It’s January, so now’s a good time to look back over the year 2021 and post about our total expenditures. There was a time when I did monthly expense blogs, but alas I’ve fallen off these types of posts as my blog bandwidth has narrowed and my blog posts have slowed down. Pursuing FIRE isn’t the easiest in an ultra high cost of living area like San Francisco, but it’s not impossible. This is the land of the $8 dollar…
May felt much like a blur, as I’m at a loss right now for any notable events that occurred. I’ve started refinishing my kitchen cabinets. We bought our return tickets from Portugal and an Airbnb. I’m very much in my grind at work, if it can be called a grind. More like a routine. I love routines and habits, especially when they make you a better person, but I also believe that too much routine is what makes life speed…
March felt a little like a down hill leg of a race for me and the family. Time is moving faster. I can feel it. I got into cycling at the beginning of the month, and it manifested itself into my wife and I purchasing entry level road bikes at a decent price at the end of the month. How’s that for a slippery slope? At work, my work load is reaching levels I haven’t felt in quite some time….
February. The ancient Romans called it Februarius and it marked the start of spring for their empire two thousand years ago. Back then of course, Februarius didn’t occur at the same position of the earth’s axis as it does now. The ancient Romans used Februarius as the time to plan for the upcoming good weather and prepare the fields. And so we followed suit in the Happily Disengaged household even though it’s not quite spring. The warm weather allowed us…
In January we didn’t have a mortgage to worry about and we took a spur of the moment trip to the Sierra Nevada for a weekend getaway for the MLK holiday weekend. While I usually dislike spur of the moment money spending, this trip to the snow was exactly what we needed as a family; just a few days out of our house in new surroundings doing absolutely nothing. Somehow we managed to stay in the black this month despite…
December finances…we ended up spending more than we have in quite a while last month. It’s always annoying to see our expenses fly through the roof after doing well for a period, but this is life, I tell myself. I’d like to think our budget-busting was for good reason. Our home refinance went through and relinquished the January mortgage payment, and they ended up loaning too much to pay off the old escrow account. So a check for $2,000 was…
In November, we reduced our after-tax auto investments into Vanguard by 80%. While it stung a bit to reduce these investments, seeing my Wells Fargo checking account fill back up felt even better. Mrs. Disengaged especially likes the “cash cushion” and I’m a happy wife happy life subscriber. Now that we’ve eased the cash burden from some of our fall escapades, we will reengage our typical weekly investment amount starting this first week of December. Not to mention a bit…
For the first time since we’ve made a concerted effort to pursue Financial Independence, we have to temporarily reduce our after-tax investment purchases of VTSAX this November. An RV road trip vacation in September and our 10 year marriage anniversary weekend in Yosemite in October, sucked out all the buffer we had in our checking and saving accounts—and actually left us chasing our credit card balance in October. Not good. Minimal cash in my bank means more market exposure, but…