Here we are somehow halfway through 2020 already. Thanks to the COVID, the first half of 2020 seems completely lost on the financial and social levels. On a personal level, I’ve taken up the goal of getting in better shape, which has resulted in the loss of about 18 pounds. I find weight to be both a terrible motivator and measure of one’s health, so I’m using physical appearance as a guide and I’ve definitely noticed a change.
At the beginning of the year I outlined my goals for 2020, and here’s a quick summary:
Minor Goals
- Fully fund my kitchen remodel – We estimated this to cost up to $55k. All told it cost a hair over $50k including any accents and customization’s we made along the way. I also signed up for a Delta Skymiles credit card, which I used to pay for the appliances (and promptly paid off) earning me 100k miles (about $1000).
- Investigate back door Roth – After much confusion reading and re-reading everything I can get my hands on, I reached out to a friend that is a financial advisor. When I told him my current income he told me attempting to convert money to a back door Roth at my current tax rate would be a massacre to my finances. I’ve decided to put this to bed and focus on my mortgage and post-tax investing.
- Grow a lettuce and tomato garden – This is well underway! I decided to grow romaine, spinach, bell peppers, and plum tomatoes. I’m looking forward to a bountiful harvest.
Major Goals
- Hit the mortgage hard – Despite the economy’s best efforts, I’m still tracking to this goal for August. I have changed it slightly, in that my original plan was to send a single payment of roughly $28k in early August. I now plan to send a payment amounting to 10% of my mortgage, about $34k. This one payment will knock 2.5 years off of my loan, bringing me down to a 17 year mortgage. Not bad having only owned the house for six years!
- Invest 90% of surplus income in the market – What a year to have been sitting on a pile of cash! Just a couple weeks before the stock market crashed, I’d sold all available company stock and sat on the profits waiting for a dip in the market. Boy did I get a dip! I slowly trickled money in on the way down and was able to dollar cost average my holdings base prices to much lower numbers. I’m starting to see rewards from that now. I also took a gamble and spread $10k between airline and oil index funds at historic lows, so far that’s going well. There is still half a year left, and with my company stock hitting all time highs I’m planning to continue selling off shares and diversifying across index funds.
Bonus
With so much uncertainty in the market, and quite a bit of cash on hand, I decided this would be a great time to budget for our final remodeling projects. We don’t plan to tackle these until 2021, but I moved the money into our emergency fund and we will keep it there until it’s time to start work. This also gives us almost a full year of expenses set aside in case of disaster, and we now have another full year of expenses sitting semi-liquid in index funds.
All told, despite the worst financial crisis in over a decade we’ve managed to solidify our financial situation to a point that as long as I stay gainfully employed we’ll come out of this better than before. On the work front, my company is thriving in this crazy market, and I’m working in a perfect area to support the company and our customers, so my job feels very safe right now. My plan is to stay the course for the next six months and hopefully far exceed my planned goals for 2020.
Freed by 50 