Okay, Fine, I'm Back

Why? I miss blogging. I miss talking/ranting about money and personal finance. So I've fired up a new Blogger account, this time with uber-ugly formatting circa 2005! 

(A stipulation of me returning to blogging is that I don't have to make the blog look nice. Sorry. I did try to pick the best theme that Blogger has to offer, but we're not working with a whole lot of options here.)

And why launch a reboot rather than pick up where I left off on the original $76K Project? 

For one thing, all of my old links are broken and I'm too lazy to fix them. For another, the original blog focused on debt reduction. We've* moved beyond that. Although we still have a sizable student loan (~$30K or thereabouts), most of our fiscal attention has turned to saving, investing (we have quite a bit of catching up to do in terms of our retirement accounts), giving, and spending on the things/experiences we value.

That said, I do plan to move some of the more useful and/or popular $76K Project posts to this blog so that people can still access them. Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe next year. Or... sometime.

*We = Me ($76K), my partner, and my kiddo

When I last posted a year ago, things were not going super well:

• Fortysomething (now in his early 50s) had lost his job due to a COVID/asshole boss combo. He'd picked up some contract work but payment was taking forever. Our savings account was draining like a leaky bucket.
• I was working a part-time online teaching job at $22/hour, 19 hours per week. No benefits, no insurance, no equipment other than that which I provided for myself, no raise in 1.5 years.
• I was actively searching for a full-time job, to no avail. After nine months on the hunt, I was beginning to feel like I'd never get another job ever again.
• Our car was starting to make weird noises and I was concerned that the bottom was literally going to drop out.
• My child was wrapping up several months of online learning and was facing six more depressing months of the same.
• The COVID vaccine hadn't rolled out yet, so we, the super-cautious 76Kers, were still huddled up in our house, diligently avoiding other humans and driving each other bananas.

What a difference a year makes - mostly in a good way!:

• My partner is now back on the job. He returned to his old workplace after new management came in and was able to land a major promotion within his first month back.
• I quit the stupid part-time job. In retrospect, wow, they really lucked out with me. After I quit, it took them something like three months to fill the position, I assume because everyone else could see just how shitty the terms were.
• I found a job with benefits! Yay! In customer service! Ehhhh. I stuck it out despite my phone phobia and just got promoted last week. The pay increase was less than what I asked for, but on the other hand, I won't have to take customer calls in this new role. No more listening to Karen scream into the void about things I can't control.
• We sold our old car back to the dealership and purchased a used SUV - IN CASH! Never thought THAT was something we'd be able to do. It was a major accomplishment for us.
• The kiddo is back in school, interacting with his peers and living a much happier and more normal life than he was last year. 
• We're all vaccinated! Thank you, science and scientists. Although we continue to mask up in indoor settings and aren't too keen on crowds in general, we're far more sociable than we were in November of 2020. I still feel anxious about the pandemic, but less so than I was a year ago.

So what will The $76K Project: Reboot address? A few ideas I've got in mind at the moment:

• Investing and investment planning for people who started saving kinda late. Now that we're working with a higher income, we can funnel more into our 401k accounts. We're behind where we "should" be, but how fervently do we work towards catching up? We're pondering that question as 2021 wraps up and as we set our contributions for 2022.
• Should we try to buy a house in our HCOL area? I posted about this several times on the old blog, and it's something that still comes up frequently for us as renters dealing with a large, often-disorganized property management company in a town with extremely limited housing options. 
• Giving and donations! We've increased our charitable giving over the past year and I'd love to share more about the choices we've made in this regard.
• Kids and money. Now that my son is in high school, college suddenly feels very, very close. Although we don't have any college-dedicated accounts for him, we have started setting aside some money that he can use towards his goals and dreams after graduation.
• The growing wealth gap, from a personal perspective. The past year has made it increasingly obvious that "getting ahead" these days is a massive uphill battle.
• Ranting about whatever I want to rant about, which is what I do best.

If you hated the old blog, you'll probably hate this one even more! 

And if you liked the old blog, welcome back. I've missed you.