Fiscal Fitness

I've been focusing on decreasing my debts this year.  So far I've paid off $23,250, and I'm within a thousand of my (revised) year-end debt goal of a total under $50,000.  (The goal was 60k at the beginning of the year but a surprise bonus when the company I work for was acquired allowed me to pay down more debt than I had expected.)  Of that, the mortage will be $25,760 after the monthly payment hits tomorrow.  I should reach the $50k goal sometime during November and am currently projecting the year-end total debt at $48k.

Hopefully assets continue rising, although I'm definitely expecting some volatility with the election next week (I'm not expectingthe winner to be called on Tuesday, although if there were enough certainty with the Electoral College votes to call it by then, that would be great.) 

Traditionally, November and December are the strongest months of the year for the market, but we'll see how that plays out this year. 

Whichever candidate wins, there will be ramifactions for the markets and for taxes, but typically the reaction around the election itself is short-lived.  It's the policies that matter more in the long run. 

And as for policies, the President generally can't act alone; the results of the Congressional races matter, as do judicial reviews.  One thing that surprised me was an article in The Economist (this week's or last week's) showing that a "trifecta" outcome is actually more likely than a split party decision.

Whichever way the election goes, I'm looking forward to getting rid of that debt in the next 3-4 years and starting to build a buffer for myself of at least one year's living expenses in safe investments in a brokerage account.  Right now there's only about 1.5 months' worth.  I've got about $11k worth of loan debt that will be paid off in 2025, and, as those loans mature, I should be able to divert most of the payments towards brokerage account savings (except there's one big home improvement project that I will need to fund as well.)

Patient Saver and I "met" on this blog back in 2006, the year we both started our blogs.  We connected here due to similar attitudes, similar ages, similar things happening in our work lives (layoffs and transitions).

The first time we met in person was in 2011, when I was driving home from a relative's wedding in Massachusetts.  We met at a highway rest stop, had lunch, and took a walk where she showed me some of her town.

There have been a few visits over the years--I think I've stayed over at her house once, maybe twice, and we found a town about half way in between us and have met there several times (most years but not every year).

The past several years, both of us had elderly cats with medical conditions, so that meant that our visits were daytrips centered around sharing lunch and a walk.

But when I read that PS had lost her beautiful Luther, I thought that the time might be ripe for her to visit me, and she agreed.

This week worked well with my work schedule since the people who I work for were otherwise occupied this week and I had no client meetings to prepare for.

Unfortunately I could not fully play hostess as my home is currently too cluttered (bad me).  I usually have an annual visitor over the summer and get the house cleaned up for her, but that visit did not occur this year.  I knew that, with the scheduling, I wouldn't be able to clean up entirely, but I did get the downstairs and bathroom presentable.  We split the cost of her stay, with her covering one night and me another.

PS arrived on Wednesday.  I took a long lunch break and took her to lunch, then drove her to my office and set her loose on downtown Historical Bethlehem with a map and guidebook.  I scheduled dinner at the historic Hotel Bethlehem (winner of the best historic hotel in the United States four years in a row) in their gorgeous 

dining room.  Unfortunately the history museums were closed, so PS mostly saw the outside of buildings, but we did get to stop inside the Sun Inn Tavern (George Washington really DID sleep there)  

I was able to take Thursday and Friday off work.  Bethlehem has distinctive north and south sides (they were once separate cities).  Since we had focused on north Bethlehem for the first day, on Thursday, we started off with South Side Bethlehem, first at the Banana Factory, which has art galleries and classes and artist's workshops, then driving over to SteelStax, where the old blast furnaces of Bethlehem Steel play backdrop to a new (decade-old) performing arts center and the Visitor Center for South Bethlehem.  We visited the National Museum of Industrial History (affiliated with the Smithsonian) and walked the Hoover Mason Trestle, which is a half-mile elevated walkway along the side of the furnaces.  After stopping for lunch at a Korean restaurant over in Easton, we took the mule-powered canal boat ride on the Lehigh Canal, giving us a full view of how the canal and steel industries paved the way for the takeover of the railroad industry.  You certainly see industrial history in this area, from the nation's first city pumping system from the 1760s to the Ben Franklin Technology Partners, which brings together science and engineering expertise from Lehigh Univesity and Lafayette College with business expertise from those same colleges' business programs and local venture capitalists.

After PS checked in to her AirBnB and we each had a short rest, we reconvened for a light dinner at my house, since lunch had been quite filling.

Friday morning, we met for breakfast at the cafe in my neighborhood and around the corner from the AirBnB where PS was staying.  This cafe is one of a dozen or so in the US affiliated with "One World Everybody Eats," a nonprofit organization.  All of these cafes are built on the model that you "pay what you can."  You order and you are given a suggested price; if you can, you donate additional money, and those who are down on their luck can get a decent free meal in a charming location.  Since PS wanted to take off for home leaving by noon, I decided that the best use of our time was a tour of the western half of the Lehigh Valley, with a stop at the Allentown Farmer's Market and, along the way, a drive past the mansions of the Saucon Valley and a look at downtown Allentown, the largest city in the area.

It was fun to play tour guide and also to have more extended time for conversation.  Since I first visited PS's home perhaps a decade ago, it was nice to have the opportunity to play host for a change.

Just a note that I hit a financial milestone today that I want to remember, courtesy of the financial markets.  I will probably drop below this number again, but I've found that, once a milestone is attained, it is likely to "stick" after a few months, especially since I am still in savings and paying-down-debt mode.

There are other financial milestones I want to hit before I shift gears and move from accumulation mode to distribution/decumulation mode. 

But for today I will just revel in having attained a number that I have been focused on attaining for a long time.

Net worth is now around $989,400--so I'm expecting to hit a million this year at last.

With the company acquisition, we have all new benefit plans--same benefits essentially but different custodians.

I spent a couple of hours setting up my new 401k.  It's annoying that my old company managed the details of the allocation for me--all I needed to do was to pick a target risk allocation and they'd do the specifics, while I need to manage the allocation for the new plan.

I used my old plan allocations as a rough guide to set up the new ones, but there are some categories of investments--TIPs, dividend appreciation funds, and foreign bonds--that are not available in the plan options for the new 401k.  That is especially annoying about the dividend appreciation category, as I like to split the US equity allocation largely between index funds and dividend-oriented funds.  It took me a couple of hours of digging into the new plans options to figure out an allocation.

One good thing was that the new plan site has a calculator that allows you to figure the effect on your take-home income and taxes of varying allocations to the traditional 401k vs the Roth 401k option.  For the past couple of years, I've been contributing 10% pre-tax and 10% Roth.  The calculator allowed me to figure that contributing 18% to the Roth (and none to the pre-tax) should yield the same take-home pay.  So that's what I set the new allocation to, with a goal of increasing the allocation back to 20% (all Roth) in January.

Debt is on track to be down to 50k or lower by the end of the year, which makes me happy since it has been mostly between 75k and 90k for the past few years.  I have no idea if we'll get any bonus in January, which is when the new company issues bonuses--that bonus I got upon the close of the deal might be my only bonus until January 2026.  In any case, I have some inherited IRA accounts which have RMDs, and I have been using my RMDs to pay down debt, so by sometime in January, I expect to get debt down to 45k or so.  I am expecting an expensive home project next year, so I'll have to set aside some money in January for that.

Financial independence isn't yet here but it is definitely beginning to come into view!

So last Saturday was my birthday.  It was lovely to have it fall on a Saturday so that I had the day off!  Too many times in recent years the company president schedules a trip to PA during the week, which makes it extra busy.  He *was* up the week before, but all the extra busy-ness was over by the time my birthday arrived.

I took last Friday off (as I have been doing for much of the summer) and went to an AirBnB within about an hour's drive--just far enough to really feel "away" but not so far that the drive was stressful.  (I pretty much stopped driving distances during the pandemic.  Since I work a mile from where I live, most of my driving is within a 3-mile radius of home, and maybe once a month, I'll drive to a nearby town and go about 10 miles away.  Driving 50 miles or more has thus become a stressor that I tackle about once a year.)

Where I stayed was on a historic Amish homestead, the Nicholas Stoltzfus family home.  It turns out that everyone in the US with the last name of Stoltzfus is descended from the former owner of this property.

The original homestead is still there and I was given a private tour by the caretaker.  (The property is owned by a non-profit group, and a couple with the last name of Stoltzfus are the current caretakers.  The AIrBnB fees are used to support the upkeep of the property.)  Where you stay is in the reconstructed barn.  The caretakers live on the first floor of the barn, and the unit they rent is about 1/3 of the second floor of the barn.  The other 2/3s of the second floor is rented out for meeting space.  The property is built on a hill, so even though it's on the second floor, there are no stairs to climb.

Where the property is located is actually very close to the highway, but you have to drive down a long roadway, past a local Penn State campus and the campus of a retirement home, before you get to the property.  Then the deadend of the road due to the highway (built about 30 years ago) is just past the end of the property.  The caretaker showed me a map--when they were building the highway, there were eight different alternate routes they considered using, several of which would have gone right through the property--that's when and why the nonprofit was formed.  And the owner of the retirement community next door (the son of a former state governor) was helpful with the funding needed to save the property from being destroyed.  The current caretakers will be pursuing getting the property put on the national historic register soon--it's not there yet.

Right across the road is a creek, and a four-mile long towpath that runs along it.  There's a Park Ranger house a quarter-mile away, so the towpath feels very safe.  (That's especially nice because, since the pandemic, my current city has allowed a homeless encampment to occupy a large space alongside the towpath near my house, so I no longer feel safe running and walking there by myself, something I have done for nearly 30 years.)

Since check-in was at 3 on Friday, I got there shortly after and, after checking in, went to the nearby Pennsylvania Dutch Farmers Market to pick up dinner. We have a Farmer's Market locally that is similar (and similar to Reading Terminal Market, if you have visited that in Philly).  This Farmer's Market was smaller and exclusively run by Amish and Mennonite stallholders, unlike the larger Farmer's Markets.  I picked up a pint of chicken salad, two pre-made vegetable salads, a gluten-free peach pie and Whoopie pie, and a few peaches for my stay.

The drive had fatigued me (the stress of driving), so I went to bed early.  On my birthday itself, I had my tour of the historic home and then visited the Ephrata Cloister in the afternoon.  I had heard of the Ephrata Cloister previously but had not visited.  This is the remnants (about 10%) of the original community from the 1700s which was started by Conrad Beissel, an Anabaptist minister who founded his own sect, distinct from the other Anabaptist groups by virtue of two beliefs:  1.  The Sabbath should be celebrated on Saturday; and 2. The return of Christ was imminent, so that believers should shun wordly marriage and dedicate themselves soley to Christ--in other words, be celebate.  Not a recipe for a long-standing religion!  In actual fact, the community consisted of Brothers, Sisters, and Householders.  The Brothers and Sisters adhered to all the beliefs, while the Householders were married couples who believed in some but not all of the beliefs of the community and helped with economic support.  The Brothers and Sisters slept for only 6 hours a night--from 9 to midnight, and then from 2 am to 5 am.  From midnight to 2 am, they had a night watch service, since it was Beisel's belief that Christ would return during that time.

The community was also unique in fostering several women composers.  The Ephrata Chorus still continues today.  They also produced a unique style of calligraphy called fraktur used for making posters of religious phrases or important personal papers.

I did go out to dinner for my birthday, finding a Japanese restaurant nearby and treating myself to a rice bowl.

On Sunday, I went for a 3.6 mile walk/jog along the towpath, and stayed on the property until 1 pm (an extra two hours allowed me by the caretakers) before driving home.

Staying here was about $75 cheaper for a two-night stay than the Bed and Breakfast in the Poconos where I usually stay (although, unlike the B&B, there was no breakfast included).  While I had to provide my own food, the fact that the property was only about a mile from the Farmers Market pretty much compensated for that.  The area is busier and noisier than the Poconos since it is in the middle of a city, but, while I won't give up on my other B&B (which sits right along the Delaware River), I'll also add this place into my regular rotation of spots to visit for a weekend get-away.

Well, the company I work for was acquired yesterday.  Our name and the website change on Monday.  We'll be getting new computers too--instead of a regular PC with the ability to log into a virtual desktop from a device at home, I'll get a laptop and will need to lug it home or elsewhere if I want to work other than onsite.

The new company has different health insurance and different 401(k) plans, so there will be a lot of administratrivia and paperwork changing those.  I can roll the current 401(k) over to the new one or roll it to an IRA.  They're also closing our cash balance pension plan and issuing us a check for our accrued balance--I have the same options for that as well.

The new company has all employees paying a share for their health insurance and their vision and dental benefits cost a bit more.  They're adjusting my pay to make me whole on that.  

The company I've been working for is a smallish (22 employees) family-owned company.  The new company is actually an entity formed by a private equity group that has been on a campaign buying up independent RIAs (Registered Investment Advisors)--I believe we are the 7th acquisition since 2020.  Whereas I know, to at least some extent, all of the other employees at my current firm, I doubt I'll ever know all the other employees with the new firm.

Since the old company was small, our COO was in essence our HR department and we had an employee, not a lawyer, who handled SEC compliance.  The new department has an official HR department and a team of lawyers to handle compliance issues.  The merger gives us a better answer when clients or prospects ask about the firm president's succession plan (not that he is planning on retiring anytime soon).  We'll also get better service from the asset custodians, since advisors are assigned a level of service that is based on AUM (assets under management).

The new firm is headquartered in Boston, so we will all be taking a trip there in a month.  Boston is one of my favorite cities so it will be nice to see it again (for however much time we have to see things during a 3-day work retreat).

To start, there are supposed to be fairly few changes in our day-to-day experience since the main goal is to keep servicing our current clients in the way they have been accustomed to.  But we'll see what happens over time.  I can't deny that the change makes me nervous.  It could be a good thing, but perhaps not.  And while I've definitely felt that I have had influence over certain things like the choice of tax-planning software with my current firm, I don't expect to have that kind of influence with the new firm (EXCEPT that the plan is to move the aquiring firm over to the tax planning software that we use).  But who knows if I'll have that kind of influence again?

One good thing is that the owners of the old company gave each of us employees a very nice bonus upon the close yesterday.  When I saw the net amount in my checking account this morning, I paid off my highest-interest debt in full and paid down some of the next highest debt.  Total debt (including mortgage is now down to about $53k--and before learning of the bonus, my year-end goal had been to get it to $60k).  That accounts for about half of the bonus, and the other half I will be putting into savings in my brokerage account to have more of a buffer for future expenses.

In other news, yesterday the gas company moved my meter from indoors to outdoors.  They may have cracked my foundation in doing so.  I wouldn't have noticed, but I recently became Facebook friends wiht the former owner, who asked me about the crack when I posted a picture online yesterday.  I have no idea whether that was there before or not. So there will be that to deal with.

I couldn't help myself.  I did something I know is irrational.

When checking my mortgage balance this morning, I saw that $43.24 remained to the next thousand-dollar incrediment.

I had over $13 in rewards on a credit card at the same bank, so I applied $13.24 to the mortgage and then paid an additional $30 from cash to get the mortgage balance to $27,000 once all the payments settle.

I also have $8,500 on a HELOC, so total housing related debt is $35,500.

The HELOC interest rate is more than twice the rate on the mortgage, so I should have applied the extra payments to the HELOC, but I couldn't help myself--round numbers have a definite allure.

It's how I've accelerated my mortgage payments ever since first taking it out in 2005.  I've ALWAYS rounded the balance down to the next hundred by paying extra towards principal--until interest rates skyrocketed, and then I rounded the mortgage payments down to the nearest $10 so I could apply more payments to my debts that have higher rates.

Current TOTAL debt is about $61,500 with about $14,300 (including that HELOC) at rates over 6%.

The higher interest debt will be refinanced in October at lower (not low, but lower) rates.  I'm assuming that the Fed will cut rates in September, which should lead to a bit of a drop in loan rates, and I have more "hard checks" on my credit score than I should due to some credit card fraud I experienced in February.  I caught the fraud right away and notified the agencies, but none of them have taken the false "hard checks" of my score.  I did have a "real" hard check from last October, which should roll off mid-month and improve my score a bit more.  If I had time and energy to deal with the credit card agencies, I would, but I don't.  It's just easier to wait and have a plan.

My goal at the beginning of the year for year-end debt was $60k.  I should actually get there either this month or next.

Then projected year-end debt is $55k as long as there are no more major repairs or appliance replacements.

Then January should lead to further decreases still due to a bonus, plus I apply my beneficiary Required Minimum Distribution from my inherited IRAs to debt reduction at that time.

My total debt (which maxed out at $108k in 2011, the year my mother died and I was both employed only part-time AND flying out frequently from PA to CA) hovered at around $90k for several years, and only recently started decreasing significantly once my salary increased to a certain level.  Debt reduction improved more (unfortunately) with the lack of pet expenses since last May.  There WILL be cats again, but in the interim, it is helpful to see my total debts going down, and especially down to a small fraction of my assets.

I have two older friends, both coincidentally named Jim.  Neighbor Jim is 82.  When I moved into my house about 20 years ago, he had just retired and was around the age I am now.  He's always been my go-to person to tell me who to call when I wasn't sure what type of contractor was appropriate, and he's done small repairs for me himself--changing a washer in the sink, replacing one of my wooden basement steps, filling in the cracks in the concrete on my front steps.  And I've been doing their taxes.

Internet Jim turned 80 at the end of last year.  I've never met him in person, but I've known him first on an internet group about walking we were both active in, then on Facebook when the site the walking forum was on was closed down.  I've known him for even longer than I've known Neighbor Jim--around 23 years.  We share a lot of interests, have had occasional phone calls and exchanged the occasional gift.

This weekend was a study in contrasts in how people age.  I'd had a feeling for a while that Internet Jim was having some health problems.  Once an avid hiker, and in retirement an avid photographer, his photographs had changed from photographs of birds and striking weather patterns to flowers in vases indoors.  He went from being someone who hiked on the Pacific Crest and Appalachian Trails to appearing to be a shut-in, not only during the pandemic, but afterwards. I knew something was up, but didn't want to pry.

Then he disappeared from Facebook for a couple of weeks.  I was worried, and rightly so.  I messaged him and when he finally responded, he told me he'd been hospitalized.  I gently prodded and asked about his health, saying that I wouldn't ask again if he chose not to share.  He did tell me something about the chronic condition that he's been diagnosed with.

Then this week, he messaged me and asked me if I was up for chatting this weekend.  I happily agreed.  This wasn't that unusual--we have talked on the phone occasionally.

Then on Saturday morning, he asked if it would be ok to Facetime.  I agreed, but felt a bit uneasy, since this was different.

When he appeared on screen, he was wearing a canula.  Not that unusual given the recent hospitalization.  But he made the purpose of the Facetime request clear:  he wanted to tell me face to face (so to speak), that his prognosis is about six months (or, as he put it, "sometime between tomorrow and six months.")

He is actually in good spirits, says he is grateful for the wonderful life he has lived, has no regrets, and his biggest worry is his cat, whom he has two suitable adopters for.

We agreed to talk monthly for so long as he is in good enough health to do so, and this morning he messaged me saying that he had set up in his calendar a series of recurring calls--the next one of which will fall on my birthday.

This was sobering news.

In contrast, Neighbor Jim, who spends his days being caretaker for his wife, who has severe Parkinson's and some other medical problems, spent the past two days doing an early fall clean-up in my yard.  All the annuals I get each year have already bloomed and died out, and the yard was at the point it gets to each year when the entire yard is taken over by invasive bindweed (which looks a lot like morning glory, so it's actually kind of pretty, so I normally do let it take over, but then it's a pain to pull out the dead weeds in September).  Neighbor Jim seemed to be itching for something useful to do to get himself out of the house, so he offered to do the yard clean up.  I hate doing any kind of yard work myself--I end up getting bit and scratched every time I spend even 10 minutes out there, so I agreed.  He told me not to bother with the beer this time--I usually buy him a six-pack or two when he helps me with a chore.  But I will buy him a grocery gift card, since he's saved me the hassle and the cost of having it done professionally myself (which I sometimes pay for).

We spent about an hour chatting on my porch today, and I was feeling particularly grateful that he is feeling so spry after yesterday's conversation with Internet Jim.

It was a study in contrasts.

I've lost a few friends whom I never met face to face in the past years.  This song by another one of them, who passed 7 years ago this month, captures my mood:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhg1ffYjOyw

No posts from CB in the City since June 30th.  I hope you are doing ok!

My portfolio hit over 800k.  It hit the 700k mark back in December 2023, so just over half a year to gain another 100k (including my contributions).  I doubt the second half of the year will be as good.

My total net worth (including assets and debts beyond just the portfolio) is up over 110k so far for the year--a record increase.  

Debts are down to near 63k--they were at 69k in February.  I am really working on paying down the debt this year.  That's why I am delaying acquiring more cats.  I had thought at the beginning of the year that I would get two new rescues over the summer, but then when I realized how much more quickly the debt is coming down without the additional pet expenses, I decided to delay.

Knock on wood and we'll see what happens with the markets, but I'm pretty sure my total net worth will hit a million during the second half of the year.  I will feel like I am "financially independent" when the *portfolio* (not the total net worth, just the investments) is around 1.25 million.  That should come within two to four years as I am saving fairly agressively--20% of my salary, plus at minimum another 3% from my company, and most years a profit-sharing contribution from the company that's aboout another 6% of my salary.

Before I retire, I also probably should pay for a couple of big home expenses (redoing the concrete stairs, which needs to be done in conjunction with the neighbor since we share a twin structure and one staircase leading up to both porches--and I should redo the roof too, plus buy another car (my current vehicle is 12 years old, but with only 66.5k miles), so there are those factors too to factor into the equation.  The neighbor and I have talked and are planning to do the stair project next year.  

Also, talking of roofs, did you know that insurance companies are really weighting those much more heavily these days?  If your roof is over 15-20 years old (depending on the company), they are likely to raise your rates.  EVEN if you have 50 year shingles--it's the actual age of the roof, not the manufacturer's guarantee on the materials, that matters.  Also companies are now using drones and computer imaging software connected to satellites to check on roof condition.  You can find some of this online--I found a site back in May that used satellite imagery to show me a picture of my roof and the measurement and give me an estimate of replacement cost--but the insurance agencies have access to even better software that allows them to zoom in even more.  (My firm had a property & casualty insurance broker in to do an educational session with us on Monday and this was a key take-home point.)

Still, I am feeling like "FI" (financial independence) is finally within sight, at least.  Not close, but at least visible on the horizon.

Total Assets are staying north of a million (first reached 2 months ago).  Up 8.2% YTD.

Total Debts are down 13.4% YTD.

Total Net Worth is just over 950k, up 10.1% YTD.

Not quite to the point where I feel "financially independent" (that is, free to live off of my assets rather than off of my income) but getting there!

We hade a short but severe windstorm mid-week that took out power for two days; I had to toss about $100 worth of food.  Temps have been in the 90s and it's been so humid that my glasses fog up as soon as I step outside.

I did go kayaking for the first time this year yesterday.  It was pretty windy out there still!

I've been meaning to get my strength training going again, so I had been looking at Planet Fitness (which I belonged to for 6 months of 2022, as a "Black Card" ($25/month) member.  Then yesterday I happened to catch an online discussion that suggested that PF was about to raise their prices.  I did my own research and confirmed it.  

Fortunately the deal that was offered to me yesterday was better than the last one I had seen (no commitment, only a $1 joining fee rather than the usual $49 joining fee), so I rejoined yesterday for $1 down.  The first $10 monthly fee will hit on 7/17, and then there IS a $49 annual fee that will hit in September.  The $10 price remains as long as I don't let the membership lapse.

But still for $120 ($10 * 12) (+ tax) + $49, I consider this a $169/year "health insurance policy."  The gym is only 6 minutes from home, it's clean, the equipment is maintained, and I've never gotten sick after working out there (which is something I cannot say about the many other more expensive gyms I have belonged to over the past few years.

The downside is that they currently do not have a personal trainer on staff (which they typically do).  I would like to learn proper form for doing deadlifts with barbells, using the squat machine and the cable machine...but in the interim, there are all the other machines I have been using for years to start with.  I know intellectually how important it is to maintain strength, but for the past year, I've focused on walking and running and haven't done much strength training at all, so I hope to change that.

It's been an eventful month, but more of an inflection point than a sea change.

Probably the biggest thing that happened, but one that doesn't affect me personally, is that my cousin's wife, who has been part of our family for over 30 years, had a heart transplant.  When we got together last month, she told me she was on the transplant list and had been for a while, but we were all surprised that the right match came for her just two weeks later!  She was in the hospital for about 10 days, was up walking within 24 hours of the surgery, and is doing well, with a much healthier heart than before!  (She is a cancer survivor, and drugs from that previous medicl event damaged her heart.)  So that is a great blessing.

Personally, there are some changes happening at work.  My job has been remarkably stable for the past 6 years, and this is the first time since 2018 that there will be some changes.  Now change can be good or change can be bad, and I pray that this is all to the good, but it does make me more eager to reach "financial independence," (FI) the point at which I have the ability to support myself from my savings rather than my income, and when I work because I WANT to rather than because I HAVE to.  We are at the point where the changes have been announced but not yet implemented--that really comes starting in mid-August.

And of course, it's a basic principle of psychology that we get more motivated and strive harder the closer we are to achieving a goal.

The speed with which I reach my goal depends on the market, of course, but I am making progress.  We aren't quite to the halfway point of the year yet, but to date, I have reduced my total debt by about 12k and my assets have increased by about 75k.  (I put 2k a month into retirement savings, and I get one big annual "profit-sharing" contribution early each year from my employer, so about 1/3 of the increase is from funds added and 2/3 is from capital appreciation.)

All things taken together, I figure I am 2-4 years from FI.

I also have a home repair issue that I have been dealing with.  I live in a 1915 house with a half-bath that was added on much later.  When we have bad storms, it has been literally raining inside my house in the doorway in between the original home and the addition.  I have four buckets that fill that doorway.  I'm pretty sure that the problem has finally been correctly diagnosed and I have signed a contract for a repair, but the earliest the work will commence is the 20th, so I'm a bit nervous about the storm forecast for tonight, and I hope that is the only one before the repair.

The drywall in the ceiling of the half-bath has also been damaged and will need to be replaced (and probably mold remediation done), and my neighbor and I have agreed to replace our shared front steps next year--all of this will be quite pricey.

For the moment, I am holding off on acquiring new cats, as much as I want new companions.  I am able to make greater progress on the debt reduction without having that commitment.  Pets and books are my biggest spending indulgences--and the cost for pets far outweighs whatever I spend on books.  

Other than that, I have been struggling for a couple of months with fatigue.  The first quarter of the year is so busy and the worst of it is that the scheduling is out of my control, as I am a "sub-advisor," not a lead.  I pushed pretty hard through Q1 and hit a wall sometime in April, at which point I've been spending more time going to bed early than working out.  I did manage to run a 5k last Saturday, though (with a short walking interval after every mile), so I haven't totally lost my conditioning.

In any case, I went ahead and scheduled my PTO time for the rest of the year.  Every Friday off starting next Friday, through the end of August.  Then another two days (for a 4-day weekend) in early October and a final two days at the end of the year before the pressure starts all over again.  (And there's also a 4-day weekend for Thanksgiving and a 3-day for Labor Day, so at least one long weekend every remaining month.) I am hoping that by having 11 3-day weekends in a row, I will regain some energy and also be able to make some progress on decluttering.

Also, my best friend turned 80 this week.  Three of us from our congregation took her out to lunch yesterday, and we agreed to meet for lunch the second Thursday of every month.  One thing that has happened during the past several years is that all of my close friends locally have retired, and I have been left out of much of the socializing, which has moved to mid-day.  But they agreed to meet every month near my work (which fortuitously is on our local "restaurant row"), so it will be nice to add that regular socializing back to my schedule.

I went to Los Angeles last weekend--really a 5-day weekend from Wednesday to Sunday.  I visited my sister, who lives in the house I grew up in, for the first time in 5 years, and also saw my one remaining aunt and one of my two first cousins on my mother's side and his family, as well as one high school friend.

I was fortunate enough to have company on the flights out and back.  The trip actually came about because my supervisor at work has family in L.A. too, and she had arranged the trip for those days.  She encouraged me to fly out with her and her husband because she knows I have a hard time taking vacations.  So I had someone to talk to and watch my bags at the airport.

We took a 6 am bus ride from the airport to EWR (Newark) and then a non-stop flight to Los Angeles, which arrived around 1 pm.  I took an Uber to my sister's house.  Last Wednesday was my sister's birthday.  We went out to Fisherman's Village at Marina del Rey (a favorite family hang-out) and out to dinner.

On Thursday, we hung around the house in the morning, looking at old photograph albums and letters.  Late in the afternoon, we went to a bank where we had 5 jointly-owned safety deposit boxes and consolidated what was in them down to 3 boxes.  Then we took a drive out to UCLA, my alma mater, where helicopters were buzzing over the Royce Hall quad from the student demonstrators who were occupying.  I did get to see the old psychology building, now renamed because the naming rights from the previous benefactors had expired.  We then visited our parents' gravesite, which is nearby (in the same cemetary where Marilyn Monroe and many other celebrities are interred), and stopped at Trader Joe's on the way home.  I miss Trader Joe's--the closest one to where I live is nearly an hour away.  

On Friday, I spent the early afternoon with a high school friend.  We drove up to Malibu and had lunch, and then stopped at the Santa Monica Pier to take a ride on the Ferris wheel on the way back--I had never done that before.  My friend dropped me at the Skirball Cultural Center, where my sister works, and my sister and I toured the Maurice Sendack "Where the Wild Things Are" exhibit.

Saturday was our family get-together.  My aunt and cousin live in Orange County, and they suggested a delicatessan that was partway between.  I was saddened to learn as we were planning this trip that my aunt has dementia.  I had sort of guessed, as the last few times we had chatted, she referred to herself as "Grandma Joyce," but it was sad to have it confirmed.  She still recognizes us, though, and participates in events, but she is much less verbal than she once was and lets her husband make decisions, such as what she will have for lunch, for her.

On Sunday, my sister and I went to the old Farmer's Market at 3rd and Fairfax.  Our grandparents had lived near here and visited the market daily, so we went there a lot as children.  Even though there is a lot of development outside the original Farmer's Market, the old part looks very much the same.

I took the redeye home and arrived back mid-day Monday.  It was a short trip, but went off better than the last visit.  But all told, I'm sure that I spent more time in a car in 5 days in L.A. than I will for the entire rest of the month in Bethlehem!

I just changed my identity protection service.  I've been using Identity Force for a few years, for an annual fee of $189.50 per year.  Prior to that, I used LifeLock, but changed a few years ago because Identity Force had better service for a lower fee.

I did a search of the reviews again, and Aura is currently the top-rated such service, AND they have a "Tax Day" sale that ends tomorrow (the % off depends on the plan you choose), so I changed services again.  I'll have about a month overlap between the two.

I like these services because of the "White Glove" service they offer.  You can get Identity protection on your homeowner's insurance which is typically relatively cheap (again depends on the value of your property but usually under $100), but that offers limited coverage and no white glove help if you have an issue.  If you get one of the premium services like those I've named, you can get protection that is $1 million or more (depending on your net worth and how much you are willing to pay) plus greater service.

Identity theft causes such a hassle and even tragedy that it's become increasingly important in this day and age.  I've now been in the financial services industry for 15 years (counting both my tax and wealth management positions), and the past few years have seen an exponential tick upwards.  

If I had to summarize my first quarter of 2024 in a short phrase, it would be "work intensive."  I'm taking 5 days off (Wed through Sunday) this weekend, but most of my weekends so far this year have consisted of Saturdays off, then doing grocery shopping and laundry Sunday mornings and working the rest of Sunday.

But Q1 is the busiest quarter of the year, so things go back to a more "normal" schedule for Q2 and Q3.  "Normal" is still quite uneven, as the company president comes in to our office one week a month and that week tends to be much more hectic than usual.  For example, in April, I don't have any client meetings until the 16th, then 7 of the 8 meetings that are scheduled so far for the month are on 4 days between April 16 and April 25.  Those multi-meeting days exhaust me, and it can take a week or two for me to recover from.

Other than work, I've tried to keep up with exercise fairly regularly.  I've run three "virtual" 5ks so far this year.  (A virtual 5k is one where you are connected with the race manager either through an app or otherwise online, and you pick and run your own 5k course and use a smart watch with a fitness tracker to monitor and report your time).  And today starts the training program for my next virtual 5k on May 4th.  

I'm going to try to exercise more consistently--I've been too much of a "weekend warrior" with my running--and to get outdoors more.  I even plan to get my bike out either this weekend or next and try to ride it.  And I desperately need to start getting consistent about strength training.  Still trying to figure out the best approach there.  But I do have an app that I like that has a "live" training program with a trainer I like.  That program starts 4/8 and hopefully will get me going.

On the "wealth" front, I'm very excited to see that my total assets (after my end of the month paycheck and after receiving a bonus and raise last month) are within $800 of a million dollars!  Debt is down to about $68k, so current net worth rounds to $931k.  As long as the markets don't absolutely tank later this year and as long as there is no other major expense (such as occurred last year with Buffy's lymphoma), I have high hopes that not only my assets but my total net worth will exceed a million by year's end.  And that means that retirement is within sight.  I would really like to get my total net worth to about 1.25 million and buy a new car before retiring, and for that and other reasons, my targeted retirement date is 2029 or 2030.  But we'll see.  I like the idea that I'll be working because I WANT to, not because I so much NEED to.  And it means that I'll have to start taking spending more seriously again--I've not paid much attention to the spending side of things for the past decade since I changed industries.

As far as my third sidebar goal of systems/habits/routines, I've completely ignored that during Q1 but hope to make it goal #1 for Q2.  I really need to clear the clutter out around here and I've made that a pre-requisite for myself before adopting new kitties.  So I'd like to declutter during Q2 and adopt new kitties either the end of this quarter or the beginning of next.

My annual bonus landed in my accounts today.  With that, I've hit a couple of financial targets--Net Worth hit the next $100k target, and debt decreased to about 69k.  After I file my taxes and get my refund I should be able to lower the debt a bit more.

The last time I hit one of these 100k net worth targets was in June, so it only took 8 months to add the next 100k.

The more you have, the faster the increases come.

"Hump day" usually refers to Wednesday as the middle of the week, but for me, it was yesterday, which was probably one of the busiest days I will have at work all year.

At the beginning of the year, we get a bunch of what I refer to as "administratrivia" tasks to do--preparing tax letters for clients, in which we tell them which tax forms to expect based on the assets they have under management, and reminding them of tax-related transactions that might not be reflected fully on the documents, such as making a Qualified Charitable Donation (QCD).  That additional work (at least 20 extra hours in total) comes on top of more meetings than usual being scheduled.  Plus our marketing team reached out to me to do my annual blog post for our firm's website, and then one of my co-workers came to me and asked me to switch places with her and do a presentation at our monthly financial planning roundtablem since she was supposed to present but was overwhelmed with her workload and she knew I'd just written this blog post.

So yesterday was super-busy, but my annual marketing piece for the firm is done and my annual presentation at our roundtable is also done.

Plus yesterday was the day when we were given information about our annual bonus and salary increase.  The bonus was about 15% and the salary increase was about 5%, and both will help my overall net worth--I'm expecting that it will hit a new milestone either after this paycheck or else sometime this coming month.

The usual login page I use, https://www.savingadvice.com/login/, is giving me a 404 error.

I was able to login by using the link on the Forums page, but both the direct login link and the link that comes up when I am not logged in and try to reply to another blogger are not working today.

2023 was a quiet year.  The most notable happening in my life was losing my beloved Buffy cat.  Other than that, I took two long-weekend B&B trips and had my usual once-a-year visitor.  No other traveling, even though with Buffy gone, I have more freedom to travel. 

2023 Goals & Results

1.GOAL:  Health: Maintain/improve on health gains from 2021-2022. 150-300 "zone minutes" per week.  Maybe run a 5k?

Results:  I DID run that 5k!  I achieved the goal of 300 "zone" minutes for 16 weeks during the year, and over 150 minutes for 36 weeks.  While there was some up and down in weight, I end the year within 3 pounds of where I began it.

GOAL: 2. Wealth:  Continue to save, and to pay down total debt to 60k by January 2024.  

Results:  Wealth accumulation was a success--I did add savings, through my retirement plans, and my total assets are about 120k more than they were a year ago.  My gross estate (including life insurance) surpassed a million, so I suspect that my total assets excluding the insurance will pass that in 2024.  Debt-reduction, on the other hand, was a near total miss, down only $3,200.  Buffy got lymphoma in March and I did not have pet insurance, and I took on some debt to try to save her, since the research indicated that it was not unreasonable to expect the chemo protocol to add many months to her life.  But she only survived 2.5 months post-diagnosis.  I'll aim for that 60k total debt by the end of 2024.  

GOAL 3. Systems, habits, and routines:  Improve workflow to get tasks completed earlier. At home, DAILY and weekly routines including 4 hours a week decluttering.  Bring in some professional help to really make progress this year!

Results:  Nope.  I did follow a program for about 3 months and made some temporary progress, but nothing lasting. Well, the SYSTEMS I set up are good, and lasting but I didn't keep up with the routine maintenance that is needed to keep the clutter from accumulating.  I need to build that in as a weekly and monthly practice.  (For me, most of the clutter is paper, and this means recycling or filing papers WEEKLY or MONTHLY and not just when the piles are so high that they cover my dining room table and desk.)

2024 Goals--basically same, just moving the needle a bit. 

The Health goal is "net negative" on weight--end each month lighter than I started it.  If I can lose half a pound on average per week, that's 25 pounds during the year and at my goal in two years.  But 25 pounds from where I am now would be a signficant improvement from where I am now and is actually what the average woman of my age and height weighs.  

Also, now that I've done the 5k, my goal for 2024 is to keep it up.  I found a group on Facebook that hosts "virtual" 5ks from May through January.  You *really* run the race, at a place of your choosing, and during a 3-hour time window.  You connect your GPS-enabled smart watch to the site to report distance and time, and they send you a medal for finishing.  I could care less about the medal but am willing to pay the race fee for the extra incentive.  I'm signed up for my first virtual 5k with this group next Saturday.  My intention is to do the monthly races virtually all year, and run enough during the interim that running a 5k once a month is just part of training.  I'll probably do two 1.5 mile runs during the week and a 3 mile run on the weekends (3.1 miles is a 5k), and maybe more once we get to next fall.

Then I want to run the "live" Turkey Trot again in 2024 (the race that I ran this year), and hope to boost my performance.  My time for 2023 was 1:03:31 (very slow, but I wasn't last, I was 17th out of 19 for women over 60) and in 2024, I'll hope to break an hour.

Also I'm hoping to do more regular resistance training during the year.  There are a limited number of basic movements (Push, Pull, Squat, Hinge, Rotate) and I found a book called "The Simple Six" that lays out some exercises and recommends a routine every weekday of doing 1 set of 10 of each of 5 basic exercises (the 6th is walking), and each day, adding 4 additional sets of one of the exercises.  I've found that I can do this in less than 10 minutes after I've had a couple of cups of coffee.  I've also been reading up on "Micro Workouts" and found that there is research to substantiate this as a way of adding muscle.  The gym and working with a personal trainer is definitely more intense (but also takes more time and $$). aybe I'll go back to that over the summer, but the "microworkouts" is a good way to get started and to maintain during the busy times of year.

Also, I want to take advantage of the fact that I live near an LL Bean outlet that has a "Discovery School," and I want to take some kayaking lessons and maybe even try stand-up paddle-board next summer.

My debt goal is the same as last year--bringing me ever closer to Financial Independence.  And I DO plan to declutter significantly next year, but I'm not going to expect myself to do a regular 4 hours a week.  It's going to be more irregular than that.

I'm planning to hold off on adopting another cat (or two) until I make some progress on the decluttering, so there's the incentive.  And I'm most likely to get decluttering done during LONG weekends, especially when there's more light during the day.  Daily decluttering is not going to work for me; I need to focus on trying to do some filing each weekend (on top of the grocery shopping and laundry that I do) and some decluttering of some small area each month.  I'm going to try to make sure that I have at least one 3-day weekend a month in my schedule in order to keep up with my filing. So I'm planning to hire some help to clear out the other clutter areas that are a problem (one room in particular which once upon a time was a guest bedroom and now is just a MESS).  The piles in that room are currently dangerously high and unstable for a kitty who might try to climb them. I REALLY would like to have new kitties by sometime next spring!

So I accomplished one of my 2023 goals last weekend.  I completed the town's Turkey Trot 5k!  And I wasn't even last.  There were about 550 runners, and I was 3rd from last.  All 3 of the last in were women over 60 and I was 17/19 in that sub-group.

I'm taking my running back indoors for the winter but I'll probably aim to run 3 5ks next year.

Otherwise I spent a few hours of Thanksgiving Day with a friend's family.  It's nice not having to think about where to go (I have a standing invitation to Thanksgiving at her house), but I also felt as though I would have been fine on my own for the day.  

When I was in my 20s and on my own for Thanksgiving for the first time (I was in Michigan in grad school and my family was in Los Angeles and it didn't really make sense to go home just for the weekend, especially so near the end of the semester), finding a place to spend Thanksgiving was a big issue, and it was something that I worried about well into midlife.  But these days, I actually feel as though so much of my free time is taken up by thinking about things relevant to work and that I'd rather have some truly free time to myself rather than fulfill a social obligation.

***************

Other news:  I still haven't made any additional progress in decluttering since my friend's visit in August--and, predictably, the dining room table is a mess again.

In particular, the "cat room" (storage room/someday guest bedroom/study/workout space) is a mess.

Meanwhile my best friend in town, who has been retired for over 15 years, has been feeding feral cats around her house.  One of those moved indoors a couple of years ago.  Another lives in a heated bed she keeps on her porch.  Both are females.  The indoor one is friendly and the outdoor one is not.

Then there is a young male who is very affectionate who has now moved into her cellar, who she refers to as "your (i.e., MY) next cat."  He seems interested in meeting her indoor kitty, which is a good sign.  Meanwhile it is my busy time of year and I don't have time to clear things out or organize!  My schedule is light the last two weeks of the year--maybe then?

I'm also still paying off Buffy's final expenses, and I had intended to adopt two kitties together so they could keep each other company because I do spend lots of time at work--especialy this time of year.  My heart is ready for more pets but the house isn't.  Unsure what I'm going to do.

It's been a quiet Labor Day weekend, the centerpiece of which was taking a ride (my fourth of the season, actually) on a mule-pulled canal boat at the National Canal Museum.  I *was* thinking of going kayaking but the hot forecast deterred me.  I might try to do that kayak trip (through LL Bean) later this month. 

I also started Phase 2 of my decluttering project.  Phase 1 occurred during July, when I cleared the surfaces in the living areas in my house.  So far (knock on wood!) I have maintained the clear surfaces.

However, during Phase 1, I moved even more STUFF into the "storage room," a/k/a guest bedroom/study/exercise room, and there is now just barely a path through the room.

So Phase 2 is actually beginning to get STUFF *out* of the house.  So far, about 10 bags of clothing and shoes are gone.  I'm going to see how much else I can get rid of during the next month and may end by hiring one of those "1-800-Got-Junk" services to haul some stuff away.  My goal for the moment is to get that room "cat-safe" (get rid of the too many piles and hiding places) so that I can adopt another pair of kitties sometime this fall.

My work schedule has been crazy-busy in August and is again in September.  November and December and January promise the same, or worse.  So either I adopt kitties in October or I wait until the spring, since I do want to be able to spend more time at home with them early on.

I usually do have the option of working from home but it's harder when my schedule is busier.

I also need to get my health program back in gear; it took a stumble in July and August.  I just need to get back to it.  With the start of the school year and the Jewish New Year almost upon us, I need to take advantage of "Fresh Start Effect" motivation.

My refrigerator chose to die on the hottest day of the year.

Actually, it IS repairable, but would cost more than a thousand to repair, so I was advised to go shopping instead.

And I can't really complain--the machine is 29 years old!  (The previous homeowner left me all the manuals for appliances and things she'd purchased that stayed with the house.)

In the meantime, it's actually not 100% dead yet, just dying, and a purchase of two big bags of ice from the convenience store plus the refrigerator's insulation seems to be keeping things cool enough that I'm not worried.

Delivery of the new machine is Thursday morning--just in time for my annual houseguest, who arrives on Saturday.

I also thought about replacing the range at the same time.  

The range actually died two years ago (it works, but I smelled gas, so I had the neighbor turn off the gas and haven't used it since.)  I do most of my cooking with my instant pot and air fryer anyhow, so it wasn't a major loss.  Plus I have a countertop kettle for boiling water.  That has sufficed.

The advantage of replacing the range now is that they are probably going to have to remove doors to get the fridge in.  My house was built in 1915 and the entry to the living room is through a 29-inch doorway (with an antique French door).

The disadvantage is the additional cost right now, plus I'm still a little iffy on whether I want to replace the old gas range with a new gas range or if I want to convert to electric or induction.  It's cheaper to just replace gas with gas.  I anticipate remaining in the house for another 7 to 10 years.  If I thought I would live here for longer, my preference would be to switch to induction, even though that's pricey.

Right now the plan is to wait until January (when there are likely to be sales) and buy a new range then.  Maybe a dryer too.  At that point, I will have replaced every major appliance except the furnace.  I don't want to wait too long to replace the range since I think that gas is going out of style, so I don't want to wait until it becomes hard.  And in the interim, I'll think about whether I might want to convert to electric or induction.

Got two long-outstanding "to dos" done today:

1.  Canceled a magazine subscription that had automatically renewed for a refund.  I like the magazine but have no time to read it.

2. Called my internet service provider (which was also my cable company back when I had cable TV, which I haven't since 2008).  Every year they yank up the price--but if you call them and request a promotional rate, they'll give it to you.  My promo rate had gone from $47 to $65 a few months ago (plus the assorted fees and taxes) and I had been too busy to call.  But I saw the payment go out of my account today and that was the prompt to call them.  Got the base rate back down to $30 for now!

Well, this year got knocked off track by Buffy's illness and passing :^(.  Still feeling like the wind was knocked out of my sails.  This next month is the lightest of the year at work and I have already arranged to take every Friday off, and hopefully I will both be able to make some progress on personal goals and get some R&R.

With regard to my 2023 Goals:

Health:  Well, I lost weight from Buffy's diagnosis to passing, then gained it back.  I'm currently at about 1 pound down from the beginning of the year.  Exercise was going well until Buffy's passing and even for a bit after, but the combination of my overall sense of exhaustion after the stress of Buffy's illness with the record number of poor air quality days has put a dent into things recently.  Working with the personal trainer twice a week, which I did from September until Buffy's diagnosis in March, was very helpful, but I'm still paying down the debt from Buffy's illness.  I'm planning to get back to my regular "slogging" (very slow jogging) and join a nearby gym to work out on machines a couple of times a week just so that my muscles don't go to complete mush, then I'll go back to working out with the trainer again in the fall. 

North Star goals:I tend to organize my life by major goals.  Ever since 2009, the year that I left academia, (and my last long-term romantic relationship ended, and my mother and Henry the Pricey and Priceless Basset Hound were diagnosed with their terminal illnesses), the goal that served as my North Star was becoming a financial planner.  Well, I've been one for nearly a decade now, putting the cap on that achievement with my official CFP certification 2 years ago this week.  Then I turned to restoring my health as the major goal.  Even though I gained a little weight back recently, I'm still down about 30 pounds from 2 years ago and even with the exercise slow-down, I can jog a mile and still do so a couple of times a week at least.  I certainly need to continue on the health improvement path, but I've got some decent habits generally in place, and what's come in to view recently is planning for retirement as the next "North Star" goal to organize my long-term planning from now (about 7 weeks shy of 63) until age 70.  And what *that* means is trying to focus more on finding a place to live in retirement (in my area; I don't plan to move away from here), getting ready to move, and focusing more on relationships and hobbies (as well as my health) so that I have built something to retire TO, not just to retire FROM.  I'm a creature of habit, with my identity very (too much) tied to my work, so this too will be a long, slow process.  [I just noticed that my 17-year Blogoversary was a bit over a week ago; any of you who have been with me since that 2006 time frame when a lot of us seem to have started here can see that transition in real time in my blog.]

Systems, habits, & routines:  This is where I've gotten off track recently.  My performance at work had improved before Buffy's illness, then slowed down again.  But right now I have NO CLIENT MEETINGS scheduled for July, so it's my chance to catch up and get ahead.  Although not much is on the calendar yet, it looks like August could end up being super-busy with as many as 16 meetings on the administrative assistant's "to schedule" list.  Typically, I have 8-12 a month.  Plus, we just adopted new tax-planning software at work, which I am trying to master ahead of everyone else since as the only CPA in the financial planner role in my firm, people look to me for support.

My big goal for July is to make some significant progress on decluttering my house.  I have a houseguest arriving 5 weeks from today.  Every year when she comes, I manage to get the surfaces cleaned off, so that the place is reasonably presentable.  But every year the piles in my various storage spaces in the house just end up expanding.  This year, I want to actually GET SOME OF THE EXCESS OUT of the house, rather than merely re-arranging it.  Wish me luck!

My incentive for this:  I'm not allowing myself to get another cat until I make some progress.  Hopefully I can make decent progress during the next month, then adopt two new cats (my plan is to adopt a bonded pair of young adult cats) sometime this fall.

In the meantime, I probably spend several hours a week watching cat videos and missing my Buffy.

My net worth hit a new milestone (increment of 100k) this week.  What with 2022's down market, it took a couple of years to get there.  In a good market year like 2021, it currently takes just about a year to increase my net worth by 100k.

Debt is currently a bit higher due to Buffy's 3-month battle with cancer.  I reshufffled around some of the debts this weekend and still expect to be able to reach my year-end goal barring (knock on wood) any big surprises.

One pleasant surprise was that I brought my car in for a repair 2 weeks ago, which I anticipated would cost me about $300, and it turned out to be covered under warranty.  So I only had to pay for the oil change and tire rotation.

After getting my car fixed, I spent last weekend (Friday afternoon through Sunday morning) at a bed & breakfast that I like that sits along the Delaware River.  It sits on "Scenic Drive," and there is a restaurant about half a mile away along the same road.  There are also two small museums, the Zane Grey Museum and an exhibit about the Roebling Bridge, which was in some ways a prototype for the Brooklyn Bridge, which is also along this road.  Scenic Drive is about a mile or so long, and at one end there is Veteran's Park, which has a jogging loop.  So I walked and jogged, visited the two small museums, and did a lot of porch sitting (or sitting inside the dining room at a table with a view of the river when it was too cold to sit outside).  I had dinner both nights at the nearby restaurant, and the B&B had a microwave and mini-fridge available for guests, so lunchs were freeze-dried reconstituted meals and fruit.  This was a lovely period of decompression after the stress of the past few months, but I could use longer!

Then the middle of this week was marred by the horrid smoke-filled skies from the fires in Canada.  For about two hours on Wednesday, my town had the questionable distinction of having the worst air in the country.  I monitored airnow.gov until we temporarily got back to "good" air; now we are back to "moderate."  Living in a valley, our area tends to collect smoke and allergens.  I also ordered two new air purifiers, one for each story of my house.  I figure bad weather events are just going to get more common in the future, and with my asthma, my lungs are a weak spot.

I've started on my decluttering project.  At the beginning of the year, I had stated this as one of my goals for the year, but Buffy's illness put that on hold.  This weekend I started by taking two big tote bags of cat food and two cat carriers (the ones that Buffy and Bridget arrived in in 2016) over to one of the local shelters to donate.  I'm really going to try to focus on getting things cleared out over the next two months.  I know that I'll only make limited progress, but hopefully I'll do more than the usual mere clearing off of surfaces and actually get some of the excess out of the house this year.  The last time I took any photos of my house was in 2016, when my old college boyfriend stopped by for a visit.  That was just before I started my current job, which has kept me busier than my last one, and the clutter has increased since then.  This is my year to get things back to where I feel like I can have visitors again.

I lost my beloved Buffy on Mother's Day.   I took her to the emergency vet on Saturday morning for an issue which resolved itself while she was there, but they said, "while she's here, why don't we just do an x-ray and see if anything we don't know about is going on?"  and they gave her a pain shot.  

It was more intervention than she could tolerate and she was not the same cat when she got home.  I waited 24 hours in case she improved--sometimes before after pain meds or being hospitalized, it took her 18 hours or so to get back to herself--but not only was she not herself, but she was hunching over (a sign of a cat in pain) and occasionally putting herself in her carrier to hide (a new behavior).  She did drag herself out to the porch to lie in the sun for a while and I did get a few minutes of purring from her when I was lying by her side, but it seemed kinder to put an end to what was clearly suboptimal experience and the sooner the better.  I tried to schedule an at-home euthanasia but the earliest I could get was Tuesday, and I didn't want to wait.

I have now been pet-less for a week, which is the longest period in 29 years.  My head's intent is to adopt another two cats later this year, towards year-end, but who knows what my heart will end up doing?  I'm still kind of numb and in shock and grieving profoundly.  I have loved all of my pets, but there are some who touch you more deeply.  A decade ago, Henry was my heart hound, and Buffy was my heart kitty for the past 9+ years.

My Buffy was diagnosed with lymphoma on March 9th.  She started chemotherapy on March 17th.  She had her fourth treatment this past Tuesday.  According to the vet, it is typically the fourth treatment that puts them into remission.

We will see if she is in remission on April 25th and determine how to proceed based on that morning's ultrasound results.  Either the chemotherapy will continue for another 3 months, but at increasingly spaced intervals, or the vet will determine that she is not responding and we decide how to keep her comfortable for the longest possible period (which would only be another 1-2 months at most).

The third chemo dose was particularly hard on her, but I learned some tricks after that--like making sure I have an anti-nausea drug and an appetite stimulant on hand, requesting subcutaneous fluids to be administered at home to make sure she is hydrated, adding Prednisolone and Denamarin (which contains milk thistle and helps the liver clear toxins).  She will have that same drug on the 25th if we decide to proceed, but hopefully it will be managed better, plus I will know what to expect.

And if the results are not what I hope, I am steeling myself to not keep her around too long, just as long as her life seems to have quality most of the time.  I've learned that one day of not eating might be followed by a good eating day, so I won't pull the trigger too early, either.

Photo from a couple of years ago:

Buffy, my kitty who turns 18 on the 30th, was diagnosed with lymphoma yesterday.

The two veterinary oncologists at my local clinic are booked out for the next 6 weeks so we have a consult with a veterinary oncologist next Friday at a clinic 70 miles away.  (This will incidentally be the furthest I have driven since before the pandemic.  I kinda stopped driving distances back then.)

I believe that the chemo can be administered locally.  

It's intestinal lymphoma and I think it's the large cell variety, which has the better prognosis.  I'm praying that we are just dealing with a 3-month course of chemo and then remission (although they never say that kitty lymphoma is cured).  Some varieties of cat lymphoma have a 2-3 year prognosis with chemo, and that is about how long I would expect her to live anyways.

She is my miracle kitty who was expected to die back in 2019 when she was hospitalized for 10 days.  She's been consulting the internal medicine specialist quarterly since then, so we caught this relatively early.  She did not have enlarged lymph nodes at her last check on 12/5.  Also her bloodwork is normal except for somewhat elevated neutraphils.

Yesterday when I went to pick her up, there was a Basset Hound named Albert in the waiting room.  Bassets are my "spirit animal" and seeing one felt like a good luck charm to me.  I pray it is.

I know that she doesn't have a long life span remaining in any case, but I've been walking around with a hard knot in the pit of my stomach since hearing the news yesterday.  If her lymphoma turns out to be more agressive, she could be gone in 4 to 8 weeks.  So I'm praying for longer with her than that.

My company pays our year-end bonus for the prior year in the second paycheck of February--if we get a year-end bonus.  Bonuses are company-wide and based on whether the company met its profit-margin goal.  Most years, but not every year, we get a bonus, and the bonus is the same (in terms of % of salary) for everyone.

The 2022 bonus was 15% of 2022 pay.  I'm using the extra to pay down some debt.  I'm still in process of that, since some payments hit my accounts automatically this coming week. Even with what I paid out today, my debts are now the lowest they have been since I began tracking back in 2006, when my debt was my mortgage plus 5k on credit cards.  My total debt is down about 15k since the end of 2021.

I also got a merit increase, which will show up in my next check, of 6%, which was at the top end of pay raises given.

For the moment, I'll use the extra to either pay down debt or build up cash savings rather than contributing more to my retirement account.  I'm currently contributing 20% of my pay to my retirement, 10% to the traditional/tax-deferred option and 10% to the Roth option.  The dollar amount will increase because my pay is increasing.

I'm still not ready to declare myself "financially independent," but it's a step in the right direction.