Hi Everyone!
I've been absent for so long but now finally catching up. We did our 11 nt trek out west to Vegas, GC, DLR & Sedona. What a great time. So nice to see "Walt's park" and where it all began. We were utterly spoiled staying at the GCH and just loved the convenience. We had 2nd row seats to Terry Fator in Vegas which was awesome. Just to hear dh and our boys laugh SO HARD was pure joy for me.
I'm still chugging away at my goal to put my entire snowball into my retirement account for Oct-Dec to lower our tax obligation to the IRS. Looking on my pay stub, my taxable income is generally half of what it used to be. When dh gets paid, I take what would be the snowball amount and just hold it in savings, then when I get paid less than my usual amount, I add in the savings from dh's pay. So far this has worked out well 3x. I used a payroll calculator website to estimate how much pretax I should elect to contribute, so that it's the equivalent of my after tax snowball. This varies because the 2nd pay of the month is mortgage/escrow time so that is much less. Also Nov is a 3 paycheck month so there's another twist and turn to navigate. Every 2 weeks, my election amount changes. I have around $5500 in my new car fund that I can lean on if my calculations should be way off at some point.
My Vanguard fund earnings are way down so I'm not really "seeing" any addition to my total but dh says not to worry because it's like "buying low" and we will see it eventually when the market improves. All together, this is around $10k for the 3 month period.
In other news, both of our boys started working full time at
Amazon!
They are hiring something like 9000 employees in our little state of NJ for their warehouse/fulfillment and it was a really easy process for them. It's pays $15+/hr which is way better than min wage ($8.xx/hr) and the water ice scooping job ds21 was in. They also get full medical/dental/vision ins, matching 401k, stock options and Mommy's favorite: employee discount!! woo hoo!
They work dinner time to wee morning hours so I barely see them but the other great part is that they share the same hours so even though ds18 won't get his driver's license til March, he can carpool with ds21 and share the cost of gas. Ds18 is so drooling to buy a truck that he set up direct deposit to all go into savings. This is my child who could never just hold onto money, a total spender. Such a pleasure to see him so motivated.
I am thinking of giving him cash for Christmas instead of the usual stuff for Christmas: Flannel PJ pants, video games, BMX bike parts, skateboard parts, etc. Having a truck with 4wd would also work out well for snowy weather that they can get to work more easily.
I'm not sure if we can put ds18 as co-owner while he only has a learner's permit but we'll find out. It does list on his permit what his future DL number will be.
In travel news, we booked a trip to Aruba with our close friends & 2 other couples for next spring. We had so many vouchers from SW for our June & Sept flights being delayed several hours due to weather. I only had to book dh's one way seat with points and the rest was covered by vouchers. Well, except the taxes which are much higher than domestic flights.
Still churning bank bonuses. Lately, I've completed Santander, Valley National Bank, BB&T, M&T, and Citizens Bank. They will all 1099 me in Jan so this is why I want to lower my taxable income as much as possible.
So my next goal after Jan 1 is to power save for a car, enough that we don't need a loan. I don't ever want a car payment again. Our last few vehicles were brand new but we both have agreed to save the money from now on by getting something 3 yrs old or so and let some one else take the loss for all that depreciation.
Hope everyone is doing well. It will take me a while to read up on everyone's progress for the last month. I used to read this thread every day on the train but lately got hooked on a puzzle game on my phone. Terribly addicting...