Welcome to the now-and-again T on FIRE Weekly Report! Spring has finally arrived in my part of the world; dirty snow is gone and has just left piles of dirt instead, my town is flooding from excessive climate change and therefore rising waters, and the squirrels are chasing each other around the yard.
With all that fun stuff happening, it’s difficult to fully focus on FIRE efforts. That said, here are a few things I got done this past week to help myself towards the ultimate FIRE goal.
- I mentioned last week that I was starting my own 10 lb challenge – lose 10 lbs in 10 weeks, so I can be healthier and enjoy FIRE for a few extra weeks. Haha. There are 6 participants. Hopefully we can keep ourselves motivated!
- Made $80 selling stuff I owned.
- Checked one insurance company’s rates to compare against my current rates. Will do more this week. This one has been dragging for months…
- Meal prepped a fair bit to save money on dining out over the next week.
Not a ton, but it’s something I guess. This week I plan to:
- Get the Guardian thing worked out so I can finish my estate planning
- Read some more of “The millionaire next door”
- Check 2 more insurance companies for rates.
- Sell another thing.
- Clean my own dryer vent and pipe, so I don’t have to pay someone to come and do it.
I think that’s about it for the week. What are you doing this week to better your financial situation? Let me know in the comments!
I am also distracted by squirrels running around my yard. They’re such cute little buggers! 🙂
I also dragged out getting new quotes for our insurance. It’s NOT a fun task!
This week, I’m going to reconcile our April in YNAB to see how much is leftover for us to put into our TFSAs.
Too funny. For some reason I’ve been putting off insurance quotes. It’s not that painful but I just don’t wanna. I’m curious how you reconcile the month in YNAB. Do you just reconcile each account as per the usual? Or do you zero your categories and then reallocate the money into May? I’m always interested in new ways to use the tool.
Yep—I do exactly those things in YNAB at month-end!
I always wait a few days after the month has ended to do the tidying up. (This gives the credit card transactions enough time to post to my accounts.)
I zero all the categories where it makes sense to do so, then I see how much I’ve managed to free up for next month/investing.
I also have reimbursement categories (for our extended health expenses, ongoing IOUs with family members, etc.) I go through these and reconcile all the IOUs to make sure everything adds up.
I also reconcile all my accounts at this time, though I also do this every 10-14 days. (Any longer and my memory fails—then one-off, non-routine transactions don’t get categorized properly!)
I’d love to learn more about your process too! Are you on the new web version of YNAB? I haven’t made the leap yet—I’m still on the desktop copy that I won through one of the webinars!
Ok, thanks. Yes this is similar to my process as well. I reconcile on paydays usually because I can’t go too long without categorizing transactions. I am on the web version having joined the YNAB party just late last year.
I have to reconcile YNAB frequently too. I use the auto-import as I have too many accounts to manage it manually. I tried it for a while and it was too much to handle. That’s even after closing a bunch of accounts to simplify things. Looks like I should put that back on my clean-up list.
Because of all my wife’s and my bank accounts, my net worth tracker is lengthy and complicated with all sorts of indicators over time and different ways to track progress. It’s a mess…lol.
All the podcasts I’m following I just keep adding more tracking effort for myself. 🙂 Net Worth, Liquid Net Worth, different savings rates, FI Milestones….it’s a big list.
In that case, I think your spreadsheet is the best bet! I have a bunch of accounts and tracked assets in YNAB as well. Most update automatically but I do have to go in once a month to reconcile for a more accurate net worth report. I like your idea of having everything in one place. I have no FI milestones (except that I’d like to retire sometime in my 50s) so I should probably get on that. Best of luck! It sounds like you are on top of things despite the complexity.
Looks like a good list to me. I submitted our taxes last week and I’ve been balancing my YNAB as well. Been updating my FI tracking sheet as well as my net worth excel sheet. I’m hoping to get it cleaned up to a point where I can share it.
The past two weeks have been busy with family in town so no minimizing or cleaning out things as I had hoped.
Thanks for the reminder on the dryer vent. Keep it up!
Another YNAB user. Hurrah!! I’d love to see your net worth sheet! I’ve been using the reporting feature in YNAB. Of course it means entering all assets and liabilities, but it gives a fine enough picture. No good for forecasting future net worth however. Spring cleaning is certainly top of mind now that I can get into my shed full of junk!