The first month of the year is over. We finally got rid of our very high health insurance premium. The expenses for this month reflected that. We are also on the “waiting for baby #2 mode”. I’m now passed 37 weeks as of this writing. Although 37 weeks is still consider early, it is safe […]
2019 Early Retirement Reflections
It has been 6 months since we officially quit our W2 employment, called ourselves “retired” and moved out of the city. We are financially prepared and has been very conservative with our estimates. I’m not worried about the financial aspects going into retirement, but I was / am worried about the emotional toll that it […]
The Monthly Expense of an Early Retiree – DECEMBER 2019
December is quite the opposite of November in terms of our spending. If November is low, December is high and the highest since we retired. This is expected because of the holidays. In December 2019, we spent $8,748.80 Gifts It is the holidays and the highest line items we have is our holiday gifts specifically […]
Early Retirement Spending – November 2019
November is surprisingly an inexpensive month for us. Most of what we buy are starting to become a routine, with the exception of those one time expenses. Our November Spending is $3,512.61 Health Care Health insurance is still the biggest expense for this month and will continued on until December. With our projected low income […]
5 Books for your Toddler
It’s the holidays and you are searching for that elusive books that your toddler/niece/nephew or any other kid will love. Books that you are hoping that they don’t already own because you want to be a pretty cool caregiver. Here are the top 5 books that MBP loves. We discovered these from the library. He […]
The Cost of a NICU stay
November is prematurity awareness month. According to March For Dimes “the preterm birth rate in the United States has worsened for a third year, rising to 9.93 percent in 2017. Premature birth and its complications are the largest contributors to infant death in this country and globally.” MBP was born prematurely at 28 weeks and […]
Early Retirement Spending – October 2019
It’s been 4 months since early retirement, but it feels like ages ago. Our spending still varies quite a bit month per month. There seems to be a one time expense almost every month. We were busy this October with the Halloween festivities. MBP enjoyed trick or treating and we went to 3 events – […]
Fall Kids Consignment Haul
Most of MBP’s clothes and toys are either used or free. There are very active Buy Nothing Groups in Seattle where we got MBP’s crib, chairs, clothes, bottles and tons of toys. I supplement his stuff by buying other items on consignment, which typically happens twice a year. When we moved this May, I joined […]
Free Printable DIY Recipe Card
I realized that I’ve been tackling some projects almost every month since early retirement. On month 1, I repaired 47 Bumgenius Cloth Diaper Elastics. On month 2, I digitized our filing cabinet and got rid of more than half the paper in my filing box. This month, I created a recipe card for our favorite […]
Early Retirement Spending – September 2019
I’m going to start logging our monthly household spending, now that we completed 3 months of early retirement. We track our spending pre-retirement and have some idea of our monthly spending, but it would be good to see the actual numbers, now that we have a somewhat different lifestyle. Some Background Our journey to FIRE […]