Bob B.'s Financial Soundingboard

We got our 2012 adoption credit check from the IRS in the mail yesterday. We got this one a month later than last year's check. The amount was $1,066.06 - $1,053 was credit, and $13.06 was interest. I'll deposit the check later today.

For those of you who may be new, or may not remember, we adopted two boys from foster care, DS1 in 2011, and the DS2 in 2012.

The adoption credit was refundable in 2011, so we got the entire amount in one check. In 2012, the credit became non-refundable, so we only received credit to the extent of our tax liability.

I'm pretty sure we'll use up the entire rest of the 2012 credit this year, because of the tax we'll owe on our short sale this past April. Probably, we'll owe beyond the tax credit. But, we'll see on that.

The Tigers game was a great time. Detroit won 12-5 over the Chicago White Sox. It sprinkled and misted nearly the entire game, but it was a warm rain, and I figured was better than a really cold night, which it could have been. And, we spent $0 on concessions. DD1 bought a $4.50 bag of popcorn with her own money.

The family picture went well on Saturday. All drama was restricted to the planning stage.

I broke down, and started the furnace at home Sunday morning. It was 63 degrees, and I thought it was time. I was just 9 days short of my October 1 goal!

I mowed the lawn for (hopefully?) the last time Sunday. My dad needs to use it to mow his (hopefully) one more time, too. Then we can put it away for the winter. I'd like to have it services yet this fall. It's a brand new, expensive mower, and I'd like to keep it well maintained. I figured it would be better to get it done this fall when we don't need it back soon, rather than wait until March or April when everyone and his brother is getting theirs serviced.

I'm not sure how many of you have heard of or listened to Ric Edelman, but he is an investment adviser who has a syndicated weekend radio show. I listen to him occasionally on Sunday mornings. One of his callers had a question about rolling over his 401(k) from a previous job, and the topic of a Roth IRA came up. A Roth didn't make sense in this particular case, but Ric added his own thoughts about Roths in general. His thought is that he's none too confident in Congress, and that he's not entirely sure that withdrawals from Roths will necessarily be tax free 30 years from now. That is, he thinks the chances are more likely than not that Congress will change the rules on Roth IRAs, making a withdrawal a tax event. Does anyone have a thought on that?

Tonight is the Tigers game. First pitch at 7:08, 80% chance of rain in Detroit.

The guy who visits my office to sell paper and office supplies was in this week. He is a huge Tigers fan - almost always wearing a Tigers hat, Tigers jacket when it's cool, and I even noticed that his cell phone is housed in a Tigers case. He an his wife spend several weeks each spring in Lakeland Florida, the home of Tigers spring training.

I asked him how much I could figure for four hot dogs and four Cokes at Comerica park. He wasn't sure, because he's never ordered Coke with his hot dog, only beer. But, he thought $40-$50 would cover it.

DW did some checking on the Comerica Park web site. Fans can enter with bottled water and juice boxes, and snacks, sealed in original packaging. We stopped by the grocery store to buy some snacks and water last night. We'll also eat before the game. I'm not saying that we definitely won't buy anything to eat at the game, but if we do, it will be as part of the experience, rather than to satisfy hunger.

I blogged last week about getting furniture from my BIL and SIL. Someone asked in the comment section whether we had a way to conveniently transport the furniture back to our house. We already had the furniture at our house when I posted. DW had to return her parent's golf cart. They have a golf cart so MIL can easily drive around the farm, and we had it so they could drive around the Octagon Barn festival, that I also blogged about. Anyway, DW was returning the golf cart with my dad's trailer, so that's how she was able to bring the furniture back.

I burned the furniture this weekend. I took the remaining metal to the scrap yard. Total weight was 80 pounds. About 15 pounds was scrap unrelated to the furniture, and one of the pieces was a hide-a-bed. The scrap was worth $6.

I think I mentioned our energy audit yesterday. We had an energy audit for our house as part of our decision making for the geothermal.

When we renovated our house, we had it insulted with spray foam on the main walls, and cellulose in the attic. We opted to not have the basement sprayed. That was probably a mistake. According to the energy audit, we could save 20% of our heating costs if we had the walls in the basement insulated.

We've gotten three bids:

One for $1,200 for an inch and a half of foam - but the guy bid based on my measurements, and has not looked at the basement.

One for $750 for an inch of foam, or $950 for an inch and a half.

One for $600 for an inch of foam, or $800 for an inch and a half.

I called, and left a message with the first guy to let him know his bid was high, and invited him to look at the basement. He is also furthest away from our house, so that may be part of the difference.

20% savings in heating costs is $480 per year, based on last year's heating cost. So, even if we don't quite get a 20% reduction in heating costs, we should be able to pay for the cost in the third year. I'm not sure if that 20% savings is based on an inch, or an inch and a half of foam. I'll have to follow up with the auditor.

DW and I have been thinking about geothermal heat (and cooling). Really, we entertained the idea four years ago when we renovated the house, but we couldn't justify the expense at that time.

If you're not familiar with geothermal heat, it's a heating system that collects energy from the ground, and transfers it to your house through an electric heat pump. No fossil fuels are used - except, of course, the fossil fuels that produce the electricity that runs the pump.

Geothermal also cools your house, with no additional equipment. You just reverse the heat pump when you want to cool the house.

Finally, geothermal can preheat water for your water heater. You do need to buy a second water tank, but the water enters the first tank at 110 degrees.

Geothermal is an efficient way to heat (and cool) a house (and water), but very expensive to install.

My first step was to do some investigating on the internet. I liked what I saw. I even found an on-line geothermal forum (I think there's a forum for everything). I got some basic questions answered there.

My electric co-op offers an energy audit for your house. The rep from the co-op was out on Tuesday. According to the energy audit, we would have a 70% savings in heating home costs, a 44% savings in cooling costs, and 41% savings in water heating costs.

A neat option offered by the electric co-op is that the electricity used to power the geothermal system is charged at a reduced rate - $0.065/kWh, our normal rate is $0.12/kWh. But, we would need to buy and install a second meter.

Then I called some contractors for bids. Two were out yesterday, and one will be out this afternoon. Of course, we haven't gotten a solid estimate yet, but one of the contractors did let us know that we would be looking at about $15K to purchase and install the system.

The lines that collect the heat from the ground can be installed either vertically or horizontally. Vertical installation is about 5K more expensive, because of the cost of the drill rig used to install. A home with limited space (close neighbors) would need a vertical installation. We have about three acres of available space around our house, so we can go horizontal. The lines need to be 120' long, spaced 7' apart, and about 7 feet deep. I think the first contractor (the one we're leaning toward right now) said we'd need five lines.

My next step was to set up an excel spread sheet with all of the above information. I used 15K as the initial price, and will modify that as bids come in. Right now, according to my spreadsheet, the geothermal system will pay for itself in year 10, and after 25 years (the expected life), we'd be ahead by about 26K. I ran a separate calculation for the water heater, because that's a separate decision. The water heater could pay for itself in eight years.

Oh, and this system would be eligible for a 30% energy efficiency tax credit.

I'm interested to see what the actual cost estimates will be. We're not going to jump into this right away. If we decide to go with geo, we'll spend the winter saving money for it, and have the install done next spring or summer.

Our existing oil furnace is eight years old. Expected life is 15 years. I dunno. Maybe we should use that for a few more years. The numbers we're looking at are $2,420 spent last year to heat the house with oil, and an estimated $732 per year to heat the house with geothermic.

DD1 bought some hay on Tuesday. She has some goats, three right now. One buck (male) and two does (female). One of the does is of breeding age, and the other will be in about six months. Our objective is that she breed her own goats for the fair, and, over time, perhaps build the herd to have some goats to sell.

It really doesn't make financial sense - there just isn't enough money in goats. But, it's a great learning experience for her, and she is responsible for the daily chores associated with her small herd.

For the past year and a half or so her grandfather has been giving her the hay from his own dairy cow herd. We've been buying the grain. We decided it was time to be big boys and girls, and purchase the hay ourselves.

There's a livestock auction about 20 miles south of us, and on Tuesdays there is a hay auction. Hay producers bring in lots of 20-30 bales, and interested buyers bid on the lots. Fortunately my brother-in-law had a couple of cows he needed to sell from the dairy, and we was at the auction yard, too. Their farm is about 20 miles to the south of the yard.

DD1 bid on the hay, but her uncle nudged her when it was time to stop bidding. She bid on the first two lots, until she received the nudge. She had success with the third and fourth lots. She ended up with 46 bales of a grass/clover mixed hay for $259.60, or $5.64 per bale. That will be enough hay for about 9 months.

I'm not sure how many of you are up on the current hay markets, but I'm guessing at least a few have no idea whether that is a good price or a bad price.

2012 was a drought year in the mid west. If she had bought that same hay a year ago, she would probably paid $7-$8 per bale. Hay was in short supply. If she had bought that same hay 5 or six years ago, she probably would have paid $2.25-$2.75 per bale. Hay has been steadily going up in price over the past several years. A lot of previous hay ground is growing corn or soybeans now, because of the increase in price for those commodities.

Based on current hay markets, I think she paid a good price for the hay. And, because her uncle was there, I'm sure of it.

DD1 helped me unload and stack the hay in our barn Tuesday evening.

My SIL and BIL brought my MIL and FIL to watch our girls play soccer this weekend. The girls each had a great game, and they started an hour apart, so we got to see most of both games.

While there they handed us our tickets for the upcoming Tigers game.

The total for the four tickets was $68, $17 per ticket. I had blogged about a handling fee before. That was per transaction, rather than per ticket, and it was $6. My SIL absorbed that for the group.

The game is this Friday, and the group has ballooned to 20. The seats are all in the same section, but not contiguous. Maybe people will play musical chairs with us, and allow at least some of us to sit together. The four seats for my family are not in a row, or in a square, but a "z", with two of us sitting beside each other, and the other two sitting one row behind, but offset by one seat.

Either way, it will be fun.

We'll be setting an in-park budget as well. We'd like to do some hot dog purchasing, or something like that without breaking the bank. I have a suspicion that some in the party will purchase quite a bit more than we will.

It could be a special game. Detroit pitcher Max Scherzer is listed as the probable starting pitcher, and he will be going for his 20th win.

The family pic will be the next day. That has set forth its own special family drama, but I won't get into it here.

We've transferred some money to four different savings accounts:

$1,000 to each of our girl's savings accounts for college. We'll send that money to their 529's at some point in the future.

$5,200 to our emergency fund. EF total is now $6,000. It's nice to have a "real" EF now.

$400 to a sub account under regular checking. Plans are to transfer $400 to this account each month from here on out. That will be an account for non-monthly/non-regular expenses like property taxes, vehicle repairs, garbage (quarterly), Christmas and birthday gifts, and house maintenance.

I'm sure most all of you frugally minded SA bloggers take advantage of your Flexible Spending Account, if your or your spouse's employer offers one. My employer offers an FSA, and I sure take advantage of it.

For those of you who may not know what an FSA is, it's an opportunity for an employee to defer some income into an account. The money in the account must be used for approved medical expenses. The money deferred to the FSA is not taxed. The catch is that if you don't claim the money over a 15 month period (Jan-Mar), you lose it. Forever.

An FSA is like a HCSA for W-2 employees.

The reason I bring it up, is I just submitted an FSA claim. Over the past couple of month, I've polled three of my colleagues about their participation in the FSA. Their responses are a mixed bag:

One colleague participates

One colleague is aware of the FSA, and chooses not to participate. He's afraid of losing his money at the end of the year.

One colleague had no idea what an FSA is.

So, based on my completely unscientific, informal, and extremely limited poll, 50% of employees in my organization participate in the FSA, 25% are aware of it, and choose not to participate, and 25% are unaware of the FSA.

As for me, I have $100 per month deposited into the FSA. My claims paid to date are $394.44. Today I submitted $110.20. That gets us caught up through July.

If you do not participate in an FSA (or HCSA), I urge you to look into it.

DW visited her parents yesterday. Her sister and her brother both gave us some furniture. A love seat, sofa, and recliner from brother, and a (nearly brand new) recliner from her sister.

I mentioned in a post a couple weeks ago that furniture was high on our replacement list. It's not anymore.

The only draw back is that the pieces have been in storage in a building that my BIL owns. The building has an awful musty odor, and the furniture has picked it up. We got a mattress a few years back that was stored there, and picked up the same odor. So, we know that it will dissipate after a couple weeks, and a couple applications of Febreeze.

So, we have some new furniture. Actually, we're up one, because we didn't have a second recliner before.

We'll be having a bonfire with the old stuff this weekend. Trust me when I say that with four kids, our stuff has no resale value.

We bought a generator last night. It cost $664 plus sales tax. It's a 5,500 watt generator, and received good reviews on Amazon. It should be plenty to power our refrigerator, freezer, and some lights during a power outage. We'll just have to watch drying clothes, and other huge energy draws. Our oven is also electric, so we'll have to see on that. Probably won't be able to bake a turkey dinner during a power outage.

We also got a bid from an electrician for installing a transfer switch, so we can plug it in to our electric system. The bid was $390. The total cost for this project will be $1,054. I was figuring $1,200.

We didn't get multiple bids for installing the transfer switch. My cousin is an electrician. We usually have him do our work. He didn't get back to me when I contacted him twice. Must be busy.

The electrician that we did choose has done a lot of work for my family over the years. We've found him to be trustworthy and reliable.

There is one thing I'm not sure about yet. If you have a generator plugged in during a power outage, how do you know that the electricity is back on? My in-laws have a dairy farm so they NEED generator to run the milking and cooling equipment. They have a light next to the generator that turns on when the grid power is restored (it's not connected into the generator stream). I'll have to call the electrician, and ask about that.

There is an octagon barn about seven miles from my house. It's a large, beautiful building that sits on land that has reverted back to the state of Michigan. When I was younger, it was in disrepair, and was falling apart.

About the time I was graduating high school, and moving away to college, a group formed to save the barn. They raised some money, and restoration began.

When the project was at a certain point of completion, the Octagon Barn Society began inviting the public in to view the barn, and raise additional funds. The original "Fall Family Days" was held the weekend after Labor Day, and this past weekend marked the 18th annual Fall Family Days at the Octagon Barn.

During the past 18 years, the barn and house have been fully restored, and other features have been added such as a saw mill, blacksmith shop, one-room school house, a grain elevator, and other things. During Fall Family Days, there is an antique tractor parade, a patriotic program performed by children in the school house, a flea market, and other events. Fall Family Days typically attracts 10-15,000 people over the two days at $5 per person.

Our family attended both days this weekend. We were busy on Saturday, as my girls took part in the patriotic program at the one-room school house. I returned with the four kids on Sunday, and DW stayed home to can some vegetables.

I stayed with the boys, and our girls hung around with friends, with instruction to check in once per hour. I waited until near the end of the afternoon to take the boys to the petting zoo, because I knew they would resist ever leaving the petting zoo. The people who ran the petting zoo had your typical horse, calves, miniature ponies, ducks, geese, rabbits, chickens, etc. Some of the smaller animals were for sale, including two bantam (small) roosters. The price had been $14 per bird, but had been marked down to $3, because it was near the end of the last day of the event.

You may remember that we have chickens at our house, and you may remember that DD1 shows poultry. I called DW, and asked if we should buy a bantam rooster for $3. She said that it would be nice for DD1 to have another show bird. (DW had walked through the petting zoo the previous day, and had seen the roosters marked for $14 each).

I had the girls meet me at the petting zoo, so DD1 could inspect the birds, and decide which one to buy. When the decision was made, I gave the owner $3 for the rooster. He told me we could buy both of them for $5. I told him, no we're just interested in the one. We would be back at the end of the event, in about an hour, to pick up the bird.

At some point during that hour, I asked DD2 if she would like the other rooster. She thought about it a bit, and answered yes. When it was all said and done, we left Fall Family Days with two bantam roosters for $5.

I'm really not sure of the value of the birds. If they were sold at an event full of poultry enthusiasts, maybe they would have fetched the original $14 asking price. My guess is that this guy has a bunch of bantam poultry at home, and only needs a couple of roosters. Obviously, we'll be getting no eggs from the rooster. And if they breed with our hens, we'll have really weird looking medium sized chicks. But, the girls each have a new show bird, and our menagerie of small livestock just became a bit more interesting.

It's been about a month since we received the gift of money from my in-laws. I thought I would make an attempt at an accounting of where the money has gone thus far. So far, we have spent/saved/paid down debt amounting to about $25,200 in the following broad categories:

Savings $9,200.00 36.4%
Home Improvement $8,322.05 32.9%
Debt Repayment $6,361.72 25.2%
Home School $745.60 3.0%
Vehicle Maintenance $636.00 2.5%
$25,265.37

A coupe of caveats:
1. Not all of the money has been spent/saved in each of those categories yet, although it is our intent to do so. All but $2,000 of the "Savings" category is sitting in checking yet, for example. Some more to debt payoff and some more to home improvement.

2. We would have spent that, or nearly all of that on Home School curricula with or without the gift. Maybe not in one payment.

3. Same goes for vehicle maintenance (tires) my tire would have blown with or without the gift. Maybe I would have bought the used tire, or only one new tire instead of all four. Who knows. The gift did make the decision to buy four new tires easier.

There is one big ticket item that we have not purchased, but I have included it above. That is a generator and hard wiring for generator. I'm estimating that at $1,200. I think I already blogged about that, or I intended to blog about it. It goes back to the whole living in a rural area, we have the electric service of a third world country, yada yada thing.

We haven't taken action on a Roth for DW. That is big on my to do list.

So, when Savings plus Debt Repayment lines are combined, we get a total of 61.6% of what has been spent/allocated/intended so far. Yes, about a third the total has been spent on "Home Improvement" and yes, most but not all of that is the porch project. It did balloon beyond our original intent a bit.

We still have a pinch less than $5,000 to allocate yet. You certainly can't say that we're blowing it all in one place!

We had some mom+dad+DD2 special time last night. We scheduled a babysitter for the boys, and persuaded DD1 to stay home.

We were planning to see the new Smurfs movie in town. We live in a very small town, surrounded by other very small towns. So, there's not much else to do other than see a movie, or go bowling. So, we parked at the theater, and the marquee lights were shining brightly. We were met by Dick, the guy that has owned and operated the theater my whole life, plus probably five or ten years. He informed us that nobody else was there, since school had just started, and he couldn't run the movie with just three patrons.

I think DW and I were more disappointed than DD2 was. She probably figured that surely mom and dad would figure something out. DW had already looked at the neighboring small town theaters, and nothing else appropriate was showing. There are two larger towns about 40-50 minutes west of us where there are multi screen theaters, but no kid movies were starting that late. So, I stopped by the next small town west of us, and we got some ice cream at Dairy Queen. DD2 got a banana split for the first time in her life. We called the bowling alley, and it was league night - no open lanes.

After the ice cream was finished, we offered DD2 the opportunity to go to the toy store (aka Walmart), and told her she could pick out any toy for $15. She was OK with that offer. I don't think we've ever given our children the opportunity to go to a toy store, and pick out anything that they wanted. She took full advantage. She looked at, touched, smelled, and absorbed *everything*. Twice. She even made sure that we were aware of the availability of the Disney Princess Castle. "No, that's $50". You can't blame the kid for trying.

She ended up picking out a doll from the Barbie line. The doll has red hair, just like DD2, and wears a purple outfit, just like DD2 would wear. She was happy, and we ended up spending about the same on a doll and ice cream that we would have at the movie theater. Evening salvaged.

Mortgage $55,921
Truck Loan $8,555
Lawn Mower $103
CC1 $0
CC2 $0

Total Debt - $64,579

Retirement Fund $127,771
DD1 Savings $5,442
DD2 Savings $339
DS1 Savings $1,000
DS2 Savings $1000
Emergency Fund $800

Total Savings - $136,292

Debt reduced by $6,392
Savings increased by $3,657

About $1,700 of that increase in savings is because DD1 received her check for selling hogs at the fair. It's her money, but is earmarked for college savings, so I'll include it as a family asset.

I intended to pay the lawn mower loan in full last month. I went into the website to pay it off, and it's not easy to navigate. I entered the wrong amount to pay. When I went back in to see if the payment had posted, I saw that there was still a balance. I was unable to set the payment date for any sooner than 9 days before it's due. So, it will be paid in full on the 18th of this month.

I have another milestone to report. Our total family debt is now less than our annual household income! That sounds pretty good to me. Also, our total family savings is twice as much as our debt. Also good!

One last thing on the EF. We intend to beef that up. Right now the money sits in checking, which I've not listed here. Basically, we keep our EF in a bank in DW's home town. That way it's inconvenient for us to access. It's also inconvenient for us to add money. Our goal will be to get that money transferred over to the savings account before the end of this month.

I know most of you have probably been waiting with bated breath to learn how much we'll be spending on Tigers tickets, so I'll end the suspense here. We're getting pavilion tickets behind the Tigers bull pen. Tickets cost $19 each, plus a $4.75 service charge, whatever that is, so we'll be seeing the game for $23.75 X 4 = $95. Plus parking plus gas to get us there plus whatever we buy for food. That works.

On to the post at hand.

I graduated from Michigan State, and my sister graduated from Western Michigan. MSU plays WMU tonight in football. I placed a friendly bet with my sister. It seemed foolish to bet any real money, and silly to bet only a dollar. We ended up betting winners choice of a bottle of pop (or soda, depending on your preference) or a candy bar. I'm spotting her twenty points.

When the bet was set, I announced it all on Facebook. That drew the attention of my brother-in-law, who is also a big MSU fan. He concurs that MSU will win, but he doesn't think they'll win by 20. So we went ahead and set a bet. The stakes on this bet are a six pack, losers choice of brand.

I drink about five beers over the course of two months. And I'm not at all picky about what I drink, although I don't drink the really cheap stuff I did in college. My BIL on the other hand is a regular beer snob. He can detect all those orange rinds or oak barrels or whatever was used in the brewing of the beer. So, since I fully intend to win this bet, I figured he would choose a nice six pack for me. If I lose the bet, I've got my work cut out for me to not disappoint.

For the record, I predict MSU 31-WMU 10. GO GREEN!

Our niece L (DW's niece, mine by marriage) and her husband M live in South Africa. They'll be coming home for a visit in about three weeks.

So L set up a conversation via Facebook about arrival dates, when they will be where, planning, etc. Among those plans was an effort to set up a date/time for a family picture (there are 28 of us in total, and everyone will be in the same state at the same time). M is also a fairly big Tigers baseball fan, and they're doing fairly well this season (current series with the A's not withstanding). So L asked if anyone was up for a Tigers game on Sept. 20.

My immediate reaction (to myself) about the ball game was "count us out". My gut reaction is always to not spend the extra money, and we have two boys with special needs, and any time we need to find someone to watch them for us is at a premium.

A lot of the ensuing conversation around this FB thread had to do with the pictures, and the Tigers game kind of got forgotten. Apparently if you buy tickets in groups of 10 or more, you get a discount, and L and M really want to go to the game, and were hoping for a sizable group. So finally yesterday L asked via the FB thread - "Who's up for the ball game?" And DW sent me a text asking if I wanted to go. I said sure.

So, the four from my family plus L and M plus L's mom and dad plus DW's mom and dad makes 10.

I'm not sure how much the tickets will cost. I just looked on-line, and saw that fairly decent seats to great seats are priced anywhere from about $30 to about $80 each, before the 10 ticket discount. I just made my first contribution to the FB thread asking about price, so we'll see.

I haven't been to a Tigers game since 1995 or '96. Not sure. I think I've only been to four or five games in my life, and I've never been to a game in the "new" Comerica Park (opened in 2000). This *could* end up being a special year for the Tigers, and if it is I'll be able to say that I saw a 2013 Tigers game.

I blew a tire on the way to work yesterday. The truck is fully insured, including towing, so after some effort on my and DW's part to get the spare on, we had it towed to the tire shop.

I opted to have all four tires replaced. The truck has 85,000 miles. I'm not sure if the tires are original or not, but they needed to be replaced. No need to go blowing them one at a time over the next several months.

The total cost to replace was $636, including tires, labor, and tax. The tire guy said that I could have a good used tire for $50. But, again, we have the cash, so I opted for new tires all around.

This leads to a (somewhat) funny story. Until recently I drove a POS car. Three or four years ago that car had a flat that needed to be replaced. My job has me wearing different clothes depending on what I'm doing, either seasonally or day to day. One day I might be wearing khakis and a button up shits, another day I might be wearing a tee shirt and dirty beat up jeans. On this particular day when I got the flat I was not dressed up. The tire guy probably assumed I was broke (actually, I probably was broke). He offered a good used tire for $20. Different vehicle, different tire, different year, I know, but I can't help but think that I appeared to have a different paying capacity three or four years ago than I did yesterday, hence the difference in pricing.

Anyway, I'm set for the winter now, and maybe set for another 85,000 miles.

We've retired some debt this month. All credit cards completely paid off. Truck loan - took a big chunk out of the loan. Lawn mower loan - almost completely retired (balance will be paid next month).

So, I decided to re-figure our debt to income ratio. It's now 24.5% - that is a wee bit less than 1/4 of our before tax income is required to meet monthly minimum required debt obligations.

That being said, we'll plan to send more than the required minimum to the truck loan per month from here on out. Not quite a double payment, but I'm thinking a payment that would amount to 10% of gross monthly income. That will bring our effective DTI to about 30%, and retire the loan about 14 months early. I think we can live comfortably with that.

I'm not sure how much I've talked about it in the past, but DW home schools our girls. With school about to begin, she needed a block of time to get curricula organized. So, I took the boys out for a road trip on Saturday. The girls had been invited to a birthday party in the afternoon.

Before we left for our road trip, I loaded the back of my pickup with some scrap iron. We live at my family's old farm, so there always seems to be scrap iron turning up. The load ended up being small - 40 pounds. The price I received was $3. Really, I look at it as an opportunity to deliver trash, and they pay me for it. The junk yard is 4 miles from our house.

I went into town, and had an extra key made for my pickup. When I bought the truck, I only received one key. With a copy now, I'll have some insurance if I ever lock the keys in the truck. The copy cost $2.99. Kind of funny how that worked out.

Then, I got the oil changed in my pickup. The oil change cost around $41. The truck is a Dodge Ram Hemi. It holds 7 quarts of oil. The expensive oil changes are something I wasn't aware of when I bought the pickup in December. Live and learn.

I have changed the oil myself in our various vehicles in the past. My brother-in-law has a nice farm shop that makes changing oil easy, and if we're there for the weekend, and a vehicle needs an oil change, I'll go ahead and do it. But honestly, enough of the cost is the actual oil and oil filter, that it really doesn't cost a whole lot of money to have the quickie places do it for you.

Then, I took the boys to a zoo. The zoo is about 40 miles from home. Admission for the three of us was about $25. We had a nice time. The funny/frustrating thing was that the goats at the petting zoo area were the biggest hit with the boys. We have three goats at home.

The boys ended up falling asleep on the way back home, so I pulled over and listened to the Tigers/Mets game on the radio. The Tigers won the game, and swept the weekend series. Go Tigers!

I bought a truck last December. I financed it through our credit union. We hadn't ever financed a vehicle through this credit union. We had carried a credit card, house re-fi, and home equity loan (back in the bad old days when we did home equity loans) through this credit union, but never a vehicle loan. The dealers always beat their rates, typically by 0.1% point. So, I wasn't really sure how the CU worked the loan if paid ahead.

Some months, I've been rounding the $378 minimum payment up to $400. I had been wondering if the minimum due would gradually ratchet down - like $1 less due per month for every $36 that I was paid ahead on the loan (it's a 36 month loan). But, the payment has never been adjusted down at all, which is fine. I wanted to pay AT LEAST $378 per month, and have the truck paid off earlier. I just figured that the CU would make some adjustment to keep me paying on the loan for the full 36 months - more interest income for them.

Last week, I made a substantial payment ahead. I decided to pay 10% of the remaining balance. The remaining balance was $10,220, so I paid $1,022 (About $16 of that payment went toward accumulated interest. Had I been thinking more clearly, I would have increased the payment so that the principal balance had gone down 10%). I went to the CU website this morning just to check if the payment went through. It did. And, yep, the amount due with the next payment remains $378. What changed is the date the payment is due! I don't owe anything on this truck until December 1!

Of course, I plan to make my Sep., Oct., and Nov. payments. We also still haven't decided if we're going to pay this off entirely with the gift money.

Either way, we're hopefully getting ourselves well positioned to pay this truck off, and start saving cash to buy a replacement family van in a few years. I'm not saying we won't finance it, but we will hopefully at least make a substantial down payment.

No, our septic system didn't fail. But, it hasn't been updated in quite some time, and will need to be replaced. Just, not yet.

But, we want to be prepared, and have the money available for replacement, when the time comes. So, I called an installer yesterday, to get an idea of replacement cost.

His first questions were: which county do you live in, and how many bedrooms are in your house? I told him which county I live in, and that we have three bedrooms in our house. My county requires a 2,500 gallon tank for a three bedroom house.

Next, he asked me if our house was on sand or clay soil. I told him that our soil was loamy, or in-between. The required length of the tiles in the drain field are dictated how fast your soil percolates water. Sandy soil percs faster than clay soil. So, a septic system on sandy ground costs less than a septic system on clay ground (less excavation, less fill sand, less drain tile).

He estimated the cost at about $6,000, but said that the estimate would be much tighter after the county environmental health department came out to do an actual perc test.

So, we'll set aside $6,000 in the EF. The system may need to be replaced next year, or it may be 10 or more years. Either way, we'd like to be prepared.

First - to make the new porch truly barrier free, it will cost quite a bit more than the original estimate.

Second - the new porch area will have new soffit and fascia. We've decided to have the contractor put new soffit and fascia around the entire house. The old soffit is wooden and peeling. Do you even call that soffit when it's wooden? Not sure.

Third - our house has never had eaves troughs. We'll have the contractor put eaves troughs around the house. That will help withe the water in the basement problem.

So, yeah. That's a lot of money we'll be spending on the house.

I've probably hinted and mentioned the circumstances about our house a few times, but there are some new readers hear, so I'll go into some detail.

About 5 1/2 years ago, a job opened up for me in my home area. My wife grew up in the same general area of the state. So, I took the job, and moved home. We put our house up for sale right at the beginning of the housing crash. Selling that house became its own adventure that I've detailed extensively in past blogs.

My maternal grandparent's house was empty, so we rented it cheap from my mom until (we were thinking) our old house sold, and we could find something permanent. During that time, my fraternal grandmother died. That house became available to us. It's on the original farmstead that my dad's great grandparents settled and built in 1882.

While the actual real estate transaction was cheap, the house was in very bad need of updating (previous update was 1929). We had absolutely no money, and absolutely no capacity to borrow money to make the necessary renovations. While it's true that we could have moved in, and renovated one room at a time as we saved money, we just weren't up for that option.

My aunt (my dad's sister) really wanted the house to stay in the family. She really wanted us to update the house and move in. She had just inherited a bit of money from her parent's estate, and she has money of her own saved. So, she lent us some money to get started.

We gutted the house ourselves, and hired a builder to renovate it. We were still under the delusion that our other house might sell during this time, freeing us up to borrow more money to finish the renovations. That didn't happen, so we ended up borrowing more money from my in-laws to complete the project.

When the project was complete, we had an almost entirely new house - on the inside. We did nothing on the outside, except clear brush, and cut some trees, and add gravel to the driveway. The house still looked old and beat up from the outside.

Since moving in, we have dome some improvements outside. We put on a new roof two years ago. We replaced the front porch last year. I've blogged on here about each of those projects. They each needed to be done.

So now, we've been gifted this money. And, really we're finishing the project that we started five years ago.

So, there's some pride and sentimentality involved with our decisions. We certainly could have made other decisions that would have been cheaper. We could have stayed in my other grandma's house until our old house sold. We didn't even have to move from our old house. But, we did. And we took the opportunity to move into my family's farm house. And now, we're taking the opportunity to update the outside of the house. And, I'm happy to be doing it.

We visited our attorney on Friday. As a reminder, the reason for our appointment was to have him set up special needs trusts for our two boys .

I was fairly ignorant on what exactly a special needs trust is. What I did know was that it a special needs trust is a way to shelter money earmarked for their use that doesn't count as an asset if/when they qualify for social security payments after age 18.

I'll pause here for a moment. Let me be very clear - I hope that both boys lead very productive adult lives, employed to the fullest of their abilities. They were each adopted out of foster care, and DS1 is autistic, and DS2 has cerebral paulsey, and fetal alcohol syndrome. We need to plan for the worst.

Anyway, what our attorney told us is that he would add an amendment to our existing estate planning documents. We should set up separate savings accounts for each of them, and refer to those savings accounts in the amendment. That's it. Pretty easy.

Immediately after our attorney appointment was finished, we drove to our bank, and set up new savings accounts, one for each son. We put $1,000 in each account.

We'll continue to add to those accounts through the years - cash birthday gifts, money that they may earn through the sale of 4-H animals, and we'll periodically add our own money.

We will need to drop off our current trust papers to the attorney. Somehow neither one of us thought to bring them with us on Friday. But, it's done. Fairly simple.

Completely unrelated - I said in one of my posts last week that the porch renovation would only take a couple of days. That was a fantasy. The contractor didn't understand that when my wife said that the entrance to the house needed to be "barrier free" that she meant that it needed to be "free of barriers". We lost all of Friday when new plans were made. They are working on it again today.

We're getting a load of gravel today (actually, it's probably already delivered). We used two loads of gravel six years ago when we made our driveway. We've had lots of rain this spring/summer, and the potholes have become very evident. The delivery fee is $75, plus $6.50 per ton for the gravel. The dump truck holds 19 tons. So, I ordered 19 tons, and the total comes to $198.50.

It's fortunate that the porch contractor has a skidsteer on site. The gravel driver will spread the gravel as best he can from the dump truck. The porch contractor will help spread it evenly with the skid steer. Will save me from moving it around. We're going to extend the driveway a bit back from the road, too. We would have done that six years ago, but there is an electrical line in the way. The addition of the skidsteer will help that.

I also contacted a professional carpet cleaner. He will be at the house on Monday. He'll charge us about $100-$150. Yes, we could have rented a steam cleaner (and bought cleaner) for about half that cost. It can be a challenge to coordinate that, especially with two kids with special needs. The boys are in school Monday, and DW and the girls are busy, and will be out of the house.

We've got a couple minor, but out of our area of expertise plumbing problems. I've contacted a plumber to take care of them. Not sure on the cost yet.

The gravel and the plumbing have been on the to do list for a while. We just needed to wait until we had the extra cash. Plus, doing the gravel while the porch contractor is there will make the finished product much better, and easier.

Other home improvement projects for the future:

Generator with transfer switch installed. We live in a very rural part of Michigan, and have been without power two times recently. One of the times was for about 20 hours.

Couches and easy chair. We haven't bought a single couch at all ever. The two that we are using are hand-me-downs from my in-laws. The easy chair is about 11 years old. It was a gift from my brother-in-law (purchased new) when our first daughter was born.

New dressers for the kids. Again, all kids dressers are hand-me-downs, and they don't work very well.

Refrigerator. Our refrigerator was left in our old house when we bought it. We moved it with us. Not sure how old it is. It still refrigerates and freezes things. The ice machine does not work. We can do with this for a while, but it needs to be in the replacement plan.

These items are on the wish list. We need to see how the dusts settles out on other priorities.

Some may question the wisdom of us spending 4K on renovating our back porch. Our EF is pathetic, and our college savings is pathetic. Our retirement fund is not exactly pathetic, but anemic may better describe it.

All of this is true, yet we are going to have our back porch renovated. It's not at the level of safety concern, but it is an eyesore. And, my 82 year old arthritic/diabetic mother-in-law and 82 year old father-in-law with Parkinson's have great difficulty in entering our house to visit their grand children. That can also be read as the people responsible for the gift that will allow us to renovate the porch deserve better access to our house.

The builder starts today. There is no rain in the forecast. Hopefully he's finished by the end of the day tomorrow. We'll see.

Oh, I almost forgot to add - we had the same builder renovate our front porch last summer. He stored some materials in the old family blacksmith shop. He happened to notice that we had an anvil, drill press, and other small blacksmithing tools. He offered us $500 for the items. When he's finished with this project, he will knock $500 off the cost of the renovation, and take the items with him.

I'm going to try to add a couple of images to show the current condition of the porch and walkway.

This past weekend, my in-laws gifted my wife $30,000. For more background on the gift see my most recent post in the forums.

Steps that have been taken so far:

The checks were deposited into our account on Monday.

The credit card was completely paid off this morning.

We scheduled the builder to begin work on our back porch today. It is raining.

We scheduled an appointment with an attorney to set up special needs trusts for our boys. We'll be meeting with the attorney this Friday afternoon.

Our emergency fund is housed at DW's home-town bank, and that transfer has not been made yet.

Our girls already have 529's set up, but we have not allocated any new funds toward them.

I received some good advice from my forum post. We may pay off the truck (10K) and set up an automatic monthly payment for a Roth IRA for DW for the amount that had been going to the truck payment.

Still not sure exactly how everything will be spent and allocated. It will not be spent on a luxury car or a Caribbean cruise.

$30,000 represents a bit more than half of my annual salary. Heck, 10 years ago, I wasn't even making 30K in one year. I (we) are overwhelmed by the generosity of this gift. It gives us the flexibility to attend to some savings goals that have been sorely neglected, as well as make some needed improvements around the homestead.

This past weekend, my in-laws gifted my wife $30,000. For more background on the gift see my most recent post in the forums.

Steps that have been taken so far:

The checks were deposited into our account on Monday.

The credit card was completely paid off this morning.

We scheduled the builder to begin work on our back porch today. It is raining.

We scheduled an appointment with an attorney to set up special needs trusts for our boys. We'll be meeting with the attorney this Friday afternoon.

Our emergency fund is housed at DW's home-town bank, and that transfer has not been made yet.

Our girls already have 529's set up, but we have not allocated any new funds toward them.

I received some good advice from my forum post. We may pay off the truck (10K) and set up an automatic monthly payment for a Roth IRA for DW for the amount that had been going to the truck payment.

Still not sure exactly how everything will be spent and allocated. It will not be spent on a luxury car or a Caribbean cruise.

$30,000 represents a bit more than half of my annual salary. Heck, 10 years ago, I wasn't even making 30K in one year. I (we) are overwhelmed by the generosity of this gift. It gives us the flexibility to attend to some savings goals that have been sorely neglected, as well as make some needed improvements around the homestead.

We were at our county fair last week. Our girls show animals, and take projects like sewing, entomology and baking.

DD1 was Grand Champion Poultry Showperson. She won both her goat showmanship and her market classes. Her pigs earned 2nd place in her pen class and 3rd in her heavyweight hog class. The dress she sewed was Best of Class, as was her entomology collection. She earned a public speaking trophy.

DD1 was made a 4-H Princess. She was 2nd place in her goat showmanship class and earned a medal for dramatic reading. Other projects included sewing a dress, baking cookies, and insect and wildflower collections. She excelled in pig showmanship.

And, DS1 participated in the fair for the first time by showing a goat and exhibiting a bead necklace.

DD1 sold her hogs for a very good price, and her goat for not such a good price. DD2 chose to not sell her goat at the fair. It is a female, and she will add it to our breeding herd at home.

As a family, we spend quite a bit of money at the fair, in addition to spending some money on baby sitters and day care for the boys. We've been so down and out broke past years, that we've always had to watch money very closely. We didn't go over-board by any means, but let the money flow a little more freely than in the past.

I assigned a percentage value for each of the assets listed on our balance sheet. That is - the percentage that each asset represents of the value of our total assets. Not sure why - just to see where everything falls, I guess. Nothing too fancy.

Retirement Fund: 56.7%
House: 34.2%
Pick Up Truck: 4.9%
Van: 1.8%
Household Items: 1.1%
Lawn Mower: 0.8%
Savings Account: 0.4%
Checking Account: 0.1%

These are not net values - that is the value that I used for the house is an estimate of its current market value, and not value minus mortgage.

Yes, our share of the value of the lawn mower is 2X our savings account. We own the lawn mower with my parents.

The value I placed on household items is probably low. I assign a value to recognize that there is a value there, but I've put in no effort to inventory, and come up with a solid number.

It's the end of the month, and I get paid tomorrow. So, our checking balance is low as of this writing.

Clearly most of our net worth is in the house and retirement fund. Retirement fund is 1.6X greater in value than our house. That's probably good. But, again the value on the retirement fund is solid, and value on the house is an estimate, and I probably low-balled it.

This story begins a couple weeks ago when DD2 began complaining about a tooth ache. DD2 is a bit more of a whiner than her older sister is, and it can be difficult for DW and me to discern when the pain is real, and when it is being exaggerated.

The pain persisted, and DW set up an appointment for her with our dentist. That appointment was set up for one week ago.

Last Wednesday, the day before the appointment, I got a call from DW. She was on the road with DD2. The pain was unbearable, and she was hoping I could get an appointment yet that day. I called around, and finally found a dentist who could see her that afternoon.

The dentist claimed that the pain was superficial, and nothing to worry about. Just keep on with the ibuprofen as needed. Not hard to believe, given DD2's history. So, we cancelled the appointment with our regular dentist. Bad move.

The pain persisted and persisted, so we set up another appointment with our regular dentist. That was this last Monday. Turns out that the previous dentist had not set the X-ray low enough to see the entire root and nerve. The tooth is dead, and needs a root canal. (I should add that this tooth had a deep cavity about a year ago). Our regular dentist prefers to not perform root canals on young children, so DD2 was referred to a dentist in a larger town.

Fortunately, the first, and last good turn of luck was realized when the appointment was set up for first thing the next morning. That dentist decided the tooth was too young and immature for a root canal. The dentist also claimed that while he is not typically an advocate of pulling teeth, he saw no alternative. This dentist did prescribe an anti-biotic, which has helped with the swelling and healing. But, this dentist does not pull teeth, that is below his pay grade, and our regular dentist would have to do that.

So, her appointment with the regular dentist was today. Our regular dentist strongly disagrees that the tooth is not a candidate for a root canal. We would, of course, prefer for her to keep the tooth. So, we're going with that. The dentist also did some prep work for the root canal today that has further relieved the swelling.

My insurance covers 1/2 the cost of dental procedures. So, our out-of-pocket for the root canal will be $650.