Oh my goodness, it’s December. We’re past Thanksgiving and BAM! it’s now the holiday season.

I certainly don't have many opportunities to use the term segue. What a fun word though!

Maybe you’d like to catch up with all my going ons by taking a look at last month’s progress report?

 

All good? Ok, here we go!

Let’s take a look at my debt:

Mortgage: $145,000

Car Loan: $4,100

Student Loans: $9,200

Credit Cards: $2,700

Grand Total of Debt: $161,000

My student loan balances

 

Including my renovation fund:

Renovation fund requirement: $8,300

New Grand Total of Debt: $169,300

That’s a $550 reduction from last month. Meh. Not great.

As you see my renovation fund has remained unchanged. Work has continued and so have cost overruns. But man does everything look so dang amazing. I can’t even be too mad because ultimately the overruns have resulted in amazing results. 

And as I told you last month, I’m planning on refinancing to get a lower interest rate so we’ll see how things play out with that.

So for now I’ll keep the renovation fund unchanged.

Moving on to savings:

Savings account: $2,500

P2P Lending account: $150

Investment account: $750

Grand Total of Savings: $3,400

My investment account increased $100 due to market fluctuations.

I’m really looking forward to a time where I’m done with renovations and all the stress that comes along with them and I can add more to my savings.

One day. 

 

Hopefully sooner rather than later.

How’s everyone else making out with their holiday shopping? Anyone already done and wrapped? Those are the folks I’m always a bit envious of. I mean, who has it all that together?! I’ll be wrapping presents until at least the week of!

I hope everyone has a safe and healthy holiday season. 

As always -

Remember, we will get through this ❤️

Maybe one day I’ll get my act together.

Probably not. But maybe.

October has honestly been a pretty rough month and I’m glad it’s over. 

We had to put one of our beloved dogs to sleep. She was 14 and a half and unfortunately it was becoming more and more obvious her time was coming - she was completely deaf, her hips were going, her joints ached, accidents were becoming more frequent. But all of that comes with the territory. 

Then all of a sudden we woke up in the middle of the night and she was gasping for air. She was a fighter until the end.

This is the dog I’ve had my entire adult life - she’s been with me through everything. The big birthdays, promotions, the death of loved ones, buying a house, a marriage, a divorce. Everything. 

I’m going to miss her like crazy.

The worse thing about having a dog is having to make that choice. I thought I’ve been prepared for a while now that it was coming but there’s really no preparing.

Ok enough sad news. 

If you’d like maybe you want to check out last month’s progress report.

 

Now let’s get into the nitty gritty. 

Let’s take a look at my debt:

Mortgage: $145,200

Car Loan: $4,300

Student Loans: $9,250

Credit Cards: $2,800

Grand Total of Debt: $161,550

My student loan balances

Including my renovation fund:

Renovation fund requirement: $8,300

New Grand Total of Debt: $169,850

Overall, I increased my debt by $2,500.

So you might have noticed two things. 1) I added another student loan and 2) My renovation fund is unchanged

I told you last month I was thinking about taking out another student loan. I ultimately decided to do so because this has been a crazy year and if year end bonuses don’t happen I didn’t want to dig myself a hole.

As for the renovation fund, cost overruns have happened and that number is probably a bit higher than that. But since I’m looking into refinancing with the crazy low interest rate environment we’re in, for now I just decided to leave it as unchanged. 

But since I’ve been talking about it forever and haven’t so much as offered any details. How about I give you a sneak peek of a little project that’s been done?

That’s our old front walk on the left versus the new front walk on the right. The disintegrating, weedy mess of bricks I called a walkway for many years was replaced with beautiful bluestone. 

Shout out to my dad for going through the bluestone piles to find the ones with the most character for me. He didn’t get why I cared about character but he killed it.

Now, let's take a look at my savings:

Savings account: $2,500

P2P Lending account: $150

Investment account: $650

Grand Total of Savings: $3,300

I gained $50 over the month after having to shift some money from my P2P lending account to the stock market. Unfortunately, Lending Club is retiring their notes platform as of December 31, 2020.

I’ll be sad to see them go. I never put much money into my Lending Club account but I always reinvested my principal and interest and enjoyed picking out new loans to invest in over the years.

If you’d like to reminisce, one of my first posts was about making money using Lending Club.

How was everyone’s Halloween? Unfortunately I didn’t have any trick or treaters but one of the neighbors set up a haunted house for the kids and did a surprisingly good job encouraging social distancing and pandemic safe fun. It was truly great to see.

And I got to see all my friends cuties dressed up on Facebook. Hopefully next year I’ll be able to see them in person!

And one more thing - vote, vote, VOTE on November 3rd.

As always -

Remember, we will get through this ❤️