OK I have finally got the point after getting two daughters through college and established and a son ready to go to to college and I got that money OK, now I got to my “safety net” savings goal of $5,000. I now have $4,912. I almost made it.
Tonight I bite into something and my front tooth breaks and the cap next to it comes loose. I guess I bit really hard.
Now that means probably a root canal and a recapping or maybe a bridge, who knows.
First of all, yes I know, I should shut up and just be thankful that I have enough savings to pay for this. This is what savings it for. I also am thankful because a lot of members of this board would kill to have that much money and need dental work.
So I respect their situation.
But on some level, it bugs me, that I just can’t get ahead to where I want to be. Whenever I save money for the purpose of having a cushion, something comes up. I just can’t get ahead.
So anyone else have any “I just can’t get ahead” stories related to finance?
My friend will be teaching English in South Korea for a year and I’d set aside some money to go visit her. Then my phone got stolen, and long story short, I had to pay AT&T $469 for the pleasure of no longer being a customer with them.
So, at least I had the money set aside. That said, I’m still broke after spending such a large amount and I pretty much don’t have any savings.
I’m 22, so I’m taking that as a life lesson and will start budgeting better so I can have a bit of a safety net. I figure spending the money to go to Korea is a bit silly too at this point.
Not recent, but many years ago, after being part-time after the kids were born, we had a largeish amount of credit card debt. Then Typo Knig got a big bonus for Christmas - enough to pay off that credit card bill. Yay!
Then his car was totalled 3 days later.
The loan on a new car, after applying everything insurance gave us for the old one, was almost exactly what the credit card balance had been. So, at least we just had the car payment, not the car payment + credit card payment, but still…
Was talking on the phone to friend about what a fine idea it would be to go to a beach somewhere and have drinks with little umbrellas brought to us. My cat decided the dollars would be better spent on emergency bladder surgery.
Years later, as part of my Financial Advice for Young People lectures, I specifically advised my foster daughter never to mention “extra” money in the presence of one’s pet, car, or major appliances.
Make sure a portion of your paycheck goes to some kind of savings. If it’s a pre-tax withdrawl, you won’t even miss it, and at least you’re saving SOMETHING…EVERY MONTH…No Matter What.
Is it a lot? Not really…with the ups and downs in the market, mine is only $50k or so after 15 years of savings…but it’s $50k I wouldn’t otherwise have, and haven’t missed (because I wouldn’t have HAD it)
My game plan was to have three or four funding streams for retirement:
Paid off House
401k
PERA
??? (Inheritance, money from selling that collectible that turned out to be worth bank, etc.)
Only to find, as I get older, that I’ll probably also need:
5. To work a couple days a week to put food on the table.
Once the House is paid off, you can downsize if necessary, then your cost of living really drops…especially if a couple days a week the cash flow is POSITIVE (working) rather than NEGATIVE (Trips to Far Away Locale, or Golfing, or ???)
For the OP, don’t get too concerned. As you get older things do get easier and you strangely accumulate money. Maybe not a fortune but enough to be comfortable. of course by then you may no longer want to spend hours on a beach or whatever.
Before this spirals into whining I want to acknowledge that I’ve been fortunate/blessed/however you’d describe it to have my needs met in surprising ways, and I’m truly thankful.
My story is the same yours BeaMyra, just on a different scale. There’s always something. A car repair, dental work. My son is a freshman in high school. I have nothing saved for his education, and I consider that a huge failure on my part.
Things were on an upward swing and then my state deregulated utilities and gas prices skyrocketed and my monthly bills went up by just about the same amount as my income.
Most recently my car’s transmission has started slipping. It’s a '97 Hyundai with 110k miles … but no payment. I don’t have cash saved to buy another beater, or to use as a down payment on a newer car. I don’t want a loan. I have debt I’m chipping away at.
Yeah, most people’s financial situation improves markedly as they get the kids out of the house. Kids are expensive, and there’s a pretty small window when you truly realize just how expensive, because after a while the extra expenses are so integrated into your life you don’t even see them anymore.
This is why I never wanted kids. Not criticizing the OP’s choices, of course. But for me, I noticed early on that people without children had boats, extra houses and other neat toys. Having kids wasn’t important to me in the first place, so it was a no-brainer.
So at age 40 I’ve been able to leave a career I didn’t like, have a paid off home and take a year off just because I felt like it. No way I could be this far “ahead” if I’d had kids.
Have you ever logged every time you spent money for an entire week? A month? I was taught that as a kid to actually see where my money went. I even tracked every penny (every penny!) for more than a year. Since I come from Greatest Generation parents, the value of a dollar was imprinted upon all of us.
Even today, when I can afford things, I still watch the pennies and nickels. The dollars just seem to fall into place. I cannot tell you the last time I bought lunch. I brown-bag it. I don’t smoke. I don’t drink coffee or soda pop. My wife and I may eat out (or bring in) no more than once a month, if that (it’s part of a wellness/exercise plan). It’s not a case of being frugal as it is a plan to watch our money.
When I returned to the US ten years ago after living overseas for ten years, my actual savings was lousy. Counting a year unemployed when the dot com went dot bomb, that was tough living but the discipline carried us through and that killed any remaining savings. We save, save, save money all the time. Even things we can afford right now, we don’t buy until “need” changes to “want,” and we have the cash in hand. Until then we do without. Our rainy day fund is now almost nine months of my gross salary, we have a house (half paid off in six years), no car loans (paid off), all because we watch pennies and nickels. Still, the two granddaughters don’t lose out.
Everybody’s circumstances are different. Just do your best with what you have. And when it comes to spending money, is it for something that keeps you alive and safe, or just something to make you feel good for the moment?
An extra house usually costs more than a kid over a lifetime, once you count the tax breaks you get from having a kid. Latest numbers I ran off the US Department of Agriculture figures had the cost of a kid at $261K to 18, but that didn’t exclude the child tax credit of $1,000 a year and the annual deduction of $3,700 a year per dependent. So that leaves the actual cost of a kid to age 18 as $176,400…about what my own house in a fairly inexpensive suburb is worth, and that doesn’t include 18 years of property taxes and maintenance. Not trying to attack anyone’s lifestyle, but I don’t think not having a kid really saves you enough money to buy a second house.
To kind of turn the tables back your statement, though, I’d argue that the best way to get ahead is to not buy those “neat toys.” A friend of mine used to own a sailboat, then stepped back one day and realized that he was spending more on the boat than he was on his mortgage, and he could only use the boat maybe every other weekend for four months out of the year. Maybe we all can’t afford boats, but there’s other stuff we’ve bought that later on we think to ourselves, “did I get what I wanted out of this purchase?”
I feel in agreement with Duckster here, to tell you the truth–I think it’s telling that you said that people without kids “had nice toys”, not “were financially secure.” Because, in my professional experience in determining net wealth, I’m always extremely suspicious of people who have multiple expensive cars or boats or airplanes. Their money often now belongs to the car/boat/plane dealer or the bank, not to them.
Well, depending on your income, you might not even get that tax credit (so in that way, a kid is cheaper if your income is a little lower).
Also that figure doesn’t include the cost of college. 4 years at an in-state college is about 80,000 right now, where we are. So that’s 250,000 or more per kid.
I’d also wonder if that figure includes things like need for a larger house: we’d still be in our townhouse - mostly paid off, I suspect - if we hadn’t had kids. Add on a price difference of 200,000, that means my kids will have cost 700,000.
I suspect we’d have spent a lot of our income on stuff like travel and toys - but not all of it. We’d have avoided the income hits when I worked part time or took unpaid leave. So all in all, we’d still have quite a bit more cash saved up if we hadn’t had kids.
We had a couple grand saved up for either a trip to Hawaii, or new, grown up (aka not second hand) furniture for our house.
Through some math fail that’s partly mine and partly the company I worked for at the beginning of the year, we owe about $4K additionally in taxes.
Now-- I am very grateful that a) I have the money and b) I have the money without having to tap major savings or investments to get at. So I should not complain. But man-- a busted car or medical bills would be better, I think. I am literally getting nothing in return for this payment.
And by the same token, your Boat can’t call 911 when you’re having a heart attack, nor draw a picture of their hero (you), and present it to you as a Christmas Ornament.
Having kids: You either get it, or you don’t. Neither side is more or less right.
Nobody gets out alive, you can’t spend it when you’re dead, who will mourn you when you pass, and I can’t stand diapers.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE my children. The Toys I bought that I still have from Before Kids? Meh. The money I have saved for retirement? It’s a number…and I don’t honestly think I’ll spend my retirement a)Traveling the globe or b)Bugging my wife 7x24
I’m not making a case for precise equivalence of costs - kids vs. extra home or whatever. And I don’t have any “toys” like that. What I do have is great freedom and peace of mind because I have no complications stemming from either. But if I did want the toys, I’d be in a much better position to acquire them without having had kids.