Well, it’s somehow (basically) June and closing in on the half-way point of 2021. Insanity, right? As the world slowly chugs back to normal-ish, I’m spending most of my time moving projects along and figuring out how on earth I will unpack my entire garage when I don’t have a closet (my family renter has the largest room with the walk-in-closet, which he uses as a library since he owns very little other than books.) So. I have to figure that out.

Despite my whining about work stuffs, I’m feeling pretty good about making it through the year as long I can keep chugging along. No hopes and dreams of getting a knockout performance review and being promoted or anything like that. I could stay at this company 10 years more and would probably never see a raise or title increase. Which is why I’m still, albeit less obsessively these days, thinking about what’s next.

But I also have realized that IF I can negotiate a WFH situation (not sure I can into next year) then it might make sense to stay for a bit longer. It’s definitely worth applying (and hopefully interviewing) starting around Feb next year, but I don’t have to jump to the next thing. This job, as stressful and frustrating as it can be at times, seems somewhat manageable for me. I have a sense for how to do it well, even with some of the newer things my new boss wants me to do, and I think I can sort those out too. Again, I’m kind of limited in going above and beyond since I seem to get penalized every time I offer any creative ideas to make things better or do more than is expected of me (which seems to be the requirement for a high performance review and promotion?!) BUT it’s kind of nice to, for once, have some sort of feeling that I can just stick it out, get the work done, try to fly by invisible, make people happy, and have time to maybe get healthy and maybe see my kids a bit before they’re off to school and such.

So I’ve got these 7 months left to get through with the best work I can do. I think it’s achievable as long as I tell my ego to shut the fruck up. I’m being treated horribly but no one cares when I’m making as much as I’m making this year and I get it, that’s fair, I don’t deserve to be treated with respect or anything. At least no one is yelling at my face. I also feel good(?) knowing some of my colleagues are leaving soon because the environment has gotten toxic, so I know it’s not all me. I think their leaving is a huge loss to the organization but doubt it will be enough for things to change. People don’t stay in jobs that long here anyway, you do your 4 years of vesting and then you move on or you can’t keep the same income. It’s sad that’s how it’s structured as companies don’t really care if they lose that knowledge and talent, but I guess it saves them money over time. Anyway. I can leave anytime between Jan 1, 2022 and April 1, 2023. I’ll be in no rush and just try to find the right next fit. The only rush I’m in is trying to get into a new company before I attempt to have my last baby. I don’t want to go through this company as the woman who took 3 maternity leaves, and I’d also like to find a company that covers IVF since I’ll be 39 (!,!,!,!??) when hopefully getting pregnant with my last kid.

Anyway, this month has been pretty flat for net worth growth because it went down then came back up. It’s kind of sad that I didn’t sell out of more of my company stock as it hasn’t come back up and my dreams of hitting $3M this year are no longer viable. That’s ok, though. I’ve got a solid plan to get to $3M in about 5 years. And I’ve decided one I get to $3M, which includes having $150k per 529 plan locked, loaded, and forgotten about, I can relax a bit when it comes to spending.

My plan is basically pay the mortgage a year in advance so I always have that safety net (won’t lose my house for a year) and just let it all roll. By 43 or so we should have $3M unless the stock market tanks. A lot of that increase will be gains on the current investments but it also includes still putting a lot of income to savings. Once we get to $3M, I don’t think I’ll need to save as much. We’ll still max out our retirement accounts, but I’ll feel good about where we are so we can spend more on home furnishings, maybe save for and add on to our house or even move to the town where I really want to live. I figure my in-law will probably live with us for 5 more years, and him putting money to us instead of rent helps too. So instead of our mortgage being $7k, it’s $5k a month, which includes about $2k going to principle, so we’re basically paying $3k a month to live here, which makes my brain feel better knowing we were paying $2.5k for a 1 bedroom apartment and now we have a house with a yard. I try to ignore the lost gains on the downpayment and principal.

Anyway…

Here is where we are start of June and updated stitch goals for the year. It’s unlikely we can be up another $450k this year (my estimated additional savings for us as of June 1 is about $200k after expenses (due to the remainder of my stock vesting and living fairly frugally for the rest of the year), so that would mean our total investments (1.78)  would have to increase by $250k or about 15% in 7 months — unlikely.)

I’d say more realistically we’re looking at closing the year out with $2.2M, maybe flat, but if flat then hopefully there will be a run up at some point where we’ll see increase in the stock market. Or it could all crash and we could close the year out at $1M. Who knows. That would suck. I want to get to the point where we have $3M in investments then I can just live life and not worry about saving a ton more and let those investments ride for years so they can go up and down and not bother me much. Then with $3M invested it will get to $5M eventually, especially if we continue to max out our retirement accounts but not add more to our savings otherwise. I’ll probably start a small UTMA for my kids once eligible for gifting them again (since we’re superfunding 529 this we can’t give them any gifts again for 5 years) – I figure I’ll start doing small contributions to UTMA in year 6 and then whenever they get their first jobs I’ll start matching their income so they can all start Roths. That should fall in line nicely with when I’ll have enough saved up to feel like I can do that without impacting our future. It also will be around the time when my mom will need money probably so I want to make sure I have enough saved where I can help her if needed and pay to fly out to visit her frequently when she can no longer travel (that hopefully will be in a bit longer, but good to know I have the money to do it so I don’t have to worry about spending a lot on flights to see her.)

What I feel best about is where the 529s are right now. My parents gave me the gift of my education and while I can never pay that back to them, I can pass that gift down to my kids. And I will. With $225k already saved in 529s, I’m well on my way to making sure my kid’s undergrad is covered in full — and if the market works for me it’s possible they can have grad school covered and/or their kid’s college education covered (and if I’m still alive by  the time my kids have kids — the I should be in a place financially where I can help put them through college too.)

I’m hoping I am alive that long as my health has been not the best lately, but I’m starting to feel a bit better with random “flares” of who knows what. I know everyone thinks my health issues are related to my having given birth earlier this year and maybe they are but the headaches seem possibly vaccine related (they got really bad after second shot then went away about 3 weeks after the shot) but the fatigue is concerning and my eye blurring issues (two episodes of my right eye vision going blurry for 15-30 minutes) still have me worried even though the eye doctor said she found a benign thing in there and that could explain it…

My neurologist offered and MRI and I’m so fucking claustrophobic that she said I really don’t need to do one now since it’s super unlikely based on my symptoms and her office testing that they’d find anything. She also seemed comfortable with the idea that the headaches were caused by the vaccine as she has heard that some people do get headaches for a few weeks after the vaccine (yet everything I read online about it says side effects should go away in 36 hours.) My allergy tests all came back negative so I don’t know what’s up. I think I’m going to make another appointment with my doctor once I finish my at-home 72 hour EKG as we’re seeing if anything is going on with my heart (though the weird chest spasms seem to have stopped — I doubt they’ll find anything.) Maybe that’s a good thing and I can just put this all behind me, which I’d like to do, except every once in a while I’ll feel incredibly fatigued, like my lungs are just weak, and no matter how much I breathe in I can’t get enough air. Maybe it’s just anxiety and panic attacks but I don’t know… even my initial EKG saw that my PR interval was slightly depressed but not enough to diagnose a heart block since my heart rate was low at the time. I’m really curious what this EKG will find, if anything. I just want to feel better. It’s taking too long to lose weight after baby and I’m still considered obese which I’m sure isn’t helping. I know it’s hard to lose weight while breastfeeding but still I have to get the weight down.

So outside of keeping my job and saving as much as possible this year towards my $2.5M goal, my other main goal is getting back to the “overweight” and not obese BMI category. I’m not going to get to a healthy BMI this year but I can inch closer. If I want to even consider having a third kid… and getting pregnant in 1.5 years (!) especially with IVF I need to drop the weight. And I don’t want to feel like this for the rest of my life. At least doctors will treat me better if I’m a healthy weight.

I’m also wondering about if I want to stay sober for good. I never considered myself an alcoholic but at this point in my life I can look back and see that of all the moments in my life I regret about 90% of them occurred when I was drinking. I was a binge drinker and it was hard for me to stop at one drink when socializing. I had a lot of fun being a drunk idiot too, don’t get me wrong, but I just am not the right kind of person when I’m drinking. I think I can manage a glass of wine with dinner when I go out on a date, but I don’t want to to do the social drinking that has led to me being an idiot and saying shit I can never take back. I’d say the other 10% of things I regret are due to my likely undiagnosed bipolar disorder as I can definitely see periods of my life where I was manic and I’m scared of who I was then and just hate myself for it, but I’ve decided I have to just close the book on that and move on and try really hard to focus on knowing when I’m in a phase like that so I can just stop myself from saying whatever it is I’m thinking at the time because it’s not real and it’s not me. My therapists never believe me that I’m bipolar but I know I am. Drinking while manic is the worst for me. Though it’s not exactly good while depressed either. :/ So, yea, I’m going to try to reduce my drinking. Really cut myself off at 1-2 drinks if I do decide to drink. I haven’t had a drink in over a year (due to being pregnant and breastfeeding) and I don’t see why I can’t continue on this way. It’s rough as I’m so socially anxious and I really do find it easier to engage with other humans after a drink… or two. But I’m old now and a mom and I don’t really want to be social like that anymore. I’m worried I’ve fucked my liver with my occasional binge drinking through the years. It was not frequent, but it was still pretty bad when it happened. Plus, not drinking saves $$… though I’ve been putting that to overpriced tea at Starbucks and Peets. At least that’s a bit healthier for me. Oh, and I’m trying to cut out caffeine as well outside of green tea and matcha. That mostly means not having the occasional latte and especially not having Coke Zero an Diet Pepsi which is horrible for me anyway.

So if I can get to the end of this year mentally stable, with my kids thriving, with $2.5M (or $2.3M) in the bank, with my job intact, etc etc, and alive, I’ll call it a win. Really I’m considering this job my $2.5M job so I’d like to stay in it until I get to $2.5M, but we’ll see about that. This job is my $2.5M job and the next job needs to be my $3M job so I have to find the right fit and right salary to make it worth a move. The only thing I can do is just try to go the best I can at this job and stop going to get overpriced tea so much. But it’s my one self care pleasure in life so I allow myself that.