Living with my parents for the last 4 months has given me some interesting glimpses into their mindset.  They come from the silent generation.  These folks are older than boomers and have a different outlook on life than the boomers. Setting the scene As I have mentioned previously, my parents live in the UK.  Their house has radiator heating and no AC. The heating system is controlled by a thermostat, and is currently set to 21C or 23C when they are using the shower. (They are in their 80s and feel the cold). Every night, before he went to bed, my father would turn the heating off.  I asked him…

This is a rant post. I will be posting a more exhaustive breakdown of long term care costs shortly, but I want to put out there why I am focused on long term care and why it has importance in my mind. In my previous post about financial mismanagement I mentioned that my parents are old, infirm and require care. At the time of writing I am living with them in the UK while my very dear and patient wife soldiers on in the US.  Cat has also written her own thoughts on the cost of long term care.  We both work remotely so we are not suffering financially other…

Here we are at the end of another year, and what a year it has been.  The highlights for me this year have been the continuation of the COVID pandemic with all its new and exciting variants, the decline of my father and my subsequent  move to the UK to help care for him and my mother, and the markets continued climb upwards, with the odd dip here and there to make things interesting.   How are we coping with COVID? As I have mentioned in previous posts, Cat and I have been working from home on and off for years so this permanent work from home is no big…

… or how to let emotion manage your money. This is a tale of my parents and their journey from comfortable to broke. The Starting Point Once upon a time there were two fully paid off bungalows; my parents lived in the smaller home, and my grandparents lived in the larger one. When my grandparents died, the larger bungalow was left to my mother. It was then rented out, giving my parents a little income. So they had two homes with an approx value of ₤︎350k + ₤︎250k, for a total of roughly ₤︎600k plus rental income, and no debt. Sweet. The Family Drama My parents had two kids; me…

The IRS recently released its 2022 contribution limits for retirement accounts, and I took a look to see what these changes make for Cat and myself. 401k The biggest vehicle we use for retirement savings is the 401k.  We both have them and this year, my employer increased the match so you can be sure I will be contributing again in 2022.  The 401k contribution allowance has increased from $19,500 to $20,500 with the over 50s catch up contribution of $6,500.  This means that Cat and I can put up to $27k each into our retirement accounts.  That’s a whopping $54k removed from our taxable income (assuming we contribute the…

I was prompted to write this because of an article I saw recently JLCollins, that discussed the choice in education between degree courses and certifications.  I am, for the most part, firmly on the side of certifications, at least for my industry.  I am in IT and because IT moves so fast in terms of technology, any degree you have is out of date by the time you have finished it.  Now that is not to say that degrees are worthless; I think it all depends on what you need it for.  Doctors? Sure, IT, not so much I started in IT many years back, but I transitioned from the…

Let me start by saying this quarter has been a bit of a clusterfuck.  My father is dying and there is of course the inevitable family drama.  When I found out what state my father was in and how my mother was unable to cope, I said I would fly to the UK to look after both of them.  (Just as a reminder, I am in the USA and my family is in the UK).  I have to give credit to those who do this for a living because this is hard. My father also seems to have some dementia too, so there is that to deal with, and my…

A while ago I published a post about moving off Verizon’s unlimited plan and getting a new plan with Tello.  So far this phone plan has worked out well.  Just to recap, I have unlimited talk time and unlimited text, and a 1GB data plan.  Because we are all still cooped up because of COVID and I work from home, most of the time my phone is on WiFi, so I really only use a few MB of data per month. Last month, Cat and I went over our subscriptions, and as part of that process, we took a look at Cat’s phone plan.  She is still on the Verizon…

Most of us have one or two subscriptions in our lives. It might be Netflix or Amazon Prime, but we all have one or two somewhere.  For a time now, I’ve had this nagging feeling that we’re spending to much on subscriptions services so today, Cat and I took a look at our combined subscription spending.  And here it is: *Disney+ is part of our phone plan from Verizon As you can see, we spend $2415 a year on Subscriptions!  This is way too much and so we need to cost reduce somehow.  So we started to look in detail in terms of what were using and how.  One of…

Today we hit our end of year target of $1M.  Yes, I thought I would lead with that. No fancy intro, just that. I set this target back at the beginning of 2021, when I had hoped that the market would return and we could, with a lot of savings reach that $1M mark.  Well, the market and our savings seemed to have exceeded my expectations, and here we are with a net worth of $1M between us, already. Compound Interest I want to thank the power of compound interest.  While Cat and I have been saving as much as we can, compound interest has also made a considerable contribution…