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Leveraging Technology

June 29, 2022 Robin and I continue to get acclimated with Summit’s Climbr® tool, we’ve got almost all our accounts linked in – and it feels good to join the 21st century and leverage (free) technology available to help inform out family’s finances. Our initial reactions are that it will be super helpful, and convenient to have a snapshot of all our accounts – from multiple financial institutions, in a single spot. Another nice feature is the ability to link other accounts besides the standard savings, checking and credit cards. We have our mortgages, auto loan, Edvest savings account as well as 401k & 403b retirement accounts linked as well – for a wholistic overview of our accounts, assets and liabilities. The categorization feature for organizing expenses by type will definitely be invaluable as Robin and I formulate a more detailed household budget. The system automatically categorizes the expenses – also allowing for adjustment, or even splitting the categorization into multiple categories for an expense. Climbr has a function to set the categorization and title (did I mention you can also include descriptive titles for each expense too?) for all similar transactions – which will be great for our family on things like daycare expenses. Within the Spending by Category dashboard, which has different period options – weekly, monthly, quarterly or biannual, provides and overview of what was spend within each category and includes different charting options (pie, bar and graph). Looking at this data for the first time as a family, the recurring costs – mortgages, car loan, utilities and childcare expenses came in about where we expected. What was a little surprising to us was the percentage of our budget going to the Dining Out category. Robin and I wouldn’t consider ourselves foodies or a family that routinely goes out to eat, but nevertheless the amount we are spending here is fairly significant. Able to drill down in Climbr, it looks like there are a lot of “convenience” meals – usually just for one of us, a quick lunch for me or breakfast for Robin while we are on the road, which end up adding up over the course of the month. The next steps for us are to continue to leverage the functions of Climbr and start to build out our budget within the tool, as well as entering in some of our family’s goals. Having the budget in the same location of our expenses will help us set up our initial budget – and will also allow for accurate and up to date tracking of how we are doing each month based on our budget. You might also be interested in As the year comes to a close, so does Season 14 of Project Money. In preparation for writing our final blog post we reflected over what has occurred over the last 6 months and the strides our family has made. Below, in no particular order, are a few of the highlights from our journey: In the last week we had to take Robin’s car, a 2019 VW Atlas, in for a couple of recall notices we had received. Nothing completely out of the ordinary and wouldn’t have any out-of-pocket costs – so it wasn’t something that we had put much thought or effort into – outside of scheduling the appointment. Unfortunately, what we anticipated being a ~1 hour visit ended up being 5+ hours and spurred a larger discussion. One of the topics we had mentioned in our posts from earlier this year was an employee stock purchase plan offered by Robin’s employer. We have never participated in any stock purchase plans before through our employers but being a bit more vigilant as part of Project Money, we decided to give the program further consideration. Being part of Project Money has pushed our family to take a more active role in managing our finances, necessitating weekly conversations that have spurred growth from both educational and fiscal perspectives. One of the topics we had discussed was micro investing, investing small sums of money in fractional shares of stock or ETFs. With Thanksgiving behind us, the countdown to Christmas has “officially” begin. This year, as part of our Project Money journey, we have been planning to approach things a bit differently when it comes to our holiday budgeting. I had been putting this off for a few weeks/months now, optimistic that Fall might stretch on a little bit longer – but this past week’s winter weather brought with it a reality check, it’s time to replace the tires on my vehicle. I’ve just started to research pricing at local tire shops and trying to narrow down which tire choices will be the best value – both in related to cost and performance in wet/winter weather. I’ve also been checking some of the retail stores, Costco in particular. Over the last few weeks, we have been working to refocus, and get back to some of the basics as we start to head into the end of year holiday season. Over the past few weeks and months, I had seen several news reports about I Bonds, usually with a corresponding endorsement of their attractiveness as an investment in today’s market. I’ll be honest, my only experience with bonds was a savings bond that I received as a child – and I can remember waiting for what seemed like an eternity until I (and the bond) were old enough to cash in. After that I haven’t given them much thought until the past couple weeks. We have reached the point of the year where we have one foot firmly planted into heating season and thought we would reflect on what energy saving tips we have used previously and are currently using to help reduce our bills. 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