Well done
Good work! Do you value your house using its municipal tax assessed value? That works fairly well here except there is a six month lag in valuation timing.
I put it at the lower of the Zillow amount (385,400) and the Redfin amount (388,167) only because I can get those numbers in literally ten seconds. I just type in my house number in the search bar and both links come up.
The actual assessed value is 377,400. Iâm not concerned if my number is off 10k, that is a half-percent error on $2.2M and I donât really pay attention to the $2.2M number either since I canât eat my house. Although I suppose I could sell my house and have a REALLY nice mealâŚ
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Red Lobster for the whole GoA gang, letâs do it!
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I suppose I have to fly you all in and put you all up ⌠FINE âŚ
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Max retirement vehicles (401ks/Roth IRAs/HSA). New company doesnât offer a mega-backdoor Roth 401k, otherwise, fully maxed.
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Pay $12k extra on mortgage before the rate adjusts in '27. More like $6k paid. Unexpected bills restricted liquid cash for a while. Back to $1k/month overpayment.
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Add $100/mo to 529 (no child yet, just getting it rolling). Lowered to $50 for same reasoning, but otherwise done. Back to $100/month.
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Rest of money to taxable brokerage. $12,800 added.
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Maintain new balance sheet. Finally got all my accounts into one spreadsheet and plan to track my net worth across all accounts. Finally assembled my net worth over the past 13 months, retirement vs. non-retirement and with vs. without house.
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Begin broadly tracking expenses as early data for potential early retirement. Starting to track expenses near the end of the year, but I need more data to better know my expenses.
Income increased 23% this year, pre-tax. Planning to direct the extra toward early retirement (brokerage, after the retirement accounts).
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Wouldnât you need to find a Red Lobster?
Final year end:
- max 401k (trad only for me - roth not worth it in current marg bracket) - YES
- max HSA and leave it alone - YES
- pay extra $5K on one of the large loans we have - YES (paid $10K)
- continue to manage the home project and accompanying loan - NO - spiraled and will leak into 2026 impact
- pay for college for youngest without upsetting the above - YES (although prior category impact is inter-related maybe)
- put another IRA-allowed max into inv accounts for self and spouse and convert to Roth - YES
- Work on projection spreadsheet to track savings towards retirement (still nearly a decade out) - YES. I like the sheet. changes will need to occur in 2026 still
- Work on expense projections to understand needs in retirement (still nearly a decade out) - Started, yes.
Overall, accomplished some. Stumbled on the project. When you have a big project, once they swing a hammer, you are kind of at the mercy of things going great (and they never do). COst over-runs were material. Finished result is great, butâŚexpensive. and still not quite finished
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What is the project? You probably told us and I forgot. Iâm proud to say weâve been doing renos for 20+ years, and at this point I only include a +20% adjustment to my estimated cost, and I can hit that. Itâs especially tough if youâre talking multiple trades and, for example, you canât really figure out electrical until you start tearing walls out.
we had a 1 car attached garage and a breezeway (3 season porch). in its place we now have:
4 season mud room w laundry room behind it, new entry/porch area
2 car attached garage with 12 x 25 family room behind it
Hall way from kitchen to new family room with pantry and half bath
2 BR/1ba 800 sqft ADU on top of garage
newer and wider driveway
so main house got benefit of mudroom/st flr laundry/pantry/half bath/family room/larger garage. we also now have an apartment we need to finish and get ready to rent.
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holy crap, that is a project!
HmmmmâŚ.maybe my project for âextra parking spotâ for teenage drivers should become âextra 2-car garageâ so that I can turn this into a dedicated wood-shop one day.
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I donât even want to know what all of that cost, or how many headaches it gave you.
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Even in the interim, a thought. Most garages now for new homes would be 20x20 for a two-car, itâs tight if you have much out there besides two cars. Our house has a 24x24, and that extra little bit is pretty glorious. You can store some tools around the perimeter, and then if you want to work, pull the cars out and go nuts, then put it back.
You folks can obviously do the math, itâs 76 extra sq ft, not huge but thatâs a lot of storage.
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Especially if you want to be able to open one or both front doors to exit said vehicle.
I have a three-car garage that holds one small car. There are cabinets along both sides. No basement, so the rest is storage with several racks.
Did I also mention that I installed 4âx8â boards to create a second floor of space?
Yes, I really need to start throwing shit out.
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Haha, I can get one car in my oversized two-car garage. To be fair, I have a mower, a Vespa, a snowblower, table saw, a gas pump, there is a lot of stuff out there. But I need to organize it, Iâd like to think we could squeeze a second car in there. Iâm close, right now it fits like a car and a half.
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I have 32x21, and I have room for the essential tools around the perimeter (mostly, in front of the parked cars). I have also added a fair bit of cabinetsâ/storage to get a lot of the big things that take up space but arenât heavy (like coolers, or xmas decorations) up and out of the way above the hoods of the cars. It is pretty efficient use at this point IMO - I can get 3 cars in there without banging doors into each other and almost nothing on the floors beyond the stuff on that front wall.
Sawdust is a pain in the ass though. It gets over everything. A dust collector would obviously help, but thatâs now getting into a system that you need dedicated space for it. My garage is backwards in that the single door is closest to the house, otherwise I could consider walling that off into a dedicated workshop.
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This is a game changer
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I am seriously considering this setup. I had a homemade wooden version once and it was badass.
We made 32 wooden shutters last year. I swept up every day, ran the leaf blower a lot. I donât want to brag, but I think itâll be fully cleaned up by 2030.
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