End of January

I started using Tiller, a company that uses Google spreadsheets to manage personal finance, in December to get a bit acclimated and then started over on 1 Jan for real.  Now I've got my first month's data and it is starting to be very useful.  The $4k car investment is not amortized so the numbers are pretty skewed there but looking at the rest of our income/expense picture things are on the OK side.  I'll know more in a couple of months but splitting out discretionary spending was enlightening and will really help me track what we do have the ability to control better.  Being able to easily tighten the focus on increasingly smaller expenditures over time will make a huge difference.  My other half does not do spreadsheets but I can now create pretty easy to follow reports slicing the data any way I want to and make it a conscious decision to do things rather than 'why don't we have enough money to do.....'.   

And I love geeking out on spreadsheets.


Our across the street neighbor had, apparently, been renting her house.  It is now listed for sale after having had its previous listing removed in 2020.  That listing was for $269,000.  The listing price now is $349,500 and is listed as 'active, under contract' on Zillow.  This area is just growing so fast that I assumed it would sell quickly and it looks like it may have.  It was listed on 1/11.  Of course I hate that the area is getting so congested but our house is such a great investment now.  Were something to happen to either of us we would have a decent hunk of change were we to sell.  I track that on a monthly basis too.  The fun thing about being old is they keep being nice to us about property taxes.  Ours went down last year.  Weird state.

Of course I'll have to sell and move to keep my social security and pension coming in once the state decides to secede.