Horton Home

I think Anson has heard those words mumbled around our house almost every day this month. The weather in Kirkland is “beautiful,” according to random people in the street. It’s sunny and hot (but not too hot).  Unfortunately, my allergies have kicked into super-crazy-evil mode this year. I have tried avoiding the outdoors, but my current job is making that near impossible. You see, I’m teaching elementary summer school. We have TWO recesses every day. TWO!  So, I take solace in watching Christmas movies and drinking hot cocoa while waiting for Anson to get home from work. I know that Christmas will be here soon (and hopefully snow will come with it). Just 148 days to go!

Aside from that, things have been going pretty well. I have a job teaching special education in the fall. It will be at the preschool level, so I’m pretty excited. I’m hoping there’s a unit on teddy bears   I’ve been slowly skimming through some of my old textbooks while also trying to finish the Wheel of Time books before the new one comes out. I’m almost done Book 10—it’s amazing how little has happened in that book. Hopefully Book 11 will be better

For those of you who haven’t talked to us in a while—Anson and I recently spent a bunch of time in Maryland. We had a lot of celebrating to do!  On June 12th, we got to meet our new niece, Mia Elaine!

That’s not the greatest picture of her (I have one of her smiling somewhere—probably hidden on my phone), but I like it because she’s sleeping in the blanket I made her

The very next day, on June 13th, we got a new sister-in-law! Welcome to the family Daniela!!!

And on June 25th  we got a new brother-in-law! Welcome to the family Tim! There’s no way out—probably should have told you that before you said “I do”

While in Maryland, Anson and I also got to visit with our good friends—Mark , Ioana and Dave. We all went to Hershey Park one weekend. There is only one picture of the trip (mostly because I didn’t want to carry around a camera while I was on the roller coasters). It accurately expresses how each of us feel about roller coasters:

Aside from all the excitement with family additions, we had some time to relax and got addicted to a new tv show (thanks Angie and Eric!). We’ve been watching NCIS non-stop since we got back. We’re on season 3 now. We’re actually buying them, so we’ll be able to lend them out and get everyone on the west coast addicted as well. Yay!

And now it’s about time for Anson to be getting home from work—so I’m off to go daydream about snowflakes and stockings

Anson and I have decided to get an air conditioner for our new house. Maybe I’m getting old, but this seems much harder than the last time we did this! I’ve spent the past couple of weeks interviewing contractors to install it. Of course, no 2 contractors offer the same air conditioners. And Consumer Reports doesn’t give enough information to be able to make a detailed comparison. There is, in fact, only one chart (which, of course, has the company that made our furnace on the very bottom of the list…good sign). I determined that all of the AC units we were looking at were about the same, so it came down to the contractors.

We’ve decided to go with the contractor that installed the air conditioner at our old house. Most of the articles we read said that having a good contractor install it is almost as important as which kind of AC unit you choose. At least we know this guy does good work!

The next step is where it gets a little frustrating—the paperwork. I started the process of applying for a permit to have it installed. I called the City of Kirkland offices and they led me to the paperwork that homeowners need to fill out. Naturally, it’s not written in any format that a homeowner without experience in the field could understand. There are a ridiculous amount of abbreviations! So, I’ve spent three days calling my contractor and having him answer questions for me (he’s been very nice and understanding). I finally had all of his information filled out when I discovered a line that asks for the electrician’s information. Sigh. I called the contractor and he gave me the name of the electrician he uses. I called the electrician who informed me that he pulls his own permits and I cannot pull the permit for him. I explained that I am MORE THAN HAPPY to have him pull the Electrical Permits, but I still need his information to complete the Mechanical Permits. He said, “okay, what do you need to know?”. I started to read off the list of 3 things that I needed from him and he had no idea what the form was asking for. Of course. Sigh. So, he said he would take the weekend to look up the form and call me with the information. Why is this so complicated?  Hopefully we will have AC before I head back to MD…

Maybe this is just my luck with home improvement projects? I’m convinced a trained monkey could (in general) do a better job than I can.  Let’s take the curtain rod for example. I spent 2 days working on, what the instructions described as, a 30 minute project. All I needed to do was drill 6 holes (2 for each hook), put in wall anchors, screw the hooks into place, and put the rod in it. Easy, right?  Well, maybe for a trained monkey!  I’ll list the ways I failed at this project below, in chronological order of A-HA! moment (the moment I realized what I had done wrong):

1. I drilled the holes in the wall, but did not drill deep enough. I discovered this as I tried to push in the wall anchors and they would only go in 3/4 of the way.  I even tried hammering them in and they wouldn’t move! Drilling FAIL!
2. On the 2nd day I went back and re-drilled all of the holes. In order to drill deep enough I had to stand on a stool holding the drill above my head and push it into the wall for about 5 minutes for each hole. On the 6th hole (that’s right, the last one) I accidentally hit the reverse button on the drill…and it went right in. I’d like to congratulate Anson’s Uncle Joe for figuring this one out!  I even double-checked! At least, I thought I had double-checked…FAIL!
3. After re-drilling all of the holes, I tried to push the wall anchors in. Unfortunately, I had tried to hammer them in the day before. That, apparently had distorted them enough that they would STILL not go in any further than before. FAIL! So, I hammered them again. Secretly, the hooks are probably still about 1/8 of an inch from the wall. But Anson hasn’t noticed. Though that might be due to the fact that I instructed him not to touch the curtains EVER.
4. The first hole, upon putting a mild amount of weight on the hook, would not hold the screw. Hook FAIL! So, I found a random, longer screw in the tool box and used that. I’m pretty sure it went straight through the wall anchor, but it also holds the hook in place. Phew!
5. The middle two holes were uncooperative. Even with extra drilling AND hammering, the wall anchors were still too far out to put the hook up (not to mention, the hammer was taking out chunks of wall instead of pushing the anchor in…oops!).   AND, since I hammered the anchors so much, they are now too soft to remove from the wall. It kind of looks like the wall has little tubes coming out of it. I’m categorizing this one as a hammering FAIL. Though, the curtains cover it up. Speaking of the curtains…
6. We wanted room-darkening curtains. I bought a cream/brown striped set that looked like it matched our bedroom set. When I hung it up, it turned into a 1970’s yellowish-brown. But, since it technically darkens the room and covers the holes in the wall….FAIL-ish?

I’d like to dedicate this post to Angie—and ask her to remember it when I get to MD and she needs help around the house

Anybody who has ever lived with me (or near me) knows that I have the uncanny ability to make anything with wires stop working for no clear reason. And normally this wouldn’t bother me. I happened to marry someone with the much-appreciated ability to fix things with wires. But I just don’t understand how it happens! If I could understand what I was doing wrong, I’d be able to avoid it in the future. But, no such luck. I hit the ‘on’ button and BLAMO!

Today I broke the food processor. I took it out of the pantry, plugged it in and nothing happened. I took apart all the pieces, put it back together, plugged it in…still nothing happened. I eventually gave up and sliced the apples for the pie by hand. I just can’t understand how I broke it. And, what’s worse, the past few times I have broken things, it has happened in sets of 3.  Most recently, I got the xbox, my laptop, and garage door to stop working all in one day. So, now I am sitting in my living room, carefully  considering how likely I am to break the tv remote and how expensive it would be to replace if I do permanent damage (my laptop has survived this before, so I have faith that it can handle my bad luck today). For the next 24 hours I am going to try to avoid touching anything too expensive (no coffee for me!) and hopefully I won’t break anything else. Thank goodness I have such a forgiving husband

Anson pointed out to me recently that I haven’t posted in a while. So, I thought I would write a quick post on what we have been up to

We’ve been working on getting achievements for xbox games. Anson has been playing a lot of Mass Effect while I have been working on Fable and CSI: Hard Evidence. CSI was pretty easy and only took a day. Fable is KILLING me. The game has many faults—the most annoying is that it makes your character fat. We looked this up and it takes about 20 minutes of having your character eat celery and then sleep to fix it. For some reason, it’s just not as much fun to play a fat character…and bald. The game also made me bald. ARGH! Anyway, I’m working on one more big achievement and then I’m giving up on it.

Aside from games, I’ve been reading book 8 in the Wheel of Time series. I’m halfway through and I can’t wait to get to the books Brandon Sanderson wrote/is writing (books 12-14). Anson just read a book by a new author he really likes. Unfortunately, that author hasn’t written anything else (yet!). 

The Easter Bunny was kind enough to give us some new books for Easter. Anson got The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell. You see, the Easter Bunny saw an interview with Sarah Vowell on the Daily Show. She talked about this book and the EB thought it would be perfect for Anson. I got Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith. It’s the same author who wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, so I’m pretty excited to read it (both of those books are in my ‘to-read’ pile– I really hope the author is good). The EB also gave us a few seasons of 24, so we’ve been watching that in the evenings. Currently, we’re on season 5. Thus far, my favorite part of season 5 is when the CTU staff makes a statement about how the probable success rate of their plan goes down to less than 20% if Jack Bauer isn’t helping them. Hah!

I’ve been doing a bit of church stuff. I still play in the bell choir and our concert is coming up next month. Yay! I also teach a Sunday School class and am being trained to be an Assisting Minister. I guess I have technically already been trained, but they didn’t want to start the newbie out on the Easter services. I’m sure that I will eventually sign up to work some services

And, of course, I’ve been working on planning Angie’s baby shower, Mary’s bachelorette party, and Mary’s bridal shower (though Angie has been taking charge on the last one). I can’t give too many details here, since much of it is secret. I will say, however, that I have not yet been able to get photoshop to do what I want it to—but I will MWA HA HA HA! <that comment was directed at YOU, Mary>

… to have two posts in a row titled “can’t sleep.”  I haven’t posted in a couple weeks.  I’d like to say it was because I was too busy, but I think it has more to do with being too lazy.  I’ve been off my normal schedule ever since getting back from the Bahamas last month.  I’m unbelievably envious of people that can maintain a constant weight.  I’m either losing weight or gaining it.  I’m currently on the later half of that cycle.  Rach and I have several weddings coming up, so I figure it’s time to buckle down and start getting back in shape for the upcoming craziness.  I have to say I’m more than a little excited for the couples.  In just a little over two months Rach and I will be attending no less than 3 weddings (and we’d really like to attend 4 if 2 of them didn’t happen to be on the same day). 

Outside of work, which has been particularly busy recently, Rach and I have been re-watching West Wing and 24.  We finished West Wing a couple of weeks ago, and just finished season 2 of 24 this weekend.  West Wing is definitely one of my favorite shows of all time.  The beauty of the show is that it makes me believe in our government.  It’s obviously idealized, but I love that regardless of whether I happen to agree with the point that the character is trying to make, they are all incredibly competent.  It’s so easy to be cynical about what happens in D.C. and pretty much every time I hear Palin talk I want to gnash my teeth and gnaw at the furniture, but I continue to believe that with enough time and energy we can make progress.  You may hate the healthcare legislation but it gives me hope.  It gives me hope outside of the specifics; it gives me hope that our government isn’t so impossibly paralyzed by partisanship that it’s possible to tackle a problem of such infinite complexity and contention.    So thank goodness for Obama, and thank goodness for West Wing.  Hesiod was right, the box contains more than just earthquakes, snowstorms and war.

Rach and I have also been playing a fair bit of Xbox.  We just finished off King Kong, Lego Indiana Jones, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Assassin’s Creed 2.  King Kong was terrible… terriiiible.  It was a pretty easy 1000 gamer points, but they forgot to add the fun before releasing the game.  The problems are too many to list, but the highlights are the poor controls, amazingly poor combat, and a boring story.  It gets slightly better towards the end but it’s not worth playing unless you want quick points.  The rest of the games were all fun to varying degrees.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a very fast play through, but had a lot of fun moments.  It reminded me of the first time I saw TMNT on television; Aaron and I thought they had a misprint in the TV guide.  It’s geared towards kids, but Rach and I had fun playing it together.  Probably the biggest problem with the game is that the last boss is 10x harder than any other part of the game. 

Lego Indiana Jones was fun but definitely less enjoyable than Lego Batman.  LIJ follows the first 3 Indy movies very closely so there aren’t a lot of surprises.  The puzzles are also a lot less intuitive (in a puzzlehunt we would say they are ‘un-clued’ meaning that you just have to try different things until they work, there is no hint that points you in the right direction).   The other problem with LIJ was that there were too many achievements for which you really didn’t make any progress at all on during story mode.  I don’t mind a few, but a play-through probably only gave us half of the achievements, and the rest were things like ‘swing with Indy’s whip 250 times’. 

Assassin’s Creed 2 was amazing.  It’s one of the best 360 games that I’ve played.  I highly recommend it.  It has a good story line, phenomenal graphics, great game play, intuitive controls and a nice progressive talent disclosure system.  The achievements are a lot of fun, and there are really only one or two ‘annoying’ ones.  Grab this game if you haven’t played it yet!

I just started playing Mass Effect (the first one) and so far it’s really, really good.  It’s a ‘space opera’ RPG and the universe and story line seem great so far.  The game play takes some getting used to, and I currently have it on casual and still end up dying a fair bit, but I’m slowly learning how to control the squad, upgrade items, manage inventory, etc.  It’s funny because it reminds me a lot of one of my favorite games – Star Flight 2.  Star Flight 2 was a DOS game released in 1989 and I played it constantly when it came out.  Obviously there have been changes in 20 years, but it makes realize how astonishing SF2 was for its time.  It had hundreds of worlds to explore, and something like 30 alien races to interact with.  Its graphics are atrocious by today’s standards, but the scale of the game was epic for something that came on a 1.44mb floppy.  Ah, nostalgia…

I can’t sleep for some reason, so I figured I’d write a post and then start work early.  Honestly there hasn’t been a lot going on since we got back from the Bahamas.  Both Rach and I have been focused on work.  We did meet with an attorney to draft up wills, which puts us close to finishing the set of items that we wanted to take care of this year for our personal finance.  I still need to set up our money market account for our emergency fund which I’ll likely do this weekend. 

The wills process was interesting.  The part that we probably understood the least was the estate tax.  Apparently this year the federal estate tax has ‘expired’ such that if you were to pass away now, then you could leave your inheritance without that tax applying.  In general the tax is stupidly high; in 2001 for example, the estate tax was 55% of your ‘taxable estate’ – which that year was anything over $657,000.  In recent years it’s been more reasonable, in so much as the exclusion amount (the amount of money you can leave without being taxed) has gone up.  In 2009 the exclusion amount was $3.5 million and the tax was 45%.  Who knows what the estate tax will be like in 150 years when I might have to worry about it, but given the trend it will 1) exist, and 2) have a “low” exclusion amount, and 3) be a stupidly high tax rate.  This isn’t even considering a tax levied estate tax.  For WA the estate tax is decoupled from the federal tax, which ranges from 10-19% depending on your taxable estate.  So if you own property in WA and you want to leave $10 million dollars and you die next year, you would be taxed 55% on $9 million of that, and another 19% on $8 million.  That’s a lot of tax!

The investigation was enlightening.  In general I think it’s perfectly reasonable for the govt. to impose an estate tax.  I think a $1 million threshold is too low however; minimally the threshold should increase over time, and yet it 2011 its scheduled to ‘reset’ to $1 million instead of the $3.5 million that it was in 2009. 

So are there decent ways to minimize the estate tax?  I think so.  First, why die with that much money?  Amassing wealth for the joy of watching your the numbers on your bank statement go up seems silly.  I, personally, believe that if you end up collecting a lot of money, then you should try to spend some of it!  Outside of potentially helping you relax and have fun, it helps the economy when you spend money.  Second, you don’t have to wait until you die to start distributing your wealth to your heirs.  You can hand over a certain amount of money as ‘gifts’ tax-free each year.  Why not do that?  You then get to leave more money and you get to see how your heirs use it!  Third, in general it’s probably better to leave most of your money to the youngest/younger generation.  That way it’s most likely longer before that same money gets to a point where it could be eligible for the estate tax again.  Finally, there are various tax shelters that allow you to leave more money, given certain restrictions, without the estate tax applying.  For example, our lawyer suggested that one such mechanism was to create a trust if either Rach or I died.  We could ‘leave’ that trust up to $1 million (depending on the estate tax threshold at the time) without worrying about the estate tax.  In addition, another $1 million could be left tax-free to whoever is living longer.  The survivor could draw from the trust for various things (though not for everything) – medical expenses, ‘life-style maintenance’, but not things like extravagant vacations.  When the survivor passes away the money in the trust would automatically pass to our heirs without being taxed, and would no longer be limited by any of the trust restrictions.  That’s in addition to the normal amount that could be left to our heirs without being affected by the estate tax. 

I think Rach and I will mostly try to avoid dying with a huge amount of money.  We’re pretty successful at spending money to date, so maybe it won’t be a problem longer term  

We finally have all of our furniture! YAY!

I spent some time yesterday working on a photosynth of the main open area of our house. It took quite a bit of work! I took about 400 pictures and the program recommends no more than 300. So, after a LONG synthing process, I got a final product that turned out okay. It’s 90% synthy   It’s not quite as smooth as I would like, but I’m pretty sure it would explode if I tried to add more pictures. Anyway, take a look at our new furniture:

http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=e1f9c157-b9a2-4c05-9512-009e1c70c3a2&m=false&i=0:0:190&c=3.55308:-1.57147:-0.0275943&z=773.136308079187&d=-1.58668134138256:-0.711237495281171:-0.625584775994399&p=0:0&t=False

Rach’s poem of awesomeness:

Twas the week of the wedding, and all through the Bahamas
Friends and family all gathered, despite weather traumas
Swimsuits were worn as we soaked in the sun
Knowing the wedding was soon to come
On Monday guests gathered to meet and greet
At a local bar with decorations so neat!
Tuesday’s rehearsal dinner was super
Anson snuck in ketchup for his burger and grouper
Wednesday brought with it a weather surprise
We awoke to see trees bend before our eyes!
The staff at the resort were calm with assurance
That the wind would not be a wedding deterrent!
“Now Jane! Now Eric! Now All! Stay calm!
We shall move the ceremony to the resort’s side lawn!
Among the buildings, the wind will be the norm.
And a reception indoors will keep everyone warm.”
So, with hairspray and pins we made preparations
To share in all the wedding elations.
Out to the lawn, we all made our way
To watch Eric and Jane on their very special day.
Jane walked down the aisle with beauty and grace
While Eric had the most blissful look on his face.
They said their  “I Do”s, then we headed indoors
To watch the newlyweds on the dance floor
The entire evening was amazing, no doubt.
It reminded us all of what love is about.
So, the rest of the stay was spent with good friends
And it was so sad on Saturday when it all had to end
Back to the real world we flew on a plane
But as we left, if you listened, you could hear us exclaim
“Congrats Jane and Eric! You’re married! Woo! Woo!
We couldn’t be more happier or more ecstatic for you!”

Rach and I are now on the plane flying back from the Bahamas.  We had an amazing time; in fact, you can tell just how amazing a time we had because I’m writing this after about 17 hours of flying and layovers (with another 2 or so to go!).  The Bahamas were our first international destination vacation and actually our first time out of the country ever.  It was definitely a new experience to go through customs and to see how different life is in another part of the world – even a part as close to the US as the Bahamas.

Of course, the Bahamas are pretty straight forward with respect to international travel.  Getting through customs going into the country was a snap.  They asked us a single question, and were mostly interested in getting data on us for increasing their tourism (which is obviously their biggest industry).  The islands have their own currency, but it exchanges 1 for 1 against the US dollar.  That made it super easy to spend money, which we happily did   The only issue is that if you use credit you get charged an international exchange rate on purchases, though with First Tech that rate is only 1%.  Of course, an ‘exchange rate’ when the currency is 1 for 1 seems a little silly.

We landed in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, last Saturday and then took a small propeller plane to Marsh Harbour on Abaco.  We then had a van drive us over to Treasure Cay (pronounced “key”) where we spent the vast majority of our time.  We shared a beautiful condo with Dave, Sarah and Chris at the Bahama’s Beach Club.  The condo looked out over a pool and then directly onto the ocean.  We ended up getting a super great deal on it because of the time of year and economy, so it was only about $110/night.  Getting a condo was awesome; it had a full kitchen and a washer/dryer.  We actually made dinner most nights there.  It’s hard to describe how beautiful the area is; but it looked so incredible that it was like standing in a stock photo picture of ‘paradise.’  It was almost unreal:

The island itself is definitely one of the more out of the way places in the Bahamas.  It’s decidedly different than the places that Rach and I have vacationed in the past.  First off, there was only one real restaurant.  Luckily that restaurant had pretty excellent food; I had an amazing lobster tail there the Sat. we landed.  It had been forever since I had lobster, so I was unsure whether I was going to like it – but it was amazing.  I originally thought crime was going to be an issue in the area, but it was clear after a couple of days that at Treasure Cay it isn’t a concern at all.  It’s basically a small little retirement/resort town.  The grocery store was also in walking distance of our condo so we bought a lot of stuff from there over the week.  The prices for food, despite having no tax, were anywhere from 2x-7x as much as they are in the states.  It was pretty crazy.  Abaco is geared towards golfers and fisherman, but it’s a pretty perfect place if you want to lie back and relax as well.  We essentially had the resort to ourselves for the first half of the week which was great for reading, sunbathing, and relaxing.

Obviously the main reason for heading to the Bahamas was to celebrate with Eric and Jane.  The wedding was beautiful.  I had the occasional responsibility as best man, but mostly I just hung around and provided moral support for Eric (not that he really needed it, he was having a great time with virtually zero jitters).  The ceremony itself was on Wednesday and was held outside.  Unfortunately a freak wind storm blew in that required moving the location around a bit, but the resort folks and Jane pulled it off amazingly well.  The reception ended up being held inside a large condo which actually allowed everyone to be seated at essentially the same table.  The photographers must have taken several thousand pictures; I really can’t wait to see how they turn out!  Given the beauty of the location, the skill of the photographers, and the amount of joy at the ceremony and reception I think they are probably going to have one of the best wedding albums ever.  After the ceremony, we had some appetizers at the reception; there were enormous shrimp that were amazingly flavorful as well as a really great tasting mushroom stuffed with crab.  After mingling for a bit we sat down for dinner and then speeches.  I finally got to give the best man speech that I’ve been working on for a while and I think Eric and Jane liked it, so I’m pretty happy about it.  After the speeches Eric and Jane cut the wedding cake, which was 3 layers (coconut, chocolate, and red velvet).  Rach and I can attest to the fact that the chocolate and red velvet sections were very, very good.  Finally there was the dancing, which despite desperately trying to avoid, I ended up doing some of.  I’m generally not a huge fan, but for the few dances I went out for I had a great time.  All-in-all it was fantastically memorable, and hugely fun.

There were lots of things I really enjoyed about our vacation, but a few really stood out.  First, it was just great to be down there hanging out with friends.  We ended up playing a lot of a game called Zombie Fluxx which Dave and Sarah introduced us to – we’re big fans now!  Second, the place was laid back and relaxed.  It was easy to just doze off, read a lot, and generally unwind.  Third, the gym looked out over the beach and when I went in the mornings I would get a beautiful breeze off of the ocean.  Finally, renting a condo that had a kitchen and laundry meant we could pack light and eat reasonably healthy and cheaply while we were there.

After this trip we definitely want to try out Hawaii in the future.  The only really frustrating part about the trip was giving up two whole days for the flight.  It actually took us 24 hours from when we got to Seatac to get to the condo.  Rach and I are definitely not used to that much time spent in airports and planes, but it ended up being surprisingly bearable since a lot of us had the same flight so we could entertain each other during layovers.  Hawaii seems like it would be similar in some ways, and a lot closer.  We’ll have to see when we’ll the chance to try it!

You’ve won a brand new car!  It can replace the Donkey that you’ve been riding around on. 

I’ve been driving a 1996 Honda Accord for several years now.  It was a great car.  It was very reliable, extremely economical, and hideously boring.  I honestly didn’t mind that much since I wasn’t driving very far at all on any given day.  Basically I’d drive to work and back which consisted of a total of an 8 minute drive… assuming there was heavy traffic.  It was also nice to basically ignore the car and have it continue to hum along.  That said, the car had all kinds of issues.  It was stupidly loud – most people thought I had intentionally removed the muffler so I could out decibel a motorcycle.  It was a manual transmission which meant Rach couldn’t ever drive it anywhere, and that I quickly got tired of driving it in any sort of real traffic.  It had a big rusting dent in the side from when some kids in our old neighborhood decided to try to break into it.  It didn’t have a stereo because, perhaps the same kids, would steal it every time I got a new one (lost two that way).  The ‘defogger’ would frequently reverse itself and decide to fog up all of the windows instead.  Oh, and it was a nice shiny color of Old.  It likely would’ve lasted another 100k miles, but Rach and I had been saving up some money for a new car for a while and we decided it was a good time to go looking.

My new car is a 2007 Acura TSX, and I love it.  I love it for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which is I feel like I got a super good deal on it.  It’s got about 50k miles on it, but it shines like its brand new.  I convinced the dealer to take my ‘96 Accord as a trade-in for over $4k.  Given that we only paid 10k off the lot for it originally, and its bluebook value was closer to $2k of scrap metal, and it looked sort of like it was taken care of by a semi-domesticated band of wolves, I was pretty stoked.  In fact, overall, we ended up paying enough under the original sticker price on the Acura that KBB actually told me the trade-in value of it was almost equivalent to what I paid.  I expect this means that the engine will fall out in a couple of weeks, but for the moment I’m ecstatic.  Two important things that I learned about negotiating for a car is that it’s critical to start at a super low price point in the bargaining process (you may get it), and second to always negotiate on the “Out the Door” price, particularly if you live in a state with a 9.8% sales tax on autos.

I had no idea how many advancements they have made to cars since ‘96.  I thought it was pretty advanced to have power windows; after all, my car didn’t even play music any more.  My TSX has so many cool features that I could probably go on and on about, but there are some which are just super, super cool.  It’s automatic.  I know, I know, simple right?  I love it.  I just got so tired of dealing with a manual transmission.  It has heated seats which are just absolute paradise in the mornings.  It has auto climate control, and individually customizable heat/cool for the driver and passenger.  Now I don’t have to stew in my own sweat when it’s 70 degrees out and Rach decides to put on the heater .  It has seat memory so that you can set it once and if someone else drives your car and adjusts your settings you can just hit a button and it reverts to your saved configuration.  I don’t know if anyone has noticed this before, but Rach and I aren’t the same height.  This feature is inspired.  But wait, it’s even better – it’s tied to the keyfob.  So if I use my keyfob to open the doors (yep! remote entry) then when I open the door it updates to my settings.  The car has a hands-free link and I can’t remember the last time I used my cell phone so often.  It’s great to be able to chat with family and friends while I drive home.  It has different programmable voice prompts and commands in an extremely calming voice.  I sometimes hit the push to talk button just for the extra company.  It has a system called ‘home-link’ which is basically a programmable transmitter that I can use to open our garage door, so I no longer need to hang anything on my sunshade.  The car has an auto-dim rearview mirror – I don’t understand how it actually works, but I dig that I never end up blinded by the SUV’s headlights behind me.  It has built in sensors that monitor things like tire pressure, and a trip computer that shows fuel economy and estimates remaining range before a refill is needed.  It automatically resets the tripometer when you refill the tank.  It has comfy leather seats with at least 8 million adjustable settings.  It has cupholders in the front and back.  It has a 6 disc CD changer, built in XM receiver, and radio controls on the steering wheel.  It’s got a sunroof, heated mirrors, fog lights, interval wipers, 6 air bags and it comforts me when I’m feeling down. 

Here it is

As most of you know we recently sold our Redmond house.  We now have a stack of cash sitting in the Savings account of our bank depreciating daily, and that prodded me to do some research around personal finance.  I posted last week about analyzing our spending over the last year and deriving what I consider to be a pretty realistic budget.  That was our first step to putting together a plan moving forward. 

We have several goals.  The first is to establish a reasonable plan for retirement.  The second is to rein in our discretionary spending; or at least minimally track it better.  Our third is to make the money that we do have work for us.  Finally we want to make sure to protect against various catastrophes that might otherwise cause financial hardship/ruin.

To that end, I just finished reading Personal Finance For Dummies which I can now highly recommend.  It’s a fantastic survey of the various areas that people might classify as ‘personal finance’ and I find the author to be eminently pragmatic which I appreciate.  If you’re looking for a book to understand how to ‘beat the market’ this is definitely not it; this is more about understanding your options and learning what best practices are.

This post captures the set of things that Rach and I are considering implementing in the next month or so.  Another goal that I didn’t mention is that I’d like to get something in place soon that we will only have to monitor minimally.  For example, I have no desire to try day trading.  Outside of already having a day job, I remain convinced that day trading is tantamount to gambling.  I’d rather invest our money in the best way that we can reasonably figure out now and then check up on it every year to make sure that we’ve still allocated things appropriately for our goals.

Retirement

The first subject that I started looking at was retirement.  Retirement means a lot of different things to different people, but to me it means not being required to work a full time job.  In fact, in my current vision of the future I would still probably do part time work even after retirement, but I want that work to be optional.  Our goal is to be able to retire at around 60 years old (yay for 30 more years of work!).  I did spend some time crunching numbers to see whether it was realistic to retire before that… it doesn’t look good without more compromises than we’re willing to make at the moment. 

The nice thing about retirement is that the government offers some nice incentives to save for it.  Ever since I started working for Microsoft I’ve put 15% of my salary towards a pre-tax contribution to a 401k plan.  MS has a great package that includes a certain % matched.  The annoying thing about 401ks is that they have a pre-tax limit for contributions.  At the moment that limit is 16,500/year.  Rach and I have decided that for our 401k we will continue to contribute the max pre-tax per year.  The one snag that we have to be careful of is that if you happen to make enough to hit that limit early in the year, it’s possible to lose out on some of the employer matching money.  I looked around through the MS plan documentation and it turns out that it currently isn’t effecting us (yay!).

I looked into opening a separate IRA either Traditional or Roth to save a bit more, but unfortunately Rach and I cannot take advantage of any of the pre-tax benefits of those accounts because of the income limits imposed.  Frankly I think it’s silly, given the mess that is retirement for a lot of people to make it hard to save, but it is what it is.

At the moment our 401k will be our primary vehicle for retirement contributions.  When Rach starts to work full time, we’ll see if it’s possible to invest in any employer provided pre-tax program.  I’m currently unsure whether the 16,500 limit is per person or per couple.  Either way, it’s not an option for us at the moment.

Our 401k is currently split 40% in international growth stock, 40% in an index fund, and 20% in a midcap growth fund.  We’ve decided that we’re happy with that allocation.  Both Rach and I tend to be risk averse which is why so high a percentage is in an index fund. 

In case anyone is curious, the calculators that we used suggested that we have roughly $3m dollars for retirement.  Assuming consistent contributions, plus our current assets, with an estimated 8% return and 3% inflation we will get there if we wait until 60 to retire.  That’s based on a lot of things that will change of course, but it’s the best estimate that we have at the moment.  Note, I didn’t include Social Security in those calculations; when added if we start withdrawing money at 67 we’d be in good shape.

Emergency fund

We want to establish a well thought out emergency fund.  In the past several years we’ve kept our checking/savings balance quite high (over $20k).  Our checking gives us exactly 0% interest, and our savings account is currently giving us 0.25%.  In short, they are well below inflation and we’ve been wasting money by letting it sit there.  However, because of the high balance we have, in essence, had a nice cushion in the event of anything catastrophic happening (e.g. if I lost my job).  It wasn’t at all intentional though.

The recommendations for emergency fund ‘size’ range anywhere from 3 months to 1 year of expenditures held in a very liquid ‘instant access’ account.  Rach and I have decided to stow away roughly 5 months of current expenditures, though it would likely last  a fair bit longer if we did have any issue since a large chunk of those expenditures are reducible. 

I have had a heck of a time trying to figure out where to put that money.  Our credit union offers accounts that they call ‘Instant Access’ where we could get 1.15% return.  Honestly that return sucks.  Instead I started looking at Money Market accounts.  The major difference is that MMAs aren’t insured, and while they tend to contribute to low-risk investments there is always the chance that we can lose money with them – particularly if interest rates skyrocket when the economy recovers.  This is a risk that Rach and I have decided to take.  We’re considering one of two different accounts, and if anyone has a suggestion as to which would be better I’d love to hear it.  We’re either going to go with the Fidelity Money Market Fund (SPRXX) or the Fidelity AMT Tax-Free Money Fund (FIMXX).  This choice seems to have a lot to do with understanding the AMT and unfortunately I’m no tax expert.  To date, Rach and I have never had to pay the AMT, but this year we sold a large amount of stock to cover the down payment on our new house.  I don’t know whether that will affect our AMT status or not.  I am leaning toward the SPRXX account at the moment.

Insurance review

One of the fascinating parts about the book I just read was that it included a section on insurance.  At first I didn’t understand why that would be, but the author makes some fantastic points in the chapter.  Basically, his meta point is that insurance is the way you go about making sure that you protect yourself and your family against financial ruin.  He then enumerates the various types of situations which could result in ruin, and the various insurance that you can buy that helps prevent these situations.  A few things that I had never considered that he mentioned:

• Life insurance is pretty pointless if you’re single with no dependents; it’s also not all that interesting to splurge on life insurance if your spouse is completely capable of continuing their current lifestyle with you gone.
• One of the most important things to cover when you’re younger is your ability to work, so it’s critical that you consider things like accidental disability insurance (workman’s comp will only pay out if you’re hurt on the job, what if you get hurt elsewhere?)
• It makes sense to get enough liability insurance to protect your assets.  If you don’t have very many assets, then the default liability is fine.  What if someone sues you for $1,000,000 though?  If you have $500k of assets and only $100k of protection… well, you do the math.  As your assets increase, it makes sense to consider higher liability insurance, potentially under an ‘umbrella’ plan.
• People pay for silly insurance.  Insurance shouldn’t be used to try to smooth out every day life; if you can afford to pay a $1k deductible if you need to then get insurance that matches; only get covered for things that would be financial ruin.
• This also makes it an easy decision when asked if you want additional ‘warrantees’ on products that you buy.

After reviewing our insurance we’re covered decently well, but I plan on making the following changes:

• We had a rider on our auto insurance which pays for towing in the event of an accident.  Towing isn’t expensive, and it’s pointless to insure against it.  Particularly since we belong to AAA (duh!) so I’m removing it.
• We have Personal Injury Protection on our auto insurance.  Our health insurance will cover both of us in the event of a major accident so this insurance is redundant for us.  PIP would also cover people in our car that didn’t have good health insurance, but the fact of the matter is 99% of the time we drive each other around, and the other 1% of the time we drive folks that also have good health insurance.  It’s not worth it to keep this coverage (and WA doesn’t require it).
• We are investigating increasing our liability coverage, though I haven’t researched rates yet.
• We have gone through our house and recorded serial numbers and taken pictures of all high cost items and stored that information up on a protected share in the cloud.  It should significantly reduce the complexity of making a claim in the future if needed.

Additional investments

Outside of the 401k I mention above, Rach and I have a couple of other investments.  In the past couple years I haven’t been contributing heavily to our employee stock purchase plan.  In retrospect that seems silly.  The ESPP allows us to buy Microsoft stock at a discount rate at various set times during the year.  We can then sell that stock immediately if we choose and get an immediate return (minus income tax).  This is an amazing deal, and we’ll be contributing the maximum to that moving forward. 

After establishing our emergency fund we will still have a large chunk of cash from the sale of our previous house.  We have gone back and forth about what to do with it.  There are really two major options.  We either invest the money in the stock market (likely a mutual fund) or we use the money to pay down the principal on our mortgage.  If we had any high interest debt then the answer would be obvious, but our mortgage has a low interest rate and nice tax benefits.  However, I know that Rach and I will procrastinate if we decide to invest this money into the stock market.  Ultimately, we’ve decided to pay down our mortgage.  It’s almost certainly not the highest return move, but I think for us it makes the most sense.

Final actions

I mentioned we procrastinate right?  We still haven’t written up wills.  This is something that we’re going to throw into this bucket and take care of.  We’re going to write up normal wills, as well as put in place durable power of attorney. 

I’d certainly appreciate any thoughts people might have on our plan, particularly if you see something that you think is jut plain wacko.  Keep in mind that Rach and my risk profile is generally adverse, which means that we’re going to make more conservative decisions than other people (e.g. paying down the mortgage).