers (due to his college and degree choice).  

I joined a parent group for his college and is probably TMI at this point.  Information overload.  But some of the conversations have been really helpful.  The concensus seems to be that $200/month spending money is pretty average (mostly for food and transportation expense/uber).  MM(17) is far below average.  But I am fine with using the average as a starting point.  $200 x 9 months = $1,800 per year spending money.  I think he will end this summer with enough cash to cover all 4 years (and then some). 

MM(17) is a personality who likes work and independence, and can work with all A's.  That said, we all agreed he really needs to just take the first semester/year and get settled.  I wouldn't be surprised if he decides to get a job at some point, even if just a few hours per week.  But it also sounds like he is pretty well set up to not have to work at all during the school year.  

I did see that the summer job he had secured on his own last summer (that never came to be), that they had bumped their hourly rate and were offering free daily meals.  !!!  That's quite a benefit for a very hungry teenager, but I knew he wouldn't be too enthused by their junk food menu.  Anyway, I did bring it up but he told me he thought it was better to take the job with less exposure to mega amounts of people.  Fair enough. If he had chosen the other way, would have just told my boss, "Sorry, but they are feeding him every day!"  & my boss probably would have matched it anyway.  Given him an extra $30 per week or whatever.

I am going to attempt to briefly touch on the big picture, but mostly just want to dive into the minutiae.

Yeesh, last week was some week from hell.  We've dived head first back into too many hospitalizations and disasters.  (If it's not infinite like it was before, I can deal with one bad week.  There are not enough hours in the day to get into it).  In addition, MH was out of town for two days (so I had to work and play Mrs. Mom, as opposed to Mr. Mom that the kids usually have, it was just a crazy day).   With things opening back up, the kids' schools are trying to cram a whole year into a week or two.  

I am exhausted! 

Big picture:  MH applied for his last unemployment check.  I used the last few checks to cover Orlando airfare and down payment on college room/board.  (He may be able to renew unemployment, I don't know.  Not worth the hassle and red tape at this point).

In my mind, I just lumped MH's last job as "dead" with the pandemic.  But we talked about it recently and I am moving it over to "plausible still has a job," category in my mind.  They'd open back up in the Fall.  If they were going to shut down this location, they would have already.  Fair enough.  I really haven't though about it other than "dead" since the pandemic started.  Plan for the worst.

Anyway, so we decided to just coast through summer and pull from savings if we need to.  We will regroup in the Fall.  If MH can't find a job by September, then we will regroup and make a longer term one-income plan.  For now, we have too much cash to really bother with it.  That said, he's never had work during the summer, since having kids (2003).  So it's probably a natural rhythym for us to pull back spending during summer months.  We are just going to play it slightly looser than we would if we knew 100% he was just going to give up and retire.  I don't know, still some limbo for probably 2-3 months.

We also have a bajillion big expenses coming up, hence the title of my post.  We've hit our savings goal this year per side bar (thanks to stimulus and unemployment), but I am not calling it as a completed goal yet.  Will have to wait and see where we end up at the end of the year.  I will deduct house maintenance and medical expenses that we will be paying next month, which will put us back under our goal.  Mostly I wanted to save $12,000 cash this year to pay for college (after cash flowing anything and everything else that might come up).  If it doesn't go to college or long-term savings, I will deduct (from sidebar/goal) if we spend down for other things.

I did receive $275 in car insurance rebates, due to the pandemic.   This works out pretty well because we just bought a new toaster oven (we had a price watch for a long time and it just dropped in price).  We also upgraded our blender.  I believe I paid $20-ish for that thing 20 years ago and we have been pretty hard on it.  Both have been really nice upgrades.  We spent $295 for the appliances and so will pay for most of that with the car insurance refunds.

MM(17) received some cash gifts from relatives and so I decided to go through our cash stash and will make a deposit this week.  I have way too much cash, I think it's just building up with not much going on.  In the end, I pulled out $150 that I'd like to deposit to help cover some expenses. 

Other expenses will come out of short-term savings.  We did book the hotel for college move-in week.  That will come from our vacation budget (short-term funds).  We also just found out that our annual family camp trip is on.  We thought we had canceled because we did not expect DL(15) to be vaccinated.  We moved to the waitlist for late summer, figuring he could get vaccinated after his birthday next month.  But anyway, that was a very pleasant surprise.  I booked the cat hotel because there's no way he is up to us leaving for 3 days.  The cat *freaked* when we left for one night and DL(15) stayed behind.  Again, vacation budget will cover that (the trip is otherwise free) and that still leaves some substantial dollars for Florida trip (which is mostly paid for already; free hotel and car rental).  

This weekend I made some good progress on freecycling.  Already gave away the old toaster and blender.  While at it, I spied a couple of electronics I had set aside to give away (but never got to).  I listed a printer and a drawing tablet.  MH spotted the tablet right before he went out, and rescued it.  I told him it was all his, but to put it away with is crap.  😁  It was a miscommunication, I thought no one wanted it.  I had a legit taker like one minute later, so MH was lucky I didn't give that away.  I've got one large item left listed, kind of surprised no takers yet.  Is probably the nicest thing we are giving away.  I did also give away 6 empty cat litter containers last week (nice plastic buckets).

This leaves me with four donation bags I don't know what to do with.  Will probably just presume things will open up and be more normal soon.   The charities stopped coming by for pickup; I was spoiled by that.   If they don't start coming by again, will have to figure out where to take this stuff.  When I have some time/energy I really need to do a clothes purge.  I was kind of thinking, "I really shouldn't be buying any clothes the rest of this year," and then my employer basically bought me a wardrobe.  4 shirts (with our logo), a second jacket and a really nice sweatshirt.  The sweatshirt is so cozy and comfortable, might wear it every day in the winter months.  So I have a pile of new clothes to launder and to figure out what to do with.  On the flip side of the coin, I went through my closet today and figured out what to wear for graduation.  I was buying up dresses on clearance, when I left my last job.  Thought I'd have more time between jobs and more than one interview.  Anyway, I can most definitely shop my closet for the rest of 2021.   It's nice not to have to go shopping to find a nice graduation dress.  I am happy with that aspect, just not happy with the clothes piling up everywhere.  I think it's a bit of an 'extra money/nothing else to do/more online shopping/less ease of purging" thing.  It seems pretty moot as I stare down this one-income summer.  "Buying more stuff" has fallen to the way bottom of my priority list.

My last post was how I decided it was easier to utilize credit card rewards than scholarships (in particular, really ridiculous applications for small dollar amounts).

Then, the in-laws came up yesterday to celebrate MM's Graduation.  So I have some numbers in hand.  They had brought up cards/gifts from that side of the family.

MH's Family:  $670

(Mostly from Grandparents; some from Great-Grandparents and a Great-Aunt)

My Family: $0  

(I will be shocked if MM receives even $1 from my family.  I have by far the much bigger family, but they mostly don't seem to care that I exist.  My parents just are not cash gifters.).

Because of the state of my family, I really just didn't have any idea what to expect.  I thought MH's family was probably going to be generous, particularly his parents.  But...  I don't really have a frame of reference of what is "normal".

In fact, before this turn of events, I started to eyeball all my credit card rewards and thought I might just earmark them all (roughly another $2,000) for college expenses this year.  I don't expect to need all of it, but would raid what I need for college set up type expenses.

In the end, if I add the $300 Target gift cards I have and the $755 credit card reward that I just did (I should get that cash any day)...  

Grand Total:  $1,725

Most of that will go to a laptop, the rest to dorm expenditures.  I think this *should* cover everything.  Will see where we end up.  (Anything extra, we will let MM keep.  I suppose it's plausible that he will have more gifts than expenses). 

With the chip shortages and everything, we are leaning on MM(17) to pick out a laptop this weekend, so that it arrives in time for school.  I probably should also set a hard deadline to make dorm purchases this month.  It just keeps coming up over and over to plan ahead before popular items are sold out.  MH just happened to notice the long lag time in laptop delivery; he was pricing laptops last weekend.  I don't think we would have been this far ahead thinking about it except I was trying to decide if this credit card reward would cover a laptop purchase.  

This is just one more step in ensuring paying cash for college *and* not touching college funds.  At current, that is our goal for freshman year.  Future years, depends on grandparent gifts and MH's employment.  (100% will pay cash, no loans.  But not sure how realistic it is not to touch any college funds). We had decided to pull dorm costs from college funds, but then we had stimulus and unemployment monies to cover Freshman year, in addition to a free-tuition scholarship.  So we have gone back to Plan A, cash flowing everything.

2021 TALLY:

$800 Cash (Chase Sapphire Quadruple Dip, MH) 

------------

$800 TOTAL *ONE-TIME REWARDS*

**In addition, various monthly rewards that I will tally at 12/31

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I just applied for a credit card reward.  The reward is $800 cash, minus $95 annual fee.  Plus some extra $50 grocery reward and the possibility to get an extra 25% back on some categories?  At the least, should be $750 cash back.

Edited to add:  Ended up being $800 cash back

It's a quadruple dip I did last year.  Will have MH quadruple dip this year.  Which means we will have both done this reward 4 times.

My motivation?  I was thinking about it because I was closing my Sapphire card (before another annual fee kicked in).   

But my motivation this time around is trying to come up with college money.  The scholarships are *ridiculous* this year.  Like $500 scholarships where you need three letters of recommendation and have to write an essay and spend hours on an application.  Meh.  I thought one day, "It would be easier to do a credit card reward."  Which generally work out to about $1,000 per hour of effort.

So...  I looked it up, the reward was really good, and have already gotten MH approved for this card.

I had been kind of counting on college money and scholarships to cover dorm start up costs and a laptop for MM(17).  But the scholarships have been frustrating.  The really big generous scholarship our CU does every year, they had unrealistic community service requirements during a pandemic, in my opinion.  It was $20K that we let go.  & then all these $500 ones have ridiculous requirements.  I don't think it's just us.  The school emailed us the other day that no one had applied for this or that scholarship.  It was one that wasn't too ridiculous, but MM(17) was too busy and I told him I was kind of over it anyway.  I totally understand that he didn't have the time and energy.  

I had kind of figured he'd get some money from family and maybe a scholarship from the school (he is top of his class).  But...  Then a Grandparent sent MM $20 the other day.  & then I remembered how cheap my family is.  LOL.  (That's probably $20 more than anyone from my family will send him).  So I think that was also some extra motivation to hustle.  

I do also have a $300 Target gift card.  So I figure $750 + $300 is a good start to get him all set up for school (dorm, computer, etc.).  My in-laws will give him too much money I am sure.  There is also that.  This is a good start to get costs covered, and I will consider anything else to just be gravy.

Edited to add:  Discussed later with MH and MM.  We tracked down computer specs and MH priced one out (today) at $750.  Is just what it happened to come out to.  If MM(17) wants some extra computer capabilities, he can contribute towards a more expensive computer.

Second edit:  Just saw a $1,000 reward offer on this credit card.  Yeesh!  I really missed the boat!  Could have squeezed out another $200.   MM(17) will be 18 soon but I doubt he has the credit needed for this card.  

I will start with DL(15) who is more at the starting line.  

He's really dragging his feet working on his driver's license.  Which is driving MH crazy because he wants to go back to work full-time.  Anyway, DL is a personality that needs to be pushed.  It is what it is.  I think we are trying to give him a little space, but with his 16th birthday next month we are going to start pushing more.  I'd like him to start 2022 with a license.

In the meantime, I may or may not have a summer job lined up for him.  I've told my boss my kids' availability and he is considering everything.  But I just realized, only 3 more weeks of school!  So I will probably push a little bit on Monday and see if DL(15) needs to get a work permit.  It's been a little up in the air because my office is mostly being vaccine adverse (UGH).  So at first we decided DL(15) would not work in my office.  But then he was able to get the vaccine, much earlier than we ever expected.  Phew!  

It doesn't really matter, he won't have any expenses until he gets his license and needs insurance.  We won't expect him to pay gas or anything while he is still learning.  He is not doing sports and pretty much refuses to do anything extra-curricular after school.  He is the polar opposite of his brother in many ways.  So...  I think it's more likely he will probably pick up a more traditional teen job, do 16 hours per week more year round.  Something like that.  If I can get him some job experience and money at my office this summer, will make the working transition easier and give him some extra money before he turns 16.   Though I guess with the labor market, there are more jobs opening up to 15yos.

I am pulling up his financial situation to see where he is at.  He is exactly like his brother in that he is a money hoarder.  He's probably the more spendy of the two, but he has managed to save about $1,400 from his $2 per week allowance (during the last 10 years).  He may also have some generous grandparents, and a bank account that pays 7% interest.   We personally do the allowance thing from a young age so the kids learn how to manage their money well before they can get $20/hour jobs in their teen years.  (It's good to learn this before you dive head first into mega money and no expenses).  Because of the high minimum wage here, whatever, we are not paying them any allowances past age 16.  It's completely unnecessary.

I think DL(15)'s money hoarding will pay off and he can probably get away with not worrying about a job this summer.  We will just roll with it, however it works out.  Car insurance will run him about $1,000 per year, so he's going to need a job at some point.  Cars aren't cheap, best to learn that now.

My kids were gifted an old car from Grandparents.  The rule is just that they have to share.  They are welcome to a free car, but they can pay all the expenses. 

I probably haven't gotten around to posting about it, but MM(17) chose a college where he can pretty easily go car-free for 4 years.  Being a mega money hoarder, he wants to try to go carless (maybe indefinitely).  Will see.  For the first year it's pretty much impossible to have a car there, so not much choice.  DL(15) needs the car for a couple of years anyway, so it works out pretty well.  Afer that, we will re-evaluate.  If MM(17) wants a car at that point (in two years), he can probably take the car back.  & I think by then he should have enough cash to buy a much nicer/newer car, but it also seems pointless (buying a nice car) living in a college town with mostly new drivers.  

This is getting so long, I will do a separate money post re: MM and can do a rough college money post.

I heard last year that there was some retroactive tax credit for installing car chargers in your home.  We amended our tax return about a year ago and just got the refund check.  With interest, was about $250.

{These retroactive tax changes are driving me crazy!!  Much to my favor, but makes it hard to plan.  Should just be grateful I no longer work in tax and that it's just my own tax returns to worry about and constantly amend.}

We also returned from our beach vacay.  The hotel we always stay at is about 10 miles past the college that MM(17) will be attending.  We already did a very rushed 2-day trip in May.  It was fine and clearly the electric car is absolutely fine for this trip (600 miles roundtrip).  But we went an entirely different way this trip and had more time to be a little more efficient and to choose less expensive chargers.  Very roughly, might have spent $40 on our first trip (with very little time or planning).  Is a $75 gas fuel trip in our gas sipper (current gas prices), and we probably got it down to $30-$35 this last time. (I will get the exact dollar amount, below).  Of course, it will be cheaper when MM(17) is at college and we can use the free college chargers.  There's also a garage near the campus with chargers, at $1 per hour.  So we will have some good options.

This time, we went an entirely different route, stopped at different chargers, etc.  Last time we didn't see another soul charging.  This time we saw a lot more people.  Strangely, the busiest charger was in the sleepy little beach town we were staying at.  I'd expect to see more people charging closer to the Bay Area?  But the beach was a good stopping point for driving down to LA.

We did stop in the Bay Area to see family on the way down, but this was the first time we decided not to also stop and charge.  It makes more sense to charge when the battery is lower.  Then it charges back up more quickly.  So we let it go (though we were stopped anyway).  There's no lack of chargers to choose from on the 101.  So we went both ways on the 101 this time (which is the same distance as coming back more inland on I-5.  I-5 currently lacks chargers).  <---& even that I think is probably moot.  It's just going to take us some time to get more comfortable with the car and how it behaves on this trip.  We seem to be perpetually over-estimating by 50 miles (always having 50 miles left when we get to our destination).  It really isn't that big of a deal to come back I-5, there's certainly more than ample chargers.  I think we just enjoyed the more choice of going the 101 route.  Probably more psychological than anything.

We spent $32 charging (out and about).  Technically $37, including charging the car up fully at home before leaving (about $5 for a full charge).  Total miles driven: 665

Plugged in at home overnight and started out with a full charge.

Stop 1, about half way (150 miles).  Stopped for lunch which was *divine*.  Stopped for 1/2 hour and gained 100 miles of range. 

Car range is roughly 240 miles.  Destination was 300 miles.  Added 100 miles on the drive, so had 40-ish miles left when we reached the hotel.  We did stop and drive around the Bay Are a bit.

We did also use free fast chargers at the rest stops, but those were purely bathroom stops we'd do anyway.  We ended up with about 70 free miles from pit stops (one stop each way).

There's two ways to play the recharge for the trip home.  You can spend some time at a slower charger or you can fast charge (most efficient from about 20% to 80%).  Or I guess a combo of both.  It was a pleasant surprise to find out that the beloved hotel I have been going to my whole life, that they had chargers!  I am guessing in the future we will get whatever free charging we can get on the college campus and can just top off at the hotel.  This time we just lucked out.  We had a couple of errands we wanted to run and those were all right next to the fast charger.  So the next day we went over there and ran errands and added 140 miles to the car.  Took about an hour, but we just charged while we were busy running into a few stores.  This charger was walking distance to the hotel and to our favorite restaurants so this will be an easy lunch stop in the future.  

The thing about the hotel charger was that it is expensive.  Electrify America chargers are roughly 1/2 the cost of gas (for our car).  The hotel slow charger was about the cost of gas.  Electricity at home is roughly 1/3 the cost of gas, for reference.  I think the charging at home and the charging at the hotel kind of offset and overall still kept our fuel costs very low.

After we got back to the hotel we just plugged in and charged (to top it off) while we lounged by the pool.  We could have just been even more lazy and left it plugged in overnight.  But at that point we just needed 60 miles.  It took about 2.5 hours to top off.  The slow chargers are nice for somewhere you will be all night (or day) anyway.

On the way home we stopped mid-way again (same place) and stopped for 45 minutes for about 130 miles.

Had 50 miles left when we got home.  It will take some time to just get used to the drive/car.  It depends so much on the terrain, how much A/C you use, etc. that we honestly weren't sure if we had enough to get home and if we may have to stop again.  But we decided we were ready to go and could always stop 5 minutes for a top off if we needed to.  *shrugs*  Of course, we expected really heavy traffic.  It wasn't so bad, but there was enough stop-and-go for us to have 50 miles left when we got home.  Without the stop-and-go I think we'd have enough left, but maybe just 20 or 30 miles.  Braking regenerates energy.

I personally find the electric car more convenient than gas for around town and for our frequent Bay Area trips (we now need less fuel stops for that trip, and is a trip we make 1-2 times per month). Before, we'd have to make sure we had a full tank before we left or stopped on the way.  We always refueled on the way home so that we had gas left for the work week.  Now we just have to make one small stop, and even that is probably just being on the safe side.  If we ever hit any traffic on that drive, stopping to fuel is not necessary.

600 mile road trip = *shrugs*  It 1000% depends on your personality.  I said to my friend, "You have to stop and eat anyway" and she looked at me like I was crazy.  Okay, sure, most our friends rather leave at 6pm on a Friday to get to LA at midnight.  That is so not us.  We always stop and picnic at the rest stops, and take our time.  As they put in more free chargers at the rest stops, that is 1000% what we will do, but what we did before anyway.  Finding out our hotel had a charger though, certainly made life easier.   & this trip we were very much just wanting to rest and recharge our batteries.  We didn't really drive anywhere else.  In the future, we may want to travel a little farther and explore.  So being able to just plug in when we get to the hotel and not think about it (just wake up the next day with a full charge), that will definitely be nice.

I am still curious about a longer road trip, but not sure when we will ever get to that.  It will be an experiment when we do.

For whatever reason, Electrify America is putting their chargers at all the outlet malls.  We stopped at so many outlet malls!  I found them to be a nice place to stop because of all the restaurants and bathrooms. 

So that is a general sum up of a longer trip.  One that will be made frequently in our future, with MM attending college over there.

There was about 5 weeks in between trips.  During this time DL(15) started going back to school full-time, in person.  MH got his wish, with just driving the car around town and seeing how far he could get.  I mean, we had a few freeway trips thrown in.  If just driving to/from school/work, MH and the kids, I expect the car will probably go 350+ miles with all the regen (from braking).  

In this case, MH drove 300 miles during these 6 weeks and did not need to recharge in between bigger road trips.

That said, he did find a free charger at a movie theater.  I think it's mostly moot because at the time our nearby theater was closed.  It has since reopened.  But he is going to some other movie with free charging today (we have a gift card).  He will get about 75 miles free charge.  It may be 30 miles roundtrip diving to get there.

It may be mostly moot in the short run (with our neighborhood theater opened up) but I guess as the free movie screenings open back up, that is where he will get use out of these free chargers.  I think MH would be in heaven.  Free car charging and FREE movies!?  What else could you ask for?  😁  The free movie screenings are all over the place.

Edited to add:  Just a reminder that every EV is *so* different.  This is one of the slower ones to charge, for reference.   I wouldn't judge current EV technology based on our car choice.  We have more time than money; our primary motivation switching to EV was to save money.  This car was the sweet spot for our personal situation.  I was just reading about all the new cars coming out that will charge roughly 200 miles in 20 minutes. 

April Spending covered with unemployment funds:

--Some charitable contributions came up 

--College expenses ($300 for various orientations)

--Dining Out $200+ this month ~ this included a marvelous lunch out of town (our first restaurant meal in over a year and it was actually very good, some place a little different).  Also, MH is working on a film project and I ran out to get dinner two weeks in a row, in addition to feeding other people.   Just a lot of extra splurging.

--Vacation spending $600

This last splurge feels very redundant because...  MM(17) chose a college!  He's going to school 300 miles south along the coast (in paradise).  Lucky him!   So though we may go back several times this year for orientation, to get him moved in, etc.  This is my happy place and it's the only place I want to go.  I tried to come up with anything else but I just don't want to go anywhere else.  MH and I are going away for a couple of nights, to celebrate our full vaccination.  

Hotel is booked and paid for already.  Fuel will cost basically nothing (electric car).  Will splurge on some nice meals out while we enjoy the coast.

May Spending:

--I need to come up with a $1,500 housing (college dorm) deposit.  I am just going to use MH's unemployment money because it's less I will have to pull from savings later.  (I do have Year 1 costs set aside for college already, in cash).  

Edited to add:  Ended up paying this last weekend.

--Will also be booking Florida airfare (MH and the kids) for this summer.  Can probably cover 2-3 tickets with unemployment money.

MH should get two more unemployment checks, and then we are done.  If they automatically extend him again, he will stop certifying for benefits.  He will still be looking for work.  But, mostly we don't want to deal with the red tape and issues any more.  If he wants to take a month off from the job search to work on his movie or whatever, just wants to get back to things on his terms.  We kind of felt this way in January, but then everything has been smooth with unemployment since then.  Knock on wood.  With the extra $300 per week boost, sure whatever, was worth dealing with the hassles that came up.  But at this point we are both very over it.  He usually is off work during the summer months, so it seems a natural breaking point.  

So I am trying to fund as much as I can without touching savings.  Before we get back into one-income mode.   

Oh yeah, and in other random money spending, we picked out a tuxedo rental for MM(17).  His friends are doing a mini-prom, which is absolutely perfect.  He never would have been interested in regular prom.  He is a very casual dude and so I joked early on that he needed to do a full tux.  I think some because it would be so unexpected and us probably being more willing to fund that after a year of not much exciting going on.  Even MH (most definitely not a tux guy) liked the idea.  But at that point it was just talk.  Yesterday MM(17) committed and picked out a fancy tux.  Most of his friends are girls so they are all going to freak.  They are probably expecting him to show up in shorts.   

Goal Achieved:  $500,000 Retirement

I feel ridiculously "retirement poor".  Because we spend so little and need so little to retire comfortably.  

Because of this, I just felt so "meh" about fomulating the next retirement goal.  I started this post earlier but then walked away to give it some thought.  I decided I've had these feelings before.  We saved 75% of our income to get into a home (San Francisco) when just starting out.  After that, we saved 50% (all of MH's income) until we had kids.  After that we took a 5 year breather to have kids.   We eventually circled back and started to think about longer term goals.  Retirement was it.  It's just not that exciting.  Might have taken us a couple of years to get into a home and a couple of years to feel ready to prepare financiall to be home with kids.  But...  Retirement is more of a decades long slog. 

So I stepped away, thought about it, and decided my feelings were similar, today.  20 years ago, I think we were just feeling very financially comfortable and wanted to enjoy the fruits of that hard work.  This time around I am feeling very burned out.  2018 & 2019 were some terrible years for me.   It's similar, but also different.  I don't think I am going to start working half as much, while I get my kids through college.  😉

I decided that I don't want to make a goal and I am going to take a breather.  It will be very relative.  A relative breather.  We were saving 20%+ to retirement after MH lost his full-time job and we had our first child.  It will be same now (20%+ to retirement).  I think a lot of our "retirement poor" is just a side effect of financial and tax efficiency.  It doesn't make any sense whatsover to give up employer match or keep money in taxable accounts (that can be moved over to ROTHs).  And...  MH is looking for a full-time job.  Has absolutely nothing to do with money.  Is more about personal fulfillment.   This breather is more about taking a break from some longer-term goals.  We are also talking about investing in some non-financial things, taking some new risks. 

I am just going to leave the "$500K retirement at age 45" goal in my sidebar.  See what the market does, and where we are in another year.  See where we are at when we are 45.

I think we are going to give it 6-24 months.  In 6 months we should have a lot more clarity on the job front (MH).  If he does find a job, maybe we just buckle down and finish saving for retirement, get our home paid off.  I don't know.  What's relevant in 2 years is that DL(15) should be making his college decisions.  All of this is a lot of limbo to sort out.  So we might want not to expend too much energy on longer term plans until this stuff starts to sort out.  

This year is going to be expensive.  I am just trying to let it go and roll with it.  We are just talking about a lot of things.  This post is too long already, so will get to these things later.

Not related to our "taking a breather feelings" whatsoever, I later saw that our home had gone up 40% in value over night.  !!  We live in a city that everyone is moving to.  

It's...  depressing.  We got priced out of the city we grew up.  Apparently we are doing the same to our kids.  It makes it really impractical (too expensive) to downsize and stay here.  It's not all bad.  It makes it more practical to move closer to our parents, if they do need more help.  We are just along for the ride.  Not planning to get off this ride for another 2 years (when DL is done with high school).  I guess this is just more limbo getting thrown into the mix.  

Yeah, it's completely absurd.  We have bought in two completely absurd markets.  I...  Don't know what this is.  It's something that has never happened before.  I saw some home sold in our neighborhood for $750K last month.  I then saw Monday morning that there were people camping out and lining up for new townhomes ($1.2 Mil) in the Bay Area.  I mentioned to my boss (I work for a home builder) and he started showing me graphs of the current market.  He's just, "This has never happened before."  The housing inventory was already non-existent before the pandemic.  So that's the fuel and throw on the fire of everyone trying to move here.  I keep seeing articles that it's also impossible to find rentals here.  

{Home construction was not labeled "essential" in our state but was labeled "essential" in our region last March, which is why work has remain very unchanged for me}.

I share because it's probably pretty likely we have hit our "financial independence" goal, with this turn of events.  {Current net worth is $1.2 Mil}.  Which is of course meaningless.  Our "financial independence" goal was $1 mil plus a paid-for condo.  It's not $600K investments + $600K home equity.  (That $200K condo is now a $400K condo, with mega property taxes).  & it's made further moot by this not being a "financial independence" goal while still supporting kids and having a mortgage.  We have to cross these other things off our list first, before we can hit "financial independence" with $1 mil.

So...  I will work on re-formulating that goal.  Again, might just step away from that for a year or two and see where this roller coaster ride ends up.  I might not formulate a new goal for another year or two.  But off the top of my head, it might be $800K investments, as a new goal.  If we expect to cash out roughly $200K when we do sell this home (and downsize).  All of this can change so dramatically based on the stock and housing markets.  It may just be a goal that needs significant re-tweaking over time.  

It's still a coin flip between the two State colleges.  The schools themselves are pretty much the same in most ways (academics and job opportunities).  Both are impossible to beat from a cost/benefit standpoint. The decision at this point is purely how/where MM wants to live.  

MM told us he would decide this week.

He did get his last private school rejection last Wednesday.  (They pushed back decisions about 10 days due to huge increase in applications, so is why it's getting so late).  So yeah, the second he does decide, we need to scramble with housing applications and orientation signs ups (which opened up last week).

We dropped everything last Thursday and took him to tour both schools, to help his decision.  He toured both at some point but has been a while.  MM is so tactile, I knew it would be good for him to go see in person, as he makes his final decision.  It also gave us a chance to do our first longer trip in the electric car.  600 miles roundtrip.  Not the most practical with such a rushed trip.  But it looks like we can get away with paying -$0- for fuel if we can have more time on these trips.  (I will do another post later about the road trip/electric car). 

This is what I wrote in my first official college post in this blog (4 years ago):

Some of the ways that we expect to keep college costs down:

--Saving money ahead of time for college
--Scholarships
--MH working more while kids are in college
--Possibly finding an employer who will chip in with college costs (re: Grad school)
--Kids working in high school/college, even if just during summers
--Thinking outside the box as to housing (which is important with the high housing costs here)
--Mostly considering public colleges
--Community college (this is really what all the regional public colleges prefer these days, getting first two years done at CC, so motivation is more than just saving money)

Certainly not meant to be an all inclusive list, but in general sums up how we stayed out of college debt.

All of these things will come into play.   A college student gave us a tour of the farther away college.  One thing she mentioned was that most students take at least one online GE class at the community college every semester, because it's cheap and easy.  (Community college is currently free in our state?  Before that it cost virually nothing).  I had kind of written off community college re: the specific colleges MM applied to (beyond anything more than maybe a summer class here and there).  But maybe we will utilize after all.   

MH has voiced wanting to go back to work full-time.  I had told him to put a pin in that with the more mushy gushy private schools (more income wouldn't help our bottom line).  But...  That's all moot anymore.  He can make as much money as he wants, we might actually be able to keep some of it!  Both sets of Grandparents have offered to help more, even with the cheap public colleges.  So...  Will see if any of this sticks.  Not sure what to do with all this.  If they do both help *and* MH gets a full-time job...  We may just tackle our mortgage??  MM(17) should also be getting mega high paying summer internships, with either of these colleges.   Will see what sticks and will figure it out.  

When MM picks a college, I will go through numbers in more detail.  Will just start with my current salary and current assets.  Anything else will be gravy; not counting any eggs before they hatch. 

Vaccinated!  All of us but DL (because he is not 16 yet).  He will at the least be able to get vaccinated this summer, when he does turn 16.

They had a pop up vaccine event (in our neighborhood), intended to hit the uninsured and less privileged groups.  But...  They had 300+ vaccines leftover.   

I still am in disbelief, honestly.  Not only that one of us got a vaccine, but that we all did.

It will probably take a while to process what all this means.

Things discussed already:

--MH wanted to make travel plans to see his Grandfather this summer.

--MM(17) can (safely) get a job this summer.  We had kind of just given up the idea of our kids working at all this summer.

--MM(17)'s high school graduation seems to be a go.  I wasn't particularly enthralled with that (when a date/venue was announced a while ago).  But...  Now it seems more realistic and doable.

I am sure there is a lot I haven't thought about yet. 

Edited to add:  I personally haven't skipped any regular appointments.  So I have nothing to catch up on.  But both MM and MH have not gotten a professional cut in over a year.  They may want to get hair cuts.   

{In the end, my health insurer is highly prioritizing essential workers that work outside of the home.  & I mean, they are not following state guidelines.  They are making their own priority list.  I was offered an appointment today.  So...  I gained 3 days?!  But the leftover vaccines were *great* and life changing for MH/MM, who are at the absolute bottom of any priority list}.

If that's not enough excitement for one weekend...

My parents came up, for the first time in over a year.  My Dad took some sports photos of MM(17).  It was worth the wait!  I thought I missed the boat, but he just happened to get his uniform back a couple of months ago (they've been doing scaled down track meets this year).  So I was able to get the 'professional' sports photos I never would have otherwise gotten.  Will do a repeat when MM(17) gets his cap and gown.  My Dad will do his senior photos.

In other total random news, MM(17) gets his braces off today!  

Financial stuff:

Taxes are (were) on hold again.  I got an email about an unexpected tax loophole (unemployment in community property states).  This will save us $555.  Phew!  So glad I didn't file yet.  I was waiting for more firm confirmation (on this grey area), but got it a few days ago.  I may file our tax return tonight and get that rolling.  Especially now that we are getting a refund.

Oh yeah, I did also get confirmation in that email (from a tax publication I subscribe to) that the IRS has (or will) delay the IRA funding deadline to May 17th.  (I started typing this out a few days ago, it's been officially announced at this point).  I expect to have a lot more information by then and probably would be prudent for me to wait a while to make a final decision (Traditional versus ROTH).  But with the stock market being rocky (more oportunity to buy lower) and college costs getting more clear, I had already transferred $12,000 out of our savings account, ready to fund our 2020 ROTH IRAs.  Will probably just rip off the band aid and be done.

This still leaves $10,000-ish in addition to our 9-month emergency fund.  I updated sidebar (with stimulus and unemployment received this month).  We've got MM's freshman year of college well covered.  Will probably spend next school year (MM freshman year) saving up for Year 2 of college.  That is the rough plan, for the moment.  

Still no college decision.  MM is too busy with school.  His task for spring break is to make choice (still a coin flip) between two public schools.  Should also hear back from last college next week.   It would sure make life easier if they would get back to us before spring break.  It's plausible, but that would probably be too easy.  

Crazy Crazy Week(s)!

Things just went from 0 to 60.  Schools are opening back up (in person) this week.  We hosted guests for the first time in a year (St. Patty's Day dinner).  MH got jury duty.

& then College...

So far, we have ruled out the more expensive and more far away private colleges.  It's official that MM(17) will stay in state.  It's a super rough year on the college front, I already mentioned.  But the east coast college had 70% more applications that prior year(!) and dropped their acceptance rate from 8% to 4%.  Was a stretch anyway, but I think we are pretty shocked he didn't get into his #1 choice (LA college).  Have had some time to digest and move on.  Honestly?  We were supportive because MM was MM.  We were discussing *if* #1 college choice was $40K per year, we would make it work (with help from Grandparents).  He is extremely driven and he knows what he wants to study.  But...  Public school is so much better for *our* personalities.  Private school was so...  Complicated.  In the distance, in the cost of travel.  How MH couldn't work at all because it would just make it more expensive (he'd net nothing after increased college costs and taxes).  How we probably couldn't accept gifts, it would then be too prohibitively expensive.  I kept calling it "mushy gushy."  Public college is just so much more straightforward.  I literally wrote in my college comparison spreadsheet, "Unlimited Income and Assets!" for the public schools.  The cost won't drastically change if our personal circumstances change (for the better).

MM(17) is totally cool and fine.  He is not emotionally wrapped up in college choices.  Still has *no idea* which college he wants to go to and is a hard enough decision with just two college offers in hand. 

{Still waiting to hear back from one private college.  It's the least expensive and mushy gushy.}  

All remaining college options cost roughly the same.  One might be free tuition, the other might be free room and board.  But it all roughly comes out to comparable price (over 4 years) for all the options.  & the least expensive option has some other trade-offs.  Cost is removed as a deciding factor, for what's left.

This was my last post re: public college tuition.

Tuition and fees at our alma mater:  $31,000.  <---  That is total for 4 years (sticker price)

In addition, there is a state grant that I believe was $2K per year.  & MM is a kid who will get some scholarships.  I'd be surprised if we paid more than $15K?

In the end, the other State college is more expensive (full price is $40K; $10K x 4 years) but gave MM a substantial scholarship.  Our cost:  Probably $0.  It depends how the State Grant shakes out.  & he won't need a car there at all, which saves a lot of money.  So probably would be the most expensive school (of the schools he has been accepted to and we are waiting to hear back from), but they just leveled the playing field with a merit scholarship.  

It looks like college is probably going to be a small blip for us financially.  I am just going to enjoy that, for now.   😁 Am not going to bother worrying about any finer details until a college decision is actually made.  When the college decision is made, will work through all those finer details.  If MM needs a car, what we expect MM(17) to pay for, if we even touch his college funds (probably not), etc.  

Edited to add:  Don't have to buy MM a winter wardrobe, don't need to worry about travel/airfare costs, etc.  The cost savings are significant all around.

Final shake out of how the latest stimulus bill benefits us in direct payments and tax savings.

Stimulus (x4):

+$5,600

First $10,200 $20,400? of unemployment will be tax free for 2020:  

Tax savings 2020:  +$2,200

{I edited this part because of some tax loophole in community property states.  We probably get the full $20K and will save an extra $555 I was not anticipating.}

Child Tax Credit changes:

Tax savings 2021: +$1,000

$1,000 tax savings for DL (increased child tax credit)

I decided to just file taxes on time and not play the game with getting extra child credit for MM(17).  The more extra income we have, the less benefit we will get from playing the game.  Will opt for simplicity for over a (big maybe) few dollars.

I will check if our tax software has been updated yet for retroactive tax changes, and might just file our taxes this weekend if we can.  I already did our taxes a while ago, but then they changed 2020 tax laws.  (The work is done, but hadn't filed).

Unemployment extension:

+$5,000

MH just got renewed for another $5,000 of benefits.

Because of this, I think I am just going to bite the bullet and do ROTH IRA contributions for 2020.  I was initially hoping they'd extend IRA due dates and that I would have more time to decide.  But...  lots of college news this week and I think it's safe at this point to voluntarily pay an additional $1,500 in taxes.

-$1,500

Will use $1,500 of this money to fund ROTH IRAs. Basically, swapping Traiditional IRA deductions out for tax-free unemployment.  

Total unexpected monies:  +$12,300

$11,300 of this should be received this year (within the next month or two).

The rest will sort out when we file taxes next year.

A lot of college stuff is shaking out and I will do a separate post for that.  But it sounds like we will most likely use this money to cover college costs this year.  As of today, it looks likely that we will just stick with sidebar goals, and that college won't change anything.  Plan A was always to stick to inexpensive public colleges and to cash flow with current income.  This plan is shaping up pretty well.   

Final shake out of how the latest stimulus bill benefits us in direct payments and tax savings.

Stimulus (x4):

+$5,600

First $10,200 of unemployment will be tax free for 2020:  

Tax savings 2020:  +$1,700

Child Tax Credit changes:

Tax savings 2021: +$2,000

At the lease, $1,000 tax savings for DL (increased child tax credit)

Probably $1,000 for MM (advanced child tax credit).  Best I can determine, they can't clawback $2,000 (of advanced credits) if our AGI is below $60K.  It's $1,000 that they can't clawback if our AGI is below $90K.   I'd say the biggest unknown (re: our 2021 AGI) is unemployment income, noted below. 

MM is not eligible for this tax credit (he turns 18 this year).  He will most likely get the advanced tax credit because we have not filed our 2020 tax return yet.

Note: The catch is we can't file our tax return for a long time.  Will go on extension and plan to file around the 10/15 due date. 

Unemployment extension:

???

MH did receive his last unemployment check and it had a note that said it will automatically renew and nothing he has to do.  If that's the case, will just keep taking benefits.  (I noted in my last post we were kind of over the red tape and had already replaced two years of his income).  

Note: If we do continue to receive unemployment benefits with Fed boost, the less we can keep of advanced child tax credit for MM (who turns 18 this year).  Will evaluate as the year progresses.

I can further manipulate AGI by throwing more into my 401K, but I don't foresee doing that this year.  I need all the cash I can for college.  TBD, I guess.  I am still in the "can hope for a free ride" stage (waiting for acceptances).  

Total unexpected monies:  $9,300

It took a little time for me to find (more detailed) clawback/phaseout rules for the 2021 advanced child tax credit.  Just noting a very detailed blog post for future reference (linked below).  That's getting complicated enough, I want to at least be able to remember why I made this plan (to file our tax return 10/15).  I will get more in the weeds when I take my professional education classes later this year. 

https://www.kitces.com/blog/the-american-rescue-plan-act-of-2021-tax-credits-stimulus-checks-and-more-that-advisors-need-to-know/

I feel like every time I look at the news, there's more money raining down on us.

{I am so glad I haven't contributed to 2020 IRAs yet, or filed our tax return.  We would have had to change/amend everything.}

It seems likely this is the first year (ever) that we will go on extension.  Our taxes are very simple.  But...  As much as I had come to abhor the ridiculousness and tradition of 12/31 retroactive tax changes (which made my life mostly impossible when I worked in tax).  Making tax changes March after the year is over, is just absurd.  😠 I hope it's a 'once in a lifetime' pandemic thing and doesn't become the new way of things. 

Mostly irritated because, we really really really could have used that extra $11,000 for college.  But I put it in my 401K to avoid a tax cliff (50% tax rate).  Nothing we can do about it.  That is something I can not change.  

{This commentary is in regards to retroactively making first $10K-ish of unemployment tax-free in 2020}.

I can revise this when new stimulus is finalized, but it looks like this is probably how things will shake out.

First $10,000-ish of unemployment will be tax free for 2020:  

Tax savings 2020:  +$1,700

Child Tax Credit changes:

Tax savings 2021: +$1,750?**

At the lease, $1,000 tax savings for DL (increased child tax credit)

**Oh boy, this one is going to get complicated.  If we don't file our 2020 tax return, we will get advanced child tax credits for MM that we won't have to pay back.  At this point, maybe we just file our tax return in September (final due date).  I will have to go through the math and figure this one out.  

Thankfully, they also made this credit more refundable.  I was already targeting -$0- Federal taxes in 2021.  This could mean that we literally pay -$0- in Federal taxes but the government pays us (negative tax rate).  We pulled this off during some of our early one-income/maternity no-income years.  Our tax rate hasn't been -0- or negative since our kids were babies.

Unemployment extension:

???

I did see the latest unemployment extension being thrown around is through Labor day, or when MH's job would most likely come back anyway.

I am not sure if MH will keep looking for work or will have the patience for unemployment red tape.  We will have to run through tax and college financial aid calculators to figure out if we are getting anything net net net (with extra income).  This will be better math once we have a college decision in hand.  Unemployment has already replaced two years of his income, for reference.  We may just be happy with that and done with this red tape mess.  

Stimulus:

+$5,600

This is the amount we will probably receive.  I've never seen any AGI cutoff discussed that would affect us. Our AGI was same 2019 and 2020 (based on current tax law) and so it doesn't matter which year they pull to base this stimulus off of.  Potential new tax law just lowers our AGI even further for 2020 (which wouldn't change anything).

I actually was holding off tax filing because technically MM(17) was not eligible for the last two stimulus amounts.  It sounds like he will be this round.  I wasn't going to volunteer that he has turned 17 last year, in case he wasn't eligible for this round either.  <---This is the reason we haven't filed our tax return yet.

Phew! Thank goodness we held off.  Now, I am going to wait for unemployment taxes to sort out.  I don't want to have to amend a tax return.

I do hope they can figure this out before April 15th.  (I mean, between finalizing the bill, and getting everything programmed with tax software and IRS.  It takes time to implement tax law changes).  I don't want to go on extension, and it would be nice to know how much we could put into Traditional IRAs before the April 15th deadline.  🙄  (Depends on our AGI).

Edited to add:  This was written before I read we could get some child tax credit for MM and not pay it back, if we do go on extension.  I guess extension it is.

Total unexpected monies:  $9,050

I guess that breaks down into $5,600 expected soon and $4,700 at the end of 2021.  Minus some advanced tax credits we may have to pay back in 2022. I can't adjust my withholding to pay negative tax (or even $0 tax), so I don't have any other way to advance these monies into 2021.  But I guess it works out nicely that the government wants to advance these tax credits, July through December of this year.

If MM goes the public school route (and lives in the dorms) then that is 1000% what I am going to do with this $9,050 basically falling from the sky.   We needed to roughly come up with $10K per year.  We are going to probably pay most of the dorm costs with his college fund and it sounds like the bajillion dollars in groceries we spend (for that kid) will equate to dorm food costs.  That leaves about $5,000 that I think is mostly hyper inflated expenses (that we would be more frugal about), things MM(17) covers already (like the cost of his car), and things we expect him to pay for (books, personal expenses).  <---- He also has very generous grandparents willing to help him fill up this $5,000 bucket.  

This is really rough, but is where our heads are at with public colleges:  We will get -0- financial aid**.  I never expected any financial aid for public in-state colleges, but it's official that the financial aid reward is: $0.  (I do not seriously consider student loans as a financial aid reward).

**We are technically eligible for some automatic State grants, which sound like they may be $2k per year (for public college).  Those will take forever to sort out, so I don't know.  We are putting this in the 'not counting our eggs, but will take more money falling from the sky' category.  I expect more details in October, if he chooses a public school.

No one in our family has ever lived in a dorm (and did not go away to college, for the most part).  Though MH and I both chose not to spend our 'college money' on college, and felt we needed that more for post college housing in the SF Bay Area.  We have kept that same mindset and never really expected to use this money for college.  It's extra complicated because MM's college money is gifted from grandparents.  Too many strings and weirdness, which is also some of why I just ignore it.  So... we discussed recently and agreed that pretty much his college fund would be spent on dorm costs.  If MM is going to live in the dorms, we won't be saving this chunk of change for him to use after college.  It will be up to him.  (We won't pay it forward, if he chooses a significantly more expensive college route).

I had a lightbulb moment.  I have to back up first though.  I've gotten a few well meaning comments (over the years, in this blog) that we need to be prepared to pay for college before college starts.  ??? (& to clarify, I mean like having to pay a semester ahead of make a down payment.  Though honestly, all I see is installment payment options, anyway. We are more "pre-pay as much as we can" personalities.  I think we'd pre-pay the semester rather than deal with the hassle of more frequent payments.  But I am also hyper aware that is not normal whatsoever).  Look, I entirely put myself through college.  I know how college works.  We also have never borrowed for anything (but our home).  You don't do that just flying by the seat of your pants.  I think people are confused.  We have never tied up a penny of our money 'specifically for college.'  This doesn't mean we have no money, no plan.   MM(17) can go to school pretty much anywhere he wants to go to school, and we intend to pay cash.

Hence my lightbulb moment.  As I think through how much these windfalls mean we pretty much will be spending $0 or our own income/savings this year.  It's... 1 year down and only 3 to go!?  It's kind of blowing my mind.

I just keep thinking, "6 more years..." and so it's kind of nice to realize that it may just be "5 more years..."  College is our last big mountain before financial independence.  

GIFTS:

------

$50 Barnes & Noble (we always gift these to FIL)

MOVIES:

--------

$100 Regal

RESTAURANTS:

------------

$50 Cracker Barrel

$50 Olive Garden

$25 Chili's

$ 25 x 2 Jamba Juice (Birthday Gift)

RETAIL:

---------

$ 100 x 1 Target (Emailed/paper gift cards)

$20 Target gift card (loaded to online account)

$24 Kohls credits ($20 + $4), in wallet

$ 75 Kohls ($50 + $25)

$50 Bed Bath & Beyond (for college dorm)

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

I guess I have nothing to add or change.

I bought a lightweight stick vacuum at Target, using up the last of the gift cards I had loaded to my online account.

I was a little thrown off that we had used *all* of our gift cards.  Until I remembered it was so much I didn't want to load it all to our online account.  

So I just remembered to check, and we still have $300 paper/emailed gift cards.  Which I no doubt noted in this post (last time) that these were paper gift cards, so that I would not forget.

Phew!  I am going to hang on to that $300 for college/dorm type expenses.  That was always the plan, which was why I was thrown off when I thought I had spent it all.

We had also talked about sending this last gift card to FIL but never did.  It can be a belated birthday gift.  Probably rather just give it to him and get it out of our hair.  

My baby is going away to college.  😭

Yeah, that was always the plan.  But this year is the *worst* to apply for college.  The colleges that MM has applied to have all had record numbers of applications this year (I read one college had 30% more applications than last year).  Also, they are holding spots for 'pandemic gap year'.

We were 99.99% sure he should be able to get into our alma mater.  It's an under-rated college that is impossible to beat from a cost/benefit standpoint.  It costs nothing, and is where all the Silicon Valley companies recruit from.  But this year is so weird, I have been thinking it's good we never looked down our nose at community college.

So yesterday morning when I woke up, MH told me, "Our baby is going away to college!"  I didn't know what that meant.  He told me he officially was accepted to our alma mater.  That he has somewhere to go.

It turns out he had also been accepted at the other State University that he applied for, just didn't realize until late the next day.  That is exciting because it has a much lower acceptance rate.  This was also the only school he applied for that is not in a high-cost region, so while their fees are a little higher than our alma mater, I expect that to be offset by their lower dorm costs and generally lower cost of housing in that region.

Yeah, when MM told me last night that he had more news, I couldn't even fathom what college he might have heard from.  Their official acceptance date was April 1, and everyone is pushing back their acceptance dates.  I was most definitely not expecting to hear back from two colleges this week!

This week is just notice of acceptance, with details to follow.  But I have enough information to share.

Tuition and fees at our alma mater:  $31,000.  <---  That is total for 4 years (sticker price)

In addition, there is a state grant that I believe was $2K per year.  & MM is a kid who will get some scholarships.  I'd be surprised if we paid more than $15K?

This is precisely why we have never set aside any large dollars specifically for college. 

Community college was very much on the table for the UC route (the more expensive public colleges in our state).   They *beg* their kids to go the community college route and mostly no one listens.  This would have kept the cost at about $30K for a UC degree, if MM did first two years at community college (and likely also would be reduced by grants and scholarships).  I share because MM did not end up applying to any UCs and so we are not seriously considering community college at this point. 

We've got about 6 weeks to see how the private colleges shake out.  Maybe 7 weeks for that and financial aid.

Tracking spending (in blog) did help, it was a good way to get back into a blogging habit.  But having a calm month was probably the most of it.

That said, now I just want to take a break.  If life is calm whatsoever, I have a million things to catch up on.  So I may end up going the opposite way this month.

{I probably started this blog post 2+ weeks ago.  Clearly I went the opposite way; have not posted much.}

I do have January sum up of spending:

Notes:  

This is our 'variable' spending I guess, that I tracked daily in my blog.

In January 2020 we spent $152 on auto fuel (mostly gas), versus the $26 we spent last month.

In January 2021 we did receive 100 free miles of fuel, for the electric vehicle.  

February-to-date:

We seem to be having a unicorn month with the grocery spending, having only spent $475 on groceries (done shopping for the month).  January was weird.  Two months of this is extra weird. ($900 is more our monthly spending level)  I wouldn't be surprised if MH ends up with a $400 grocery run (for just 10 days).  At some point, there's going to be a stocking up of something more expensive.  

The only other thing of note is that we did some extra spending with unemployment money.  I think I came up with $400-$500 already spent for the first half of this month (includes that hard drive, which didn't ship/charge until February).  Mostly MH supporting musicians/comedians with online concerts and investing in his movie making passions.  Which he was doing anyway, but is where he is redirecting his time and energy during this period of unemployment and pandemic.

We did receive my final side income check ($500) and $1800 of unemployment income.  It's all going to savings (February) because we pay all bills the first of the month.  February is done, so everything rolling in this month will get saved.  But will probably reduce this $500 (extra spending) or whatever it ends up being, from next month's unemployment checks.

I personally could care less about eating out and the kids seem fine.  (We never ate out much to begin with, is probably normal for the kids to go months without eating out).  But I recognize that I am not the one cooking dinner every night.  I brought up to MH the other day, reminded him I had some Christmas cash for a dinner out.  He told me it wasn't financial, he was just being COVID cautious.  I think he decided to order out this weekend.   

I do think that some of it is that we never did take-out or delivery before (with the exception of pizza) and we all feel, "Meh, we weren't missing anything."  Cold and soggy food, and always some mistake with the order.  Literally, we are only ordering from and supporting our favorite restaurant at this point.  Home cooking is so much better.  Already kind of felt that way but could find something redeeming (sometimes) eating out at a restaurant.  If the alternative is take-out, we'd rather just make our own meals.  Heck, I think MH is just ordering from this restaurant to be nice and to support them.  I don't get the sense it is something he is overly looking forward to.  He had plans this weekend and already asked me to cook dinner all weekend, so it's not like eating out is his only way to get a night off from cooking.  (I made dinner 3 nights this week, but it was an unusual week).

I think it's official that we hit $1 mil.  !!

It feels...  extremely anti-climactic and I don't feel at all like celebrating.  But... I think it's just that it took so long (a decade) to recover from the last recession and to get back to $500K after hitting it the first time.  It's not like we are in a sunshine and roses situation right now (the world as a whole).  So I think it's mostly hard for me to find much meaning in it.

I am sure just the overall state of things is not helping.  If we could plan some extravagant weekend away to celebrate, we might.

Will see how the year shakes out and if we can still boast $1 mil when we are in a more celebratory mood.

Then...  I noticed we hit another big goal!  This one I am more excited about.

I will back up a bit.  In 2014? we made a goal to have $500K in retirement funds by age 45.  This was a super aggressive goal.  What amazes me is that how often just thinking the goal is 90% of the battle.  It puts weight on it, you believe it is possible, your subconscious takes over.  Honestly, I didn't fully believe in this goal but I did think it was possible we could reach $450K retirement funds + $50K taxable investments (earmarked for retirement).  <---- It's this goal we have reached.  Currently $465k+$35K.  Because it was the combining of two amounts, I didn't even notice when we crossed the $500K mark.  

Since forming that goal in 2014: MH found a job, we received some substantial cash gifts and the market has been on an incredible bull run.  Surpassing this goal and making it early feels like sheer luck.  

I am not ready to check off this goal.  I have two more years to make the 'age 45' timeframe of this goal.  I now think it's plausible that we can literally hit $500K in retirement funds by then.  So will keep working towards that.

I am also reluctant to make any new goals while in college limbo.  It will be another couple of months before we have more clarity on the next 4 years.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I did take yesterday off from work. 

2020 was supposed to be my first year (in 20-ish years) without a busy tax season.  Then 2020 went to hell.  So...  We try again?

Dec/Jan will always be crazy.  I just needed a break.

MH and I went on a pretty light hike close to home.  It was *amazing*.  It was only 1 mile to a waterfall.  We walk about 2 miles every day, and so wasn't ready to just turn around and go home.  We kept walking past the waterfall.  It had rained like crazy the night before and was pretty muddy.  I told MH, "I just wish there was somewhere we could just sit and enjoy the view for a while," not expecting that to pan out.  Turned the corner and there was a picnic bench.  !!  The view was amazing so we just sat there for probably an hour.  

{This was not *the* view, but was a view from the hike}

January 31

NSD

Dinner:  Chili (slow cooker, tried a new recipe)

Odometer update (January):

Hybrid: 300 miles

Electric: 575 miles

I probably roughly split the cars 50/50 for commute, plus we had an emergency out-of-town trip earlier in the month.

MM(17) seems to be resuming normal driving.  They are having track practice every day, so is same as when he drove to school every day.  I asked him to let me know his odometer number.

I did end up discovering a useful way to utilize audiobooks.  I had the energy to tackle a very neglected kitchen.  Was just about to start scrubbing when I decided I wanted to listen to my book.  I think I would actually clean once in a while if I had an audiobook to listen to.  

January 30

$10 Online Concert/Show

Dinner:  Stuffed Peppers

Stuffed peppers was a second time in the Instant Pot.  We love this recipe, but we can't figure out how to get the rice cooked.  This was try #2.  MH is just going to use cooked rice for the filling next time.  The peppers just come out so perfect.  I bet it tastes even better without uncooked rice.  😉

Reading another article about unemployment fraud and surprise tax statements, I asked MH to pull up his tax statement.  It's not ready yet, but we saw that his checks had been issued.  In the past we received a pile of checks literally the next day after he cleared a road block.  This was Friday, and he had called on Wednesday?  Not arrived yet but figured they'd be in the mail likely Saturday.

Yup, checks received today.  Roadblocks all clear.  Again.

I will front load mortgage goal for the year (I updated sidebar).  The rest went into savings.  Should get another $2,000-ish next week, which will top off our 2020 IRA funding.

I budgeted/planned for -$0- unemployment this year (and truly expected $0), so this money will all just be gravy.  MH's income would have gone to fund 2021 IRAs if he had a job, so that will be our next savings goal with extra funds.  Will also probably receive some stimulus to that end.  I expect the combo of the two will replace MH's very small income, this year.

MH bought a couple of livestream tickets the last couple of days. 

January 28

Groceries $33

Hard Drive Upgrade $163

Dinner:  Olive Garden Chicken Pasta (Instant Pot)

This is one of the better (non-soup) instant pot recipes that we have tried.  Not too dry or watery.  Came out "just right".  Was probably a million calories, but definitely a good dish for teens with high caloric needs.  

MH needed something from another store and so he did a grocery run today. 

He seemed overly confident that the unemployment office will cut him a check soon.  Just had a brief discussion about that.  I am in the "will believe it when I see it" camp.  But literally he wanted to upgrade his hard drive, changed his mind when UI was all screwed up.  Then he looked at it yesterday, the price had gone up $30 since last he tracked?  Then he looked later and the price had dropped $50.  He was telling me about that, so I figured when I saw the charge today, was why he pulled the trigger.  He told me later that the price dropped briefly for a few hours, he bought it, and then the price went back up.

We can very much afford it.  It's just his comfort level with it; he didn't want to buy it (right now) unless he knew we had extra money coming in.  He just got some random $10 refund and also had a free $50 gift card (from some electric car survey) and so the $163 he spent was net of all that.

This day was CHAOS.  It was probably this day I abandoned doing SA updates.  Yeesh!  I don't think I had a moment of peace until around 9pm.  Everyone had a tale to tell on this day.  Lots of drama.   Just a long and exhausting day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

January 29

$15 Online Concert/Show

Dinner:  Taco Rice Salad

I logged into the credit card to check spending, and there was a $90 reward to redeem.  

Also, $6 was deposited into my bank account (another monthly credit card reward).

We had't been using the grocery card (capped out annual benefit; will take a month before rewards kick in again).  & We didn't use the Target card this month (I just logged in to triple check that the balances was $0, it took roughly 15 seconds).

So...  That's the massive amount of time I spent managing rewards this month. 😉  Will invest $96 (total January rewards) some time next week.  

January 26

$22 Tax Software

$5 College Application Fee of some sort

$0 Target (Groceries)

Dinner:  Tortellini Soup (Instant Pot)

MH asked me if I needed anything from Target.  I thought about it this morning when going through and paying bills.  I checked and he has $80 in the Target cart, but we bought up a bunch of gift cards while on sale in December.  Will be $0 from our budget.

This would have put our grocery/household spending to $740 for the month (without the Target gift cards), or about $110 below budget.  It was just a weird month.  I do think some of the high calorie baking and deep fried fritters and stuff like that has maybe helped to keep the teen boys fed.  But... I think mostly it was how the timing worked out.  

As hospitals are less impacted and more people are vaccinated, I presume that MH will go back to grocery shopping every 10 days.  Once every two weeks is a *lot*.  He refuses to take anyone with him to get a second shopping cart and I feel bad adding anything to the grocery list (unless it is necessary).  So that might also be a lot of it.  Will probably just re-assess in another 10 days.

We had a whole whopping $12 balance on our dining out card, so I sent the payment in a couple of days ago.  & then I completely forgot and did it again today.  Doh.  At least it was just $12.  I will probably order a pizza some time in February, if things get less grim here.  A somewhat pre-paid pizza...

Groceries are done for the month probably, so paid off the grocery card.  I usually pay off the balance of our credit cards around the first every month (pay day) but I have the cash for such a low-spend month.   We enter every new month 'debt free'.  It's just my thing, I use the credit cards for convenience, but pay them off before the new month begins.  When I was younger and less wealthy, always utilized the float more.  Now I just don't care and like to make life very simple.  Could also be motivated by having too many credit cards (for rewards).  Rather than 'manage several credit cards' I just put them all on a monthly billing cycle and pay them all off the same time every month.  

Oh yeah, and I noticed that MM(17) paid off his credit card though he had charged $5 at some point for some transcripts (obviously for some college application).  I just sent the $5 payment to his card today, to make us square. 

So...  I had a big DOH moment when I entirely forgot to buy tax software this year.  I bought around Black Friday the prior couple of years.  Before that I was spoiled by 'free professional tax software' at work, for about 20 years.  Which is no doubt why they thought hadn't crossed my mind at all.  Anyway, I realized around New Years.  I had set up in camelcamelcamel last year (they only time I have ever used this website).  I was able to look back and see that prices are usually good around January 31.  I set up a price watch for the 2020 tax software and figured I'd probably be buying this weekend.

I did set it up to tell me if it dropped even one cent, but I didn't get a single email until today.  Dropped from $30 to 22.  Which was same as Black Friday pricing.  It is done. 

I did also put it on my calendar, for every future year, to remember to buy tax software on Black Friday. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

January 27

NSD

Dinner:  Thai Basil

Wow, what a night!  Crazy storm, not sure I remember a storm that powerful before.  60mph gusts in our neighborhood.  Mostly wind.  Surprised I got any sleep.

Decided to work from home and not navigate the mess.  I checked that electricity was on at work, but was told, "Just stay home, it's a mess."  Lots of fallen trees and electricity outages.  I personally wanted to get out of the house and not work from home two days in a row.  

MH was griping about me ending my "surge mode" and resuming normalcy next week, so I just finalized one more week with two days at home.  One day at home was what I was doing before the pandemic (this job) and the only thing that seems to really work well.  So I will resume that the following week (phew!).  But...  I am taking a 4-day weekend for the holiday so will just give it a couple of more weeks before I am literally in the office 4 days per week.  I'd say with all the year-end deadlines, it's been okay, but I think it's more about ergonomics and productivity than anything else.   I just feel more achy when I work at home. This day just happened to work better to be at home, for my flow.  In the middle of a giant deadline, and my employee was out sick anyway.  She's probably going to put a pile of stuff on my desk Thursday, but then I will be there to tackle it as it comes.  Wednesday I worked through my giant project without any distractions.  Phew!

{Oh yeah, and with the kids' school and everything, Wednesday is the best day to work from home.  Other days, we are stepping on each other's toes more.  DL has more of an independent study day on Wednesdays and less very loud band practice.  Wednesday was the day I chose in the before times because the kids had short days and I helped with that.  Also, just breaks up the week nicely.  I probably wasn't appreciating how hard it would be to work from home other days, until I tried it this month.  This is probably the first time this school year.  Last year, school was just kind of abandoned in March.}.

MH mentioned going for a walk later on this day.  I told him, "Meh, don't think I want to go outside today."  But I did later change my mind and figured it would be a more interesting walk than usual.  If there was anything canvas like a flag or a shade cover, it was all ripped to shreds.  All of the construction road signs had blown away.  I grabbed some winter jacket I bought in Utah 20 years ago.  Smart choice, but the zipper crumbled when I touched it.  MH thought I might have worn it to the snow once or twice.  Other than that, has just sat in the closet.  

I probably personally would never go outside in the winter.  & not like we get much winter anyway.  But...  With the gyms closed and everything, have been just suffering through it.

Saw more headlines of what a disaster our state unemployment system is.  But MH called and sat on hold for hour, and supposedly got his account all cleared.  Will see...   

January 24

NSD

Dinner:  Chicken  Korma (crockpot)

I think MH found this recipe for the Instant Pot but it utilized the "slow cooker" function.  So...  Why not just put it in the crockpot then?

It was *amazing*.  Only complaint:  Not enough leftovers.

I wasn't feeling great physically on this morning, and then I found out a woman I used to work with had passed away.  She was 86.  I had worked with her until she was probably about 80.  By far not the oldest person I have worked with.  But anyway, she passed away several months ago and I just found out. 

I ended up having more of a "curled up in the fetal position" kind of day. 

I just brings up a lot, the mess of illness and death that punctuated the end of that job.  Plus also brings up memories of our other co-worker that we lost to brain cancer 10 years ago.  

I snapped out of it mid afternoon and did some laundry.  Had better intentions but then didn't really do much else.  I ended up downloading some ebooks from the library.  One I could only get in audiobook format which is not my preference.  I think probably too distracting to listen to while driving, but was nice to change up my mid-day walk break.  I can maybe get into walking and audiobooks.

It has overall been so incredibly quiet and peaceful.  Really not holding my breath, but maybe feeling some optimism that I am getting out from under this black cloud.  It feels...  weird.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

January 25

Groceries: $322

MH allowance: $15 (movie?)

Dinner:  Spaghetti Pie

MH did a big grocery run.  Once every two weeks, until things settle.  Maybe one more two-week run, will see.  Or I guess, probably would wait two weeks but then can probably do a 10-day run at that point.

I almost didn't even check the credit card, because it's like been over 10 days since MH bought anything?  But it did cross my mind to check and I did see that MH had spent $15, probably on a movie.

Work was strangely calm and peaceful today.  I have some big deadlines and there's never enough hours in the day.  But...  When everything isn't constantly a disaster or an emergency and I can actually have peaceful nights and weekends...   My stress level is around a zero right now.  It's a noticeable weird shift, that I noted in my last post.  It just feels...  weird.  But good.  GOOD weird!

I did enter all my February income/bills in my electronic check register.  I have a good idea how the credit cards will sort out, with grocery spending done for the month.  Thankfully, we seemed to squeak by without any over-spending.  MH did receive a $100 check from my parents (for his birthday) which helped with his extra spending earlier in the month.  

I don't know what the odds are that MH's unemployment will sort out.  Now there's headlines that people have to pay back unemployment in our state!?  UGH!  (People who did everything the state said, but the state wasn't following Federal rules?).  I mention because am not holding my breath on any unemployment income this year and am very much in one-income mode.  Which is why I am happy that we navigated January spending so easily.

January 22

NSD

Dinner:  Goulash (Instant Pot)

Dinner did not turn out so well on this day.  If anything, most dinners have been too watery in the Instant Pot.  But this one went the opposite way. 

I have some days to get caught up on...

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January 23

Allowance Spending (Moi): $139

Dinner:  Garlic Chicken Parmesan (Instant Pot)

Tried a new recipe, dinner was okay.

For some time I was exposed to so little advertising that most of my spending trigger (the past few years) has been SA.  Seeing people talk about purchases or things that sound interesting.  We stopped watching TV commercials 20 years ago (when we got our first DVR) and probably have our computers well equipped with ad blockers.

But alas, the social media ads are getting very creepy in a 'reading your mind' kind of way.  I expect I've made it worse during pandemic by sticking to just shopping online.  Probably didn't do much clothes shopping online before.

The other pitfall was free shipping.  I was just about to pull the trigger on a $40 purchase, and just going to eat the shipping because didn't really want or need anything else.  But thought about it more carefully and thought of some things I could use.  Couldn't find what I needed and then just ended up shopping more.  Spent $100 on clothing and jewelry.  After that I circled back to some cute shoes I saw and resisted earlier, but at least found them cheaper on Zappos.  The clothing I will most likely just donate what I don't end up liking in person.  But the shoes I will 100% return if they don't fit (they likely won't).  

{During normal times, if I do shop online I would just go return in store.  In this case, not even sure if a local brick and mortar store exists.  Have expanded my shopping horizons a bit during the pandemic, trying other stores besides just the one in my neighborhood}.

That said, this is all very typical of my spending style.  I did look it up and I haven't bought any clothing in 3 months.  If I spend $150-ish every 3 months, that's my $600 per year *blow money*.  

The line between clothing and *blow money* is probably blurry.  In this case, was 100% nothing I needed whatsoever, and so was obviously *blow money*.

Edited to add:  Shoes arrived and did not fit.  As expected.  I would pay anything pretty much, for shoes that fit my feet.  Makes my total spending $100, but won't get the return processed until next month.

Onion Fritter recipe:

https://www.justapinch.com/recipes/side/vegetable/amish-onion-fritters.html

This was the easiest recipe.  So I figured I would share.

MH is really not into anything greasy or deep fried.  In that vein, I just got a small frying pan and covered the bottom of the pan with oil.  With the small pan, wasn't using tons of oil, and was never going to use as much oil as the recipe called for.   

But...  Because it was a small pan, once I filled it with onion/batter, the oil covered half the fritters anyway.  The first few came out absolutely perfect.  My husband commented on maybe turning down the heat or cooking longer on some of the later ones, because they were more doughy.  I told him it was because I was running out of oil and they were less "deep fried".  Which I knew would overall be his preference (doughy) if the alternative was just more oil.  I don't think anyone really cared, there were none left when I was done making them.

January 20

NSD

Dinner:  Black Bean Soup

This was an instant pot recipe that MH tried before.  I told him to put it on my list to make this week.  It was so good and so easy to throw together, I told him to just put it in the rotation every grocery run. 

It calls for dry black beans.  Takes about 1 hour to cook (getting to pressure and cooking) and probably about 1/2 hour of slow pressure release.  

The one thing I would do differently is start earlier.  Is a good recipe for a work-at-home day.

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January 21

NSD

Dinner:  Loaded Bake Potato Soup (Instant Pot) & Onion Fritters

The bacon we had on hand had gone bad.  But the soup came out really good without the bacon.  

I just happened to see an onion fritter recipe that looked really good/easy.  Decided to do the second dinner thing again.  Though probably worked out as a good side with the potato soup.  I just didn't get around to making it until after dinner.

MH *loves* onions.  I have no idea why on earth I never made a recipe like this before.  It was so good and everyone went crazy for them.

Every one of our age 65+ CA relatives have received round 1 of COVID vaccine.  Woohoo!

I feel like I have to pinch myself, I must be dreaming.

The exception...  Some allergy (a flu vaccine ingredient) was incorrectly noted in my Dad's file and by the time he got that cleared up, he had to wait two weeks to get his first shot.  I am really upset about that.  He probably has the most health risk of all of them, which is why I am upset.  But I did see yesterday some headline that it could take 4 months to get through all the 65+ in our state.  It gives me some perspective.  Clearly he is still very front of the line, and I should just be grateful he was only delayed two weeks.

This was such good news, it warranted a separate blog post.

We are most definitely not out of hell yet, but there's some significant strides in a better direction this week.

January 18

NSD

Dinner:  pasta with sausage and artichokes

MH put the recipe away and I don't remember the formal name.  Just something he threw together on the stovetop.  

I had figured I would likely work from home on Monday, due to emergency stuff the night before.  In the end, I got home at a reasonable enough time Sunday night.  Working any less in the office just gets too complicated.  So I decided I had enough sleep to be able to go into the office.

It was nice working the Holiday.  It felt like I got more ahead instead of more behind.  Phew!  Hadn't really anticipated that, but it was strangely quiet.  It was well needed after the last few work weeks.

Hell froze over and I had the energy to get some chores done around the house after I got home.  As an early bird, the flip side is that I am pretty useless after work.  So it felt good to get some stuff done that needed to be done.

Oh yeah, and the weather was *gorgeous* today.  72F degrees at some point, I took a half hour walk in the middle of the day.  I always walk, but it felt nice to get some so much sun, and did a slightly longer walk than usual.

In the evening, I was craving pancakes (the ones I recently made were so good).  I figured my kids could use a second dinner anyway.  They did not disappoint.  The kids devoured their second dinner.  I later saw MM(17) going back for cereal and ice cream.  (& I am sure that is not all he ate, is just what I saw).  He ran 8 miles.  Which is more than he has ran in about 6 months, so I expect some major food spending in our near future.  In full training mode, he will run 8 miles most days.  That is when our grocery bill gets insane.  

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January 19

NSD

Dinner:  Sausage & Kale Soup (Instant Pot)

Tried a new recipe that was an A+.  It was pretty much Zuppa Toscana without the cream.  I like it better without.  I think everyone in my house did.  It was also beans instead of potatoes, so probably quicker to throw together.