Disneysteve's Common Cents Blog

They announced yesterday that restaurants can resume outdoor dining on 6/15 and that salons and barbers can reopen on 6/22. I couldn't care less about salons as I cut my own hair and have for years, but the two main things I've missed during quarantine have been the gym and eating out. Gyms are still closed but restaurants will start coming back in 2 weeks.

We are not typically ones to dine outside. My wife has bad allergies and it's rare for the weather to be cooperative. Either it's too hot and humid or too cool or windy or raining. I'm trying to think of the local places we like that have nice outdoor seating areas, especially ones that are covered. That way the sun and/or rain isn't an issue. There is one Italian place nearby that has a great patio space. With social distancing requirements I'm not sure how many people they'll be able to accommodate at a time but if DW is willing, maybe we'll do dinner there one night once things are up and running. They have short rib that is to die for.

Work seems to be gradually picking up, though some days not so much. We saw 22 patients on Thursday and I think they saw 23 on Friday, but then I saw 4 yesterday. However, 2 of our sites that had been closed reopened yesterday so that may have been part of it. I was only in 9-1 today but we had seen 8 when I left so that was decent.

I suppose it's sort of like survivor's guilt. So many people are suffering with so much right now - disease, unemployment, having to home school their kids, having summer camp cancelled, struggling to keep their businesses afloat, and more.

Meanwhile, here we are with me still fully employed earning my normal income. My wife is very happily quarantined and almost couldn't care if things open up again or not. Our daughter is unemployed but fortunately not suffering financially as a result (though it has been hard mentally - she can't wait to get back to work). We do have a couple of friends who have been quite sick from COVID but thankfully haven't lost anyone close to us.

As I've shared before, our spending is actually down by about $1,000/month largely due to COVID. There's nowhere to go and nothing to do that involves spending money. So ultimately, we're going to come out of this whole mess better than when it started. So many millions of people can't say the same.

Not to say, of course, that it hasn't been a challenge. For weeks, the stress level at my job was sky high, the worst I've ever experienced in my 30 years as a doctor. Things were changing daily and we just didn't know what was going to happen, what we were supposed to be doing, how best to protect ourselves. Patient volume plummeted making us all concerned if we would maintain our jobs, especially as we heard more and more stories of healthcare layoffs.

Fortunately, we seem to be past the worst of it now and things have settled down. Work isn't so stressful anymore and we've adjusted to the new procedures. Volume is starting to pick back up also so I think our jobs are safe at this point. Now we're just dreading the fall when we have seasonal flu AND COVID to deal with. That certainly won't be fun.

Anyway, it's just been a little awkward or uncomfortable when we're talking with friends who have it way worse than we do. We're very thankful not to be financially impacted, not to have little kids to deal with, not to have had COVID strike too close to home.

I was listening to a podcast on my run this morning and they were talking about visiting and supporting your local science museum.

It got me thinking that currently, we really aren't supporting any local non-profit cultural, entertainment, or educational ventures. Over the years, we have had memberships at various places like a botanical garden, a community theater, an art museum, etc. I think once the whole COVID thing settles down, we need to get back to doing that.

I'm going to speak to DW about this. I'd like us to subscribe to the community theater again. We both love theater and enjoyed when we were kind of "forced" to go see the shows there because we had already paid for them.

I don't know that we want to do the botanical garden again but maybe one of the many museums in Philly. DW has gone to one particular museum a few times with a friend who has a membership. Maybe we can join one of the others and take her along in return.

I know it's not the most altruistic sort of charity since we get something out of it ourselves, but it's a way to help a good cause and provide some activity and entertainment for us at the same time.

I posted last month that our spending was down significantly year to date at least in part due to the COVID shutdown and not being able to go anywhere or do anything.

As May is nearly over, I took another look and the savings continue to grow.

I compared our total credit card charges from January through May 2019 to the same period for 2020.

2019: $20,931.71
2020: $15,460.73

So YTD we've spent $5,470.98 less than last year.

Not all of that is COVID-related because our January and February spending was also lower this year, and that was before the shutdown, so we have just been spending less in general, but still we've spent an average of almost $1,100/month less than in 2019. I'll take it.

I was planning to attend a medical conference in St. Louis in early July. I booked the hotel months ago. I realized that I haven't heard anything about the status of the convention itself so I went to their website last night and sure enough it has been cancelled.

I checked my saved email and it turns out that while I had made the hotel reservation, I had never actually registered for the convention which is why I didn't get a cancellation notice. Makes sense.

I went on and cancelled the hotel stay this morning. Fortunately, I had the good sense to not book airfare in advance so I don't have the hassle of having to cancel that.

Looks like I'll have a little staycation in July. No reason to cancel my PTO. I have more PTO than I will likely use this year anyway. I might as well use it. Hopefully by July we'll at least be able to do something fun with some of that time, even just a day trip or two. Who knows at this point?

We love to travel but we are not major planners. We rarely plan our Disney World trips more than 3 months in advance and rarely plan other trips any farther out than that. We might know when and where we want to go but don't usually make all of the plans far in advance.

The only exception is when we're attending a specific event like a convention or something like that.

Disney World's 50th anniversary is October 1, 2021. Disney opens room-only bookings 499 days in advance, which was just a couple of days ago. I hadn't made note of the booking date but fortunately a friend posted on Facebook this morning that he made his reservation. I immediately e-mailed our travel agent to book us a room. I'm waiting to hear back. It will be stupidly expensive but we've said for years that we want to be there for the anniversary and stay at the Contemporary hotel so that we can walk in to the park and not have to deal with any transportation. Hopefully it hasn't already sold out.

Our garbage disposal died a few weeks ago, sometime soon after quarantine began. I tried fixing it myself to no avail. I wasn't up to replacing it myself so we contacted our handyman. He installed the current one. Of course, due to COVID, he wasn't able to come out, nor did we want him to, but we wanted to get on his list for when things started loosening up.

So for however many weeks now, we just haven't had a working disposal, which honestly wasn't a huge deal. He reached out a few days ago and asked if he could come today and we said yes. He came this morning and installed it so we're up and running again. We made sure to wipe everything down before he arrived, wore masks while he was here, and wiped everything down again after he left.

Disposal itself was about $150 from Home Depot plus $65 for him to install it so $215 total.

I know I'm not the only one experiencing this but we've actually saved a significant amount of money as a result of the world shutting down.

For March, which we only lost half of, our spending was down by $500 compared to March 2019.

For April, which we've lost all of, our spending was down by $1,000 compared to April 2019.

I'm not incredibly surprised but I didn't expect the savings to be quite that high. It really makes me wonder about things going forward.

I think I will take a look at the actual charges last March and April to see where most of that savings has come from. I'm quite sure that dining out will be the single biggest factor. That's actually the thing I miss most about the whole quarantine thing. I know we aren't going to stop eating out (once we are able to do it again) but I will definitely be more aware of how much we're spending in the process.

How about all of you? Have you noticed a drop in spending?

Well, there's not really much in the way of news but it's been 2 weeks since I posted so figured I'd check in.

Our daughter wasn't eligible for unemployment because her last job was with a non-profit and they don't pay into the system. The look back period ended 9/30/19 and she had only been at her current job about 2 months at that point and needed to have 20 weeks of work history.

There may be a silver lining, though. She got a call from her manager the other day and it sounds like they got money from the payroll protection program as she said they may be able to pay her for 8 weeks worth of income. She's waiting for confirmation and details.

I'm working same as always. Urgent care is still very slow. The hospital census has been gradually increasing but not to a point where they are overwhelmed and calling in more help. I'm hoping that remains the case and they won't need us. I really don't want to go work there.

DW is managing okay. She and her mah jong friends got set up with an online game platform so a couple of times a week they get together virtually and play. They use a 2nd device to Facetime so that they can all see and talk to each other. They'll probably keep using that system even after quarantine ends at least sometimes because it means nobody has to drive around. It will be great if we have bad weather or someone isn't feeling well but can still play without getting others sick.

We've become regular Zoom users, as I'm sure lots of you have. We've had meets with our bourbon club, our Disney friends, family members, and more. What a great resource to stay connected with everyone. I've used it a few times for work also for updates and meetings.

At work, we've been very grateful for some of the community support, mainly in the form of free food. We've gotten lunch from Five Guys and Mission BBQ, free smoothies from Smoothie King, and free donuts from Krispy Kreme among other things.

Financially speaking, the quarantine has really cut down our spending. Less gas, less dining out, less unplanned shopping, no outside entertainment - it's all added up to over $3,000 of reduced spending compared to the first 4 months of 2019.

I hope everyone is hanging in there. Stay safe.

It's been 2 weeks since I posted. Things are going reasonably well. Work remains slow but also very stressful. I'm having dreams about work pretty much every night. Several of my coworkers have said the same. Constantly working with the threat of catching COVID from our patients is really taking its toll mentally on all of us.

As part of the Emergency Operations Plan, they have all of us urgent care providers getting oriented in the hospital so that when the surge hits, they can send us there as additional help if needed. I haven't done any inpatient care for just over 20 years so I'm not sure how much help I can be. I did a little orientation yesterday so I at least have a general concept of where things are and what the workflow looks like. But if I actually have to start working there, I'll need a great deal of help and support.

Passover was essentially cancelled thanks to COVID. We always host the seder at our house which obviously didn't happen. My cousins in NYC did a Zoom seder but none of us really felt like participating.

I'm trying my best to exercise regularly which is hard with the gym closed. I have gotten out to walk/jog several times and I've been doing some floor exercises at home with what limited equipment we have. I figure it's all good and better than nothing but I look forward to being able to go to the gym again whenever that happens.

Financially, things are pretty normal since I'm still working full time. Our daughter has been out of work since 3/13 and filed for unemployment. She got the debit card a couple of days ago but hasn't actually gotten her first payment yet. We're hoping that her place is able to reopen and doesn't go out of business. She'll be devastated if it does.

Not much else happening since the world is pretty much all closed. I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy at home and being super careful when you must go out.

I realized I haven't posted for a couple of weeks. Heck, I haven't even been reading anybody else's blog. Obviously, it's been a crazy time, and being a healthcare worker, I'm not on lockdown like so many others including my wife and daughter. I've still got to go to work every day and that's been a whole new level of crazy with the rules and guidelines and policies and procedures changing pretty much daily.

On the plus side, patient volume at urgent care has plummeted. My theory is that with schools closed and so many people working from home, there just isn't that much routine illness going around. Also, with all sports and activities suspended, gyms closed, etc., we're not seeing all of the sports injuries we typically get. So we've been quite slow.

On the other hand, we're on the front lines of the COVID-19 stuff. We are seeing plenty of patients with respiratory symptoms so every person who walks through the door is a potential case and we need to act accordingly. That is quite stressful for all of us.

In addition, because of the decreased volumes overall, we're starting to worry about our jobs. They have already stopped urgent care services at 2 or our 8 sites and reassigned providers to the remaining 6. But we wonder how long that is sustainable when we're seeing about 1/3 of our normal volume. Colleagues across the country are reporting their urgent care clinics are cutting back operating hours or closing sites entirely. Some providers have even been laid off. So obviously that's a huge concern for me.

The "good" thing is that I work for a large hospital system, not an independent urgent care company. If the situation reaches a point where they really feel they don't need some of us in urgent care, they may reassign us to other clinical duties, especially if the hospitals start getting overwhelmed with COVID patients and/or a lot of providers are out because they are infected or at least quarantined due to exposure. So at least right at this moment, I think my job is safe, but I know that could change at any moment.

My daughter's job shut down a week ago Saturday and they were officially laid off a few days later, making her eligible to file for unemployment. She was upset about that and is hoping that her job opens again whenever appropriate. Her manager told her they definitely want her back but there is always that chance that they might trim staff or simply fold if they can't financially stay afloat.

My wife is managing pretty well with the whole situation. She doesn't work outside the home so her routine isn't quite as disrupted as ours, though it's still affected. Other than us taking a couple of family walks, I don't think she's left the house for well over a week. She normally does a weekly volunteer gig packing home meals for the elderly, plays Mah Jong every week, and does another monthly volunteer thing for a blind support group. All of that is gone for now. I know she's also really worried about me, afraid that I'll catch the virus at work.

And of course, we can't ignore the financial impact this whole mess is having. Last time I checked, our portfolio was down about $230,000. I'm sure it recovered a bit yesterday and today but that's still a huge loss on paper. I did do some buying over the last couple of weeks so I'm hoping that will help when the recovery ultimately happens. I got some stuff at pretty rock bottom prices (I hope) so that will goose the returns some when things start going back up.

I guess that's long enough of a post for now. I hope everyone else is holding up okay through all of this. Stay safe. Stay healthy. And STAY HOME!

We finally got an answer from the utility company today. They said that the meter was 99.7% accurate (I think that was the number). So apparently there's no refund coming our way and we've somehow managed to increase electricity usage 40-60% in the past year without changing anything we do or use in our home.

At least there was no cost to getting our meter replaced. I'm really curious to see how the bills are going forward. If the continue to show higher usage, I guess that will confirm the answer. If, however, it shows a significant drop in usage, I may reach out again to complain and question that analysis.

This isn't quite a financial topic, though everything is to some extent, but I'm looking for everyone's thoughts.

How do you spend your evenings? After work and dinner, what do you do for the rest of the day?

I've really been struggling with this for a while. I feel like we don't do much of anything except watch some TV and spend time on the computer or our phones.

We do go to the gym regularly, but not at night. My wife does a lot of sewing and quilting, but not typically at night. I really have no hobbies or interests that I engage in anymore.

I don't like shopping unless there is something specific that I need, which is rare. I don't actively collect anything like I used to. I occasionally list some items on ebay but that hasn't been a regular thing for years.

It's a bit easier in the warmer/longer sunshine months because I'll do a little yard work or spend some time cleaning the garage or go for a walk/run, but especially in the winter with the colder weather and shorter daylight hours, I just feel like a slug.

I don't expect anyone to have a magical solution for me but I thought that maybe hearing what everyone else is up to might inspire me.

I met with our CPA today to do our taxes. They aren't actually done. He and his crew need to actually do the work and then get back to us with the results. That will take a week or so, but my end is done. He has all of the data he needs.

I'm super organized when I go there, which he greatly appreciates, so we zip through the actual tax part of the meeting pretty quickly. We then move on to the discussion portion: How much do we have saved for retirement? Do I have a retirement age in mind? Have I thought about when to claim Social Security? What's our daughter's situation and to what extent will we need to continue to subsidize her? Do we plan to stay in our current house?

I brought up the inheritance issue I posted about on the forums and we talked about how that will play into everything. For those who don't read the forums, I have a terminally ill relative from whom I am in line to inherit somewhere in the 700K-$1 million range, possibly within the next year or two unfortunately. We talked about what that could mean as far as when I retire.

We talked about selling taxable investments and buying tax-exempt ones. We talked about converting traditional IRAs to Roths.

I love the free form flow of ideas I have with him each year, and he loves it too because most of his clients don't have the financial knowledge that I have and he has to explain every concept to them in great detail. With me, he can just think out loud and throw out ideas and we can discuss them.

As for our taxes, I expect that we'll get a small refund, a few hundred dollars, from the state and that we'll owe under $2,000 on Federal. So net cost of around $1,500 is what I'm guessing. We'll see when they're done preparing our return.

Text I just got from my daughter (she's 24). She is at the bank waiting to have a form notarized.

Her: Lady in the waiting area on her phone, "I always check my account balance on the app and it said $168". It was normal for me to have more money than other college kids but this lady is 50 or 60. I mean she could have more money in other places but still.

Me: Surveys show that most people can't cover an unexpected $400 expense.

Her: People need to get their stuff together because that's crazy.

Me: Just keep being abnormal and you'll be fine.

Her: Sometimes it's good to be different.

They came out today and replaced our electric meter. My wife said the tech told her that the meter did appear to be worn out internally so he thinks I may be right that it wasn't recording properly. He said it takes about 2 weeks for them to do the analysis and he gave us a number to call to get a report.

So now we just have to wait a couple of weeks and then see what they say. Hopefully, they'll confirm a discrepancy and we'll get some money back. I'll update when I know.

The moral of the story is that if something just doesn't seem right, don't be afraid to question it. And the other moral is to pay attention. Review bills. Look for discrepancies or unfamiliar charges and look into them when they occur.

Every month, I put money in our Ally account and money in our taxable Vanguard account. Last month I bumped up the amounts from $1,500 each to $1,600 each. I made the February deposits yesterday.

That's rarely all we put in but we always put in at least those amounts. Last month I actually put $5,000 into Ally.

For the month of January 2020:

10 gym workouts
2 outdoor runs

12/30/19 weight: 185.7
1/31/20 weight: 181.4

I'm happy with those numbers. Now to keep it up in February and keep that weight number going down.

Last month, I won a $600 gift card to a local restaurant in a drawing at a liquor store we frequent. They said it was for a "whiskey dinner" for 6-8 people. It turned out to simply be a gift card to the restaurant to be used however we'd like. DW and I talked about it and decided we'd go out to dinner with another couple two different times (with different couples) and cover the bills with the gift card as much as possible. We also happened to have an old $50 gift card to the same place that we had never used.

Tonight was our first dinner there armed with $650 worth of gift cards. I'll admit we went a bit overboard in ordering since the meal wasn't costing us a penny. The tab came to $342 plus $64 for the tip for a total of $406. That leaves us a $244 balance on the gift card for next time. That may not fully cover dinner for 4 but we can tone it down next time around so it should cover most of it. I don't mind paying a bit out of pocket.

The meal was fabulous, though. I know to a lot of people, a $100 meal is unimaginable but just trust me when I say it was worth it. From the cocktails to the appetizers to the entrees to the desserts, everything was top notch including the service. We loved it and our friends loved it. We don't get to spend time with them often so we really enjoyed the company as well.

We haven't set up the next dinner yet. We have to decide who we want to go with and then find a date that works for all of us.

I called the utility company today and explained my concern with the sharply higher electricity usage compared to last year. The rep asked if we had any space heaters, electric fireplaces, etc. I said we do have a space heater but it's the same one we've had for years. I also explained that we recently got a new dishwasher which is more efficient than the one it replaced and that we've also installed several LED lights so our usage should be lower.

She set up an appointment for our meter to be replaced early next month. They will analyze the old meter and if they find a discrepancy, we'll be credited accordingly. If they find no issues, then our bill will remain as is. But there's no cost to having the meter replaced so we really have nothing to lose. I figure it's worth a shot.

I'll post an update when I have one.

One of our toilets was taking forever to fill. It wasn't running. It wasn't leaking. It just was filling really slowly. My wife finally asked if I could fix it so a couple of weeks ago, I stopped at Home Depot and picked up a new fill valve assembly and installed it. Everything seemed fine. It was working properly and filling in a normal amount of time.

Then 2 days ago DW texts me at work and says the toilet is running and she opened the back and the water level was rising over the top of the drain tube. I talked her through a couple of things to try but nothing helped. The only thing I can figure is that the fill valve I installed was defective and had a leak somewhere so the water flow wasn't cutting off when the tank was full.

I had to work all day yesterday so couldn't do anything about it until today (which I'm sure our next water bill will reflect). I went and got another new fill valve assembly, took out the first one, and installed the new one. I also went and replaced the flapper while I was at it. It wasn't leaking but it was pretty old.

So far, everything seems fine, but that was true last time too. Hopefully it will continue to be okay. I just have to get back to Home Depot to return the first one.

Of course, in the process of doing all of this, I discovered that the water shut off valve to the toilet doesn't work. I had to turn off the main water supply to the house to fix the toilet. I got a plumber referral from a friend and will call them at some point to come install a new valve. That's a little beyond my DIY skill set.

It recently occurred to me that there might be something wrong with our electric meter. The utility bill shows how much our electricity and gas usage is compared to the same month a year ago. The gas usage is sometimes higher, sometimes lower, but I've realized the electricity usage is always higher, sometimes 10 or 12% but sometimes 50 or 60% higher. This was actually happening last year but I attributed it to DD being back living at home and not away at college.

There's no way we can be using 60% more electricity than a year ago though. Nothing has changed in our house. It's been the same 3 people. The only new appliance we've gotten, and that was just a couple of months ago, was a dishwasher and the new one should be a lot more efficient than the 15-year-old one it replaced. Every other appliance is the same.

I'm going to call the utility company and see if they can send someone out to check our meter. We've had it for a long time so maybe it needs to be replaced.

They finally gave us extra help at work. We now have 2 providers for 4 hours per day on Monday, Friday, and weekends. It definitely helped yesterday as we saw 22 patients from 9-1 which I couldn't possibly have kept up with by myself. Now I just have to hope the volumes support adding a 2nd person on the remaining 3 days of the week since I work Tuesday and Thursday by myself.

We went out to dinner last night to a place we like. The restaurant sent out an email yesterday morning with a $10 off deal one day only. I'm guessing they thought business might be light due to bad weather, or maybe that was just a coincidence and they were going to send that offer anyway.

In addition to the $10 off, I had a $20 gift card that we got as a bonus for buying a $75 gift card last month. Finally, I hadn't yet used the $100 gift card my staff gave me as a holiday present. I think we ended up using about half of that card.

The storm didn't do much here. We got a dusting of snow and some sleet but it wasn't bad and the temp was back in the upper 30s this morning so nothing froze over night.

I realized yesterday that we have not yet gotten the property tax bill. I was sure the payment is due February 1 so it seems awfully late to have not received it yet.

I posted a question in our town's Facebook group today and others confirmed that the bills haven't gone out yet. Someone mentioned that there is a 10-day grace period so you really don't have to pay until 2/11, but I don't play those games. I pay before the stated due date, and typically when I get the bill so it doesn't actually get misplaced or forgotten.

Someone also mentioned that you could pay online and that the bills were already posted. I figured there'd be some convenience fee for online payment that I wouldn't want to pay, but I checked anyway. Turns out that the e-check fee is only $0.99. Since a stamp is $0.55, that means it would only cost an extra 44 cents to pay online and be done with it, not to have to write a check, and have immediate confirmation that my payment was processed. No chance of it getting lost in the mail or anything like that. So I went ahead just now and made the payment. Yes, I paid 2 weeks before I had to, but it's done and I no longer have to think about it - until April.

I'm glad they made the convenience fee so reasonable. It's worth 44 cents to me for sure.

This isn't entirely a fail, and it is in no way my fault, but I kind of feel like I wasted my money.

A year or so ago, we replaced the ceiling light fixture in our sitting room. We also put in dimmable LED bulbs. There was already a dimmer switch and I didn't change that.

We found that the lights were fine when at full brightness, but they flickered quite a lot when they were dimmmed, even going off momentarily and coming back on. I did some reading online and learned that older dimmer switches regulate the current differently and they aren't compatible with LED bulbs.

I went out yesterday and bought a new LED-commpatible dimmer switch and installed it today. It works okay but the lights still flicker. Not nearly as bad as they did. They don't actually go fully off and on like before. It's more of a constant minimal flicker which does seem to be a lot less annoying. We'll have to see how noticeable it is when it's dark outside and the fixture is the only light source.

I'm all in favor of switching to highly energy-efficient lighting but it does have some downsides and flickering is one of them. The LEDs I installed in our hallway flicker a lot too and those aren't on a dimmer. I've also found 3 fixtures in the house where LED bulbs wouldn't work at all and I had to stick with CFL or incandescent bulbs which was disappointing.

Last year, I pretty regularly picked up an extra shift, maybe once or twice a month. But I haven't done that for at least a few months. We hired a lot of new people so there haven't been nearly as many open shifts, and I was just kind of burnt out and didn't feel like working any more than I needed to.

Recently, I've been paying attention to the openings again. Two or three times in the past few weeks, we've gotten a text or e-mail saying they needed help last minute but every time I've either already been working or had personal plans. Yesterday we got a message that they needed help at one site from 1-5pm today. I was free, double checked with my wife, and took that shift.

I hadn't been to that site for ages, probably close to 2 years, so it was nice to go there and see everyone. It wasn't terribly busy which was also nice. And the other doc on with me is pretty new. We've met at meetings but I never really had any time to talk and get to know her.

And, of course, we get paid $140/hour for weekday per diem shifts so I made an extra $560 for giving up my afternoon. Not a bad deal all around.

CCF suggested this idea and I thought it would be fun. Post a comparison of where you were 10 years ago and where you are now, and talk about what happened in the interim. So here goes.

12/31/09: Total financial assets (not including home)
$395,673.73

12/31/19: Total financial assets (not including home)
$1,329,432.03

12/31/09 Mortgage balance: $92,285.99
12/31/19 Mortgage balance: $0.00

So our net worth went up by $1,026,044.29.

Major financial events of the last 10 years, and I'm probably forgetting some

Bought my car in 2012, paid off in 2013
Bought my wife's van in 2013, paid off in 2016

Daughter attended college 2014-2018, all loans by her and us have been repaid

Paid off mortgage in 2019; now totally debt-free

Began a job transition in April 2016 that was completed in November 2017 and now earn more than double what I made at the old job

I think those are the real biggies. Obviously, lots of smaller things, car repairs, home repairs, travel, medical expenses, and all of the other normal stuff. It's pretty powerful to look back like that.

Now that the market is closed, I did the final 2019 update on our portfolio spreadsheet.

12/31/18: $1,023,684.61
12/31/19: $1,329,432.03

An increase of $305,747.42 for the year. That number is incredible to me. It really shows the power of investing and compounding. That's more money than I earned in 2019 gross and a little more than double my take home pay. Obviously, a strong stock market had a lot to do with it. We'll see how long that continues.

I hope you all had a great year and have an even better 2020.

For most of my career, I was one of those folks who did not have an employer-sponsored retirement account. I finally got one when I started working for urgent care in 2016, so less then 3 years ago.

As of today, my 401k balance is just over the $100,000 mark.

That's less than 8% of our total portfolio but it was still nice to see that one account cross into 6 figures. I did max it out last year and this year and intend to do so every year I work there so it should continue to grow nicely putting $26,000/year into it.

I got a voicemail yesterday from a liquor store we frequent saying I had won a gift certificate for a whiskey dinner for 6-8 people. I didn't know exactly what that meant. We took a ride over there today to find out.

It turns out that what I won is a $600 gift card to a very nice local restaurant. There is no official "whiskey dinner" that they do. We can use that gift card however we'd like.

We talked about it a bit and what I think we'll do is invite one couple to join us for dinner one night and invite another couple a different night. Eight meals should pretty well burn through $600. If anything remains after that, my wife and I can just put it toward another meal for the 2 of us.

I was excited to win anything and certainly blown away that I had actually won a $600 prize.