As I often do around this time of year, I recognize the year is ending, summer has gone and the cooler weather is finally here. We’ve got just a few more months left in this year and I’m starting to think about my progress this year and what else I need to do to feel good about 2023. As I’m reflecting I thought I’d share a few things that are on my mind and what I’m doing about them! 

More Life Insurance

As KiddosMoneyFinance get older and our expenses continue to grow, the topic of life insurance has crossed my mind. As I’ll get into for point #2, it’s important to stay organized and on top of financial things. One thing that’s on my mind is – do I have enough life insurance?

How much life insurance does one need can be a tough question to answer. A life insurance salesperson would is incentivized to tell you that you need a lot of it, but IRL I’m not sure if I need a lottery size payout for Mrs Money. Thoughts come to mind around enough to pay off the house, send kids to college, provide an income for your spouse. 

I added it up and I’ve got just under $1.2M in term life insurance. I suppose I listened to Dave Ramsey so much growing up that the phrase ‘whole life insurance’ makes me immediately run in the other directions. Whole life has been beaten into me that it’s a) too expensive b) not a good return and c) not the best use of my money. Perhaps one day I’ll peek into what it actually could do but then again maybe not. For now it’s all term life for me! Much cheaper for coverage. 

One area a life insurance salesperson would caution me to look at is the fact that around 60% of my life insurance comes through my employer. Many employers give you some level of coverage for free and then allow you at a fairly affordable price to get term life coverage. I do this and find it a great option; but the risk here is that I change jobs or lose my job and then that coverage would disappear. I’ve historically worked for larger companies with decent benefits and have always been able to have some coverage options, but I guess that could change. 

What I’m considering doing is adding on another maybe $250-$500K plan – maybe for 20 years. A few years ago I bought a 30 year policy so maybe now just a 20 year is enough to cover any gaps that might pop up if I passed. The idea is that your net worth grows to a point where you don’t really need life insurance, or at least that’s what I’ve been told. I suppose as I’m MiddleMoneyFinance now with kids now would not be a good time to die early and leave my family without my income…so it couldn’t hurt! 

Getting Organized

As things slow down and I have more downtime on my hands, I’m reminded the importance of staying organized. In the YMF household we’ve done some fall cleaning and have some boxes to take to Goodwill – tax write offs! I’m also reviewing our financial organization – both in the real world and digitally. One of my financial resolutions this year was to not open any new accounts – and so far I’m achieving my goal. I’m also reviewing the accounts we do have – savings, checking, credit cards and investment accounts to make sure we a) still need them and b) have them organized. So far so good in that front. 

I’m also physically thinking about being financially organized and that mainly entails going through my filing box and throwing away old documents. Although more and more in trying to go digital and get all documents / bills / notices electronically, I’m not 100% there and do have a bunch of old paperwork. I’ve been throwing a lot away – ie goodbye water bill from 2014 from 3 houses ago and also trying to make sure what I do think is important is readily available. Things like medical records, the KiddoMoneyFinance birth and other vital documents, and old tax forms are something I might need one day so making sure they’re findable. 

It’s amazing how much we can accumulate over the years and periodically I think it’s wise to do some cleanup! 

Gold

Ok so this is probably the dumbest thing I’ve been thinking about but gold is on my mind. I know, it’s silly. Perhaps some of the books I’ve been reading or movies involving gold but there’s just something magical about it and how for thousands of years it’s been something valuable across time and cultures. The last few years has been a lot with a pandemic, war, unrest, maybe a recession; and perhaps it’s the mini-prepper in me that has me thinking about it. I do have a small zombie kit in one of our cars (lol let’s hope we’re in that car when the zombie apocalypse hits) and have a few gallons of water in storage. 

Gold probably wouldn’t be helpful in the event of a zombie apocalypse – actually when I worked at an army navy store post college for a few months I was told that alcohol would be super valuable as people would likely trade for it. (Insert hands up shrugging emoji). But in the event of a big financial meltdown the thinking is that gold would hold its value to some extent. 

Gold is also like $1,800 / coin right now so lol it’s not like I would buy that many or even 1 for that matter. I feel like there are so many other things on my list of ‘things to buy / invest in if I have extra money’ and gold is not super high on that list. But it’s still fun for me to think about! 

Slow progress

I was meeting with my younger sister the other day talking about some personal finance basics as she starts her first job post college. I left her with the parting words of ‘it’ll never be easier than it is today to save and invest’ and those words have rung true for me! It feels like every year I’m fortunate enough to get a raise that the extra income quickly goes to household expenses. I’m grateful to have the money to do so but it feels harder and harder to keep saving more and more. Thankfully our saving/investing rate has held steady so we ARE saving a lot – it’s just feeing like we’re at the max we could be saving! 

I do a monthly net worth check to keep an eye on our accounts and it’s encouraging to see our slow and steady progress. The progress has felt a bit slower and steadier as of late but it’s still progress. I have to remind myself that progress is still progress! 

Thankful for buffers 

Mrs Money and I have historically been quite financially conservative and we have had huge jumps in our income like some peers who have taken more financial risks. We’ve always tried to keep buffers wherever we could. We save and invest each month so if we needed to one month we could back off. We have our emergency fund. Mrs Money was able to go half time in her job to try to start a new business. That new business didn’t take off and she’s back to full time and I’m grateful we had a buffer during her half time. 

As I posted in my recent article on one year as a landlord – we had a tenant turnover recently and our rental house sat vacant for 2.5 months. We also had to lower our rent to get it rented. Neither was ideal but we had built up a cash savings account with proceeds from the rental in year 1 which helped us pay the mortgage when it wasn’t rented and we also put a fair amount down initially so our monthly payment could be lower so we could lower rent and still be ok. 

Buffers can feel like a waste in the good times; like ‘do I really need this large of an emergency fund’ but in the bad times we’re thankful for them! 

Progress on resolutions 

Finally, I am thinking about my financial goals that I set at the beginning of the year. I’ll definitely do a wrap up post later in the year but I am also thinking about what progress I’ve made so far and what, if anything I can do more of. A couple of priorities have changed for the year – i.e. we decided to hit pause on building a tiny house and Mrs. Money found that her business wasn’t able to get off the ground and is back to working again more full time. Our net worth as of right now (knock on wood) has grown more than the goal I set of 5% and I’ve also done an ok job of saving for winter in the fall. The winter always proves a very expensive time of the year and I have been trying to get better at saving for it earlier in the year.

I think over the next few months I’ll focus on continuing to save for the winter (although winter is just about here(!) and also contributing to a post-tax 401k through work. This is an exciting option that my employer offers to allow employees to contribute above the $22,500 limit set by the IRS (all legal of course).

What about you?

How if your year going? Have you been able to meet some financial goals that you have set for yourself? We’ve got just over 2 months left so go ahead and start doing what you need to do now!