Nearly 35
I'm about a week from turning 35.
By the time this post comes up, I should have returned from the yearly vacation. The experience this year has been interesting, as it has been very much three different vacations between the five of us. And that's all fine. Expected, almost, considering the age differences. At the same time, things have been almost disjointed enough that I feel like, well, this should have been separate vacations. I certainly have been counting down the hours until we returned.
Otherwise, things have been going well. We just got a new porch built via family connections. It was frustrating because I actually was more inclined to use regular contractors than family, but of the three that I contacted, only one actually gave me a quote: $3700, and that was without replacing the metal roof. All told, I spent $3150 with family and got something that looks really nice. More important than looks though, is that it is secure and safe.
Unfortunately, during the project, we noticed that I have a dip in a section of my roof. After crawling up in the attic a few days ago, I could confirm that there is some discoloration of the plywood in that area, e.g. wood rot. I called my insurance and spoke with them a while. After the adjuster came out, we figured out that we will be receiving some insurance money to repair the damage. Not enough to replace the whole roof, despite that being the real solution here, but enough to offset some of the costs. It will still probably cost around $2000-$3000 more to replace the whole thing.
As you may notice, this is a lot of money to be throwing around sequentially. And it absolutely is. But... we seem to be able to keep up. Not by virtue of some large bequeathment, but the much more mundane force of being easy to please. We don't go out to bars, and we hardly ever eat out. Our honeymoon was essentially a staycation, and we loved every minute of it.
To be clear, we do do some things on occasion. A couple of weeks ago, we went canoeing, for example. We just got back from the beach. We will undoubtedly be going to Ren-Faire again this year too. But otherwise? Our entertainment is Netflix and videogames, which can be extremely cheap.
A lot of this makes me think about the future though. I will be turning 35, as I stated before. Theoretically, I can retire with a pension starting as soon as I turn 59.5 years old. That is, of course, another 24 years from now. Will I still be working at The Job for another quarter-century? Given my present position, I'm not even sure how that would be possible. I can get some certifications in a year and a half, and that will certainly open some more doors for me on the outside. Working on the outside means the pension kinda sorta goes away though - I could probably transfer X amount to a 401k or whatever - and I may be back to square one. Well, presumably working elsewhere would result in even more money, which I would need to sock away, and so on.
I guess at the end of things, I need to decide what I'm doing here. Which would, ideally, mean retiring as early as possible.
Hmm. I should probably start trying to map all this out. I'm good at building nest eggs and such, but I'm less good about leveraging them into something more than the immediate needs of paying off X loan or doing Y house repair.
By the time this post comes up, I should have returned from the yearly vacation. The experience this year has been interesting, as it has been very much three different vacations between the five of us. And that's all fine. Expected, almost, considering the age differences. At the same time, things have been almost disjointed enough that I feel like, well, this should have been separate vacations. I certainly have been counting down the hours until we returned.
Otherwise, things have been going well. We just got a new porch built via family connections. It was frustrating because I actually was more inclined to use regular contractors than family, but of the three that I contacted, only one actually gave me a quote: $3700, and that was without replacing the metal roof. All told, I spent $3150 with family and got something that looks really nice. More important than looks though, is that it is secure and safe.
Unfortunately, during the project, we noticed that I have a dip in a section of my roof. After crawling up in the attic a few days ago, I could confirm that there is some discoloration of the plywood in that area, e.g. wood rot. I called my insurance and spoke with them a while. After the adjuster came out, we figured out that we will be receiving some insurance money to repair the damage. Not enough to replace the whole roof, despite that being the real solution here, but enough to offset some of the costs. It will still probably cost around $2000-$3000 more to replace the whole thing.
As you may notice, this is a lot of money to be throwing around sequentially. And it absolutely is. But... we seem to be able to keep up. Not by virtue of some large bequeathment, but the much more mundane force of being easy to please. We don't go out to bars, and we hardly ever eat out. Our honeymoon was essentially a staycation, and we loved every minute of it.
To be clear, we do do some things on occasion. A couple of weeks ago, we went canoeing, for example. We just got back from the beach. We will undoubtedly be going to Ren-Faire again this year too. But otherwise? Our entertainment is Netflix and videogames, which can be extremely cheap.
A lot of this makes me think about the future though. I will be turning 35, as I stated before. Theoretically, I can retire with a pension starting as soon as I turn 59.5 years old. That is, of course, another 24 years from now. Will I still be working at The Job for another quarter-century? Given my present position, I'm not even sure how that would be possible. I can get some certifications in a year and a half, and that will certainly open some more doors for me on the outside. Working on the outside means the pension kinda sorta goes away though - I could probably transfer X amount to a 401k or whatever - and I may be back to square one. Well, presumably working elsewhere would result in even more money, which I would need to sock away, and so on.
I guess at the end of things, I need to decide what I'm doing here. Which would, ideally, mean retiring as early as possible.
Hmm. I should probably start trying to map all this out. I'm good at building nest eggs and such, but I'm less good about leveraging them into something more than the immediate needs of paying off X loan or doing Y house repair.