July Wins and losses

[chpmnk1015]

Its Mid July so Figured i would check in on if anyone had some wins or losses for this month so far.. i have seen a mid year check in either and could do another thread or do it on here.?

[chpmnk1015]

So ill go:

W: Hit our E fund goal (we used like everything we had to buy an investment property this year so were down to like nothing)
W: since we hit E fund, we now are putting savings to vaca fund to restart that and my roth for this year
W: we met with a new financial advisor and i am anxiously awaiting to see their plan for us and if we are on track
W: Split my 401k savings between a roth 401k and regular and raised my total by 1%.
L: it has been a spendy month on parties, gifts, random other things so trying to get that under control
L: Dh away next week so no money coming in for him which stinks.

[sadlebred]

L: The Microwave died in late June right after the washer and dryer in the last week of May.
L: My property taxes went up 30% last year, and I had to pay thousands since escrow was under funded. My house payment has gone way up because of it.
L: What e-fund? I have only been spending the last 3 months and not on anything fun.
L: My auto insurance has nearly doubled in the last year starting this month. (I can shop around in August when an accident where I was not at fault from a few years ago falls off my driving record.)
L:? Boss said there is nothing he can do and no out of cycle raises he can give this year.
L: I had to use half of my small Oh S**t Fund that I keep as money of last resort to buy groceries & gas a few weeks ago. (See washer, dryer, microwave dying & escrow)
W: Fidelity is offering $100 if you open a brokerage account with $50. I'll take it.
W: I stuck to my small budget on Prime Day/other sales for things I needed.
W: Not exactly MM, but big big boss acknowledged something I did last week and thanked me. (brownie points)
W: I have an e-bike with a brake problem. The Local bike shop finally got the manufacturer to warranty a part they hope fixes it.
W: A financial saga is likely to be over soon....maybe 8 weeks.
L: The financial saga didn't end exactly the way I'd hoped.

I'm sure I'll think of more.

[quesyrah]

I have nothing but loss. DH took a temporary position for the last year and a half. It paid higher than his old role and he was given 3 (small ish) raises along the way.

He went back to his old position last week and his pay is $440 month less. It’s okay, obviously $440 a month is going to break us but it just sucks.

I’m wishing we never got used to his new salary and hair saved it all!


Actually, I do have a win. His old position became bonus eligible while he was in his temporary position so he’ll get a 7% bonus at the end of the year.

[jewel]

I have so few real wins lately! Most of my wins are less-bad losses, or neutral avoided-a-loss.

Back yard fence went down in January. I finally got quotes, 2 neighbors refuse to split costs, so we’re replacing most of the bad fencing but not all. $57 per linear foot was the best price I could get. Which adds up to…a lot.

Booked and prepaid everything for a vacation in Sept. The vacation is a win, but I think I’ve paid $3-4k in the past few weeks. It’ll feel more like a win once we’re on the trip and it’s already paid for.

I just realized I let a couple of Groupons expire which is SO annoying. I know I can still use what I paid, but I wouldn’t have purposely planned to pay $100 to bowl.

[trissie18]

W: Met with our financial advisor and we are solid enough in our retirement savings to retire at 60 without needing to withdraw SSI until full retirement age. Only 19.5 years to go!
L: Still working on our mudroom renovation project. Only thing left to purchase are the $$$$ cabinets.

[minzy]

I don’t know that I’d call it a win because I lost a family member in the process (and only stood to inherit because my own mother was already dead), but I disbursed almost all of my aunt’s estate last week, and I am one of the beneficiaries. I’m not entirely sure what I will do with my portion, but some is definitely (at least mentally earmarked, at this point) for my kids. I will also give some of it away.

Tomorrow starts a new pay period, and I’m going up a step, so that will be an extra ~$5k gross a year.

As for a loss, we just got our annual property tax bill yesterday, ouch, and will now be paying a lot more of one of the kid sports since she’s moved up to team level. I also declined the executor’s fee on the estate, because, although it was a bit of work, I did it as a kindness to my late aunt. I also did not feel right taking it, knowing the others would get less, but that would have been about an extra $6,400 if I had.

[chpmnk1015]

Jul 14, 2023 22:04:44 GMT -5 sadlebred said:

L: The Microwave died in late June right after the washer and dryer in the last week of May.
L: My property taxes went up 30% last year, and I had to pay thousands since escrow was under funded. My house payment has gone way up because of it.
L: What e-fund? I have only been spending the last 3 months and not on anything fun.
L: My auto insurance has nearly doubled in the last year starting this month. (I can shop around in August when an accident where I was not at fault from a few years ago falls off my driving record.)
L:? Boss said there is nothing he can do and no out of cycle raises he can give this year.
L: I had to use half of my small Oh S**t Fund that I keep as money of last resort to buy groceries & gas a few weeks ago. (See washer, dryer, microwave dying & escrow)
W: Fidelity is offering $100 if you open a brokerage account with $50. I'll take it.
W: I stuck to my small budget on Prime Day/other sales for things I needed.
W: Not exactly MM, but big big boss acknowledged something I did last week and thanked me. (brownie points)
W: I have an e-bike with a brake problem. The Local bike shop finally got the manufacturer to warranty a part they hope fixes it.
W: A financial saga is likely to be over soon....maybe 8 weeks.
L: The financial saga didn't end exactly the way I'd hoped.

I'm sure I'll think of more.

Ugh..so sorry to hear you got a lot of L this month... hoping it gets better!

[brooke77]

Eeeek! July has been very spendy.

Wins: Sold some things on Poshmark. My DH started a new job with a higher salary.

Losses: A lot of spending this month! We bought new bikes and a bike rack for our family of 3. I’ve been wanting a bike forever and finally just bought one. I also paid for two upcoming trips, which were quite expensive with airfare and hotel.

[sadlebred]

Oooo! I have a Win!

W: Something that needed to be done is done. My savings accounts are back to normal....and the Speed Queens are still humming along!

brooke77, You know I have to ask what kind of bike you got.

[aspentosh]

July has been pretty good to us (knock on wood)

W: We are transferring all our investment accounts to a personally managed account, so we'll save close to $1k a month on management fees.
W: H is getting a bonus. No idea how much or when, but it's been in the works since May (lol)

[brooke77]

sadlebred - We both got Trek FX2 Disc bikes 😊

[mlkgls]

W: My 401k hit a major milestone this week that I can’t share with anyone IRL. 🎉

L: Everything else? Lol. This summer has been so expensive food, grocery, utility wise. 
L: My home insurance renewal premium was almost double what I expected. My taxes and insurance now cost more than my actual mortgage. 😳
L: I only have a few more weeks of daycare payments, but the increase this summer has taken a serious bite out of my budget. 

[lilypad1126]

W: I successfully figured out how to use a travel credit card to my advantage, lol. I now have enough points for multiple round trip airfare tickets, so H and I can go somewhere for vacation.

L: the win is only bc it was an expensive summer, so I’m trying to just remember that’s what my e-fund is for.

W: my mom inherited some money from her mom and she decided to give it to me and my sister now, instead of holding on to it and us getting it when she passes. That was such a nice surprise, and for my sister, it could not have come at a better time.

L: why is my car insurance going up so much?? Ugh.

[bee20]

W: Had to re-paint my fence, wasn't sure what color of white I wanted so I was looking around at the various options. The store had a nice creamy white sitting on the oops shelf for $5, and it looks great.
L: My sprayer valve needed replacement, not too bad, but took up my paint savings.

[midwestmama]

L (or maybe a wash?): The flooring team that installed our new flooring damaged the wall in the 1/2 bath. We have wallpaper in that bathroom (which I've wanted to replace for as long as we've been here (12 years)), and the wallpaper and drywall were damaged by the installers. They initially offered $100 off the labor, which I told DH was ridiculous and he agreed. We countered with a request for a $500 (due to the need for wallpaper removal, drywall repair, and paint), which they accepted. We'll have to see if the repair ends up being more or less than the credit we received.

W: Having a credit card with zero foreign transaction fees for our recent trip to Europe. (Although I'm not looking forward to paying the cc bill next month! With the USD being lower value than the Euro, it made for an expensive trip (expensive to us, but we had budgeted money from our bonuses to pay for it).)

W: Me not driving for 15 days and DH not driving for 10 days did help save some gas $, which will help offset a bit of the money we spent on our trip.

[wildrice]

W: We came out several hundred dollars ahead with our "slush" money portion of our budget. This shouldn't be a win - that portion is much higher than I would like it to be, but it is padding so that we don't often have to pull from savings - but it seems like every month there is some kind of repair/yearly fee/out of town trip/etc that ends up eating up a large portion of it and we end up either going over budget or at least using all of it.

L: We haven't paid for it yet, but we're in the process of figuring out getting a new fence section that will probably end up being around 2k

L: We had a roof leak this week so we had a roofer out yesterday and he says we need a new roof. He provided a lot of documentation to get it covered by homeowners insurance due to wind damage so hopefully this will only cost us our 1k deductible, but it was not something we planned on. I knew our roof was probably nearing the end of its life expectancy but I was hoping dealing with this would be a few years away. I guess this is partly a win though if insurance covers it?

[dcn]

Loss: My H’s unit hosted a training for all the recruiters in his battalion. They had a social with food and a bunch of soldiers didn’t attend and didn’t pay like they were supposed to so we got stuck with the bill. $1,500. I don’t really understand why they did it that way and didn’t have the unit pay but there’s nothing to do about it now. I guess a win is we had the money? Not what I wanted to spend it on though. Those jokers aren’t getting a holiday gift 🤷🏻‍♀️

[chpmnk1015]

Jul 27, 2023 8:14:45 GMT -5 dcn said:

Loss: My H’s unit hosted a training for all the recruiters in his battalion. They had a social with food and a bunch of soldiers didn’t attend and didn’t pay like they were supposed to so we got stuck with the bill. $1,500. I don’t really understand why they did it that way and didn’t have the unit pay but there’s nothing to do about it now. I guess a win is we had the money? Not what I wanted to spend it on though. Those jokers aren’t getting a holiday gift 🤷🏻‍♀️

Wow that's crappy. . They should still pay if they rsvpd then no showed... ugh.

[niq]

W: Our camping vacation was affordable!
W: First month without any giant purchases on the CC in a while!
non-MM W: I tidied the f*** out of the house during a two week staycation!

L: We discovered we forgot to fill out forms for our daycare FSA money for last year. I hope the FSA administrators threw a nice party with it.
L: The rumored price for EV I am eyeing (Kia EV 9) keeps going up...

[heygrey]

W: We did a 3 week holiday and came home with money.
W: H and I both got raises July 1, though I won't see a paycheque with the new amount until the school year starts in September.
W: Our utility bills have been very reasonable. Way better than I expected based on previous summers.

L: Our homeowners insurance premium increased by $100.

Overall way better month than the previous few.