by Ashley
This year hubs and I vowed as one of our New Year’s Resolutions to do a lot of things that would move us closer (in our own minds) to becoming full-fledged “adults” (said in quotations since we’re 31 and 32, respectively, so obviously already legally adults for a long time now).
If you need a refresher, I talked about our 2015 resolutions/goals here, and I gave an update on how we did in the month of January here.
You may be wondering why there’s no February update?
Heh. No progress to report.
Yeah.
But I’m here today because I DO have some progress to report for this month. Wahoo!
Remember that in January I added hubs to my accounts, but I still hadn’t yet been added to his accounts (due to time constraints). We got our power of attorney forms notarized, but not our wills.
Well, here’s our March update:
- I’ve now officially been added to hubs’ accounts. He’s on mine; I’m on his. Done.
- We still do not have our wills notarized. We’re planning to do it this month, but its proven incredibly challenging (we need two witnesses, so we’ve had a tough time with trying to find a time that works for multiple people to come with us to the notary).
- And my personal favorite update for the month: We finally have a Roth IRA!!!
This has been a big deal to me because I’ve really wanted to start a retirement account. We’ve only been saving $100/month and finally opened a Vanguard account (which has a $1,000 minimum) with a whopping $1,050. I wish it were more (and I’d originally hoped to be able to throw more money toward it this month), but it is what it is. Given our immense debt, this is probably for the best.
One thing that’s kind of a bummer – we didn’t have enough money to open an account for each of us (hubs and I), so we only opened a single account in my name. Hubs is listed as beneficiary if I die (with our kids as the secondary beneficiaries if we both died), but I would have liked if we’d each had our own account. Aside from the obvious (divorce), is there any real reason for or against opening one versus multiple accounts? Just curious, as I’m totally inexperienced in the retirement savings arena.
Other fun “year of becoming an adult” things coming up on our agenda include:
- Getting wills notarized! This is first and foremost, at the top of our To Do list!
- Filing taxes in April (boo! hiss!). We do not have a return (in fact, I’m fearful we’ll owe a bit), so this is NOT a fun thing for us.
- Re-start the process of trying to get hubs health insurance (last time we tried didn’t work out because it was too soon after hubs experienced a medical mystery illness….the same illness that set us back $9,000). We’re hoping that since it’s been a full year now since his mystery illness that he’ll be able to score some life insurance. Planning to start this process in May.
- Open 529s for our toddlers, probably in June. Their birthday is in June and I was thinking that instead of spending money on presents and a party that it’d be nice to set some money aside for their future college educations. However, this is still a bit of a pipe dream, as I haven’t researched it yet so I have no details at this time (e.g., is there a minimum to open a 529? what are the rules/regulations/policies/whatever?) So we’ll see.
I think those are the really big things, but if there’s anything that jumps out to you as something a “real adult” should really be doing, then let me know! I’m happy to add things to our list! : )
