Look, my day was unbelievable for a middle aged, middle class guy.
Mensch or not, I had money flying every which way. I started the morning by transferring nearly three grand from our checking account to our son's college.
Oh well, that's what I do. That's why I diligently saved for over fifteen years and am still saving for our daughter's upcoming college years. More on that later.
Student Name: Money Mensch's son
I also made a $2,000 payment to my wife's credit card, leaving a balance of about $600. Wow! I thought to myself, I just transferred five grand in about five minutes and that was before I even left for work.
While at work, I had three meetings today, wrote a staff report on a project, helped a small business owner (without English writing skills) write a business plan and had several phone calls. Since I am an economic development professional and deal extensively with property purchases, redevelopment, permit and license fees, incentives and what not, would you care to make a guess about what all the above projects had in common? You guessed it.
While checking my Yahoo! email at work today, I saw that our bank issued the monthly statement. Seeing as how our bank statements typically come out anywhere from the 8th of the month to the 10th, like today, it is not exactly a calendar month statement. But since we have so many recurring expenses that get paid on or about the same day every month, I refer to them as monthly statements.
Should I even admit here that during my lunch hour I purchased yet another book, adding to my ever-growing affliction, and an old Jimmy Buffet CD?
I was mildly pleased to see that more money entered our checking account to the tune of about $1,600 between September 12th and October 9th. $12,502 in and $10,876 out. As always, there were several outliers so it is not a very clear picture of our budget. For instance, we transferred nearly five grand into the account from other accounts, including our son's 529 account and one of our savings accounts. I collected a one-sixth share of a royalty for a project that my father did nearly twenty years ago. I also transferred $970 from our son's savings account to ours to repay us for a flugelhorn purchase in the same amount that he made with my wife's credit card.
Likewise, I Paid Ourselves First in the amount of $1,650; $400 to our daughter's 529 account, $750 to my wife's IRA although I only intend to send another $250 to it this month, and $500 to my own IRA account. As always, I do not consider that spending money so much as investing it, thus I refer to the amount "leaving our checking account."
When I got home today, care to take a guess what was waiting for me in the mail?
Besides quarterly statements for my wife's IRA account and our son's rapidly diminishing 529 account, I had a few more bills. Insurance for one of the cars and the notice from Nicor, our natural gas company, about how much they were going to debit from our account at the end of the month, and our mortgage statement, which once again reminded me that we must refinance, and soon.
But that is some boring shit.
This evening, the money-related stress got cranked up a notch as we took our daughter to her school district's annual college night even though she is still only a sophomore.
Did she speak with the schools that we could afford without squeezing every last dollar out? Not a chance.
She spoke and met with recruiters from three Big Ten schools, all of which are fine institutions of higher learning and all of which would cost Yours Truly dearly: Northwestern, where both of my parents, my younger sister and her husband and several other of my less close relatives, like some uncles and cousins, attended. The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, a fine school indeed but one that receives less and less support from our cash-strapped state. The third was Iowa, which I ran some numbers on last week and saw would run us about thirty grand per year, the same as what I pay for our son currently.
She may not attend any of those three, but the bottom line is that I am certain to be shelling out plenty of dough for her education in less than three years from now.
We made it home at around nine tonight, at which time I thought it a good time to believe in the wisdom of the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet, who has famously said to "Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Be Greedy When Others Are Fearful."
Well, if investors were not fearful today, I do not know when they will be. I hesitate to say "they" because I am an investor, as well. So much so that my family's investments have lost over five thousand in value over the past three or so days. Truthfully, I do not know the exact number and do not want to. It would be too painful.
So when I saw that the Dow plummeted over 800 points today, I did look up my Roth IRA with T. Rowe Price. Predictably, it lost nearly $1,800 today alone. I looked up the Dow futures and saw that it is in line for another 300-plus point loss tomorrow.
So I did what I think a wise, steady long-term investor does.
Barely a post of mine goes by where I do not reference Paying Yourself First, so that is what I did tonight. Transferred another $400 to my Roth IRA, evenly divided with $200 going to the Blue Chip Growth fund (down nearly $1,500 today, a lot for me) and the other $200 to the Capital Appreciation fund.
It's not like sending another ten grand or fifty grand to an investment, I know. But it took some faith and guts for me to invest after such a bloodbath of a day on the markets.
I hope to link back to this some fine day to show how I did not panic in the face of such a huge drop. What I do not want to see in the future is how stupid I was tonight, investing more into the much-anticipated Next Recession.
Whatever the case may be, I am a true believer in Paying Yourself First and I also know that the market cannot continue going up and up and up some more forever.
I'm sure that wherever he may be, the Oracle himself has got his eye on some investment that is presenting itself more favorably after a few down days. The biggest difference between me and the Oracle on investing into this bloodbath is simply six zeros. I'm risking an additional $400 this week and he's probably ready to make a $400 million investment, if not more.
Either way, we will both be a bit greedy while others are fearful.
Mensch or not, I had money flying every which way. I started the morning by transferring nearly three grand from our checking account to our son's college.
Oh well, that's what I do. That's why I diligently saved for over fifteen years and am still saving for our daughter's upcoming college years. More on that later.
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Payment Details
Student Name: Money Mensch's son
Account Number: xxx
Term: 2018 Fall
Payment Method: Primary Checking
Amount: $2,942.50
Description: Student Account Payment - October 10, 2018
While at work, I had three meetings today, wrote a staff report on a project, helped a small business owner (without English writing skills) write a business plan and had several phone calls. Since I am an economic development professional and deal extensively with property purchases, redevelopment, permit and license fees, incentives and what not, would you care to make a guess about what all the above projects had in common? You guessed it.
While checking my Yahoo! email at work today, I saw that our bank issued the monthly statement. Seeing as how our bank statements typically come out anywhere from the 8th of the month to the 10th, like today, it is not exactly a calendar month statement. But since we have so many recurring expenses that get paid on or about the same day every month, I refer to them as monthly statements.
Should I even admit here that during my lunch hour I purchased yet another book, adding to my ever-growing affliction, and an old Jimmy Buffet CD?
I was mildly pleased to see that more money entered our checking account to the tune of about $1,600 between September 12th and October 9th. $12,502 in and $10,876 out. As always, there were several outliers so it is not a very clear picture of our budget. For instance, we transferred nearly five grand into the account from other accounts, including our son's 529 account and one of our savings accounts. I collected a one-sixth share of a royalty for a project that my father did nearly twenty years ago. I also transferred $970 from our son's savings account to ours to repay us for a flugelhorn purchase in the same amount that he made with my wife's credit card.
Likewise, I Paid Ourselves First in the amount of $1,650; $400 to our daughter's 529 account, $750 to my wife's IRA although I only intend to send another $250 to it this month, and $500 to my own IRA account. As always, I do not consider that spending money so much as investing it, thus I refer to the amount "leaving our checking account."
When I got home today, care to take a guess what was waiting for me in the mail?
Besides quarterly statements for my wife's IRA account and our son's rapidly diminishing 529 account, I had a few more bills. Insurance for one of the cars and the notice from Nicor, our natural gas company, about how much they were going to debit from our account at the end of the month, and our mortgage statement, which once again reminded me that we must refinance, and soon.
But that is some boring shit.
This evening, the money-related stress got cranked up a notch as we took our daughter to her school district's annual college night even though she is still only a sophomore.
Did she speak with the schools that we could afford without squeezing every last dollar out? Not a chance.
She spoke and met with recruiters from three Big Ten schools, all of which are fine institutions of higher learning and all of which would cost Yours Truly dearly: Northwestern, where both of my parents, my younger sister and her husband and several other of my less close relatives, like some uncles and cousins, attended. The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, a fine school indeed but one that receives less and less support from our cash-strapped state. The third was Iowa, which I ran some numbers on last week and saw would run us about thirty grand per year, the same as what I pay for our son currently.
She may not attend any of those three, but the bottom line is that I am certain to be shelling out plenty of dough for her education in less than three years from now.
We made it home at around nine tonight, at which time I thought it a good time to believe in the wisdom of the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet, who has famously said to "Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Be Greedy When Others Are Fearful."
So when I saw that the Dow plummeted over 800 points today, I did look up my Roth IRA with T. Rowe Price. Predictably, it lost nearly $1,800 today alone. I looked up the Dow futures and saw that it is in line for another 300-plus point loss tomorrow.
So I did what I think a wise, steady long-term investor does.
Barely a post of mine goes by where I do not reference Paying Yourself First, so that is what I did tonight. Transferred another $400 to my Roth IRA, evenly divided with $200 going to the Blue Chip Growth fund (down nearly $1,500 today, a lot for me) and the other $200 to the Capital Appreciation fund.
It's not like sending another ten grand or fifty grand to an investment, I know. But it took some faith and guts for me to invest after such a bloodbath of a day on the markets.
I hope to link back to this some fine day to show how I did not panic in the face of such a huge drop. What I do not want to see in the future is how stupid I was tonight, investing more into the much-anticipated Next Recession.
Whatever the case may be, I am a true believer in Paying Yourself First and I also know that the market cannot continue going up and up and up some more forever.
I'm sure that wherever he may be, the Oracle himself has got his eye on some investment that is presenting itself more favorably after a few down days. The biggest difference between me and the Oracle on investing into this bloodbath is simply six zeros. I'm risking an additional $400 this week and he's probably ready to make a $400 million investment, if not more.
Either way, we will both be a bit greedy while others are fearful.
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