Layout:
Home > Archive: June, 2017

Archive for June, 2017

Blogoversary: 11 years on SA

June 22nd, 2017 at 10:36 pm

With a hat-tip to CeeJay, I'll do a similar entry, comparing where I was then to where I am now.

June 22, 2006:

Assets: 241,761 (about 48% home value & rest retirement)
Liabilities: (92,669) (mostly mortgage w/ a bit of CC debt)
Net worth 149,092

My life at that point: Working full-time as a college psychology professor, but as a sabbatical replacement (year-to-year contract), living with my basset hound Henry and cats Teddy & Phoebe. Also, in a relationship. I was taking accounting classes evenings and summers in preparation for a career change. Having landed on the yearly-contract track, I couldn't do the research necessary to land another tenure-track job because I was constantly job-hunting.

June 22, 2017:

Assets: 585,603 (about 20% home value & 80% retirement)
Liabilities: (90,248) (70% mortgage, 30% loans & CCs)
Net Worth: 495,396

My Life at this point: Workng in a full-time (hopefully permanent) job as a Financial Planner, having attained my CPA in the interim and currently working on the CFP), living with kitties Buffy & Bridget. Not currently in a relationship.

Dollar value change:

Assets: up 343,842 or 231%. Mostly this is a change in retirement assets. My home 11 years ago was within 1,000 of its value today, but went down during the crisis and now is very close to its value when I bought it 12 years ago.

Liabilities: down 2,421 or -2.6%. However, the mortgage is down to 62,900 and the non-mortgage debt is up a lot due to the exigencies of lower income while changing careers combined with less time working while my mother was dying and final medical expenses for 3 pets. So whereas my debt at the beginning of the journey was pretty much all "good" debt, now I have a significant amount of "bad" debt due largely to circumstances beyound my control.

Net Worth: up 346,304 or 332%. About half of the increase is from an inheritance from my mother and the rest due to retirement savings and portfolio gains.

Income change: I currently make about $4,000 more than I did 11 years ago. This fairly nominal change from beginning to end masks a lot of variability. Average income was a bit under 40K, but it has varied from 12K (110% of the poverty limit that year) to nearly 80K.

All in all, it's been a hell of an 11 years, but in the end, I feel blessed to have survived it and I feel positive about my ability to handle what my personal life throws at me. If this site still exists in a decade, I'll be just about at my Full Retirement Age for Social Security, and I still expect to be working (although hopefully for 25-30 hours per week rather than 40-55), and the work at that point will be solely to satisfy my need for a sense of meaning and purpose and won't be financially necessary. Also hopefully there will be another basset hound at that point :^) along with two kitties--and even another relationship.

Vegas, Baby, Vegas!

June 17th, 2017 at 09:16 pm

I just returned from a week in Las Vegas at a conference. I've driven through the city once before on a road trip, at night, but we didn't stop then. This time I saw a tiny bit more, but not the full tourist experience.

The conference was at the MGM Grand, and I stayed at the Signature Towers at the MGM right next door. The Signature is newer, less flashy, cheaper, and quieter, so I'd recommend it if you go. It's not a budget hotel--there are plenty cheaper, but it does have kitchenettes so you can economize on meals.

I had all good intentions of doing so, but I was so wiped out after the first couple of days that I ate out as the quickest way to a meal and bed. And then after that, I connected with a Chicago-based financial planner and her friends, so I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to network and ask questions of other planners more experienced than me, so I ended up going out to dinner every night after all. The conference provided breakfast and lunch at least.

I'm still trying to absorb the information I learned, but it was a great conference with many of the top names in the field whose writings I follow in the literature presenting.

I'm really glad I opted to do the pre-conference workshop. The workshop was only 30 people, while there were probably 8,000 or so at the conference, so going early to a more specialized workshop meant that I usually saw a few people I already had some acquaintance with at the sessions I went to.

Most of the dinners were at the MGM Grand itself, but one night we left and went to Mon Ami Gabi at Paris (with the fake Eiffel tower) and watched the water show across the street at the Bellagio. One of the members of the group I was with does planning for malpractice attorneys, who are big spenders, and he has picked up some of the practices of his clients, so he bribed the waitstaff at the restaurant to make sure that we got a really good table and also paid for a stretch limo to ride back to our hotel in.

I didn't spend a dime at the casinos (no regrets there), and I didn't get a chance to see any shows (I would have liked to catch a Cirque de Soleil show).

It was good to get away but not in the least restful. This week is busy, but so far July is looking really slow for me. I'm happy to see that because May was overly busy, with almost twice the number of client meetings to prepare for as is typical. I'm behind on my meeting follow-ups, so a slow month will give me a chance to catch up, and possibly take a few days off to just rest. I had written a blog entry or two about wanting to get away in the spring but I never did, so maybe next month I will.

In other news, I found myself behind in my CFP exam preparation because I underestimated all the adjustments I'd have to make for the new job, so I met with my supervisor and got his ok to push that off until 2018, just trying to get at least 3 courses done by the end of the year.

And I see on here that my "Blogoversary" will be in 5 days. Since I post on here relatively rarely, I'll make note of that now.