Rebooting Life, pt 1 - Finances

I'm 46 now. It sometimes helps to remind myself of this. I don't necessarily feel 46. I still feel, I don't know, 32? The signs of being 46 are certainly there. I'm in more pain now than I was then (unbelievable to me honestly), I have heartburn when I sleep if I eat too late at night, I complain about those darn kids, I prefer old music and games over a lot of the newer stuff that's coming out. I'm turning out to be a fine ole crankity man just like I had hoped.

But over the weekend, I started contemplating of a complete reboot of my life. I don't particularly like my life. I'm alone, I have few, if any friends, I don't really connect with my family, I'm in pain all the time, my house is consistently a mess, most of my furniture I would throw away in a heartbeat if I had a decent alternative, my bed is so bad that it causes me pain to sleep in, and so on and so on. Hell, I have this large collection of video games that I don't play largely because my furniture is so bad that I don't like playing them in my house. IT's just not a great situation to be in, it's no wonder that I am consistently depressed.

I don't foresee myself ever having a ton of friends, if any. And I don't foresee myself ever being out of pain, it's going to get worse. And I'm not probably going to become closer wtih my family either. But I want to set myself up for the next 10 or 20 years to be happier with where I am in life. I feel like the job that I have currently, affords me that to a degree.

I did have a plan pre-COVID that I think I sort of just forgot about between COVID and the eBay store that I just need to get back onto with some new additions.

The Prius I purchased earlier this year was actually part of this longer term strategy of mine. I was in need of a new car for a very long time, and had been saving a small amount every paycheck so that I would have a decent down payment. My original concept was going to be that I was going to aim for a used hybrid of some sort. I traditionally had bought just some cheap old car that I could afford, but I never had more than a grand for the down payment. My hope was that with a larger down payment, I could get a used hybrid that could save me gas money longer term. Then COVID happened and I delayed buying a car because my car wasn't moving. Even after it started easing, my job let us stay in WFH mode, so it still wasn't really getting use. Then I got a new job that paid a lot more than my old one did (like 50%). It does require me working in office a few days a week, but honestly after working from home for 3+ years, I kinda like it and actually tend to work in office 4 days a week because I just don't want to be home (this may be partially be because, again, I have a setup that makes me unhappy at home, which admitadly may be largely due to being sick of it post-COVID). When I got the new job, my calculation changed. I started saving more, a lot more, for a new car. I made the decision that insted of getting a used hybrid, I would get a new hybrid with the idea that I would have a car that I could trust for 10 years, and I even got it in my head that I could save enough to get the entire car paid off within 1.5 years of purchase.

And so about 5 years after I began saving for a new car, I put a $10,000 down payment on a 2024 Prius, and a month later paid another $5,000 that I had also saved for it. I have another $5,000 sitting in stocks gaining more money with the idea of pulling it out in Jan of 2025 for another big chunk. (I'm splitting when I pull it so that I don't get hit by taxes too hard in a single year, so the money has actually been withdrawn over a 3 year stretch with that first 10K getting pulled out in 2023, 4 months before I bought the car). I'm about to hit below $20K on the loan, which I believe was just over a $30k loan when I took it out just 5 months ago. I'm quite proud on how fast it's going down, but it is consuming most of my free money to do this. My goal is to pay it off sometime around May to June of 2025 with my remaining 5K, the monthly payments that I'm making, and a good chunk of my 2025 yearly bonus (which I'm hoping will be around $3k payment on the car). After that is done, I do plan on putting aside maybe $5 a paycheck for the next car, not much, but if I only threw in $5 a year for the next 10 years, it'll put me at around $1500 in downpayment after any gains this money makes. Not enough, but I do expect to escalate how much I set aside as time goes on.

In the meantime, I have a reliable car that will cost me less to maintain and pay gas on. I was putting in maybe $1.5k a year on my old car to fix various problems (like tires or brakes or muffler or other stupid things). So this will be a quality savings for me over the next 5 years in particular. After I pay off the car, I intend to split the money I don't have to use on paying off the car in 2 different directions. One is to pay off my student loan. I did the calculation and even if Biden's current loan payoff thing sticks, I wouldn't be able to really benefit it for more than maybe a year of payments, so I'm not going to bother waiting. I think it'd be better for me financially to get that payment off the books ASAP, and weirdly enough the interest on the student loan is worse than my mortgage so it's worth me leaning that way. I think if I put slid over, even half the moeny I'm currently sinking into the car, I should be able to pay off the remainder of my student loan in a year's time which will free up even more money for me going forward to be able to pay off the mortgage faster and just get more financial security in general.

The second thing I want to do is start essentially rebuilding my home (ish). I will say, that I do currently have abour $10 a paycheck going to saving a new home. Again not much, but it's all about small investments to help my future out a little more. The overall goal of rebuilding my home is to make my home somewhere I like to be. I am a homebody, so I need to be able to enjoy my home, or I'll likely not enjoy my life. I am targeting 2025 for most of these updates, but a couple may slide into 2026. I started painting my home a couple years ago, but I intend to pay someone to finish it. I have a loft so I can't easily (or safely) paint all of it so I think it'd be money well spent to pay someone to do it. I then want to get an electrician in and route ethernet through the house, replace my electric sockets (the plugs tend to fall out currently and it's annoying), and add a couple new ones in a couple choice locations (I want my pantry to have electricity in it so that I can put a wireless printer in it, the routers, and also have a station for small appliances that I could just run from the pantry). After that's done, I want to hire someone to come through my entire house and replace the carpeting with hardwood floors and stairs. I plan on junking 3/4s of my furniture and then buying a new bed, new shelving for the living room, new reclining comfy chairs, a couch, and a second TV. Of that I imagine the couch, second TV and most of the new shelving will be 2026 purchases. I have more plans to re-do my bathrooom, kitchen and master bedroom closet, but I think those will need to be put off.

I think I'll get more happiness from painting, flooring, and living room updates. Living room updates will get my situation so that I am more comfortable sitting in the living room and playing video games again. This is something that just isn't my life anymore, and hasn't been for 7 or 8 years really. I go upstairs and play PC games, but my time playing Nintendo games or Playstation games has fallen off a cliff and everytime I sit downstairs and think about playing, I just don't want to on the current setup. I think games are big for my mental psyche and will continue to be so, amybe even moreso, as I get older and I become less capable of going out and doing things in the world. So it is vital that I get this stuff set up right. My house currently is painted in oranges and blues, and I want to change the coloring to more whites and a sage on the big wall. I love orange, and I loved the paint job when I first moved in, but after 12 years in the place and 2 years of COVID, I just need the change badly. And the floors... Well again, this place has been lived in for 12 years, and the carpets have never changed. They are old and raggedy, and I think some of the padding below it is in need of change too as there are divots in the floor that makes me sad when I step in em. And you know, I have 2 cats and puke happens, and there are puke stains all over the place. Part of the reason I want to go to wood is to make it easier to clean when they puke. But right now, walking across all the puke stains is very disheartening. So I think I am correct in targeting these 3 areas first. I think they will help immensely make me feel good about where I live. Heck 2 years ago I went and updated my kid's bedroom to be a games library and that in and of itself really uplifted me, because before it was used to store all her stuff and my games were just laying around everywhere in the house, now they have a place where I can go in and sit and enjoy them.

This is largely an unchanged plan. And I am contemplating, if and how it should change. I think it's still pretty solid. My only thought on it is that maybe I should push up the bed situation. The lack of sleep that I am getting because my bed just hurts is becoming a larger and larger problem. For the longest time, after like 6 hours of sleep, both of my hips began to hurt from sleeping on my side, heck when I first got this bed I switched to sleeping on my side because it was hurting my back. I wouldn't be surprised if a big reason that my elbow became a problem was because I started sleeping on my side, and now my shoulders are become painful and I'm 95% sure that it's due to this bed. The problem with moving it up is that I was planning on spending about $4-5k on a new bed, I want to be sure my next bed lasts a long time and I don't end up in this same painful situation so I was going to go all in. I also wanted to get an organic bed without all the chemicals in it. But maybe this concept can change. I was planning on getting one of Avocado's luxury mattresses. Maybe I could go down to their Green mattresses instead, which would save like $2k. They do have 1 year zero interest loans for their mattresses, which I hate having loans, I much prefer to just pay for stuff, but if I could put down maybe $1k, it'd be about $150 a month which isn't terrible and I'd be getting sleep in the meantime!

Another change to my financial design is that I want to rent a carpet cleaner this fall from Home Depot. It would cost me maybe $100 for a weekend, and in that time I could get rid of all these ghastly puke spots and make me happier with the carpeting. It is getting pretty bad right now. That way, if things happen and I won't be able to fully afford getting wood flooring until 2026, I'll have a couple years where the carpet is better anyway. Honestly, I probably should have just bitten the bullet and done this a couple years ago but my mentallity was that "well I'm going to replace it in a couple years, so I'd rather just save that money to replace it." That made sense, but when 1-2 years turns into 2-4, it probably would have been better to just spend the money. It's not a ton.

One more another thing I could do, is buy a new bed frame. As part of my bed upgrade, I wanted to get a Queen bed. My current bed is a full sized bed, which is honestly not tall enough for me. The standard size of a full bed is 6'3", which is my exact height. Theoretically that is fine, but realistically, your pillow takes a couple inches and your feet hang off the bottom of the bed. Queen gives you an extra 5" which should mean my feet no longer need to hang off the bed which will likely be better for my ankles. My current frame is the free metal frame that you get when you buy a cheap bed. It's fine. But with a new frame I could avoid the sliding of the mattress of the box by just putting the top mattress on the new frame and getting rid of the box which at the very least would be one less hassle. It does split up the cost of the bed though which would be the main bit. I'm not sure if this is really worth doing, but it's a contemplation that I am having.

Lastly, I need to add vacations to my list of things to do. It occured to me earlier this year that I haven't had even a brief vacation since 2019 when my mom sold the family cottage. I wish she had been able to hold out a few years cause now adays, I would have just bought it from her but I don't think she could pay for the upkeep of it any longer, so I understand. But I used to go up there for long weekend vacations once a year, a few years twice. That was really my primary method of vacation. It was cheap. We had a free place to stay on a lake, we would go do some sightseeing things in the local town, buy food from Wal-mart, and it was only a 4 hour drive. The entire thing cost only a few hundred dollars for a nice trip away. I've had staycations since then, but I haven't travelled anywhere. Even if you discount those small vacations to lake, in the last decade, I only have been on a single real vacation to Disney World like 8 years ago. I've never really been a guy who goes on trips, they cost a lot of money and I've always struggled monetarily to stay ahead. Now though, I have some spare money, but I still haven't taken vacations. Earlier this year I started putting aside money from every pay check and have saved about $1500 with the idea of going to a friend's winter house in Florida next year. I probably have enough for this trip already, but I am contemplating whether I want to fly there or take a more leisurely train ride. I'm not sure. But I think the big thing is that I need to allow myself to go on more trips. I want to make trips a more regular thing. Now that I don't have a kid around to pay for, it's probably going to be cheaper and I have more money anwyay. I am getting burnt out on life and I need to find ways to unburn myself.

So that's the thought of where I am financially. I mean overall, I like where I am going here. My current job has afforded me a lot of luxury already that I wouldn't have dreamed about 5 years ago. I was struggling before and now I can sit down and do things like buy a Prius which I just couldn't even think about before. It's been nice, we just need to figure out how to build ourselves for the long term going forward with this luxury.