Hi Everyone!
Finally got to some downtime to check in here; I have so much catching up to do. I've been so busy with holiday stuff and then dh and I went to WDW for 4 nts in late Nov/early Dec. We had old tickets that were about to expire, and flights were free on SW using pts and our companion pass. We rented points to stay at Saratoga Springs. It was nice to visit the World all decked out for Christmas. Dh is thoroughly "parked out" so we're taking a break from Disney for a while.
Our kids are still working at
Amazon and getting into a routine. Their mandatory OT finally ended so things are returning to normal here. For a while it was 15 hrs of OT per week so they barely had time to sleep & shower before going back in.
We have been chugging along full steam ahead with saving for a car for me. This week my New Car Fund will approach $13,000. I am determined to NEVER have a car payment again. I really can't stand the thought of intentionally creating debt for us again. It just took too dang long and was a lot of effort to eliminate it. My car goal is set at $40,000 and I should get there around this time next year. I told ds18 I'd give him $4000 toward his car fund, leaving $36k for my new car.
We still have $0 debt except our mortgage.
I am torn between paying off the mortgage, 3% with another 9.25 years to go, or pay extra to my retirement fund. The market has been pretty crappy lately so maybe that's a better time to buy? or maybe that will push me toward paying down the mortgage. I'd love to have that monthly payment to keep instead of paying, paying, paying.
The thing with snowballing for so long (I started here in 2013!), it's ingrained in me now. I sort of trained myself to "attack" every goal with all my might, with everything I can. Great for paying off debt but harder when it comes to saving for different goals. I have a hard time allowing myself to have more than one goal at a time. I feel like I should put everything I can to my car fund so I can be done and move onto the next thing (by then will be a truck for dh). If I try splitting it up, say half to the car and half to mortgage, I worry I will lose my momentum and start to slip & slide.
We also would like to get a bedroom set. I'm 51 and still using the stuff I bought when I was 19. lol. It's in good shape but still... We also would like a real dining room set. My friend gave us her old dining room table & chairs and it's huge but very informal and we still need a china cabinet. Before we converted our back porch into a home office, we were using our dining room as an office. Now we finally have a real dining room and want it to look nice.
Our master bath is starting to look old. We remodeled that when we first moved in; ds22 was a newborn. None of these are specifically a 2019 goal, just goals in general. Sigh, with a house it just never ends.
As for vacations in 2019, we're going to Aruba in April, an all-inclusive with our friends. We only had to pay taxes on the airfare and our Chase pts covered more than half of the resort cost. We haven't yet chosen our summer vacation weeks at work yet but so far have I have no plans.
Until next time, just keep swimming! Have a Happy Healthy New Year!!