This is my tentative budget for after the house sells.
The items on the left hand column are “required”, the ones on the right are “goals”. The total needed to live comfortably $3,807. Getting rid of my credit card debt and housing costs will be a huge weight off my shoulders. What am I missing or forgetting in this budget?
One thing to note, is this budget was created with the idea of traveling and car camping in mind (see all the gas,) but for the bulk of the summer, I will be stationary. The plan during the months I’m with my parents will be to put all monies not spent into savings.
Again, the two year goal is to save enough to be able to buy land for a tiny house. Thus, the $1,500 per month for Move. After 2 years, that will be $36,000.
I will be posting my “what will I do with the house money plan” in the next few days. It’s a really soft plan as I’m not sure how much money I will walk with. The current guesstimate is around $50K, but again, that’s a really loose estimate.
House Update
The house is currently under contract…again. Since this is the 3rd time, I’ve learned not to count my chickens before they hatch. So we wait…
It did go under contract to one of my “exclusions” with the realtor. A family who had seen the house a couple of times before I signed the contract with him. In fact, they didn’t make an offer until the day the professional pictures came back and it was going to be listed on MLS. So I am saving 3.5% in realtor fees if this one closes. I am paying the buyers’ agent 2.5%.
They had 3 contingency periods, the first has expired. They’ve put down $1,000 in earnest money. And the inspection happened this week. The second contingency period ends Sunday. If we get through that, I feel like it will most likely close.
I’ve been avoiding logging into my investment accounts lately. Not because I’ve been too busy – but because I knew what I’d see and I wasn’t ready for the gut punch.
It’s been a strange season of life. I’m still grieving the loss of my father (oh yeah – and my husband’s 94 year old grandfather just passed, as well). We’ve had several (5, to be exact) meetings with financial advisors. We’re trying to navigate the legal and financial complexities that come with an inheritance and trying to make smart, responsible choices with the money my Dad left behind.
But it’s hard to make confident decisions with the market in such a “state of flux” (to put it mildly).
I think it’s tough for any/all of us with money invested right now to watch our investments being devalued. But there’s something different about just *barely* inheriting a pretty decent sum of money, only to watch it lose value right before my eyes. It’s been heart-breaking.
I saw a funny (the “ouch! that stings” type of funny) meme that said: “Millennials hearing they are about to live through their 4th “once in a lifetime” recession, with a picture of Amy Poehler throwing up peace signs. Hard not to laugh. And then groan.
Market Volatility Reflections
So I’ve been doing what I do best: reflecting, planning, and trying to learn something from the mess (good thing 2025 is my year of “peace, planning, and purpose”). Here are a few lessons I’m taking away from this market downturn – not just about finances, but about mindset, patience, and the value of thoughtful decision making.
Emergency Funds are worth their weight in gold.
As I’ve been considering where to invest money, I’m glad I have maintained a pretty healthy savings account (I just blogged about my high yield accounts with e-trade and CapitalOne360), in addition to some CDs and general savings accounts. These are the only accounts that haven’t been negatively impacted by the market since they aren’t tied to stocks and bonds. And I’m glad we’ve got it in case its needed.
Diversification is not optional.
All of our investments are diversified, but I wish we had done even more to diversify our portfolio. We have much of our money in target date mutual funds based on retirement dates. While these funds are nice to automatically balance and re-balance our portfolio across time, right now they are “highly aggressive”….which means high loss during times of market downturn. It’s been painful to see.
Debt-free is the way to be!
I’m grateful that our debt is minimal. We only have our mortgage and the last remaining bit of my student loans. I’m on the public service loan forgiveness program (PSLF), but who knows if that program will still be a thing next year when my time for forgiveness arrives (I am crossing my fingers and toes it still will be!). Either way, I’m so glad we don’t have a bunch of extra debt saddling us. We’ve talked about investing in real estate. But is that the next thing to slip? If we’d bought an investment property with debt, just to have the market bubble pop, that would be a whole other layer of stress and anxiety. I’m glad we’ve been relatively conservative with our debt and investment strategy.
Discipline matters.
To be honest, I’m still really working through this in my mind. In conversations with my husband, he explains it this way: “If you have 10 shares of Z stock at $5/share, you have 10 shares. If Z stock drops to $3/share, you still have 10 shares. You only lose money if you sell while it’s low. Otherwise, wait it out (or better yet – continue investing!) and you’ll still have 10 shares when the price of Z stock goes back to $5/share.”
My main problem with this one is that one of my inheritances was an inherited IRA, which requires me to pull all the funds within 10 years. In my meetings with financial advisors, I had planned to pull an equal amount each month for the 10 years, until the funds are depleted. I was choosing this strategy so that the tax obligation would be spread out over the 10 years instead of hitting hard in Year 10 (or whatever year I pull it all). BUT with the markets being down, I’m now considering altering course. Instead of starting a monthly distribution now, I’m thinking I’ll put it off until things have course-corrected a bit. This is troubling since I don’t know when that will be and I don’t want to screw myself by ending up with a huge tax bill down the road (I’d rather have it all spread out equally). But I would also rather NOT be taking distributions when things are low. Thoughts or advice on this one?
You can’t predict the market, but you can control your budget.
This is probably my biggest take-away. So much is outside our control. When markets are volatile and so much feels unpredictable (tariffs, grocery prices, interest rates, etc.), the one thing we CAN control is our budget. It might be time to reduce spending and focus on saving. At least for me, I get stressed out about things I can’t control. Having control over simple things really helps ease the strain. Focusing on the basics: meal planning around ingredients I already have on hand, shopping based on sales, and finding ways to cut back or tighten the budget belt to keep things in check helps me psychologically.
The market will rise and fall – that’s just what it does. But what we learn in the downturns can make us sharper, stronger, and more strategic moving forward. This recent dip has reminded me that while I can’t control the stock market, interest rates, tariffs, global events, etc., I can control how I respond.
I can keep my emergency fund funded. I can not take on new debt. I can revisit my investment strategy with a more critical eye. I can budget with intention to protect my peace.
I’ve been working on “the power of the pause” in general. In this situation, I feel like there’s power in pausing, reassessing, and adjusting as needed. We may be in the thick of the storm right now, but we’ve been through worse. Might as well learn some lessons along the way.
