Things I Thought I'd Write About

 I was going through a notebook that I've been keeping for the past couple of years that has a page in it where I jotted notes about things to write blog posts about. Obviously there is a lot I didn't get around to! But here's the list so you'll have at least some cryptic idea about things that struck me as being interesting from a money perspective:

Babbitt (the book)

The Manticore p 21-22 (a rather fascinating book, with some interesting observations about wealth)

p.154 Murder Must Advertise (another book! I don't remember what the money connection was, exactly)

Elizabeth White Faking Normal (I haven't read the book but saw something on TV about her, I think. A 55 year old woman talks about how she hid her financial problems.)

HDFC coops

"Hard Work"

Social Security projections

XX Finance advice (this related to a friend of mine who invested an inheritance with a financial advisor who had been recommended by some other friends. They put the money in a ton of different funds and did a lot of trading, and then the market went down. XX freaked out and ended up pulling out all her money and taking a loss. She then used the money to pay off her mortgage instead. The whole thing was just a series of mistakes in my view. XX couldn't handle the idea of risk and waiting for longer term results. The advisors were not investing her money efficiently, I don't think. I kept telling XX she could just put her money in Vanguard funds and do better but she was more comfortable playing it safe, even though her mortgage interest rate wasn't that high and she didn't have much of a savings cushion left after paying it off.)

Musicians, $600 (a friend of ours performed in a club, a big career step for him. But he had to pay backup musicians. The club was slow in paying his share of the ticket proceeds, the musicians wanted their cash, and he ended up borrowing $600 from Sweetie to close the gap. Sweetie never got the $600 back, though the friend more than made up for it in other ways later. But it just got me thinking about how many musicians seem to live on a thin edge financially. And that was way before the pandemic.)

Fred Bass $25 mil estate (this was the owner of the Strand bookstore in NYC, who amassed quite a bit of wealth. More recently his daughter caught some flak over her appeal for people to buy books from them during the pandemic, which some people took as a wealthy woman crying poverty.)

Wild (again, the book.)

Baby shower (someone I know spent an insane amount on a fancy baby shower party)

Near misses (__layoffs, __ layoffs, could have changed my luck) (I've worked a few places where other people got laid off and I somehow didn't, at a point where my finances weren't really solid enough to handle it. There but for the grace... etc.)

Investment results

Optimism vs pessimism/distrust

Healthcare, mom's $3k meds, medicare (yikes. now I can't even remember what those $3k meds were!)

Gala (a swanky fundraiser I went to, where the ratio of expense to benefit was probably questionable)

Mom's apartment move

Virus!

That's the whole list. At some point I'll elaborate more on some of those later items, perhaps! Or maybe I'll just keep accumulating notes and sketchy comments! 

Another 2020 Update

 I have been so checked out on blogging and hadn't even seen the comments on my last post until just now. It is good to hear updates from longtime readers-- some sad news, unfortunately, but also some positive news. Deaths and births and life ongoing, as everyone adjusts to the pandemic.

I lost a dear friend this past week, to old age and unrelated to COVID, but it made me think about how much I value spending time with loved ones, which has been difficult these past months. I saw this friend a few times this year, always a bit worried about the risk to her of any outing, even a tiny, socially distant, mostly outdoor, or at least well-ventilated gathering. She had lived a very long life, and wanted to keep living it fully as best she could. We went to a museum together a few months ago, and she came to my house for Thanksgiving. She was hoping to visit Paris again when travel resumed. She was 94 years old.

On a more positive note, the pandemic has had a silver lining for me. I got a job! I used to sometimes hear from friends in my industry who thought I might be interested in certain openings, but when I said I didn't want to commute into NYC at all, things fell apart. But now that everyone is working remotely for the near future, that all changed! The perfect job kind of fell into my lap-- a more junior, less stressful position than I've had in a while, with a flexible schedule and decent benefits. I can work from home permanently. I wasn't sure I wanted a "real" job again, but I feel like this is something where I can be useful. It doesn't pay much in comparison to my past jobs, but it's more than enough to cover the costs of my current lifestyle and put me back into the mode of saving money instead of depleting my resources. And I figured with everything pretty much shut down because of the pandemic, I had nothing better to do anyway! Sweetie is a little bored while I'm working away upstairs, but when the time comes that we want to travel again and do other things, I'll see what I can work out in terms of reduced hours. So far I am happy enough that I think I'd like to continue part-time work for the longer term, but if that isn't possible, I can always just retire again, and be in a better financial position than the last time I tried to retire. One thing I've realized is that I am very good at working, but not very good at managing my own time in a productive and creative way. I need some kind of project to organize-- for a while it was moving, and home renovations, but once those things were past, I was getting bored again and COVID left me feeling even more aimless. So even if it's not quite the post-retirement plan I'd envisioned, I'm in a good place.

I have lots more money stuff to talk about-- how much I invested in home office ergonomics, Sweetie's new car, my mom, my investments, and a recap of my 2020 budget and net worth. I'll try to get to it before summer! Happy New Year everyone! Wishing you all a joyous and healthy 2021.

2020 Update

It has been another good long time since I’ve posted… and what a strange time it’s been! I feel like the world has totally changed. COVID-19, baby!

First of all, I am very lucky to be able to say that my family and I have all been healthy. But I do have several friends who have had the virus, with varying degrees of seriousness. Thankfully all have recovered, but friends of friends have died, so I don’t feel too far detached from the real impact. My unlucky friend Mortimer, who I’ve written about here from time to time, had the virus in early April and barely avoided going to the hospital, which is a miracle as he has asthma and some other health issues. He still doesn’t feel totally recovered even all these months later. 

My life has been very hunkered down. Travel plans were canceled. ALL plans were canceled. I’ve mainly only left the house to go grocery shopping once a week. From mid-March until now, I have gotten maybe 3 take-out lunches and 4 take-out dinners. I ate in restaurants with outdoor seating for lunch a couple times over the summer, and exactly once for dinner, a couple of weeks ago. I went to visit my mom and sister once, and have entertained friends or family at home 6 times during the summer, always staying outdoors for most of the time. But groceries have definitely gotten more expensive, so I’m somehow still spending more on food. (This may be because Sweetie was the one tending to pick up restaurant bills while I paid in the supermarket.) My gym membership was on hold for a few months and I have yet to go back since they reopened. I spent about $45 on a new yoga mat and a resistance band for exercise (which, to be honest, I haven’t used much), and $60 on two sets of workout videos, which, again, to be honest, I haven’t used much. But I’m going to. I swear. Otherwise, I’m lucky to have outdoor options for walking and swimming so I haven’t been a total slug during the summer months. But once it gets colder again I’m going to have to try to go back to the gym. This will probably be my biggest risk factor for getting the virus. It’s also a big nuisance as attendance is very limited and you have to make an appointment, and you can’t take a shower. So I’ll have to weigh whether the motivational aspects of going to the gym outweigh the negatives, or whether I just have to find some other way of getting myself to exercise at home, instead of just fantasizing about it. 

I spent some money on plants for my garden, which has been getting a bit more ambitious. This summer’s tomatoes were phenomenal, actually, though my attempts at growing peppers and eggplant were a bust. I also spent some money on books— not a ton, but I wanted to support a local independent bookstore so I placed a couple of orders for things to read while the library was closed. Strangely, I haven’t had the concentration to get very far in reading these books. 

Since I haven’t been working, I at least haven’t had to worry about losing my job in the pandemic, as has happened to several people I know. If I’d stayed in my old job, it could well have happened to me, I suppose, though most of my former colleagues are still employed and adjusting fairly well to working remotely. I had been looking into possibilities for part-time work close to my new (not that new anymore) home, but these were all jobs at shops and cultural institutions that had to close down for a while. And now, with so many people out of work, I feel like I don’t want to take a job away from someone who might need it more. Because here’s the weird thing— or maybe not the “weird” thing, but the kind of disgusting thing: I have more money than I’ve ever had right now, over $1.65 million. When the stock market plunged on the initial coronavirus panic, my net worth dropped to a bit less than it was when I left my job. But since then, the market has recovered, and my net worth is currently more than 25% higher than it was when I stopped working. I’ve sold some mutual fund shares to replenish my cash savings, but my cost of living is so low, I can gain or lose more in market value in a week— or even a day— than I spend in a whole year. This may not be the case forever, of course. 

(And in fact, it's been a couple of weeks since I wrote everything above, and now my net worth is only about $1.63 million due to recent declines in the stock market!)

Right now the stock market seems pretty disengaged from broader economic conditions. It is hard to see how COVID-19’s massive impact on the travel, hospitality, restaurant and arts industries won’t have a devastating effect on our economy for years, especially in the NY area. Eventually that will affect the stock market too. But in the meantime, it really is a glaring example of the rich getting richer while the middle class and working class and poor struggle to keep their heads above water. “The rich” is not usually a group in which I’d include myself, but the reality is that only a very small percentage of US households have a net worth of more than $1 million. I’m probably in the top 10-15% for net worth on my own, even adjusting for my age group, and taking Sweetie into account, probably top 5%. (I haven’t found good recent statistics but there are calculators where you can see where you stand based on 2016 figures. The continued recovery of the stock market since then would I guess mean that I’m a bit lower percentile-wise. Using my 2016 net worth would put me around the 90th percentile.) 

Anyway, I'm hanging in here. How are all of you, dear loyal remaining readers who still check in? I hope you are healthy and doing well. Thanks for sticking with me!

Spending Money on Clothes

Clothing is one of the areas where my spending has really decreased since I stopped working. I used to work in an environment that was relatively casual by corporate standards, but I still had to wear suits sometimes. Even when I was wearing jeans, I was conscious of wanting to look halfway decent, so I'd try to buy good quality jeans and not let them get too faded, and keep things interesting with sweaters and jackets. I also was always willing to pay for good quality shoes and boots that would last a while and not go out of style.
New York City brought lots of temptation at times-- there used to be some great shoe stores near my office, though they'd closed by the time I left. And when I moved in with Sweetie, my walk home from work often took me past a really nice little boutique. They had a well-curated selection of casual sweaters, jeans, work clothes and dressier things for evening wear, most of which I would just admire and walk past, since their stuff was quite expensive. But I eventually did buy a few things there.

One day, I passed the shop and noticed their signboard outside was offering a 15% discount if you spent $1,000. I just laughed and thought "oh my god, this neighborhood is getting so bougie for them even to post an offer like that." But a few days later, I went in and fell in love with a sweater. Then I tried on some pants. Then the salesperson, who was really nice, started suggesting things. I usually don't like being sold to, but this woman had a nice way of doing it. It was like having a personal stylist-- she suggested things, some that pushed my boundaries a little, some that made me say "no way," but others that made me think, "huh. This is something I can actually wear!" It wasn't long before I was at $900-something and then I threw in a t-shirt to get over $1,000 and get the 15% off. I couldn't believe I'd actually become the bougie customer taking advantage of the offer! I have never bought sweaters that expensive any time since (one was over $300) but I still wear all those clothes sometimes and love them dearly. I never felt like it wasn't worth it.
Other than that, most of my work clothes were purchased at chain stores like J. Crew or Banana Republic, and I'd order the occasional pair of boots or sneakers from Zappos. I'm not sure what my biggest ever year of clothing spending was, but it might have been 2016, when I spent a little over $5,000.

After I stopped working, all that changed. Without needing to dress up for an office, I find myself wearing a pretty basic uniform of jeans, t-shirts and a sweater or fleece top most days. In the summer, it's shorts and t-shirts or tank tops. I wear either sneakers or basic casual boots, and finally gave in and bought a pair of Birkenstock sandals. For a while, I bought no new clothing at all. Then I realized some of my jeans were getting a little worn out and decided to refresh them-- but to my horror, my favorite style from J. Crew was no longer available. I also had a favorite shirt from J. Crew, and was wearing it one day when my sharp elbow suddenly poked a hole through the threadbare sleeve.
I don't even live near a J. Crew store anymore, and their website didn't have any similar shirts anymore. So I turned to eBay, where I was able to find exact replacements for the jeans and shirt I already had for extremely low prices. And this is now my favorite way to shop! I'm in a phase, or perhaps the prevailing fashions are in a phase, where I just don't like or want most of the current merchandise that is out there. So since little of my wardrobe was ever particularly unique, and since most items still had tags where I could find style numbers to use in eBay searches, I've just duplicated some of the things I already own and love, for a fraction of the original cost. In 2018, I only spent $900 on clothes, and that even included a couple of things for Sweetie.
In 2019, I ended up spending a bit more, but that was mainly because I had some weddings to attend that required a bit more dress-up. I thought I'd be ok with stuff that was in my closet, but discovered that some of it dated back to when I was thinner, which was pretty depressing! But I still had outfits that worked, and I was able to jazz them up with some super cheap stuff from a local department store. Retailers seem so desperate these days, there are sales on all the time, and there seems to be so much cheap, low-quality "fast fashion." It kind of went against my natural impulse, but spending $20 or so on a colorful top to liven up an "oldie but goodie" black suit was just what I needed, even if the top ends up disintegrating in a year.
So this is my new clothing reality-- comfort and value, and a degree of minimalism in my daily attire. It's working for me, and for my budget!

Still Alive, Still Spending, Still Saving!

It's been almost a year... yikes. Where to begin?

I actually don't have any major news. I'm still kind of adjusting to my "new" life. That has involved some higher than usual expenses as we decided we wanted to do some work on our house after being there for a while. And we've continued to take a couple of trips per year, though nothing super-exotic. But we are basically settled into a new pattern of life where we don't eat out very often and are generally enjoying a much lower cost of living than we had in the city. I've been mostly getting books from the library, so haven't been spending much in that area. I've gotten a couple of tickets for local performances and even a couple of things back in the city-- this kind of reminds me how much I miss being able to go to BAM in Brooklyn and be home within half an hour. Now staying in the city means having to time things right with trains and we always end up getting home really late. Sometimes I tell myself we can afford to just splurge on a hotel room but we've yet to actually do that. Our semi-retirement budget left room for a lot of splurges that we haven't yet allowed ourselves, but we've ended up spending more than we thought on household stuff, so I guess it balances out.

So how about some actual numbers?

My net worth as of Jan. 1, 2020 was $1,563,067. The stock market has been so strong, I think I've gained about $200,000 since I stopped working, even though I've had very little income since then. My goal has been to basically break even, but even if the market wasn't as strong, I think I'd be able to manage to spend less than my likely gains most years.
In 2019, my total income was about $70,000-- this includes all dividends, interest, blog earnings, gifts, EBay selling, etc. (I would be more precise, but Quicken does this weird thing where it shows realized gains from selling an investment as the total proceeds of that sale, rather than subtracting the cost basis to truly show the investment gain, so I've estimated what the real gains were without going back to accurately check.) Lots of that income is from my 401k, so it doesn't show up as taxable income. When I break it down to the actual taxable income, it was just under $20,000.
My total expenses in 2019 were about $27,000, not counting some additional one-time stuff that went towards our home renovation projects, most of which was actually paid for by Sweetie. My largest expenses were about $11,000 for food/groceries/liquor/eating out, as I usually pay for most of that for both of us. This still seems high to me but we did eat out more than usual for about a month while our kitchen was under construction. My next biggest category was "Misc" at about $2,300, which included a new Apple Watch and a new hard drive and battery to keep my old laptop going for a few more years. Also some art supplies, tax prep fees, postage and other random stuff. I spent just under $2,000 on clothes, which included a few things for Sweetie, and about $1,900 on education for a couple of classes. I am very lucky to have only had to spend about $1,100 on medical stuff-- this included my very low premiums for New York State's "Essentials" health insurance-- $45 a month including vision benefits, since I knew I'd need new glasses. The glasses themselves ended up costing a total of $370 for two pairs-- a thick single vision pair that was basically free, and a 2nd, half-off thinner pair with -- gasp -- progressive lenses, since I'm getting to that age where I'm not only terribly near-sighted but also need reading glasses. I will write more about the health insurance stuff, but the thing that really sucks about not being in the city is that my insurance plan, which is through United Healthcare, barely has any providers in my area. Having to drive 18 miles to an urgent care center that takes my plan is a bummer. I'm currently procrastinating about making that drive even though I probably need a little something to get over a case of bronchitis. I'm assigned to a primary care doctor who's only about 12 miles away, but I keep assuming it will be a nightmare to get an appointment. We'll see!
A few other expense lines: Travel $1,300, State Taxes $1,021, Gifts $1,476, Entertainment $958. Someday I'll have to do a post with my combined budget with Sweetie to reflect things I don't directly pay for myself, like our combined gym membership, auto maintenance, and utilities. etc. Sweetie's share is a bit larger, in proportion to the difference in our incomes.

Anyway, thanks for still reading and sorry I am so delinquent about writing. I make lots of notes about things I want to write about, and then for some reason I never get around to it! Terminal procrastination... happy new year to all of you, and hope you are enjoying the roaring '20s so far!

Cash is a Stranger to Me

I was recently in the city to have lunch with some friends, and I think it may have been the first time I ever went to a credit-card-only restaurant. There was some confusion as we tried to figure out how to split the bill with one person wanting to chip in cash and two people being willing to use cards, but then not having enough small change to appropriately share the cash. I suppose we could have asked the server to just put different amounts on each card but that seemed even more complicated!
Later that afternoon, I stopped in a cafe to grab an iced coffee. (It was one of those weird hot days and I was getting rather parched walking back to the train station.) Again, no cash was accepted. (I was also a bit shocked that a small iced coffee cost $4.75. I think I am already becoming unaccustomed to the ways of NYC. But it was very good coffee.)

Whether or not I'm going to places that don't accept cash, I find that I almost never spend it anymore. Every couple of months, I get my hair cut, and pay for that in cash. Once in a while, Sweetie and I will go to the local pizza place for lunch and we'll pay cash for a couple of slices. And occasionally there will be some other little thing. It used to be that I might buy a copy of a newspaper. But I get home delivery of the New York Times 4 days a week, and now I read the Wall Street Journal at the library. Even parking meters always seem to take credit cards now.

The Times just published an article about the backlash against this phenomenon: This Legislation Could Force Stores to Take Your Cash. I can see both sides of the issue. People argue that going cashless shuts out poorer people, who are unlikely to have access to credit and bank accounts. But businesses like the safety and administrative ease, and governments like having a data trail to prevent tax evasion and corruption.

I hope paper money doesn't disappear completely-- like postage stamps, paper bills are almost works of art, and I've always like collecting unusual ones from my travels. But I can't say I'll be using it very actively myself.

My Quarterly Blog Update: What's Up with Mom

That seems to be about the frequency I'm posting with lately! I really appreciate the comments from longtime readers and am glad to know you are still checking in! And it is good to hear from you about how you are doing in your own pursuits of financial stability and independence.

T'Pol, thanks for asking after my Mom. She is actually doing quite well. I invested the money in her two trusts (one revocable trust that is all hers, and one irrevocable trust, where she only gets the income but can't touch the principal) in Vanguard funds and they have been doing well enough to generate over $13,000 of income for my mom in 2018. She has been living on what she still gets from my father's pension, and her social security payments. In 2016 and 2017, she asked me for $5000 from the trust income to pay for other expenses. One year, that included my grandmother's funeral. The other year, she was moving to a new apartment. In 2018, she ended up asking me for two $5000 checks, as she had some expensive dental work. I was a little worried at first that she needed that much more-- it came at a point where she was fantasizing about moving to a larger and much more expensive apartment, and I sent her a slightly stern email querying the amount to make sure she wasn't somehow going behind my back to rent the new apartment. This was in December, and I explained to her that things were generally going well with the trusts but that the markets had just plunged and that we should be careful. I had another conversation with her where I reminded her how stressed out she had been when she was drowning in credit card debt, and that we had things under control now.
I worry that my mom doesn't understand the concept of building up a cushion for emergencies. I'm legally required to report to her on the trusts every year, and I've come up with a nice little template where I paste in a lot of charts and numbers from Vanguard showing what the assets are, how they did, and how much is being paid to her. (I do this by transferring the income from the irrevocable trust into the checking account for the revocable trust, which I also control. When my mom needs money, I write a check from the revocable trust made out to her personally.) My mom always just seems to glaze over on the overall details of the investments and just wants to know "How much did we make? How much more do we have than when we started?" Right now, the value of the trust accounts is over $130,000 more than when we started in 2015 (with about $450,000), and I worry that a number like $130,000 just makes my mom think "woo-hoo, we won the lottery!" So I keep reminding her that the funds go up and down, and that the money has to stretch itself out over quite a few more years, and that the more money we have invested, the more income we make, etc etc.
Some of that sinks in, some doesn't. Even though she is basically spending all her income except for a few thousand dollars of the trust income some years, she was on the verge of signing herself up for an apartment that would have cost her about $900 more a month! She said "oh, I'll just cut back on my budget somewhere," but she doesn't have any big areas she can realistically cut.

So overall, I would say things are pretty good, and we haven't had any fights about money, which is the best thing of all. But I'm always wary of what could go wrong! We are lucky to have the resources we do have, and as long as we are careful with them, everything will be fine.

And I do have more stories to tell, and hope to get around to posting again soon!

Embarrassment

I should be proud of my financial situation, right? I've worked hard, saved and invested, and reaped the benefits. But one thing I left out of my post the other day about some of my friends who remind me how lucky I am, is that I can't help feeling a little awkward or embarrassed sometimes when I talk about money matters with them. For all that I can empathize with their struggles, my own life is totally different. I don't have their fears and worries right now. And I wonder if they resent my situation or feel envious. I've realized that I share a lot less about my life on social media now because I worry that I'll sound like I'm bragging or rubbing people's noses in my good fortune. Perhaps that is also why my writing on this site has lagged so much in the last few years (though I have no excuse for losing momentum several years ago, well before I retired!). It's one thing to be striving and working and in the fray of trying to get ahead. But once you just stop and say "I have enough money and I'm just going to chill out for a while" it's not very relatable!

On this site, I can be quite open about things-- that's always been the whole point. And in "real life" I have always tried to be realistic about finances, if not totally transparent. Because our culture can be so caught up in materialism and keeping up appearances, I felt like I was doing a civic duty in a way whenever I'd say "I can't afford that" or "I've been saving a lot of my paycheck so I can afford that" or "I've been maxing out my 401k since a very early age." So many people fall into cliches when talking about money, somehow reinforcing the idea that it is okay and normal to be constantly spending money on nice things and having lots of debt-- I don't want to be part of that. But sometimes it's easier to tell little white lies about one's situation. I've met a number of people in our new community that have asked if I'm retired, with a sort of doubtful look, like "I don't want to insult you by implying you are older than you look but you don't seem to be working and you're not at home with children and I also don't want to insult you by asking if you've been laid off..." In a couple of these conversations I've ended up downplaying my financial freedom and talking more about being "between jobs" or "trying to change careers" or "doing some consulting projects" or "hoping to start a new job soon but it's dependent on funding..." The latter is basically true, but all of these things are easier to say than "well, I don't really have to work right now and yeah, I've basically retired 20 years before most people do, but no, it's not because I've inherited great wealth, I'm just a normal person who was fortunate enough to have parents who could support most of her education and give her a happy childhood while imbuing her with a lifelong penchant for saving money, and I've never been afraid to invest..." That's all kind of a mouthful, a bit TMI!

Ultimately, I can't control what people who don't know me think about me. The truth is too long a story. But I wish there was a way to convey it. Some of my situation is due to luck/privilege, but a lot of it is due to controllable factors. I suppose what would embarrass me most is to be seen as someone who has benefited from pure luck and doesn't "deserve it." But I feel proud if I can serve as an example of someone who has made good choices-- choices that anyone can make.

Tech Check

Back in my Palm Pilot days, I was such a junkie for the newest and latest device, it became a pretty significant part of my spending, even if I did lessen the blow by selling unwanted devices on eBay before they lost too much value. But nowadays, my relationship to tech toys is quite different-- I always seem to be holding on to whatever I have, and buying a new one only when it is absolutely necessary. Not just because I want to save money, but because the new things somehow don't seem as nice as the old ones. For instance:

In 2015, I posted about my decision-making process for buying a new iPhone. Seeing that post made me realize that I've now been using my phone for over 3 years, so the value I've gotten out of paying the full price up front for it is even better. It still works fine and I'm planning to hold on to it as long as I can. I don't like the even larger size of the iPhone X and newer models, so I might have to keep an eye on whether any future models will be produced in the size of the 6/7/8, and at least upgrade to an 8 before that size goes away.

My other electronic tool is a MacBook Air. I bought it in 2012. It pretty much works fine, at least when it's plugged in, but the battery tends to conk out on me when I least expect it, going from 35% or 40% to 0% without warning. They've just announced a new MacBook Air, so that's starting to make me think about an upgrade. But maybe I could just replace the battery on my current laptop? Would that be a good investment at this point? One other factor I have to consider is that I have the prospect of some work in the coming year. If I'm using my computer for work, it would make sense to get a new one, to have something more reliable. And I'd be able to deduct that expense when I do my taxes. I'm not totally sure if this job will pan out, so I will hold off on any purchase for now and see how things go.

One other technology-related purchase: I finally upgraded my Quicken software. I've ranted many times on this blog about how Quicken for Mac upgrades have SUCKED for years! I was still using Quicken for Mac 2007 because none of the upgrades seemed like an improvement. But a few weeks ago, it finally started acting up and my file got corrupted. I was able to salvage enough from backups to import most of my data into the new Quicken for Mac 2018, though I lost a few months worth of net worth data. I was able to export some snapshots into Excel so I have the last few years of income/expenses by category, and net worth as of year end. And eventually I will have enough data in the new Quicken for year on year comparisons to be valid again. The new software actually seems to do most of what I want, but I'm still pissed off at Quicken. They've gone to a subscription model, so I'll have to pay for it again on a regular basis instead of being able to stay with the same version for years. Oh well-- I guess I had a good run there with the 2007 version!

I just don't find myself tempted by any other tech toys right now. The Alexa and other such devices hold zero interest for me. I might get Sweetie an Apple TV for Christmas. Someday I'd enjoy having a really nice stereo system, now that we live in a house where loud music won't bother any neighbors. But otherwise the kind of tech that's on my mind these days is a lighter snow shovel or battery-warmed mittens!

Life Goes On...

I continue to enjoy my leisure as a "retiree." I'm healthy, I feel relaxed, I go to the gym a lot, I read a lot of books. I continue to feel incredibly lucky, especially when I hear about other people's struggles with money. Such as...

A friend who I don't think I have written about here before, so I'll call her Sally. She's been divorced for many years, and for almost that entire time, she's been chasing her ex-husband to try to get him to pay child support. She has often been working multiple jobs and is willing to do pretty much anything to make money, however menial or physically demanding. Her ex-husband works on and off, mostly for cash. He hides income via his girlfriend. He complains that it's "not worth it" to look for a job sometimes. He may or may not be using drugs at times. He owes her over $50,000. Meanwhile their two kids are in college and racking up huge student loans, even while attending state schools. Sally has a full time job with benefits now, which has helped her a lot, but they have crappy health insurance, so every time she or her kids have to go to the doctor, she is trying to get the doctors to not order too many tests, and questioning every prescription to see if they can stretch it out to a lower dosage. With regard to one medication, her doctor said "It costs you $900? I had no idea!" I guess it's a good thing to make sure doctors don't just over-prescribe and over-test, but I think it is better for medical decisions to be made on the basis of what a medical professional thinks is best, vs. what a consumer thinks they can afford. I just hope Sally will eventually get to a point where she doesn't have to worry so much about money.

And then there's Mortimer, who has appeared in my posts from time to time. Mortimer has been unemployed for almost 2 years now. His COBRA ran out and he's on Medicaid. He's kind of tapped out the friends who were able to help him find jobs in the past. I think he feels a bit paralyzed when it comes to next steps-- he's taken some classes to develop new skills, but I'm not sure if he'll be able to parlay them into a new career. Mortimer used to make around $75-100k, I think, and I think he is struggling with the idea of starting over at a much lower level in his late 50s.

Another friend, let's call her Tory, who has been dealing with the aftermath of divorce-- not her own, but her husband's, who she married relatively late in life. I'll call him Todd. He pays a large amount of alimony to his ex-wife, and unlike Sally's ex, he pays it regularly and on time. In his late 50s, his finances hadn't totally recovered from the divorce settlement, and then he lost his job. He set himself up to do some consulting but wasn't able to make much money. Then, fortunately, he got another job. But then Tory lost her job. And then Todd lost his new job. Todd is by now in his early 60s and Tory is in her late 50s. They have a 10 year old daughter. (Tory didn't mention it but I know it took her a long time to get pregnant so that was probably another big expense.) They lived in an upscale suburb of NYC, and after a couple of years with no success at finding new jobs, they realized they weren't going to be able to stretch out their assets long enough. So they sold their house and moved to the midwest to start a new, cheaper life. Just to kick them in the shins a little more, they ended up taking a loss on their house sale, since they'd bought it at the top of the market. Tory is happier now and seems optimistic, but I can't help feeling like there is an undercurrent of disappointment. For a few years, everything was falling into place for her, with a new husband, a new baby, a career and a nice lifestyle, and then she had to give it all up and move far away from family and friends. A tough choice.

I'm glad I have friends who are open about what is going on in their lives financially. I don't really know all the details of their savings and income and expenses, but they are honest about their difficulties and what they are doing to try to survive, rather than just pretending everything is fine. It's a good reality check.

A Millionaire Can Get Medicaid

So here’s an interesting development: I just found out I qualify for Medicaid, at least for the moment.

Now before you jump all over me saying I’m a greedy conniving cheat who shouldn’t be leeching services from the government, I will just say that it is very likely that I will never actually cost the government any money for using Medicaid. I’ll explain below. But I do think this is a great example of some of the perversity built into our current healthcare system.

I currently pay over $750 a month for COBRA coverage from my former job but in a few months, it will run out and I’ll have to buy my own insurance. I’ve been researching the plans offered through NY State’s marketplace under the ACA, otherwise known as Obamacare. I was going back and forth about what kind of plan to get and which insurance company to choose, but then realized that I shouldn’t be agonizing over it for just the last month of 2018— I could just pick the cheapest Bronze plan for that month since it was unlikely that I’d use medical care that month other than in an emergency, and then I could wait until the 2019 open enrollment period to decide on a plan for next year.

 I decided to see what the application process was like— I didn’t think I’d finalize and submit it right away, but I wanted to see what info was needed. The process is actually pretty straightforward, though if you aren’t sure what all the lines on your tax return mean, you might want to get some help. You basically have to give identifying information to be sure you qualify, and then income and deduction estimates for the year of coverage to see if you are eligible for any subsidies.

 The system is linked into NY State government data, so it knew I wasn’t earning any wages (via a paycheck with withholding) this year. For my estimated income for 2018, I just used the business income, interest, dividend and capital gains numbers from my 2017 tax return. (The business income is a little trickle from blogging, plus a consulting project I did last year, which is unlikely to be repeated this year.) They then ask about certain deductions that affect your adjusted gross income— again, I pulled this information from my 2017 tax return and extrapolated for what they would be in 2018. One of those deductions is what you pay for health insurance premiums if you are self- (or un-) employed.

 So here’s the thing— my taxable income this year is only likely to be around $20,000. When you subtract from that what I’ll pay in 2018 for my health insurance, which is over $8,000, boom, suddenly I’m at poverty level. Assets are not taken into consideration at all. It is also worth pointing out that the dividends and capital gains produced by my 401k and Roth IRA accounts are not taxable, so while I factor those in as “income” in my planning for the future, they don’t affect my eligibility for Medicaid. While I hadn’t originally planned to finalize my application, I sort of inadvertently did: a screen popped up saying I qualified for Medicaid, and that it would be effective as of July 1! I was very confused by this so I called the helpline and talked the whole thing through with someone to see what it would mean.

 Since I will still be paying for my COBRA coverage through November, any medical costs I have will still be covered by that primary insurance, but apparently Medicaid will become secondary coverage, if the provider I use accepts Medicaid. (That's a big if-- one of my doctors stopped being in-network for any insurance companies, so I’m sure she won’t accept Medicaid.) I’ll probably get a physical and maybe see another doctor or two before my COBRA runs out, but I’m guessing it may not be anything that Medicaid would cover.  There is also a slight possibility that I’ll get some work later this year— in that case I’ll have to go back into the application and update my projected income, and presumably that would put me back in the position of buying a bronze plan, with maybe a small subsidy towards the premium for 2018. And in 2019, without all those COBRA payments, I’ll probably no longer be eligible for Medicaid and will just get a subsidy for purchasing a plan. And depending on my actual income, I may end up paying all or some of the subsidy back when I do my 2019 taxes.

 I really wonder how many people fall into a situation like mine. I didn’t do anything to “game the system.” I just happen to benefit from a quirk in how the laws are currently designed (and yes, they should fix that quirk). If I had more investible assets, my dividends and capital gains would probably be high enough to disqualify me. And if I wasn’t paying for my platinum level COBRA, my adjusted gross income would be too high for me to qualify-- that, to me, is the most bizarre detail. But for the next couple of months at least, I am a millionaire who qualifies for Medicaid.

My Early Retirement Calculations

A commenter on the previous post asked if I'd share the calculations that made me feel confident about retiring early. I'll give you a simplified version!

There are a few different ways that people tend to look at retirement readiness. One of the simplest is the 4% rule. The idea is that if you can live on spending only 4% of your savings each year, you don't need to add to those savings, as investment gains should generally outpace what you are withdrawing. This is also sometimes expressed as a 25X rule-- multiply your annual spending by 25 to see how it compares to your savings.

My total net worth at the point of deciding to quit my job was somewhere around $1.2 million. (It has since been between $1.3 and $1.4 million due to stock market gains.) 4% of $1.2 million is $48,000. My lifestyle while living in NYC was costing me more than that, but by leaving the city, it was possible to realistically budget for a lifestyle where my half would be less than $48,000. And that doesn't include Sweetie's net worth, which is a little over $2 million (not counting the equity in the house we just bought and paid for in cash, as well as some money set aside for renovations). When taking both of us into account, 4% of $3.2 million is $128,000 and our combined yearly budget is well under that. (My current calculations have it as around $92,000 a year, including a generous travel allowance. We'll see how it plays out in reality as we adjust to our new life in the country!)

This method of calculation doesn't factor in Social Security benefits or other retirement income. My Social Security will end up being less than what they project because they don't take into account that I won't continue to make what I was making last year. (It will be interesting to see if the projections will update in the next year or two when my income goes way down.) Sweetie will get Social Security, as well as a defined benefit pension starting in about 7 years. The pension, which appears to be well-funded and safely on track to be able to pay out in full, will be additional income of about $87,000 a year. That obviously makes a HUGE difference in our projections for the future.

I also used the retirement calculator that is part of the Fidelity website (not sure if it's publicly accessible or if you have to have an account)-- it is a fairly complex tool that allows you to input all sorts of info for yourself and a partner, including life expectancy, assets on hand, sources of income, one-time events, budgeted retirement spending, and other goals like paying for college. It then uses a Monte Carlo simulation to model how things will play out under different market conditions, and projects your savings and spending until your "end of plan," which is their delicate way of saying "when you drop dead." You can see 3 versions of the results-- one assuming a "significantly below average" market, one "below average," and one "average." I plugged all our numbers into this, assuming we'd both live til 95, inflating our expenses (by about 50% over what they currently are budgeted at) to allow for plenty of fun and expensive healthcare, and keeping expectations of any future inflow from earnings or inheritance to an absolute minimum. When really pushing this to the absolute worst case scenario, it says I might run out of money in my early 90s after Sweetie is dead. But even by just changing the parameters to "below average" market instead of "significantly below" brings us back to having over $2 million left over after both of us are dead.

No prediction is 100% confident, and a lot of things could happen that would change these calculations, so of course I still have my moments of worrying about whether it will all work out as planned. But we're also allowing for so much leeway in our budgeting that there will be room for us to cut back if needed. And we'll naturally cut back on some things like travel as we age. The biggest worry is that we'll decide we hate living in the country and want to go back to NYC-- we wouldn't be able to afford to live as we did before, but we could most likely make it work if we really wanted to. I feel incredibly fortunate to have this kind of freedom-- Sweetie and I have worked hard and made good decisions, but I also know that pure luck is a lot of what separates us from the half of all Americans who say they can't come up with $400 in an emergency, let alone retire early.

A Whirlwind of Volatility

I'm not just talking about the stock market these last few days-- I'm talking about the last few months of my life.
You would think I'd have spent more time blogging lately, given that I quit my job and at least in theory have plenty of time on my hands. But the end of 2017 got a little crazy as we had to do a lot of work to put our apartment on the market, and then we sold it so quickly, it was a hustle to get ourselves packed up and moved out by the beginning of January!
I think we had pretty great timing, actually. We hit the market at a point when there weren't a lot of comparable listings in our price range. Within days we had multiple offers and a bidding war, and ended up with an all-cash buyer at above our original asking price. Seeing what's been going on with the tax bill and now the gyrations in the stock market, I'm very glad we weren't trying to sell now or later this spring.
The buyers wanted to close fairly quickly, but luckily we had also managed to find a house in an area that we liked, so we knew we'd have someplace to go-- sort of, anyway. The timing didn't totally work out and we couldn't move in right away, so our stuff (what's left of it after purging and donating and selling a lot) had to go into storage for a little while, but beyond that, the closing on our house went pretty smoothly too, since we were also paying cash. We also had good timing in that during our storage limbo, we decided to get away for a little mini-vacation in January when it got so cold and nasty in the Northeast, and not move into our new house til later in the month when it was better weather. And now we (by which I really mean Sweetie, whose apartment it was) are sitting on a big chunk of cash that we luckily didn't invest right before this stock market correction.

So we are just now settling down to the next phase of this new life, but still feeling a little at sea. Our expenses are going to be so much lower, it's kind of blowing my mind. Our HOA fee is a fraction of the maintenance on the apartment. The car insurance is cheaper, and parking is free. Even joining the local gym, which we did today, is going to be about half what we used to pay in NYC. The local grocery stores tend to have somewhat lower prices than in the city. Our utility bills may end up higher since we have electric baseboard heating. And at some point we may need to get a second car, depending on what we end up doing with ourselves in terms of jobs or other activities. So far, our main activities have been unpacking, exploring the area, and marveling at how beautiful and quiet it is here.
We'll see how it goes. I do miss the urban vibe of being in Brooklyn and going into Manhattan almost daily-- we drove back into the city for the first time the other day and ended up in a neighborhood I didn't know well and I kept thinking how nice it seemed and wondering what it would be like to live there if we someday decide we want and can afford a pied a terre. I kind of miss just watching people on the subway. It's weird to have to drive everywhere. But life also feels very peaceful now, and all the stresses of our former apartment, former jobs, and former expenses have just-- poof! -- gone away.

Another Down-to-Earth Heiress

Consider this a sequel to my last post, in which a woman's family money seemed to be funding some luxuries for an otherwise frugal couple.

This time, the story is about a childhood friend of mine. I hadn't really kept in touch with him for years, but some years ago I was at a party in my home town and met his wife. She was a lovely person who taught in a local nursery school, just really sweet and friendly and exactly the sort of person you'd want your child's teacher to be. My old friend worked in what sounded like a mid-level corporate marketing job. They had a child and another on the way at that point. They were renting a house and hoping to find one to buy. It all sounded totally typical for a young married couple of my general world, which I'll again describe as mostly people who have had a stable, middle-class to upper-middle class upbringing, college grads-- people with many advantages in life but who would not be seen as particularly rich. People who probably aren't living paycheck-to-paycheck, but who have worries about the bigger financial goals in life such as helping kids pay for college, and retirement. People who can't take money for granted.

As in my last story, an offhand remark by the wife made my head spin-- I was telling a story about my own job, with an example of a regular task I had at that time, and I referred to a company name. The wife said "oh! That's my family's business! [Things associated with this company, one of which I had just cited,] are named after my sisters and cousins and me!" This company is not a household name but it's one of those things that is actually pretty major in a behind-the-scenes way, which you notice everywhere once you know where to look. I didn't pry into all the family tree, but from doing a little research afterwards, it appeared that the wife's grandfather was at that time the richest man in the country where this company was founded.

Being the richest man in that country is not like being the richest man in the US-- our billionaires are way richer. But still... he's a billionaire! I guess there is no law that says grandparents have to provide money to their grandchildren, and maybe this woman doesn't get a thing, but even if she is one of lots and lots of grandchildren, she would surely inherit something someday. And at that level of wealth, I'd be surprised if there wasn't some sort of trust fund distributing some money already.

At some point after that party, I asked a mutual friend if he knew about the wife's background. He was aware that she came from money, as apparently a group of this guy's friends always joked about how he must have sold his soul to the devil because he'd gone from being kind of a nerd in high school to marrying this beautiful and wealthy woman! But they didn't even realize exactly how wealthy her family was.

I was just looking up this couple to see what they are up to lately, as I haven't seen them in a while and don't know much more about them other than what their kids are doing in photos posted on Facebook. The wife is no longer a teacher, and has what sounds like a management job at a tech company. My friend seems to still have more or less the same job. When the wife was a teacher, I thought "ok, that is the sort of job that is emotionally rewarding if not remunerative, so it makes sense that she would do that." Obviously I don't know any details about her current job, but it sounds more like the kind of thing people do when they need to make money-- she may find it satisfying in other ways, but I guess it is my own bias showing that I think anyone who has some family money would want to be an entrepreneur, or work for a non-profit, or teach-- in general, do things that are too risky or low-paying to do if you really need a steady income. I wish I could ask her a lot of questions....

Enough About Me...

It's been a while since I wrote about other people's money! I've been jotting down some notes over the last year or more about various situations I've encountered with friends or family whose finances fascinate me. The first one I'll tell you about is someone in my extended family. He and his wife are pretty down to earth people-- no fancy cars, no fancy clothes, and no expensive hobbies that I'd ever heard of until recently. They did do some nice travel with the wife's family, but nothing that seemed out of the ordinary for upper-middle-class people that wanted to treat their kids to a special experience. All in all, I'd describe them as people who certainly had lots of advantages in life and lived comfortably, but not someone that most people would look at and say "whoa, they are super-wealthy and have way more money than me."

But then one day, the wife casually slipped something into a conversation that did make me say "whoa." Without revealing too many identifying details, I'll just say that someone in an earlier generation of her family invented something pretty major-- major enough that unless there was some sort of unfair buy-out or other business dealing, the entire family would surely have a TON of money for generations to come. I could be wrong about that, as it's hard to know how family wealth will trickle down over generations, whether it's been invested well, etc. But I'm pretty sure I'm right, especially since the husband in this couple recently bought a plane.

Now the plane he bought is not a Gulfstream jet or anything like that-- it's a small plane that probably cost him less than some luxury cars, from what I could tell by googling the model. But still-- how many people just run out and buy planes?! In my circles, basically no one. I know one person who flies a plane because he works for a small local charter airline. And I think one of my uncles might have taken some flying lessons a while back. I myself gave Sweetie a one-hour trial flying lesson as a 50th birthday present-- I think it was about $85, and it was a really fun experience that I'd like to repeat with myself at the controls someday! But other than that, flying seems like a pretty rarified hobby. And to commit yourself to getting and maintaining a pilot's license, as well as fuel, maintenance and hangar parking for a plane that you own? That has to be a huge money pit. If you  do certain kinds of travel on a regular basis, I suppose you can avoid paying a lot of commercial air fares, but I would imagine it's extremely rare for owning a plane to work out to be cheaper.

So it was very interesting for me to go from thinking my relative was someone "like me" in terms of finances, in a very broad sense, to suddenly seeing him as being on another planet! I admire him and his wife for their lifestyle in general-- they are both smart and hard-working, certainly not anyone you'd scoff at as the "idle rich." And if the plane is the one crazy thing they want to blow some money on, it's fine with me, though I hope they are extremely cautious flying it!

Have you ever had to reassess your perception of someone's finances like this?

New Life So Far

 I’ve got a few weeks of retirement/vacation/unemployment under my belt now… and I’m still not sure what to call it! But I have already made a few discoveries about myself. Firstly, that I am lazy! I had very good intentions to blog every day and go to the gym every day and be very creative and productive and healthy, but I’m not doing a very good job of that just yet.

 In my first few days off, I bounced around the apartment doing a lot of little chores like washing windows, organizing my sock drawer, and repairing a lamp. But having knocked those off the list, I felt a bit at sea. I did go to the gym most days, but that only took up a couple of hours, leaving me a lot of time to spend A) wondering if I’ve done the right thing in quitting my job, and B) staring at my phone. I have an amazing capacity to just loll around and check Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter all day!

Then I got sick, and even my gym routine went out the window. It took a few doctor visits and blood tests to figure out what was wrong with me, and luckily, just some antibiotics to fix it, but not before my brain went off into some anxious (and literally feverish) spins about how much COBRA payments were costing me and what would be happening with Obamacare, and pre-existing conditions, and deductibles and premiums and co-payments, oh my.

 The healthcare costs are my main spending these days— immediately upon starting my semi-retirement (I’m just going to call it that for now), I found myself with a hankering for peanut butter sandwiches. That plus some salad greens, cheese and crackers, and a baggie full of nuts and raisins, has been my primary diet on these lazy days, and I get really annoyed with myself if I forget to bring my own water bottle from home and have to buy one. Sweetie and I have occasionally gone out for lunch at pizza places, middle-Eastern restaurants, and Chipotle, but on the whole, I’ve been really good about cutting my spending on food. I also haven’t spent much on any other miscellaneous items or clothes, other than finding my favorite jeans on sale and snapping up a couple pairs since I’ll be wearing them a lot more!

 Our basic costs of living— housing, insurance, etc— are a big drain right now, but so far, my net worth has pretty much stayed steady, even increasing a little— stock market fluctuations will have a much bigger effect at this point than any day to day spending, at least in the short term. But it is painful to see all this negative cash flow.

 Right now, I’m just giving myself some time to settle into this new life and figure out a new rhythm— it’s more of a challenge than I thought it would be. Although I did not think of myself as wrapped up in my old career as a big part of my identity, I am uncertain about what my identity is now. What I mean is that I didn’t base my self-worth on making a lot of money and being at a certain professional level— I was proud of it, but my career was less about prestige than it was about an inner feeling of competence. I liked knowing what I was good at my job (most of it, anyway) and I felt satisfaction in getting things done. Now that source of satisfaction is missing and I need to replace it with something. I need to feel like I’m good at something, and productive. It’s scary to not have a clear idea what that will be, and to contemplate doing something new where I am clueless and might be frustrated at first because I don’t know what I’m doing and make mistakes. The part of my life that gave me confidence and security has been replaced by doubt and uncertainty.

 But this is temporary. I know things will settle down— we’ve got a house to buy, an apartment to sell, and a new life to build, none of which will happen overnight, so I need to be patient with myself. And we have money in the bank to get us through the next steps. I still feel incredibly lucky to have these choices and decisions to make.

It's Done

In my last few posts, I was working my way towards a big life change... and now I've taken the next big step. I quit my job! It was both a big step and strangely anti-climactic, since I hadn't been at that job for very long and had never really settled into it in some ways. Now I just wish I'd done it sooner so I could have had more time off during the summer, but it's actually kind of nice to go into vacation mode just as everyone else is going back to school/work.

This is going to be weird, though. I haven't been unemployed since I was 21! What am I going to do with myself? More blogging, I hope! And I do intend to find other work, but at the moment we're working on moving out of NYC, which seems like a job unto itself. The main thing I'm going to have to adjust to is seeing negative numbers in my income/expense tracking. I will not be saving money in the short term. I will have to be very strict about sticking to a budget, but spending some of my savings is all part of the master plan. It is going to be painful over the next few months as we'll have higher household expenses while we deal with relocating. But afterwards, our ongoing expenses will be lower. And Sweetie will have a lot more liquid cash after the NY apartment is sold. We are pretty sure that if we play our cards right, we don't really ever have to have jobs again, though we do want to find other work, preferably part-time.

Meanwhile, I keep hearing of more and more people who are also leaving NYC-- some are moving to totally new cities for new jobs, some are moving back to their home towns to be closer to parents, some are doing reverse commutes to jobs outside NYC and planning to fully move later. Others are also leaping into the void of uncertainty: one guy quit his job, sold all his stuff, and moved to Berlin! There is a sense that the city has changed so much from when we ourselves were the young new arrivals, but maybe every new generation feels that NYC is becoming just an over-developed playground for the wealthy and their children and just isn't as fun anymore...

But for me, what I'm doing now feels exciting, inspiring, and a little scary. It's rejuvenating, perhaps, to throw off my very stable routines and enter a phase of disruption and reinvention-- though I suppose some people wouldn't think that a middle-aged couple moving to the suburbs is that adventurous! We shall see...

Health Insurance

Another important point brought up by a commenter on a recent post— how am I going to get health insurance if I leave my job? The short answer is that I’m going to pay through the nose for it!

This really is the crappiest part of trying to contemplate a sabbatical, or early retirement. I currently get pretty good health insurance through my employer, including coverage for Sweetie. I pay about $260 a month to cover our dental and medical insurance. I can see from my paystub that the employer covered portion of our insurance costs is about $1000 additional. Going on COBRA will also add some sort of administrative fee, so I’m budgeting that it will cost us $1,400 a month to pay for our insurance.

COBRA only lasts up to 18 months, so after that, assuming we didn’t have jobs yet, we’d have to buy insurance in the marketplace. I went to the NY State website to see what the costs would be under Obamacare. It looks like we make too much money from interest and dividends alone to qualify for any subsidies, so our costs for a “bronze” medical and dental plan for 2 people would be around $800 a month. “Silver” would be about $950, and “gold” would be around $1,150. Given that we are both currently quite healthy and don’t have any prescriptions we take regularly, it probably makes sense for us to try a bronze plan— this would have a really high deductible, so we’d be mainly covering ourselves for something catastrophic, and we have the cash to pay a big out-of-pocket maximum if we get hit by a bus. But that could be over $14,000 worth of charges we’d have to pay before the insurance kicks in. So maybe it’s worth it to pay about $350 more per month for the lower copays and out of pocket caps that we’d get with a gold plan?

Who knows… either way the whole system sucks. I know so many people from other countries that have single-payer systems, and they are perfectly happy with them and think that what we have to pay here is insane. Every time I see a drug ad on TV, I feel outraged that millions of dollars are being spent on all this pointless marketing, though I know that’s not the only reason healthcare costs are high. And of course, my numbers here assume that the Affordable Care Act isn’t completely destroyed by the Republicans. If the protection for people with pre-existing conditions goes away, I’ll be screwed, as I do have one hereditary thing that doesn’t require active treatment now, but would be considered a pre-existing condition and could potentially cause me to be charged a lot more for insurance in the future, or denied coverage for certain things.

So will we really be paying an amount equivalent to the rent on a small outer-borough apartment just to get health insurance? I guess we will, at least for a while. I’ve been googling “part time jobs with benefits” as that would be an ideal scenario, but I’m not sure we’ll get that lucky…

Remote Work

Several commenters have asked if I could move out of NYC and work remotely at my current job. I have definitely thought about this option. Unfortunately, in my current position, it would be a non-starter. There is certainly plenty of work I can do from home, but there are lots of meetings and face-time is required (the old-fashioned kind, not the Apple program!). Someone who works for me actually asked to work remotely and though I sympathized and wanted to say yes, my boss wanted to hold the line and say no. It’s seen as a productivity issue, and a fairness issue, I guess. There are some jobs where it may make sense, and some where it would be hard to measure productivity, so although there are some people who work remotely, they often say no, as they’re worried that the more they say yes, the more they’ll have to say yes to everyone just to be fair, and then the office would be a ghost town.

A lot of companies seem to want their employees to work remotely, so as to save on expensive office real estate. But then there is the question of office culture, team spirit, etc. I would certainly be interested in trying to work from home, but it would probably have to be a different job, with a different company. Or I could do some freelance consulting. I would love to have a flexible schedule, where I could bum around in jeans all day instead of having to get dressed up and commute to an office. But I do also worry a bit about whether my temperament is suited to it. When I have a day off, I can laze around for hours, getting distracted by solitaire and Facebook and reading the newspaper. I might not be disciplined enough to work from home. I think I’d also miss the social aspects of going to an office. Some of the suburban/rural areas we’ve considered moving to are actually within what many people consider commuting range— I work with people who travel up to 1.5-2 hours each way, so that’s a pretty wide radius around the city. But that kind of commute would just spoil any quality of life gains we’d get by moving, and those Metro North train passes are pricey.

So that leaves me thinking about what I could do for work from home, or locally wherever we end up living. I’m not feeling pressured to make a ton of money, so theoretically I could have a lot of options, but A) I’d have to figure out what those options are, and B) I might face some age discrimination. I’m not afraid to do menial work, and I did plenty of it when I was younger, but now that I’m pushing 50, I wonder if I’d be taken seriously as an applicant. I’m tempted to just apply for a bunch of random jobs to see if I could get one— kind of as an experiment in what today’s job market really is like. But I would also feel bad if I got a job that I didn’t really want for the longer term, but someone else might have really needed. So at least in the immediate future, I think I will try to focus on doing some networking in my industry to find out more about remote and freelance job opportunities and also try to talk to friends in other industries about what other kinds of professional jobs my skills would lend themselves to. But whether or not I find some other job, I’m becoming more and more certain that I’m going to quit and some kind of big change is coming!

How Do I Want to Live?

This is always the key question in thinking about retirement. How do I want to live, where do I want to live, what will I be doing, and what's it all going to cost?
I'm still grinding away at my job, with some good days and some bad days. Still pretty stressed. Still spending a lot of time looking at retirement calculations, and also real estate sites. Because it's suddenly seeming like real estate is where the answer will be found.

Ever since I started writing this blog, one of my key assumptions has been that I will always want to live in NYC. I love it here. It has become home. It's where many of my friends are (though some of my best friends are elsewhere), it is where I have work connections and where most of the jobs in my industry are based. I love the wealth of cultural institutions, even if I don't always take advantage of them. I just like the vibe of the streets-- there is always someone or something interesting to look at. You can walk and take public transportation to do so many things. Although there is anonymity in the city, neighbors still look after each other, and in some ways, NYC is a great place to age-- you can get things delivered, take taxis, there are doctors and hospitals galore, lots of buildings with elevators and doormen-- all things that make life a little easier for elderly people.

The flip side is that it's freaking expensive! If you really want to enjoy the best of what NYC has to offer, it's going to cost you a lot. My lifestyle has always been kind of low-to-middle in terms of NYC standards-- I've mostly lived outside Manhattan, moving further and further as real estate prices increased. I've lived in tiny apartments with no services. I've tried to keep my expenses in check. In more recent years, that has changed a bit due to Sweetie, who already lived in a nicer doorman building and had a car and a cleaning lady coming in weekly. As my salary increased, I felt comfortable taking on my share of the cost for that lifestyle, even if it wasn't what I might have chosen on my own. The cleaning lady is now only every other week but we live quite luxuriously, I think. A lawyer or a hedge-funder might not be impressed, but my 10-years-ago self would be!

So now the question is "what are we willing to give up?" The more we talk about it, the more we realize we're willing to change things quite a bit. Though we love the city, we've started to feel a bit annoyed by all the noise and congestion from so much overdevelopment-- new buildings going up, creating more density, more crowds. Meanwhile our own apartment is kind of crumbling-- Sweetie's owned it for a long time and has done some renovations over the years but more are needed. Add in some new neighbors that are kind of obnoxious, and suddenly we're thinking maybe we should just move so we don't have to deal with all this crap. But to where?

We've started looking at some areas along the Metro-North train lines in NY state and Connecticut. We've looked a little in Hoboken and Jersey City. We've looked at far northern parts of Manhattan and even in the Bronx. Most of this has been idle on-line searching so far but we've seen a few places in person at open houses. It's hard not to pull up stakes immediately when you visit a beautiful newly-built house with twice as much square footage as your current apartment, a washer/dryer, garage, and a terrace with partial water views that we could own mortgage-free with lower monthly costs than the current apartment. The only downside would be my commute being close to 2 hours each way! If I wasn't working the commute wouldn't be an issue, of course, but there were some other issues we didn't love about the location. We've also discovered that property taxes can be surprising-- in NJ and CT, they are often really high vs. NYC, so something that looks like a bargain might not be.

So this question of how we want to live is yet to be answered, but we're looking at a lot more possibilities. We could come into NYC for day trips and still enjoy the culture. We could even stay in a hotel once in a while for far less than it costs us to live here. And if we manage our expenses well enough in the next decade or so, we'd probably be able to afford to move back into the city at some later time, even have a small pied-a-terre. But the bottom line is we're starting to figure out possible budgets that might really allow us not to work at all from now on. Living in NYC is the biggest expense we can cut... I never thought we'd be willing to do it, but it could make all the difference.