Money money money

I haven't done a money post in a long while.  A couple of weeks ago I updated our net worth statement, and I've been stewing on it since then.  Just thinking about it and the direction that makes the most sense (well, UP of course, duh!).

As I think I've said before, our current house (bought in Dec '09) was toward the tippy top of my housing budget comfort level already.  Once we moved in, we realized how much work we'd need to put in.  The most realistic scenario is that we'll have to ultimately put in $100k of work to bring the house to where we want to be.  We had initially thought that we'd need to put in approximately $30k or so with several things being long-term projects.  So essentially the house will be costing us $70k more than we thought.  We mortgaged more than I'd predicted since we held some of the proceeds back from our old house to put toward the remodel. 

For a little over the past year, I've been kind of bitter about it all.  Bitter about feeling pressured to buy this house (I can only blame myself), bitter about being back in debt after being utterly debt free, bitter about the whole frustrating remodeling process, bitter that every time we talked to our parents they asked what we're doing to the house.  For a while there (after last summer), we were done working on the house emotionally, physically, and financially for the time being.  I was tired of having contractors around. We had spent our remodel budget for 2010. I felt like all the work we had done hadn't been acknowledged.  Done done done.

Then the itch started to come back in 2011.  It was precipitated by cost investigation for a new roof.  Then our furnace sorta kinda went out (it's 17 years old).  I did the contractor interview thing for both the roof (3 bids) and the furnace (4 bids).  This week both the new furnace and roof are being installed.  Just as I've felt with last year's remodel and epic painting experience, I love tossing out Hwangified crap and getting new replacements that we picked out.  It's cathartic, and slowly but surely I'm starting to like this house and feeling less bitter toward it and myself.

We have been saving for the new roof/furnace for a year now, and we finally finished saving for them (along with the money we kept from the other house).  So the vast majority of the money for the remodeling we haven't done yet is already in the bank.  That's a breath of fresh air.  Of course, something wacky could always happen.  Crossing our fingers, we shouldn't have to save for any of the big upcoming projects separately. 

Retirement is on track - or as much as it can be (contribute as much as we can and try to pick good investment options, that's about all you can do).

We have a good sum in Julia's 529 plan.  We probably should do more, but I want to hold off to ensure she's college bound, and I'm not quite clear on any possible help with college from my mom and stepdad. 

We have never completed our wills.  If I felt uberconfident in our Julia guardian decisions, I think that would be one thing.  But since I'm not completely confident, I am okay with hemming and hawing.  I shouldn't because if we both die, it could get miserable for Julia.

I do want to consolidate all of our insurance at USAA and get umbrella coverage.  For some strange reason, home insurance through USAA is more expensive than we currently pay, and car insurance is really affordable.  So we've been going through another company for home insurance.  I find umbrella insurance very appealing and worthwhile, and you have to have both car and home insurance with the same company to get umbrella coverage.

Budgeting, as far as monthly cash flow, has been okay.  For about a year, we have been saving for the additional house projects.  Now that we're there, our budget will be a tad more flexible.  If we have extra money, I think diverting 1/2 to paying off the house and 1/2 to other savings priorities (taxable investing, vacations, even additional home projects) is appropriate. 

The one caveat is that my husband's job doesn't look that stable in the coming year.  The extra breathing room in our budget may be slashed if he becomes unemployed.  Ah well, we'll worry about it as it gets closer.  Despite feeling that we've bit off more mortgage than I feel comfortable chewing, I can pay the mortgage on my salary and pay our basic expenses (though I'd have to cut back my retirement savings).  We're not in a position that we NEED two incomes, which is nice.  My personal comfort level, though, has been a bit overextended.  My comfort level is about 3x more stringent than a bank's lending comfort level.  If you divide the maximum the bank is willing to loan us by 3, that's how much I feel comfortable with owing.  Any more than that and I get nervous.

Speaking of lending, I did check out that personal loan website where you can lend money to individuals.  After I read a few people looking for money, I realized that I'm extremely critical of other people's borrowing habits, and peer-to-peer lending as a lender would give me even more anxiety than I already have.  I'll take the stock market instead, thank you very much.