Welcome to another Dr. PayItBack monthly checkup! I use this space to remain accountable to our expenses and goals, track net worth and debt, and muse on what was done well and what can be improved.
Reader, I hope you are doing well and staying safe as we go into the holidays with another COVID wave rising. Cases in my area are up 80% in the past two weeks, though hospitalizations remain steady and there have been no deaths. Our community is only about 50% vaccinated, so I do not expect this to hold. Mrs. PIB and I are looking very forward to getting our older kid his shot when able.
Budget/Cash Flow
A lot of moving money around but otherwise very standard cashflow this month. Biggest non-recurring expense was a new briefcase ($335) to replace my well-loved messenger bag that had served me since residency. We also had a monthly fancy date night ($220) and a lot of Christmas shopping.
The biggest news I covered in my last post; my wife’s student loans are gone. It doesn’t make sense from a purely financial perspective given the low interest rate, but it also shouldn’t cost us *that* much and it gets the extra complexity out of my hair.
I also put a good chunk of my inheritance from the sale of my dad’s house to work in the market and added to our kids’ Roth accounts. Like last year, they did a good bit of modeling for my wife’s business so it’s all above board.
PayItBack Progress
For the first time in six months, interest rates have ticked up a whopping 0.01%. We see the big dent from my wife’s loans here, but no current plans to pay mine off early in the same way.
Net Worth
Net worth was stagnant with a slouching stock market; the S&P was down almost 1% in November with seemingly more pain to come. But I’ll keep shoveling money in and something tells me that a year (or two, or three) from now it will all work out.
Financial Independence
As predicted last month, the super optimistic FI date prompted by the bolus of my inheritance is starting to recede toward something more realistic.
Financial Goals for 2021
1) Max out 403b: $19,500 of $19,500 (100% done) ✅
2) Max out backdoor Roth IRAs: $12,000 of $12,000 (100% done) ✅
3) Use taxable brokerage in addition to 1) and 2) to save $100,000 total for retirement: $124,500 of $68,500 (181.8% done) ✅
4) Max out 529s for state tax benefit: $16,000 of $16,000 (100% done) ✅
5) Save 20% down payment for a $450,000 house: $90,000 of $90,000 (100% done) ✅
6) Continue to pay minimums on student loans as long as rates remain <4% ❌
7) Finalize estate documents
This is a sight to behold really!
We have recently made the decision that my wife, also MD, will not be working for a fee years to take care of our newborn and toddler and, given I will be the only provider for the following years I am more and more concerned about detailed financial planning.
Having read a few of your posts here, I wanted to ask you what software/app do you use for these trackings and breakdown? They speak to me for their clarity and conciseness. Thanks!
Thank you for reading!
I use personal capital for automatic tracking of all our accounts, but that’s not where most of my graphics come from. I use spreadsheets and charts I made on Apple Numbers, which is basically just excel.
Incredible year over year progress. Keep it up and stay the course!
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Just stumbled upon Dr. PayItBack via twitter after the annual bonus tweet is somewhat going viral. I’m a PA student who stumbled upon the FI community prior to school and this is so cool to see. Thanks for sharing all of this information. I’ll graduate with 120k of debt and look forward to doing something like this with all the data!
Glad you enjoyed it, thanks for reading and best of luck!