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June 20, 2022 Robin and I headed into this week with a sort of nervous excitement in kicking off our family’s journey on Season 14 of Project Money. Excited for the experience, knowledge and tools that we will gain over the next six months and the realization that this adventure will be helping us to achieve our financial goals long after the season is over. Nervous to confront some of our spending habits that may not be the most prudent in order to achieve those goals, and also for coming out of our shells a bit to share our experiences – good and bad – with you.Our introduction to Project Money was this last fall when we became Summit Credit Union members. We had just closed on a mortgage, and I was perusing the Summit website to try to figure out which checking account would be right for us, and last season’s Project Money caught my eye. It was intriguing as the mortgage we had just closed on was on a rental property, and while we did our due diligence on the purchase it is still a bit of an unnerving realization that we now need to manage at least a portion of our finances like a business. Reading through the experiences from that season inspired us to apply and begin to re-evaluate our personal financial situation, and how this new challenge/opportunity in the rental property would play a role.Robin and I are coming into this journey with the realization that although we have some of the framework for success in our family’s financial goals, there are some gaps in our strategy. We have made a lot of individual decisions impacting our savings and debt, but I don’t know if we have a complete understanding of the wholistic picture, and how each of those individual decisions may be impacting one another. One of the more obvious gaps is our lack of a family budget. We have a fairly comprehensive understanding of what our monthly recurring expenses are, things like childcare expenses, utility bills, insurance, mortgages and our vehicle loan. What we don’t have much insight on is what we are spending on things like groceries, gas, entertainment and other household expense each month. It’s something we haven’t been tracking, and a source of some of our nervousness – not knowing what habits we have picked up in our spending that we’ve become accustomed to but should curb to align with our goals.What we hope is that you’ll stick with us through our journey, and that the experiences through the remainder of the year are helpful, insightful or cautionary (hopefully not the latter) to you. 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... 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... 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... 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... With Thanksgiving behind us, the countdown to Christmas has “officially” begin. This year, as part of our Project Money journey, we have been planning... 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... 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... 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...
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