RBO answering First Gen American’s questions about #1’s finances post-mortgage

The next near term unmet savings goal seems to be DC1 and Dc2 college fund. More posts on that would be interesting to me as I also have one about the same age. Although I am about a year behind you on payoff, that is my next savings goal.

We decided to up it to $750/mo/kid, basically splitting the difference between what we’d need for a super pricey school and what we were contributing already.  That also means that is eating $500/mo of the not-paying-the-mortgage-savings we were seeing.

I guess you can also ponder some more about when to get that next car

This is a constant pondering thing.  It was in the shop again for a week because it started doing the squealing thing that it had been doing two years ago, and even though it is a cheap fix (tighten things), it takes them forever to figure it out.  Partly because it only squeals when the engine is cold and it’s cold outside.  Only $70 for that + replacing the windshield wipers (because why not), but also there was a week of us having to deal with only having one car (indeed, they didn’t completely fix the squeal because DH had to drive to the city for a meeting and needed me to have the car to do dropoff).  And since they’ve tightened everything the shocks aren’t being as nice and shock absorbent as they usually are which means my ride is more bumpy.  But each time my car needs fixing, we don’t know if it’s going to be the last repair for a while or not.  If it is, then we’re happy, but if the car has to go in again, it’s a pain.  So I don’t know.  We’re still pondering.  Eventually there will be enough excess in savings that we won’t have to rebuild the emergency fund after buying a Prius or something similar.  (We’re not there yet.)  The other car seems fine for now, and the insurance company of the at-fault driver took care of our costs and our insurance company’s costs.

Do general posts on spending budgets (not the day to day expenses, But those emergency ones). I remember feeling a little overwhelmed when my TV, washer and water heater broke within months of each other, until I realized they were all old and due to be replaced… A lot does get fixed when you have a big emergency fund. You don’t really need to keep such close track of everything.

Yeah, we just have a big emergency fund that could cover a washer and water heater and heck, even a new roof (though maybe not solar panels to go on said roof, which we might do after getting a new roof).  We have two water heaters and I guess they’ll be due to be replaced in a few years– can’t remember if we got the 15 year or the 20 year kind.  (And actually, a few months after we moved into this house, shortly after we finally purchased a washer and dryer, the water heaters needed to be replaced, and our dishwasher broke and we ran through a series of broken microwaves… fortunately we’d had paychecks for a few months at that point.  But it did put off our ability to buy furniture.)

Maybe some posts on where you’d move in retirement. I guess if you earn a lot but don’t have a lot of house, a no state income tax place may be a good place to live. I think I generally prefer paying state income tax as there are limits to what low income folks are required to pay. Paying crazy property taxes with a fixed income in retirement is no fun.

We hope to maximize friends and fun things to do in retirement, so we’ll probably be moving to a high tax state!  Most people will retire in place or move closer to family.  But it is a good idea for some folks to think through the tax and cost of living implications of different geographical areas once they’re no longer tied to a job.