Zetta's Striving to Get Rich Slow

Quarterly Goals Review 2009 Q3

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:03:06 PST

Quarterly Goals Review 2009 Q3
I wrote up this list of Goals for 2009 in February. Looks like I forgot to do my quarterly goals review in March and June! Now that it's September, let's see how we're doing. Items marked X* are finished, but occurred later than the designated quarter.

Q1...

It's a control thing...

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 04:07:15 PST

I try to download all our transactions and update our YNAB budget twice a month. I'm not rigorous about it by any means and sometimes do it just once a month. Just by luck, I happened to update it on Friday, and discovered a fraudulent charge that occurred on Thursday -- $255.42...

Finally got the wills started!

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 07:35:52 PST

When I started my blog 2.5 years ago, one of the first goals I listed was to get our wills updated. Talk about procrastination! We finally met with a lawyer yesterday, and should have everything signed in a month. I had set up a will and trust before we married, and DH had never...

Earning interest on cash

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 08:29:08 PST

After tracking our spending for August, I took a glance at the various accounts we have at E*Trade. We sure have a lot sitting in cash, and getting lousy interest rates:

Money Market: $33k @ .4%
DH investment: $20k @ .4%
Savings: $17k @ .8%
Checking: $ 7k @ .4%

I...

Passing on a sweet house

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 06:27:40 PST

I love our current location. DH works 5 minutes away, and we're in a little sweet spot that is a reverse commute from most areas of the city. We're on a canyon, and get breezes that come in from the ocean keep our house cool enough that we almost never run the A/C. The beach is...

Great return on ESPP

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 03:06:09 PST

DH invests 12% of his salary into the company employee stock purchase plan (ESPP). Every six months, the plan purchases shares. My understanding is that they look at the market prices on the first and last day of the plan period, and then take an additional 15% off the lesser price.

The...

Not impressed with the farmer's markets

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:18:09 PST

A new farmer's market recently started on Tuesday afternoons near my son's preschool, and I decided to check it out. I was not impressed to say the least. First of all, half of the market wasn't even food -- just junky impulse purchase stuff, tupperware, etc. The next quarter was...

Adjusting the budget for twins

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 06:08:19 PST

The twins are due in November, and I'm planning to quit working Oct 1, so I've been looking over our budget to figure out where to cut back. I think we need to cut about $675 per month to make it work. Here are some numbers based on averages for Jan-Jun this year.

DH pay after...

Planning for twins

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:41:09 PST

We had the 18 week level 2 ultrasound this week, and I'm excited to announce that the babies are both girls! It was extremely cool to see the babies' hearts -- you could clearly see all four chambers and watch the valves moving as the heart pumped. They took measurements of all kinds...

Happy News

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Sat, 30 May 2009 09:21:56 PST

I've been on pins and needles waiting until it was safe to share my news -- we're expecting twins! They are due in November.

I've made some comments in the past about how we dearly wanted another child but were having difficulties. We were fortunate to be able to affort a few...

My brother's thoughts on mutual funds

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 05:25:29 PST

My brother was here for a visit this week, and we had an interesting conversation about mutual funds. My dad used to be a stock broker, and now works for a mutual fund company that sells actively managed funds that carry a load. Of course he believes that you're getting the value...

2008 Taxes

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 12:03:41 PST

I finished the taxes a couple of weeks ago, but only now am getting around to blogging the results.

Gross Income: $244k
Adjusted Gross Income: $229k
Taxable Income: $157k
Total Federal Tax: $44k
Payments: $38k
Federal Tax due: $6k
Effective Federal Tax Rate: 13.94%

State...

Financial Fire Drill

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 01:30:00 PST

There are rumors that there may be layoffs at DH's employer in 3 months time. We don't think he is likely to be affected because he is in an engineering group designing a core product -- the support staff and less central projects are likely to get hit first. But it seems a good...

Quarterly 2009 Goals

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 07:50:00 PST

I decided to reformat my 2009 goals list to make it quarterly. Hopefully this will motivate me to check it quarterly, instead of waiting until the end of the year.

Q1 Goals 2009
[ ] Call will and trust lawyers friends have recommended, pick one.
[ ] Fully fund 401(k): $4,125...

Computer blues

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 07:28:45 PST

How annoying! I woke up early this morning, and decided it would be a good time to try and do my quarterly review on our investments while DH and DS are still asleep. Wouldn't you know it, my brokerage's system is down for maintanence and I can't get into my account. Grrrr. Plus...

DOW down to 7500

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 07:17:59 PST

My dad, a former stockbroker who now works for a mutual fund company, called me yesterday afternoon. He said the DOW was down to 7500 and he wanted to add $1,000 to my son's 529 account. He asked me to go ahead and make the purchase and he would send me a check. Thanks, Dad!

It's...

Squirt bottle blues

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:08:32 PST

I haven't blogged in quite a while. My 3 year old son LOVES to clean, and I let him have a squirt bottle of this Pledge stuff that is supposed to be safe for wood, glass, stainless steel, and electronics. So no worries about what he might be squirting, right? WRONG! Usually I keep...

A look back at 2008 goals

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:16:44 PST

I decided to look back at my 2008 goals and see how I did. (Hmmmm...sounds like I need to involve DH more so that in 2009 it will be "our" goals and the review will be how "we" did!) Although I know our gross income for the year, I won't really know our net income until after we...

Our loan details weren't what I thought

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 08:02:22 PST

I decided to take the time to go back and look up the details on our 10-1 ARM. Turns out I was wrong about a few key points, like how much the interest rate could adjust initially and each year thereafter.

For my future reference in plugging into loan calculators:
inital loan...

Considering re-financing

tonyamurray@sbcglobal.net (Zetta) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 09:33:56 PST

My neighbor is a real estate agent, and a few days ago he emailed a bunch of his friends and clients to say that interest rates had just taken the biggest single-day drop he'd ever seen, and he thought it possible that conforming loans (< $418k) might briefly go below 5%.

It sounded interesting, so I contacted the mortgage broker he recommended. She said that currently a 30-year fixed is 5.375, with closing costs of $2k-$3k. She asked me at what rate we would be interested in refinancing.

We are 5.5 years into an ARM loan that is fixed at 5.125 for 10 years, and then can only adjust 1% max per year. My first instinct was to go ahead and lock in at 5.375. Then I decided to play around with some mortgage calculators:

Payment calculator:
http://www.hughchou.org/calc/missing.cgi

Loan comparison:
http://www.hughchou.org/calc/loancomp.cgi

It turns out that at a fixed rate of 5.375, we'd pay an extra $5,500 over the next 4.5 years (plus $3k for closing costs), and then it would take another 3 years before we'd be better off than leaving the $3k in a savings account earning 3%. (I assumed the adjustable rate stayed at 6.125). So it doesn't seem worth doing right now.

Of course, the story might be different if interest rates spike sharply 5 years from now, so that we ended up paying 6.125, then 7.125, then 8.125, etc.

I haven't played with this ARM calculator much yet, because I need to look up some of the details like which index we're using:

Advance ARM calculator:
http://mortgage-x.com/calculators/pay_option_arm.asp

The worst I could do with the calculator was raise the index by .5 per month. Here's how the payments might go up in that case:
Jun 2012: $2,254.18 (5.125%)
Jun 2013: $2,412.80 (5.946%)
Jun 2014: $2,605.85 (6.946%)
Jun 2015: $2,798.56 (7.946%)
Jun 2016: $2,990.05 (8.946%)
Jun 2017: $3,179.47 (9.946%)
Jun 2018: $3,212.48 (10.125%)

The worst case in 2018 looks scary, but I feel pretty comfortable sticking with the current loan through 2014. There's a chance we might decided to move to a better school district between now and then.

If a fixed-rate loan went down to 4.75, on the other hand, we'd break even after 2 years, and it would be worth it to refinance.

Here's another ARM vs fixed calculator:
http://www.dinkytown.net/java/MortgageArmvsFixed.html