Two Years of Blogging

I’m terrible with milestones, at least ones pertaining to this blog. The two-year anniversary of this site came and went earlier this month with nary a mention from me. As mentioned in last previous post, published months ago (!), this site is going through a bit of a transition. Part of that transition involved taking a break from blogging.

Along with the writing break, my social media use (primarily Twitter) took a big break as well in late winter. The blogging break is not officially over (but if you’re reading this that means I wrote something), but it may be nearing an end.

I miss writing as a creative outlet and the engagement that comes with others because of it. I continue to think of new topics to explore — I still have a list of about 50 blog post ideas on draft form, and many more that could come after those.

I have yet to seriously explore the new directions for the site, but those ideas are percolating, and hopefully will come to fruition as I am able to make more. If I am going to continue writing, then I want readership — I enjoy the creation, but I’ve also realized that apparently I want my ego stroked a little as well by knowing people actually enjoy the content.

So while my output may have declined, I have no plans to shut this site down anytime soon. I am in fact looking for more ways to market the blog, and welcome any potential advertising or speaking partnerships if others are interested.

One Year of Accidental Saving

Just over a year ago I wrote accidentally saving — I set my wife’s paycheck to deduct 75% for her 401k, but had forgotten about it, leading to very low paycheck deposits for her early in 2018 — I called it the Accidental One Income Challenge. Rather than reduce the % and spread out the deposits, I left it as a challenge to see how we did with her income significantly reduced early in the year.

I later posted a six-month follow-up, with a goal of repeating the exercise in 2019 to see if we could improve.

Income

My wife went part-time in 2017 — that was the unintentional impetus for the 2018 challenge. When she want part-time in 2017 I increased the 401k paycheck contribution significantly, as it had been set to divide evenly throughout the year. With a lower income, she would not have maximized the 401k in 2017 without this increase. It was the carryover of that deduction that started the one-income challenge in 2018, as her paychecks in early 2018 were quite small until her contributions finished.

She is still part-time; I decided to leave the high 401k deduction in 2019. I received a quite welcome salary bump near the end of 2018 — it didn’t make up for her decreased income from 2017, but it certainly helped and allowed us to save extra at the end of 2018.

I also made extra $ in 2018 via work doing extra tasks related to implementing our new electronic health record and a little bit of $ from this blog. The “extra” paid work from my employer isn’t repeating this year (thankfully), and at the moment I expect my blog income to be lower this year than last.

Overall our income in 2019 should be higher than in 2018, largely due to having a full year of my increased salary. Additionally, I hopefully will receive a promotion to Associate Professor at my university in 4-6 months (if everything passes muster) — if it does, that will come with a pay increase as well.

Barring my wife going back to full-time employment or me finally figuring out how to monetize this blog successfully, after my potential salary bump later this year, there will not be any major increases anytime soon. We’re still in a good position — it’s not a complaint, just the state of where things stand.

Expenses

We don’t follow a budget — in a future post perhaps I’ll discuss our general approach. Despite my wife’s claims that I am a cheapskate, as a family we’re not low spenders. Sometimes I go cheap, but mostly I just don’t like buying objects, and I try to be frugal when making big decisions. And maybe sometimes I’m just cheap, but in reality, as our overall income and family size has grown over the years, so has our spending. We are cost-conscious and try to make any extravagant spending a true splurge, not a regular occurrence.

The only major change in our “regular” spending thus far this year is due to my wife becoming a Trader Joe’s fanatic. TJ’s is the closest grocery store to our home (moved in 2016), but until now neither of us had routinely gone there. My wife discovered a Facebook page with people sharing tons of recipes and products to check out, and that’s inspired her to go there regularly.

Prior to that she did most of the family grocery shopping at two larger, traditional grocers (also nearby). Those places are fancier with higher prices — one of them has a giant walk in wine cooler and its own Starbucks inside.

I’ve only briefly looked at the numbers, but interestingly our grocery bill appears to have gone up. This may be because my wife is doing far more meal planning, and also buying more food in general for us to store for later use. This has definitely led fewer instances of the dates I am in charge of dinner just buying us some random fast-food/low-quality item on the way home. Tracking expenses for family meals out is difficult if not done in real-time, but my gestalt is despite a higher grocery bill, the end result is more food at home and lower overall food costs.

The fewer trips out to eat is important for another reason, as we have 3 boys, the youngest of which is in full toddler mode. Given how hard it is to corral the three of them in public, let alone getting them all to eat, it’s far less stressful to eat at home than to take them somewhere.

Expensive Expenses

When I received the pay increase, I decided to surprise my wife with a stay at a fancy hotel while the kids spend the weekend with grandparents. That type of splurge is uncommon but I felt it was well deserved.

We let our oldest invite a few friends to a 10th birthday party at Top Golf. We took our older two boys to a steakhouse that makes big flames:

Happiest Place on Earth

We also finally completed a long-planned trip to Disney World. While I’ll detail our planning (i.e. my wife’s planning) and financial decisions in a future post, sufficed to say it isn’t cheap even when you try to be frugal. We did make relatively cost conscious decisions with selective spending, but Disney doesn’t do cheap.

Also, I did this:

What does Rogue Dad do on Saturday night? He throws axes. You’re goddamn right he does. pic.twitter.com/osMcJfFvb2

— Rogue Dad, M.D. (@RogueDadMD) February 3, 2019

Just focus on the axe on the right.

The common denominator is spending on experiences, not stuff. Also to be detailed in a later post — we gave away a lot of clothing at the end of 2018, and I’ve not bought myself any new clothes since then. My wife has purchased more clothing, but is taking inspiration from an Amazon FB group providing ideas on nice clothes that don’t cost a fortune. Also she’s better looking than me and has always dressed nicer than me — walking into the kids school/daycare in torn up jeans as I sometimes do isn’t acceptable to most parents.

The Bottom Line

Overall despite having some fancier spending, we’re doing a good job saving. Unlike last year, when I dipped into our “emergency” funds at one point to pay off some large bills (partially because I was trying to avoid using HSA funds for medical bills), this year that has not been required.

We’ve avoided raiding the HSA for medical expenses (we’re still on a high deductible plan). If all continues to go well we’ll have our work and personal retirement accounts funded before summer is over. Later this year Rogue Two, age 5, will start kindergarten, decreasing our daycare bill by a whopping $1000/month. That’s equivalent to increasing our pre-tax income by $18,000!

We are still saving at least 20% of our income to retirement/savings, with additional $ going towards kids 529 accounts and principal payments on our house. The savings amount is pre-set via deductions/contributions, so that helps maintain balance. As income rises and some big expenses, such as daycare fall, I do want to see that percent savings climb.

While I won’t be retiring in my 40’s (40th bday coming up in 2020) like Physician On Fire, work will hopefully become optional at some point around the time my youngest goes to college. At which point I will almost certainly still work, but options increase.

A bit over one year in we are doing pretty well on the one-income challenge. While we have room to increase our income, optimize our spending, and set more concrete financial goals, we’re in a fortunate position and it’s hard to complain too much.