Share Your MM Wins

[ellipses84]

I had an old 401k and vaguely remember getting a notice about my former company switching providers, but life was crazy busy and I could never recall what happened with it. I thought maybe I rolled it into my IRA which is what I’ve done with all the other 401ks, but I couldn’t find any record of it and I didn’t know what company it switched to. It’s been on my to-do list forever to track it down. I’d only worked at the place a year and it was barely 5 figures. I spent an hour on the phone yesterday and finally figured out where it is and was able to get online access. It’s nearly doubled in 5 years!

[woowoo]

My husband has been furloughed for going on 7 months now (so we've been down to one income) and we have 30% MORE in savings now than we did when it started.
Obviously it's helped that we've been staying home so much, but we've also made small improvements on the house so I'm still really really proud of us. When we got married 8 years ago we were both spenders with zero savings, so reducing our income by nearly half and still increasing our savings by a good bit truly is something to celebrate.

[tacokick]

We have more in savings than ever before! It turns out cooking 100% of your meals and not going anywhere is a real money saver. lol

[Susie]

I wanted dumbbells for my basement workout area, but they've been $$$ to buy new since quarantines hit.  Turned out my dad had a set in his basement that he said I could have.

[dr.girlfriend]

I was really worried about the adjustment to our finances when DH went part-time, but it hardly seems to have made a ripple with our reduced expenses. It's nice we can do just fine without feeling the pinch.

[brooke77]

We closed on our mortgage refi yesterday. A small MM win, but the refi cost nothing and will save $100/month.

[imojoebunny]

My DH's retirement is official. Starts 12/31. We have worked toward this goal for a long time, it seems really weird that the day is upon us, when we move from intense saving, to living off savings. Also, in real life, it is really hard to talk about. People have responded very oddly to the news. One long time friend could not hide her bitterness. I did not expect that reaction. Our kids are NOT looking forward to having two stay at home parents, and it will be a switch to have DH home all the time, after so many years of being gone 13 hours a day. Covid has eased us into, in some ways, but DH still goes in his hole in the basement everyday for many hours.

[ohgillian]

Sept 19, 2020 9:36:57 GMT -5 imojoebunny said:

My DH's retirement is official. Starts 12/31. We have worked toward this goal for a long time, it seems really weird that the day is upon us, when we move from intense saving, to living off savings. Also, in real life, it is really hard to talk about. People have responded very oddly to the news. One long time friend could not hide her bitterness. I did not expect that reaction. Our kids are NOT looking forward to having two stay at home parents, and it will be a switch to have DH home all the time, after so many years of being gone 13 hours a day. Covid has eased us into, in some ways, but DH still goes in his hole in the basement everyday for many hours.

I'm sorry. That sounds difficult and not fun.  

[ohgillian]

I started another refi this week. I just closed on the last refi in June, but still, the math works so there's no point in getting hung up on sunk costs of the last refi. I'm going to a 2.65 20 year from a 3.125 20 year.

[melmel48]

I got a new job! I start Monday.. in a typical year, this new job is a $14,000 increase! Of course this year hasn't been a typical year. 

I have spent a bunch of $$ on new clothing for the new job, but I got good deals. 

[sadlebred]

melmel48 You are welcome for me telling you about the sales.

I have been eating in more, so I'll consider that win.

[melmel48]

Sept 19, 2020 14:51:23 GMT -5 sadlebred said:

melmel48 You are welcome for me telling you about the sales.

I have been eating in more, so I'll consider that win.

Thank you!!! I just hope they fit!

[aksinger]

We closed on our re-fi yesterday, we did pay points to get to 2.625%, but we’ll recoup that by next year and are saving $360/month on our mortgage otherwise. We had done a re-fi last year and between the two re-fi’s we’re saving over $800/month in interest!

I’m a small business owner and have been bad about retirement savings for myself the past few years (spent the $ on maternity leaves and home addition instead). I finally got my act together and already put in the full amount for my ROTH-IRA this year and should have enough to fully fund it next year by January. I’m going to make sure I fully fund it every year from here on out.

[lust2hart]

Sept 19, 2020 9:36:57 GMT -5 imojoebunny said:

My DH's retirement is official. Starts 12/31. We have worked toward this goal for a long time, it seems really weird that the day is upon us, when we move from intense saving, to living off savings. Also, in real life, it is really hard to talk about. People have responded very oddly to the news. One long time friend could not hide her bitterness. I did not expect that reaction. Our kids are NOT looking forward to having two stay at home parents, and it will be a switch to have DH home all the time, after so many years of being gone 13 hours a day. Covid has eased us into, in some ways, but DH still goes in his hole in the basement everyday for many hours.

Congratulations! What a huge milestone. 

We had a similar experience when we got aggressive about paying off our debt. Our largest chunk was actually from my parents, who had loaned us money for our house down payment. When we started sending them checks that were significantly more than what we had been sending, they were...not mad, exactly, but seemed put out for some reason. They made comments about how we were, I dunno, depriving ourselves or something. It was bizarre and caused a pretty big rift. 

ETA that our money win is that DH got two profit-sharing checks this month instead of just one (or none). We don't know why and honestly I'm kind of waiting for an "oops..." email to come out, but we'll stick it in savings anyway. 

[covergirl82]

We sold our 7-year old travel trailer last month. The market is hot (or was hot a month ago) and we were able to get about 75% of the original purchase price. (Knowing that we paid more than that difference with interest and insurance, but the actual depreciation in value was less that what we had expected.) It was paid off, so we put all the cash in the bank for now. We'll save about $700/year on insurance. (We stored it for free in the barn on my grandma's farm, so we didn't have any off-season storage costs.)

We are having a 16' x 24' shed (it will have metal roof and siding, a door, and a few windows on each side) built that we're going to make into a mini-cottage on our property that we have for camping/hunting/general outdoor adventures/future retirement home/cottage. (This will give us about double the space as our travel trailer.) Our budget for the shed plus interior finishes and furnishings will leave us with a profit from the travel trailer of around $3,000.

DH and I are still WFH 100%, so we're still saving gas money, miles, and wear-and-tear on our vehicles by not commuting everyday (and DH not buying lunch at work everyday), but I haven't quantified the savings. Now that school has started back up, we're saving about $150/month by not having the kids go to before-care at school.

[wildrice]

My H just got an 8% raise, which is awesome given the current financial climate everywhere. I am a bit jealous that in the 12 years I've been working I've never received a raise that large, and he's working in his career for only 1 year and already did. But in the end it benefits us both so yay.

We are also just about to hit our e-fund savings goal - it's another $800 I think. If we didn't just spend over 2k on house related upgrades we would have hit it this month, but I think we will next month instead. Now I have to decide what comes next. I am thinking about putting that 8% right into retirement savings but also torn about some other shorter term goals.

[dottyblue]

I got all of my retirement monies rolled in to a single account finally today. Hoping I don’t change employers any time again soon! I am supposedly on track to retire at 60 with my current contribution rates. 😮

I have identified a local financial planner (a fiduciary) so we can start looking at our total household situation. Making DH pull his pension and a couple of old investment accounts and I will schedule an appointment in the next two weeks or so.

[keweenawlove]

Not sure how much of a win this is because it involves buying a new car but here it goes. We're getting DH a new Outback today and the time/value we got out of his old car feels like a "win". He bought his old car (a Pontiac G6) in 2008 and just hit 215,000 miles on it. It's been paid off since just before we got married in 2010 so it's been nice not having a car payment that long but it feels like we're gotten our money's worth out of that car!

[trissie18]

Both of the schools our DSs attend qualified for a community program with free breakfast and lunch for all students regardless of income. We also have no afterschool care this year due to pandemic. Those two things alone is saving us more than $3600 this school year.

Then with our oldest son in public school this year we are only paying Catholic school tuition for one child. We were able to pay it in full in August which means we are 100% done with tuition payments as he moves to public school next year as well. We were paying $800/month in tuition last year for two kids so it feels like a win this year not to have that monthly payment anymore!

[kate1482]

We are refinancing our 30yr mortgage to a 15yr. We had about 25 years left on the original jumbo loan at 4% and we are going to a 15 year at 1.99%.  (We didn't even have to buy points)  Somehow they got it done in less then 30 days. Crazy!

[mlkgls]

I am in the process of refinancing and assuming I continue to pay at the same rate, it will cut about $35K and three years from the life of the mortgage.

@@@
DS is finally able to attend his school’s aftercare program this year and not only is it saving me $$, he is also much happier than at his previous daycare.

[chpmnk1015]

Had our first payment for the mortgage we just refinanced (from a 30 year at 3.75- had like 22 years left to a 15 year at 2.375).. wow the difference going to the principal and the savings in interest was fun to see lol.. and i am still paying a little extra each month (just rounding up).

got a desk leg at ikea for $4 and was able to do a great desk for dd in her room.

selling some old toys for some extra cash

put in some cash to the kids account this week... trying to catch up to where i wanted to be at their ages and starting to see a dent

[hippygirl]

I received an extended pay stipend at work. I was able to pay off my car. I’m debt free now.

[pierogigirl]

We just redid our wills, trust, and health proxies.

School lunch is free until 12/31, so we're letting the kids buy many times a week if it's reasonably healthy. This is saving more whining and time than money, but it's nice.

We're not doing much, so our misc. cash envelope is full. I'm going to transfer some of the money into vacation savings (for someday) and gift purchases.

I paid a large principal payment on the mortgage and am paying extra monthly on it and adding more to the kids' college funds with this year's raise. I want it to be paid off in 10 years (we're 4 years into a 30 year mortgage).

[5thofjuly]

I took a pay cut at work (mostly our big 401k match) but I "made up for it" by upping my own contributions to stay on track.

Like many others, we're refinancing the house (again) Friday- 15 years, 2.0%, no points. We also can stop escrowing, which was always a pain in the ass.