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Ready For The New Year

December 14, 2022 During the week of November 23, we wrote about how we were going to look into options for cost-saving measures. One of those measures was to analyze any balance transfers that may have been available to us. One of this balance transfers ended up being a very good offer, 0% interest for 18 months with a 3% transfer fee. It was time to take a couple small balances and one larger balance and combine them into what will be one card payment using this balance transfer offer. If I only paid the minimum balance (which I don't – I always do more), this will not only allow me to pay off the balance in half the time, but I will also be saving almost $4,500 in interest! 
We also re-evaluated HELOC (home equity line of credit) opportunities that we had previously considered but decided, for now, it isn’t the right option for us. Instead, we will focus on balance transfer(s), reviewing spends such as subscriptions, streaming services, and those hidden ‘nice to haves’.
Recently, we also had the chance to finally connect with a financial advisor. With the advisor, we will be reviewing current investment opportunities and retirement accounts. Not only our 401Ks and what the current allocations are at, but also looking at our IRAs (which, side note - are just sitting in an account – not invested! If you have an IRA – double check and see if it's invested or not!), and our HSA accounts as they are to the amount where we can invest them. While we still have more than a year left on our vehicle lease, since used vehicles are in great demand right now, our financial advisor also wants to take a look at our current vehicle terms and see if trading it in would be (financially) beneficial for us.
End of the year finance tips we've learned:
  • Check the beneficiaries on your retirement, life insurance, etc... accounts - especially if you have had a 'life change' (divorce, marriage, etc...) to ensure the proper person/people are named.
  • Check your pay statements to ensure your correct address is listed, so your W2 and other 2022 tax items arrive promptly at the correct address in January. (Especially important if you moved!)
  • If possible – max out and/or provide additional contributions to your 401Ks, IRAs, HSAs and elsewhere
  • If you changed jobs in the past year and wanted to rollover your retirement account to your new employer before the year end, many don't allow you to past the middle of December, so start on that now.
  • If you have an FSA account that doesn't roll over, remember "if you don't use - you lose", and spend those funds you already set aside on approved  . 
  • Check your PTO balances! Did you know that 55% of Americans do not take their PTO?! If you have a balance, check to see how much you can roll over and if any hours cannot (be rolled over) – TAKE YOUR PTO! While PTO may not necessarily benefit your financial situation (unless you can pay it out, of course), it is part of your overall benefits package and self-care, so take that time off!
  • If you are a Starbucks drinker, check your Starbucks Stars accounts.  We had some that were going to expire in a few weeks, so, in tandem with Chai’s 2nd birthday celebrations, we treated ourself over the weekend and made sure to get Chai a pup cup!
We are excited to re-assess our accounts during the few remaining weeks this month. This will not only give us a chance to look at how far we've come in the program these past six months, but will also help us to identify, re-assess, and create a plan of action for 2023.
Our participation in Project Money has given us helpful tools to put in place for what we believe will be a great New Year! You might also be interested in Whew and wow! This has been quite a challenging and eye-opening process! It has been very hard to do this project as part of a couple when both of us appear to handle finances and money very differently. If I’ve learned one thing it’s that you can start out with very similar goals and desires but unless you are actually working hard towards them each week, they aren’t easy to maintain collectively! While we probably aren’t in last place, we sure aren’t in first either and that's okay. During the week of November 23, we wrote about how we were going to look into options for cost-saving measures. One of those measures was to analyze any balance transfers that may have been available to us. One of this balance transfers ended up being a very good offer, 0% interest for 18 months with a 3% transfer fee. It was time to take a couple small balances and one larger balance and combine them into what will be one card payment using this balance transfer offer. This past weekend, we took our annual trip down to Chicago, which was also paired with a trip to the theater. With being in Project Money, have been more conscious of our trip expenses and we heavily discussed if we just go down for just the evening or spend the night, like we normally do. With traffic and the unknowns of early winter weather, we decided it would be best to spend the night down there, and so we did. Something that stands out lately are the number of outlets competing for one’s time, attention, and especially our hard earned money. I don’t know about you, but it can be exhausting dodging solicitations and avoiding temptation left and right, especially around the holidays! It seems I can’t make a move without a text, email, phone call, commercial, mailer, advertisement, etc. attempting to draw me in on the next latest, greatest thing I supposedly ‘need’ to buy. Ah, consumerism. If it wasn't so cold out right now, we might not believe that the end of the year is fast approaching, but alas – it is! With that, we have been starting to crunch our numbers and see if we met our savings and debt payoff goals for this year and are starting to make some savings goals for next year. To assist with this, we have also started looking at what are current expenses are, current loan and credit card rates and seeing where we might be able to cut additional costs by either canceling services, negotiating costs and/or switching companies. Initially, we weren’t sure exactly what to write about for this week’s blog post. However, the subject came to us this past weekend as we were reviewing certain aspects of our finances. We both have credit card debt we are working on paying off and recently made sizable progress towards that goal. However, we’ve noticed that our low interest credit cards have recently experienced additional hikes in their APRs (and appear to continue climbing). For example, one credit card has now climbed to from 9.9% to 15.85% due to varying APR with the market based on the Prime Rate. Many of us enjoy hosting parties with friends and family for seasonal activities and Holidays but don’t want to break the bank doing so! For me and Krystal, a Fall Halloween event is one of our favorite gatherings we host each year with close loved ones. Here are some of our money-saving tips to ensure sure the fun doesn’t become overshadowed by ghastly receipts! I don't know about you, but I, Krystal, grew up in a pretty cold house during winter. We lived in a rural-ish area where natural gas did not run, thus propane was our main heating source, until my father installed a wood stove when I was late middle-school age. Nevertheless, the heat in our house was turned down low (better for breathing we were always told, too!) while we slept and were away at work or school. One thing we’re still working through is being a bit more proactive about unexpected house costs. Sure, we have small savings account for house expenses, but mostly this is to cover our homeowner’s insurance deductible. Like my father taught me with my car insurance deductible, I try to pretend this money just doesn’t exist, thus, why we need to plan better for those unexpected house-related costs.  This week’s two unexpected costs were our dryer needing a repair and our fence project taking a lot more money than expected. 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