Disneysteve's Common Cents Blog

Another chapter in "The Joys of Home Ownership". My wife informed me that the dishwasher has been making an awful noise lately and the other day was the worst it's been. We could: a) call out a repair person or b) buy a new one. Yes, I realize there is choice c) try to troubleshoot it ourselves to see if we can fix it. However, I'm opting for choice b.

We got our first dishwasher in 1995. We remember because we bought it when DW was pregnant and started having trouble reaching the sink to do dishes . That one lasted almost 10 years and was replaced in late 2004. So the current one is actually 15 years old which is not so bad as appliances go.

I don't think it's worth paying for a service call plus any repair costs for a 15-year-old dishwasher. Plus, I've been self-managing gradual rusting of the one rack for the past few years, sanding it down and coating the edges. I even cut out a small section of the rack that was too badly damaged to save, so the whole thing is kind of ghetto at this point.

I've been browsing online and we'll probably hit a couple of stores on Wednesday and get a new one. It's not a huge expense as home repairs go and I can't complain about this one lasting as long as it did.

I posted a couple of weeks ago that I unexpectedly got a new contract at work that included a substantial raise. I thought the numbers needed to be adjusted based on my hours. I was finally able to confirm that the numbers I got were actually correct.

I thought my raise would be $15,833.
My actual raise is $40,493!!!
I am shocked and obviously very pleased.

It will be a couple of weeks before I get the first new paycheck to see how my take home changes but it should be around 2K/month. I have to sit down and figure out what we're going to do with the added income but what a nice problem to have.

We got our state tax refund yesterday. When I subtract what we owed on our Federal return plus what we paid our accountant, we came out about $1,300 ahead which will probably all go to the mortgage. We are on track to pay it off in August but that would speed it up even more.

I was going through some papers just now and found the sewer bill mixed in. I don't even remember getting it. Clearly I must have thought it was junk mail when it arrived as it was with some other junk. It was due 4/1. I normally pay by check since there's no charge for that (other than a stamp) but I went and paid it online. There's a $.99 fee for doing that but a stamp is $.55 anyway so really only an extra $.44 and it's done. I doubt there will be any sort of late fee for 2 days but if there is, it'll be my own fault so I can't complain.

I love my job but sometimes they're a little weird, or at least a bit lacking in the communications department.

I got an email yesterday afternoon that they are issuing updated Employment Agreements. They attached my new contract for me to review, sign, and return.

1. I had no idea a new contract was coming.

2. I knew that our per diem pay rate had gone up so I wasn't surprised to see that in the new contract.

3. Our regular pay also went up and they added a "weekend premium" to the compensation. I have no idea what that is or how it was calculated.

4. I'm 99.9% sure that the numbers they sent me are for 40 hours/week but I work 36 hours/week so I need a new version that has my actual numbers.

I've emailed the corporate person who handles the contracts and my immediate supervisor asking for clarification on a few items so I'm waiting to hear back from them.

Bottom line, if I'm reading everything correctly (and it's accurate), even if I adjust to 90% of the numbers they sent me (36 hours vs 40), that would come out to an overall raise of about $15,800. But right now, I have no idea if that's accurate. I'll update when I know the answer.

I said I'd try to blog more regularly so figured I actually need to post every couple of weeks.

I made our latest mortgage payment which brought our principal under the $10,000 mark. The end is near. I expect to pay it off in August most likely so that's exciting.

I haven't picked up any extra shifts at work the past week or two. I need to take a look at the schedule and pick up something in the coming weeks.

My wife and I are doing an overnight getaway this weekend. We're just going across the river into the city. There's a whiskey bar we've been wanting to try (we are big bourbon and whiskey fans). We didn't really care for their dinner menu so we're eating at a different place in the next block and planning to then go to the bar for drinks and dessert. The only problem with that is that we couldn't reserve a table just for that so we'll have to wait for space at the bar on a Saturday night. Hopefully around 6:30-7:00 it won't be too crazy yet. We're using a free hotel voucher for our stay. Just have to pay for parking.

Haven't done any decluttering lately. I'm hoping spring brings a nice weekend soon when I'm off and can start attacking the garage.

Need to start working on plans for our June trip to Dallas. The hotel was booked months ago but I haven't bought airfare yet. DW has been browsing the tourist sites looking for things to see and do when we're there.

I can't think of anything else of significance from the past couple of weeks so I'll stop there.

Happy Spring!

I heard back from our accountant today. As expected, the Trump tax changes impacted us but not as badly as I had feared. For the first time in many years, we owe for our Federal return but only $453. Still, in previous years we've always gotten at least a small refund.

The good news is we're getting $2,458 back from the state which offsets that making our net refund just over $2,000.

Our accountant had warned us months ago that the Trump stuff would be bad so I was happy that it wasn't any worse than that. And I must admit filing was so much easier because I didn't have to compile everything for itemizing deductions since we weren't able to deduct all of that stuff anymore.

I've been selling collectibles since 1986 and selling on ebay since 1997, not long after it started. There was even a brief time in 2000 when I sold collectibles full time when I was between jobs. In recent years, I've gone through spurts where I would list things for a few weeks and then get tired of it all and stop.

Lately, I've just felt more and more like it isn't worth my time. I got a new job 2 years ago and I'm making a whole lot more money than I used to. Not only that, but there are always opportunities for me to pick up extra hours and earn even more. It's that part that has really made me think it's time to pack in the sales thing.

Selling on ebay isn't difficult but it does take time. I have to photograph and list the items and then pack and ship them which sometimes involves a trip to the post office. I sell mostly low priced items, like under $40, so after fees it's not like I'm making a ton. But my job pays really well. I can make more in a 4 hour shift as I would make selling on ebay in a month.

As much as I actually enjoy the sales thing, there are only so many hours in a day and do I really want to spend them doing all that work just to make a few dollars? Years ago, I did it for the money. Now, I just don't need it.

I still have a lot of stuff in stock that was bought to sell. I've donated a bunch of it over the past couple of years. I'm going to start seeing what else I can donate and work on clearing it all out.

A couple of months ago I took a look at our cable bill, something I had neglected to do for way too long. I noticed we were being billed for 2 convertor boxes at $6.99/mo. each. However, we only have one. I went over to the office and told them and they agreed to take one off the bill.

Fast forward to last week. I was in the basement and came across a convertor box. Sure enough it is the one they insisted we had and have been paying for. I have absolutely no memory of why we have an extra box or why I never returned it. I brought it up and figured I'd drop it off next time I was over that way.

A couple of days ago, I get a letter in the mail from, the cable company. An account review showed that we're paying for one box but their records still indicate we have two so they're going to start charging for it again.

Now that I actually have the extra box, I can fix this once and for all. I'll go over today and return it and make sure our account is updated accordingly so that we can stop paying that $6.99/mo. fee.

I spent some time tonight updating our portfolio spreadsheet and adding a few lines to make it easier to track things. I used to have some accounts like my wife's 401k listed as a single item even though that account holds 2 different funds. Now every fund is listed separately which makes updating easier and also makes tracking asset allocation easier.

Anyway, once I was finished doing all of that, the bottom line was that the total as of today is up by just under $110,000 since 12/31/18. Considering how awful December was, it's very nice to see how quickly things recovered. I feel bad for anyone who sold in a panic 2 months ago. Had I done that, I'd be $110,000 poorer right now.

I met with our accountant today to do our taxes. I don't know the outcome yet but everything is submitted except for a couple of forgotten items I sent over tonight. I should know in a week or so how we made out.

A few weeks ago when I went to print something, my printer made an awful grinding noise. It did ultimately print but each time I tried after that, same noise. The printer was over 8 years old so I wasn't terribly upset, and it wasn't an expensive item to begin with.

The only thing I was annoyed about was that I bought a set of ink cartridges for it not long before that. I knew if I bought a new printer, those would go to waste.

So I checked the box for the cartridge for a list of compatible printers and then searched on ebay for the newest of those models. I lucked out and found someone selling the newest one for $15 plus $17 shipping. I was happy to spend $32 to get an upgraded printer and not waste about $60 worth of ink cartridges. It arrived yesterday and I just set it up tonight. It seems to be working just fine so I'm back in business for a pretty modest expenditure.

There are 3 savings things that I do manually each month. I send $1,000 to our Ally savings account, $1,000 to our taxable Vanguard account, and $1,000 extra to our mortgage. I don't usually do them all at once but it worked out that way this time. I just did the Ally and Vanguard transfers.

When I went to do the mortgage payment, I discovered a notice that the annual escrow review showed a shortage (doesn't it always?) of $114.89. So I had to pay that. I also had already decided to up the extra going to principal from $1,000 to $1,500. So I did all of that and made that payment. I can't wait until the mortgage is gone in a few months.

If you really want to follow our decluttering process, I'd head over to the forums: https://www.savingadvice.com/forums/forum/financial-chit-chat/general-discussion/700407-2019-decluttering-thread. We just went through all of our sheets and mattress covers and are getting rid of a whole trash bag full that will go to Goodwill. Some worn out stuff is also going in the trash.

I didn't realize it but my wife and I have a "date night" tonight. Our daughter is heading back to her college for a fraternity event and will be gone from about 4:30 until after 11:00. I think we're going to cook dinner together and then rent a movie on one of the online services and relax with a couple of drinks. Not sure what we'll see but maybe A Star is Born.

My mom loves Aldi and I've taken her there a few times as she no longer drives. My wife has always kind of looked down on the place. Even though she's frugal and a good shopper in general, she's never been a fan of the deep discount places.

Last time I took my mom over, my wife was also with us. We noticed that they sell the same brand of Italian rolls we buy all the time. I think they were over $1/bag cheaper. And one of the things my mom went for was strawberries which were on sale for $1.39. I had just bought a container of them at Wegmans the day before but I paid $4.49. That's a big difference.

There happens to be an Aldi on my way home from work if I take a certain route, so I stopped there today. I was going to just buy strawberries. They are no longer on sale so they were $2.99, but that's still $1.50 less than Wegmans. I also picked up blueberries for $1.99. I'm not sure how much those are at Wegmans but I know it's more than that. DD had some of each tonight and said they were good.

Next step is to actually go over and browse and buy some things to try out and see how we like the store brands. Hopefully we can find a few things we like. I'm happy to stop there after work occasionally, especially if every trip saves us several dollars. I'll count that as a win for sure.

I've never been that active over here on the blogging part of the site although I'm very active on the forums. I'm going to attempt to change that. I like answering questions and helping people there but I'd also like a place to share more of my own (our own) journey.

Let me start by re-introducing myself here. I'm Steve. I'm 54, married for 26 years, one daughter age 23. I'm a family practice physician who spent 24 years in private practice. Starting in April 2016, I gradually transitioned to working in urgent care, first going per diem, then part time, and finally full time in November 2017.

The result of that job transition has been a dramatic change in our financial situation. I went from earning about 120K to earning about 210K. The new position also has much better benefits including cheaper and better health coverage, a 401k with match, and more.

Another big change in the past year was our daughter graduating college. We paid for the 1st 2 years with the 529 money we had saved since she was little. We paid the 2nd 2 years mostly out of pocket so that was a bit tight as we were spending about $3,000/month for that. Once she graduated, our disposable income jumped up basically overnight.

The next big change will happen in a few months when we pay off our mortgage. I'm not exactly sure when that will be but no later than the November 1, 2019 payment. I expect to do it before that though. That will free up a total of about $1,700/month. I'm still debating what to do with that money going forward.

One thing that has been on our future list forever is buying a house in Florida and potentially moving there. As I am very happy in my job now, which wasn't the case previously, I'm actually finding that the drive to move isn't really there, but I do like the idea of getting a place of our own down there for vacations. We rent a condo or townhouse every time we go down, almost always in the same development. Last time we were there in November, I started looking at the real estate listings and we can definitely afford to buy one of those homes as a second home once our house is paid off. We haven't seriously talked about it or looked into it in great detail but I know that we can swing it if we decide to. I know a couple of realtors down there who I trust and plan to contact when we're actually ready to look for real.

I'm going to stop there for now but, as I said, I plan to make an effort to hang out here more and tell more of our story as long as people want to hear it.

Have a great weekend everyone. I'm working but also have some fun plans as we're going out to dinner with friends tomorrow night.

I shared this in the forums but I had miscalculated something in my spending log. I posted earlier that our monthly surplus was about $3,000. It's actually more like $4,000. I had made the mistake of counting a number of monthly expenses twice because I listed them individually but also listed our average monthly credit card bills and many our our expenses get paid by credit card so I was counting them twice. For example, auto insurance, Netflix, alarm, cell phone, and more are all paid by credit card so I didn't need to also itemize them. Once I corrected for that, the surplus was much better.

So in August, I did the $1,000 each to Ally, Vanguard, and our mortgage, but at the start of September, I was able to send another $2,000 to Ally. I also did the same $3,000 later in the month just like last month. From the looks of it right now, we'll still be ahead so I'll likely send more to Ally again. Not a bad problem to have of course.

Our daughter got a job today! She graduated from college in May and we all agree that she could time some time off to decompress from the whole college experience. Honestly, having her back home really doesn't cost us much and is actually tremendously cheaper than having her in college so money wasn't an issue. And she hasn't just been sitting around playing video games all day as she is a supervisor for an online crisis support hotline, but that's a volunteer position. She has also been doing some video editing work for them, also volunteer.

She and we have some travel plans between now and November so I was concerned that nobody would want to hire her once she told them that.

Anyway, she started getting kind of bored now that it's been 4 months since graduation and she kind of feels bad that she's not doing more with herself. So we got the weekly email update from our temple and it said that the early childhood center was hiring. She previously worked there for a couple of summers so decided to apply. The director did a phone interview with her today and called back a couple hours later to offer her a job.

We're not sure when she starts but I'm guessing probably Monday. She'll be doing 24.5 hours/week at $14/hour. That's perfect as she wasn't looking for full time at this point. But I'm figuring that should net her about $275-ish/week after taxes. That will allow her to accelerate repayment of her student loan (she only has 7 months left anyway at the rate she's been going) and start contributing again to the Roth IRA she opened in high school. And still leave her plenty to beef up her savings, cover more of her own expenses (like contributing to auto insurance for one thing), and have money for some fun stuff, too.

Hopefully it all works out well for her.

August is the first full month that we have the surplus income I've posted about before. I thought it would be a little higher but based on my last paycheck and an updated YTD spending review, it looks like we're running a $3,000 surplus. So I'm sticking with my plan to send $1,000 to savings, $1,000 to the mortgage, and $1,000 to a taxable-but-earmarked-for-retirement investment account. I've already done the first two this month and just need to do the retirement piece.

We'll actually end up with a larger surplus this month but only because it's a 3 paycheck month which only happens twice a year.

We did make some more expensive than usual travel arrangements in the past month so our YTD spending numbers are skewed a bit by that. I think it will average out to be a little lower by a few hundred dollars by the end of the year, making our actual surplus a little higher. Also, work still hasn't finalized our new contracts so I haven't started receiving my raise yet. It will be paid retroactively to July 1 and once it starts, I should be taking home about $400/month more than I am now, so that will boost the surplus also.

We do have a few bigger ticket purchases on the horizon. We need a new desktop computer. Ours is actually over 8 years old, which is ancient as computers go. We never really bought our daughter a college graduation present. She wants a new computer as well. Hers is good, and will probably pass down to my wife, but she has really gotten into video editing and her computer isn't the best for that. So DW and I were talking about at least paying for part of that if not all of it.

I found out about 3 months ago that we were going to be getting raises. This came as a total surprise because I'm only in year 1 of a 3-year contract. Apparently, management realized that there was no continuity to what everyone was making. It varied quite a bit based on when they were hired. They decided to switch to a 3-tier scale based on years of experience and adjust everybody's pay to get them onto that scale, giving everyone some degree of a raise in the process.

The new contract actually went into effect July 1 but we weren't able to set up a meeting to review the new contract until today. Once I sign it, they will pay me the higher rate retroactively to July 1.

Anyway, the main changes are that:
1) my base salary went up 3.55%
2) my bonus went up 14.5%
3) my bonus is now spelled out in the contract; it was not previously, so they are now contractually obligated to pay it.

When you add it all up, assuming I earn the full bonus (which I always have), I will be grossing about $670/month more which is a nice chunk of change. Most likely my pay over the next 3 years will remain the same, but I see absolutely no problem with that. I'm very happy with the new number (I was happy with the old number too).

It's been 3 months since I updated here.

College costs are done.
As planned, I've been putting the former tuition money toward our HELOC instead. I was shooting to pay it off in 4 months, May-August. As it turns out, thanks to a bonus and some extra shifts, it will get paid off in July which is great.

Once that is done, my plan is to do $1,000/mo to the mortgage, $1,000 to savings, and $1,000 to an investment earmarked for retirement (although not in a designated retirement account). That will have the mortgage paid off in October 2019. I anticipate it will be sooner just knowing how I get when debt balances get low. I tend to want to just make a bigger payment and get rid of it once it gets down to a few thousand.

The increased savings will be partly to just build our overall reserve and also because both of our cars are approaching 100K miles so in the next couple of years, we'll probably be in the market.

The retirement stuff is because we are no longer eligible for Roths so need to replace that piece of our investing.

All in all, we're in a good position if everything stays on track. And if anything unexpected crops up, as it always does, the increased savings will be in place for that.

I just made the final tuition payment for our daughter. Hard to believe but she graduates in under 6 weeks. For the past 5 months, we were on a payment plan of $3,100/month so starting May 1, that means we will have an extra $3,100/month in our budget which is pretty cool. As I said before, the first order of business will be to pay off our HELOC which is about 12K. After that, I'll split the money between cash savings and extra mortgage payments and I'm sure some of it will go for some fun stuff along the way too.

The end of college for our daughter is rapidly approaching. She graduates in 51 days! That's the first time I've actually counted.

She submitted her degree info a couple of weeks ago (and paid the $85 graduation fee). Today's milestone was ordering senior portraits. We did what we have always done with school photos and gone for one of the cheapest packages. In this case, the 2nd cheapest because the absolute cheapest only included one pose and we wanted both cap and gown and informal poses.

The list price on the package was $269 but when they mailed the proofs, they included an "early bird" offer for 10% off packages up to $299, so we saved $26.90 with that code. After tax and shipping, the total came to $266.14. While that certainly isn't cheap, it is right in line with what I was expecting so I'm okay with that. I kind of figured the whole process of graduation would cost us about $1,000. That includes photos, any school fees, a hotel room for the event, and any other miscellaneous expenses.

Of course, an even bigger deal is that the very last tuition payment is due April 15 for $3,100. I've been paying $3,100/month since December. I can't wait until May when I'll start getting to keep that $3,100/month in my pocket instead.

Thanks to the long-running bull market, our asset allocation had gotten more stock-heavy than I wanted it to be. At the end of 2017, we were 81% stock, 14% bond, 5% cash. Although I am by no means a market timer, I'm also a realist and understand that the bull market is going to end one of these days, probably sooner rather than later. I've always been very aggressive with our portfolio but we're now both in our early to mid 50s and have fewer years ahead of us to recover from any major drop. It was time to start dialing back the risk level to help protect our assets and buffer the impact of a future bear market whenever it may happen.

I decided to work towards getting the stock allocation down around 70%. I made a couple of moves early in the year, shifting 20K from stocks to bonds. Then there was that quick correction where the Dow dropped a couple thousand points. I was concerned that I may have missed my opportunity but fortunately the recovery was just as quick as the correction. Before the market had a chance to tank again, I moved the rest of the money needed to get to that new target allocation, about 100K.

So as of now, we are at 70% stock, 26% bond, 4% cash. I think that will give better downside protection when the bear shows up while still giving plenty of exposure to the upside as do still have many years ahead of us hopefully and need to have continued growth in our portfolio.

What is your asset allocation? How often do you rebalance?

I take care of all of the financial stuff in our household but from time to time, my wife and I will sit down for a "financial date" when I update her on everything that's been going on and where things stand.

I'm off today and we're in the midst of a snowstorm so it was a perfect opportunity for our latest financial date.

I showed her how my income has changed over the last 3 years with my transition from family practice to urgent care. I then reviewed where the bulk of the extra income has gone (college costs, malpractice insurance, travel). I explained how we're currently spending $3,100/month for college but the last payment will be made later this month and then going forward we'll have an extra $3,100/month to direct to other things and I told her how I plan to do that.

She asked a number of questions. We talked about the financial impact of our daughter finishing college but moving back home with us. We talked a bit about retirement planning.

All in all, it was a good update. I always like to make sure she knows what's going on even though I'm the one managing stuff on a day to day basis.

As I've been doing the year-end financial stuff, one thing I looked at was how much we ended up spending on travel. It was way too much, definitely something we need to rein in a bit going forward.

We had a great time and had some wonderful trips: a Caribbean cruise, three trips to Disney World, Phoenix and the Grand Canyon, Kentucky, and a few smaller trips.

Part of the problem is that on a couple of those trips, we stayed at much nicer hotels than we usually do when we travel. We have always been the type to stay on the outskirts of our destination where prices are lower and then drive or take public transit into the main part of town. With Phoenix, Grand Canyon, and Kentucky, we stayed right in the heart of everything. While it's great to be able to step out of your hotel and walk to shops and restaurants and attractions, you also pay a big premium for that convenience. Time to go back to the old way of doing things.

I was shocked to add it all up and realize that we spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000 on travel between December 2016 and January 2018, so a little more than a year. Time to go back to choosing the hotels off the beaten track.

One good thing at least for 2018 is that we have a ton of Marriott Reward points. We easily have enough for 15 free nights. My goal for the year is to focus on using those whenever we can to help keep costs down. We did one free night just last weekend when we were driving home from Florida and stopped for the night so that probably saved us about $110.

Another thing is that my new job gives me a pretty generous continuing education allowance. So we will combine a vacation or two with conference time. That way the hotel and transportation costs will be covered by work. It means I'm tied up in classes for a lot of the time but I'll still have plenty of free time with my wife (and daughter if she is with us) to enjoy the local stuff.

I downloaded all of the closing prices of our investments last night and updated our portfolio spreadsheet.

Our portfolio balance now stands at:

$1,001,359.64

That's the first time we've cracked the $1 million mark.

I know that number is constantly changing. Heck, it's changed since I did it last night because I paid a couple of bills this morning, but it's still a cool milestone to have reached.

Note that this is not net worth. Our NW crossed the $1 million mark a while ago because we have over 200K equity in our house. This is just counting actual financial assets: cash, stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.

We're not ready for retirement yet but we're making good progress. We should be in good shape when the time comes.

Happy New Year to all! I hope 2018 brings health, peace, and prosperity for everyone.

I love my new job.

Of course, no job is perfect. There is always something that could be better.

We have a monthly staff meeting. They are mandatory for us to attend, however, we don't get paid to be there. We used to have in-person meetings but about a year ago switched to Skype/phone meetings to try and boost attendance. That was more convenient and I didn't have to miss work to attend, though I actually think in-person meetings are more productive.

For December, they are having a live meeting. It's on a night when I would normally be working, so I have to miss a 4-hour shift to attend. I hate that I lose $400 of income when I'm required to be there. That just seems wrong.

The response is that attending the meetings is part of our incentive bonus. Great, except the maximum incentive we can earn is $400/year which doesn't offset potentially losing $4,800/year in income if we go back to monthly live meetings.

Although I do prefer live meetings, I hope we stick with the Skype meetings most months so that I don't lose income to attend.

I'm a lousy blogger . It's been a couple of months since I posted so here's an update.

My original plan to leave my private practice and work part time plus per diem hours at urgent care wasn't going to work. After discussing it with the medical director, he felt that the days of nearly unlimited per diem shift availability were going to start drying up. So I decided to switch to full time (36 hours/week) to guarantee my hours and income. I will officially be full time as of 11/5.

My last day in my practice was 9/28 so this month I've still been part time. It worked out well as we were on vacation from 11/7-11/16. The last 2 weeks of the month I kept my schedule kind of light, 28 and 32 hours.

We did open our HELOC and immediately drew out $14,700 for the malpractice policy I needed to take out when I left my practice. Right now, I'm just making small payments on that (I paid $250 last month and will do the same this month). Once the last college tuition payment is made in December, I'll start attacking the HELOC more aggressively.

As for college, we do have one more payment of $15,135 due in December. Right now, I've got about $9,000 set aside plus some surplus in our checking account. I'm not quite sure if we'll have the full 15K by December, but if we need to draw a couple thousand from the HELOC, I'm fine with that.

Once I'm full time, my income will increase and our health insurance costs will drop by over $300/month so there will be additional money to throw at the HELOC. We'll have it paid off within a year.

So everything is on track and doing well financially speaking.

Today is our daughter's last first day of school. She officially begins her senior year of college. We have one more tuition payment to make in December plus any graduation expenses (yearbook, cap and gown, etc.) but the end is near.

We will spend about 32K out of pocket on college costs this year so it will be nice to have that income for other purposes beginning in 2018.

Well, that's not 100% true. DD took a $3,750 loan but DW and I didn't need to borrow a penny to make the fall tuition payment ($15,135). Last year at this time, we borrowed $7,500 for the fall and another $7,500 for the spring. early on, I anticipated we'd have to do the same this year.

When I switched to working part time instead of per diem at the urgent care, that bumped up my income and we were able to start putting money into our savings account at a rate far greater than before. So I started realizing we probably wouldn't need to borrow another $15,000 but probably something less than that.

Fast forward to July and we had accumulated $8,000 in the savings account. We got an 2015 amended tax return refund of $1,400, a cash gift of $2,500 for our anniversary, and DD got a $3,000 scholarship check that we split with her, so another $1,500 for us. That gave us another $5,400. We were able to cover the remaining $1,700 just from current income bringing us up to that $15,135 figure.

Now the challenge is to see if we can save up another $15,000 in time for the spring tuition payment due at the end of December. That will be the FINAL tuition bill! If we can, that would be fantastic. If not, we are in the final stage of opening a HELOC so we will be able to dip into that if we need to.

Wow. It's hard to believe but our daughter is entering her senior year of college in about 7 weeks. The next to last tuition bill is sitting on my desk and is due on August 10.

We still had a small balance in her 529 plan - $2,216.96 to be exact. I just put in the request to withdraw the remaining funds and close the account.

Total withdrawals from the account were $72,336.96.

It all seems kind of surreal but after we make the August payment, there will just be one final payment to make in December and then the college bills stop (though we'll still have a little bit of college debt to take care of).