Feeling Like a Human ATM

Have you ever had the feeling that you were an ATM masquerading as a human?   I have.

I could bore you with the details of each expenditure that has made me feel this way over the past week, but you would quickly click onto something else more click-baitworthy.

To wit, I have paid to attend jazz festivals for each of my children over the past week, one that my son's college band participated in and another that my daughter's high school did.  Oh, I paid for my wife, too, which goes without saying.  Our daughter brought her BFF with her to attend the college festival, which added another $16 or so for a student ticket, making it a grand total of $72 for the four.  No big woop.

Since our son's performance ended by about Noon, I took out everybody for lunch to Portillo's.  My brother also came into town to take some depositions on lawsuits that he has filed and attended the college festival with us, so I treated him as well.   Lunch for the six of us, including desserts for the three kids, ran about $80.

Both of our children wanted CDs, tee-shirts and the like from the festivals.  Oh well, another $50 or so shelled out.  Our daughter ordered some photos of the band taken by professional photographers at an unknown cost.

The jazz tickets, swag, meals out and the like, which added up to a few hundred bucks was only the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

Being a Money Mensch and eschewing having some escrow company hold onto our money to pay taxes for us, I have cut checks to the Crook County Treasurer twice per year since we "purchased" our home in 2001.  Thus, last week I stroked a check for about $2,900 to pay for the privilege of continuing to reside in a northwest suburb of Chicago.  For those of you who think that the amount seems huge, it is actually far smaller than many people who my family and I know because we live in one of the lowest-valued homes of any of our friends and family.  I know many people who pay in excess of $1,000 per month for their property taxes, or more than twice what ours are.

Our home is assessed at about $220,000 or thirty grand less than I would consider selling it for, resulting in an annual tax bill of about $5,200.  In Illinois, homeowners pay 55% of the estimated tax bill in the first installment every year.

Speaking of our house, we always seem to pay our homeowner's insurance at around the same time that the property taxes are due.  We purchased our home over Labor Day of 2001, just about a week before 9/11.  Because of that, we receive our insurance bill every August and February, paying a smidge under $500 twice per year.  We should probably revisit our homeowner's insurance policy to knock it down under a grand.

My wife's credit card bill approached two thousand bucks, which is becoming usual.  She does not spend a lot, but we put a lot of recurring expenses on it like our children's braces, our son's books for college and the stuff that we buy at Amazon.  The good news with this is that, in addition to the usual $180 or so that we have paid every month for our daughter's braces, my wife had them put the final bill on her card the day our daughter got them removed, so even though we had two charges for braces on her bill, those were the two last payments for braces that we will be making.

I would shout Hallelujah! for that, but we are going to replace that payment with one for a new trombone for our hot-shot trombonist daughter, who seems to be one of the best, if not the best, musicians in her high school class.

My own credit card bill was a mere $300 or so, the wife's Kohl's bill was about $200, our Nicor bill was $102 and we were more efficient with our electric, resulting in a bill of a mere $58 from ComEd.

I almost forgot about my new tooth.

After not going to the dentist for eighteen years, I started going last year in an effort to keep some teeth into my fifties, sixties and beyond.

Let me tell you, you need to have some money in the bank to get dental work done.

Long story short, I got a root canal done over the course of two Wednesday afternoons last month.  For two weeks in between, I had a titanium post that I showed my children as a reminder to take better care of their teeth.

I do not know what hurt more, the dental work or the two $300 payments that I made after each visit.  It is not yet paid off, but the receptionist told me that she would bill me the balance after our dental insurance pays whatever they pay for such things.

We ate out even more than usual in February.  Twenty-five times?  Thirty times?  More than thirty?  Truth be told, I am not sure and I am trying not to stress over every receipt.  For the first time in my life, I declined receiving them a few times, figuring that I would remember most, if not all, of the places when I review our bank statement.

I almost forgot to mention that our son's college expenses went up a bit this semester, from just under $2,500 per month to just over.  Yes, I pay every dime billed on his behalf in the hope that he can graduate with little to no student debt, just as I did way back twenty-six years ago.

Since musicians have to go on to graduate school these days unless they become stars, I am assuming that postgraduate work is in our son's future.  He has already started talking about two schools for grad school, one of which would probably cost in excess of forty grand per year (DePaul) and another that would be free or very close for a student and musician of his ability (Northern Illinois University).  Knowing my son as I do, he would rather borrow fifty grand to attend a school that he likes better than accept a free ride to a school that he feels is inferior.

Anyway, when our bank statement is issued in a few days and I review the ten, eleven or twelve grand that left our account last month, I will feel gratitude in addition to my stress.

Why is that?

For one, I Paid Ourselves First and even a little more than usual.  Besides the $400 that I automatically contribute to our daughter's 529 account on the first of every month, I mailed a check in the amount of $250 to my wife's Roth IRA, invested entirely in Vanguard's Index 500 (Admiral shares).  I invested $200 on the first of the month in each of the two funds comprising my own Roth IRA, T. Rowe Price's Blue Chip Growth fund and Capital Appreciation fund.

After "kind of" being forced to cash out two of my vacation days, for which I was compensated about $700, I sent an additional $100 to each of my IRA funds and an additional $100 to our daughter's 529.  I sent an additional $33.33 to our mortgage (no kidding!) to round our debt to an even $128,000.  One school of thought would say that I sent a third of a grand, or $333.33 above and beyond what I normally would, to our enhance my family's net worth.  During February, I sent $600 to my IRA, $500 to our daughter's 529 account and $250 to my wife's IRA for a total of $1,350 invested.

As the self-proclaimed Money Mensch, I view it as about five thousand short of what I should have contributed above and beyond what I consider normal.  I should have sent an four hundred to my own IRA for an even grand, another $750 to my wife's for an even grand and should have sent an additional three grand to our mortgage, to get it down to an even $125,000 owed.  Perhaps "someday" I will be able to do that, but that time is not now.

For now, just think of Yours Truly Money Mensch as a human ATM and if you see me, don't be shy to ask for a twenty or two.  If I am in a good enough mood, I'll give it to you.