My Money Moves

A leopard linen midi dress from Zimmermann, now 60% off, a pretty silk DVF dress, now $350, a draped navy trench from Vince, now 50% off, a great turtleneck sweater from Veronica Beard, now 50% off, and a pretty Altuzarra dress, now 70% off,

A few weeks ago, I mentioned I was putting together a money post. I’m nervous writing about finance – I always wonder if I should put one of those disclaimers at the end that I am not a professional and I don’t know anything, etc! As I mentioned earlier, while I manage our household finances, in the past few years, in that two under two kids period, I’ve been pretty remiss in checking on the state of the union as it were, making sure our finances are clean and efficient. I recently started to get a handle on everything and I thought I’d share some of the “money moves” (yes what a cheesy title) that I do to try and be responsible…again, this is just my own experience. And I’d love to hear your money moves too!

All right, so let’s go! I…

…pay an extra mortgage payment a year. To be honest I’m unclear as to the financial benefits of owning versus renting and putting the down payment in an S&P index and all that kind of stuff – I think you can easily rathole based on what assumptions you are using for return, how to value utility for ownership versus renting, etc. Also I know that an extra mortgage payment could be invested in the S&P blah blah versus being used to pay down a mortgage. But for me, there’s a certain security in working to pay down your mortgage…I don’t go at it aggressively but an extra payment a year makes me feel good.

…use a 529 plan. Well plans, one for each of my kids. I was really lazy about this and didn’t do it until my son turned two. That’s two years of missed tax savings! Of course there are advantages and disadvantages and the money is less flexible stuck in the account – but something to think about, if you have kids and think you might want to help them pay for college. They’re more flexible than you think and if you have no state tax advantages (my situation in California) you can use any state’s. And after opening them, and making contributions, I’m less stressed about how to manage college costs down the line (which are crazy??). I meet a lot of people who have 401ks but no 529s, simply because you have to open the 529 yourself. If you’ve been thinking of it, do it! Or at least research, it’s easier than you think.

…consolidated my savings accounts. For a long time I had a lot of various savings accounts. I had them with Capital One, which makes it super easy to open them, and so I had one for travel, emergency, taxes, preschool, all kinds of stuff! It’s a funny system I started in college and kind just kept rolling with. But honestly it was getting so unwieldy and I realized that with all these small account balances, I wasn’t getting higher interest rates. Which didn’t matter earlier, when rates were so low, but now they’re actually higher. So I consolidated a bunch of my accounts, now have a higher interest rate (seriously, if you haven’t checked in the last few years, they’re decent now!) and now it is also easier to keep track of our accounts. As a side note, I’ve actually begun to park some cash in T-Bills as well, because the return is decent.

…invest! I do invest. I actually love it. I have made some mistakes and learned a LOT but it’s the sort of education I don’t think you can get, unless you actually invest yourself. I encourage you to try if you haven’t already, just a little bit (I know the markets are choppy). Maybe start with an index fund? Only if you can risk some of the cash, of course. Honestly, some of the benefit for me has just been in curtailing my shopping – like, if the market is down, I always ask myself: am I going to still want this X,Y,Z in a year and not wish I had just bought some stock? Which if I’m lucky, will have increased in value, and which I won’t take a ~75% hit on when I sell it on The Real Real?

And finally…

…I go easy on myself. Everyone makes mistakes. Including with money. Believe me, I’ve had some major misses. For some reason it’s really easy to go hard on yourself with financial mistakes – I think maybe because the repercussions are so easy to understand and quantify. I used to be really hard on myself – when I didn’t get the promotion, the job, made a bad investment. Over time, I’ve learned that mistakes are unavoidable and to try and take everything as a learning experience and move on. After all – we want to build financial security so that we can be happy right? And carefree…so there’s nothing productive in beating yourself up for past mistakes. Everyone makes them! So let’s all be kind to ourselves.

Also, I just have to note that I know that I am privileged – I received an early financial education, I’ve had a lot of advantages. I want to state that, because a lot of what I list above may not be immediately feasible, for reasons outside of someone’s control. But I still wanted to be transparent, about some of the financial related steps that I take, in case that is helpful for any of you. I think women should talk more about money. Again I am in no way a professional, these are just some things that have worked for me, that I’m actively doing, to try and have a responsible future.

All right…now enough on me, what are some financial moves you make?