Thinking of Someday

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Don’t Call It A Comeback

November 26, 2018 By Thinking of Someday

Don’t call it a comeback! We’ve been here for years! Well, no. We actually didn’t even make it to our first year of blogging anniversary. But that’s OK!

It’s been a year since our last blog post. And here we are starting again. The last post that we left you with was about learning to enjoy the process. So why did we stop? Quite frankly, it was getting to the point where we weren’t enjoying the process of blogging anymore. However, our reasons were different.

Omar’s Reasons

I enjoy reading about and talking about personal finance. However, blogging about it is completely different. Why? Sometimes you can feel like a street preacher. You think you’re putting good information out there, but people are just walking by like you don’t exist. I was never one to look at our site’s stats; only the comments that people would leave. Yet, Kim would tell me to look at the stats as well because not everyone is going to leave a comment.

Kim’s Reasons

I completely understood where Omar was coming from, but my reasons for stopping were different. First of all, I didn’t want to blog by myself. Omar told me he would guest post (insert eye roll here), but when we started this we were supposed to be a team. I simply didn’t want to do it without my partner. Although we’re married and agree (or compromise) on our financial goals and ideas, we are 2 separate people with different perspectives. I wanted the blog to continue to have our differing perspectives for our readers. I feel that my financial understanding is simple, but logical compared to Omar’s, which is complex, but nuanced. Therefore, readers could continue to relate to either of us.

My second reason for quitting was because blogging is a lot of work. As much as I had an idea of how much work it is, I had no idea. Before we started our blog we thought we would post every other week. But once we started it and people asked for more content we decided to post once per week. Add that to 2 somewhat introverts who were trying to keep up with social media to promote our blog… We simply got burnt out.

My last reason for stopping the blog was because I didn’t have the energy to do it anymore. My days became filled with morning sickness that hit whenever it wanted to and still trying to keep up with a toddler as well as work my regular job. I was mentally and physically exhausted. Not to mention that I was salty with Omar because he wanted to become a guest poster on his own blog, but then he would still try to share other personal finance articles or videos with me (insert eye roll again… Lol).

So Why Are We Starting Again?

We’re starting again because we have more to say and more to share. And notice that it says “we”. So yes, that means you will be hearing from both of us.

Omar’s Thoughts

Kim has been pushing me for months to pick it back up and I finally agreed. The reason is that this information is helping people who want more out of their finances. Also, I think this is a message that people of color need. Because of slavery and racism, we haven’t had the same amount of time to build generational wealth as other races. In this day and age, we are making more money as a race than ever. I’d like to try to see if I can help us keep some of that income for ourselves and future generations so we aren’t looking to either political party to save us.

Kim’s Thoughts

It didn’t take long for me to miss blogging. I missed interacting with those who read our blog as well as the other bloggers we’ve come across in this journey. I also missed using the blog as a creative outlet in regards to writing, editing, and designing pictures for each post. But above all that, I missed sharing information that others might find helpful.

I also agree with Omar’s sentiments in regards to people of color; it’s the reason that we chose to not blog anonymously. So that other people of color could see that living debt free while still enjoying life could be possible.

What Have We Been Up To Since We’ve Been Gone?

Well, in case one thing isn’t clear… We’ve made (and had) a baby! Lol. Like most things in our lives, this was planned. However, we didn’t expect it to happen so soon! For a while, we wondered if our then 3-year-old was ready and how he would handle it. But at the same time, we knew he would be OK. We welcomed our second son in June, just three days after Omar’s birthday.

  • read: Financial Preparations To Make For A New Baby

Before we got pregnant, we were saving money to start our master bathroom update. It was to be the last major update before we started paying off our mortgage. We had a nice chunk of money saved when we discovered that we were indeed expecting already.
Since we try to make wise decisions no matter how much it sucks, this meant that our bathroom update would be placed on hold. We had to save money for the baby (more like for the bills that would be coming) and other expenses that needed to be taken care of. These included:

  • Insurance Deductible: $5000
  • FMLA Coverage (to cover unpaid maternity leave): $2000
  • Vacation (because we weren’t skipping another year): $2000
  • Things For The Baby (dresser, bedding, pictures): $550
  • Things For Our Toddler (new bed, bedding, pre-school tuition): $1455

Once we added up everything, we quickly saw our bathroom update dwindle away. However, the bright side was that we had enough money saved to do what we needed to do and wanted to do. And we were still able to get new bathroom countertops. We figured it was a good compromise!

Final Thoughts

So don’t call it a comeback. We haven’t completely been out of the loop since we’ve been in touch with some of you outside of blogging. Those who wanted us to come back, those who wondered why we stopped, and those who have already welcomed us back – Thank you! We plan to post as time allows, but at least on the 1st and 15th of each month – you know, kinda like payday.

** sidenote: If you were following along with us on social media, feel free to follow along again as the IG page (thinkingofsomeday) and Twitter (thinkofsomeday) had to be restarted from scratch.

What have you all been up to since we’ve been gone? How’s the budgeting going? How’s getting out of debt going? Did anyone start saving for their 3 to 6-month emergency fund yet?

Feature Image: PicMonkey

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Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: blog updates, blogging about blogging, married life, newborn, personal finance

See what’s happening on Instagram…

thinkingofsomeday

No long caption. I just wanted to make our last “mortgage principal payoff” calendar update. 😆 It’s been a month and it still feels surreal to us...
On Christmas Eve morning, Omar left out of the bed On Christmas Eve morning, Omar left out of the bedroom saying that he had to go work on something. When he came back he handed me a letter that said:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“As I sit here on the edge of paying our home off I understand that it isn’t completely about us. Our job is to set the next generation up to do better than us, which makes me think of the generation before me. This final payment would not be possible without [Kim’s dad]. He spent his life working for this money and passed away before he got to use it for himself. We agreed to use that money in a way that would always honor him. So for the past 6 years it has funded our oldest son’s 529 [via the minimum required distribution]. Today, that money has grown enough to pay off our mortgage without touching the initial principal. Today we sever ties to debt forever. Today, we say thank you to [Kim’s dad] for the sacrifices he made and the foundation he laid that made it possible. THANK YOU!!”
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Of course after l finished reading the letter I was like... 🥺😭. Truth be told, I still kind of feel that way. It’s part of why it took so long to share the details of paying off our mortgage. Losing a parent is hard.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Pictured is my dad and I... my favorite picture of of us. He passed away 6 years ago on NYE. He was only 62. After he passed, I found out I was “entitled” to receive part of his pension. Omar and I decided to use some of this money to pay off our mortgage. This is how we were able to pay off most of our $54k balance 7 days into this year.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This is the short version, but if you want the full details, we wrote a blog post sharing:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• a recap of our initial mortgage payoff plan + payoff journey
• some background info about the pension + how we almost cashed it out when we first found out about it
• the breakdown of the $$ that it took to make this happen + why we did it this way
• how some things didn’t go as planned
• and each of our thoughts in regards to all of this
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
You can find the link in our bio.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“In all that I do, I strive to make my parents proud. I like to think my dad would be damn proud of me... of us, for this one.” Kim #piecesofsomeday
#tbt To last Thursday (1/7/2021) when we became mo #tbt To last Thursday (1/7/2021) when we became mortgage free!! Yes, you read that correctly! We are 100% debt free! Like debt free, debt free. 🤣
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
To be honest, it’s been a week and it still doesn’t feel real to us yet. But it was real watching that money disappear from our account and no longer seeing our mortgage balance when we signed into our credit union account. We must say, our credit union works pretty fast! Lol.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We didn’t even get around to sharing our mortgage payoff goal for the year with one of the little cute pictures explaining how we were going to do it. But here’s a quick recap of the numbers that we were working with...
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• mortgage principal: $54,507.37
• mortgage interest: $35.84
• reconveyance fee: $69.00
• paying off our mortgage... definitely not priceless, but oh so worth it!! 😂🙌🏽
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We’ll share more in depth details soon because you’re probably wondering how we came up with that amount of money 7 days into January. It definitely wasn’t from hitting the lottery! Lol. But until then, just know that...
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
WE’RE MORTGAGE FREE!!! #piecesofsomeday
So we took some Christmas / family pictures back i So we took some Christmas / family pictures back in 2020 (as if that was so long ago), but I never got to share them. 😩 So here’s one. I actually like the fact that it’s in front of our house. #piecesofsomeday
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
And I also wanted to add that we finally did another blog post after quite some time. Maybe we’re the world’s worst bloggers. 🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♂️ But if you’re interested, we’re sharing a recap of quarter 3 and quarter 4 from our mortgage payoff journey. We’re also sharing what our mortgage payoff goal is for 2021. We’re a bit excited about it! You can check it out at the link in our bio.
2020. This has been a year that I’m sure none of 2020. This has been a year that I’m sure none of us will ever forget. While this year has been ok for us for the most part, there are many people that it’s been a really really tough year for. Whether it’s been financially, emotionally, health wise, etc. etc. etc. So here’s to hoping that next year will be much much better, for everyone, but especially for those who had a tough time this year. ✨♥️
We started 2020 off with owning 43% of our house a We started 2020 off with owning 43% of our house and we now own 69% of it. We had paid off 39% of the mortgage loan and we’re finishing the year out at having 66% of it paid off. (These 2 numbers are not the same for us because of our 5% down payment as well as when we refinanced to a 15-year mortgage.) It’s been really exciting to see these numbers increase this year.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
(Annnnnd this concludes our December numbers. I can’t believe I managed to share them all before the end of the year!! 😂)
Q4 was our best quarter by far, mostly due to the Q4 was our best quarter by far, mostly due to the RSUs that we were able to use. However, even if we hadn’t been able to use them, Q4 would have still wrapped up nicely thanks to us still being able to stick to our 70/30 plan.
For December we were able to color in 4 rectangles For December we were able to color in 4 rectangles. This puts our mortgage balance for the end of 2020 at $54,507.37.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• 132 rectangles total
• 88 rectangles colored in
• 44 rectangles to go!!
The total of our mortgage principal payments for D The total of our mortgage principal payments for December was $3514.74.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
$995.13 came from our regular payment and $2519.61 came from our budget.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This put us at meeting our second stretch goal of putting a total of $45,000 towards our mortgage principal for the year! Yes, we did a little magic with our budget in order to get it at exactly $45k, but I’m sure that’s what we all do in when we’re trying to hit a certain number!! Haha.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We’re soooo happy that we were able to meet this goal because we really weren’t sure if it was going to be possible or not!
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Comments

  1. Kris says

    November 26, 2018 at 6:10 pm

    Great to have you two back and blogging again!! I’m looking forward to reading your posts. And congrats on baby #2, hopefully the baby is doing well!! Are using cloth diapers again for the second baby or just disposables!! If we have a second baby, we’re planning on using cloth diapers again, it was a great experience!!

    • Kim says

      November 27, 2018 at 9:18 am

      Thanks Kris! It’s good to be back. The baby is doing well. He’s growing even faster than our first one did. Lol. We’re definitely using a combination of cloth and disposable diapers. As soon as he had his first blow out in disposables I knew it was time to start using the cloth diapers! And we’re enjoying using them just as much this time around.

  2. Katrice W. says

    November 26, 2018 at 7:26 pm

    Yay!!! You’re back. You guys came back much sooner than I expected. I enjoyed the read as always. Looking forward to having you guys back! Let the blogging begin LOL! Thanks for coming back.

    • Katrice W. says

      November 26, 2018 at 7:37 pm

      I just read the questions at the bottom in the tiny bold font LOL. Well, we gave you guys a brief update on where we are in regards to our budget and saving for the 3-6 months emergency fund. We plan to start budgeting a little differently at the start of the new year (fingers crossed, cough cough to my husband LOL). Hopefully at the start of the new year, we will be able to figure out a new plan to tackling the remaining debt (a new debt was added to our budget last year) we have left. I had to get another vehicle 😔. That situation basically used up a majority of our 3-6 months emergency savings, oh and we decided to go on vacation as well LOL.

      • Kim says

        November 27, 2018 at 9:22 am

        Lol. Thanks Katrice! And thanks for the support. I guess I need to make that question a little bigger, huh? In regards to your debt, y’all have paid off a lot already. So hopefully y’all will be able to come up with a plan to kick it into overdrive! I wouldn’t have missed vacation neither, but I’m sure everyone knows that at this point. Lol.

        • Katrice says

          December 1, 2018 at 6:42 pm

          You’re welcome!!!! Yes ma’am, you should make the text a little bigger lol. You are correct, we have paid off a significant amount of debt. I have to remember to keep that in mind. Having to borrow money to get my new vehicle was definitely not on list of things to do. I remember talking to you guys about it lol. I am truly hoping we are able to make a few adjustments and get back to adding to the savings and paying off our remaining debt.

  3. Yvonne says

    November 28, 2018 at 12:54 pm

    Great read…so glad you are back. I have always enjoyed your blog…We are retired and enjoy using our budget..Best thing ever happened to us…You both got us started and for that we are forever grateful….again…welcome back..

    • Kim says

      November 29, 2018 at 10:28 am

      Thanks! It’s good to be back. I’m glad you’re continuing to follow along and still enjoy using your budget! Thanks for your support.

  4. Penny @ She Picks Up Pennies says

    November 28, 2018 at 9:51 pm

    Hi, friends! I am so glad you are back. AND CONGRATS! What wonderful baby news. (runs to Instagram!)

    I can’t wait to hear more from both of you!

    • Kim says

      November 29, 2018 at 10:29 am

      Hi Penny! Thank you and THANK YOU! I promise to let you know when there’s a picture up. Haha.

  5. Shamaine says

    November 29, 2018 at 9:03 am

    Welcome back guys and congrats on the new baby. Looking forward to reading the posts which are very informative and inspiring. Still having some struggles with the savings but working on getting a new job. My baby starts high school soon as plays basketball and soccer so I have lots of savings to do!!! Love you both. Say hey to Uncle Merchell and aunt Yvonne for us.

    • Kim says

      November 29, 2018 at 10:33 am

      Hey Shamaine. Thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed the past posts and hope the same for the upcoming posts. What are your struggles with the savings? Hopefully the new job will come through soon and help with that as well. I can’t believe your baby is starting high school already! High school can definitely be expensive with extra activites and dues for everything. I don’t know if you saw a past post, but there’s one about “Sinking Funds” that might be useful in helping with saving money for things. Love you too!

  6. GYM says

    December 4, 2018 at 1:07 am

    Congrats on the second baby, two boys!! It must be busy!
    I’m glad you guys are back too, looking forward to reading more 🙂

    • Kim says

      December 4, 2018 at 8:46 am

      Thank you! Yes it’s definitely busy, but not yet because he’s a boy. More so because we have a 4-year-old and a baby. I’m sure it’s coming though. Lol. We’re glad to be back too.

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A married couple making someday a reality all while balancing family + finances + avoiding debt. Find out more about us, here.

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See what’s happening on Instagram

thinkingofsomeday

No long caption. I just wanted to make our last “mortgage principal payoff” calendar update. 😆 It’s been a month and it still feels surreal to us...
On Christmas Eve morning, Omar left out of the bed On Christmas Eve morning, Omar left out of the bedroom saying that he had to go work on something. When he came back he handed me a letter that said:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“As I sit here on the edge of paying our home off I understand that it isn’t completely about us. Our job is to set the next generation up to do better than us, which makes me think of the generation before me. This final payment would not be possible without [Kim’s dad]. He spent his life working for this money and passed away before he got to use it for himself. We agreed to use that money in a way that would always honor him. So for the past 6 years it has funded our oldest son’s 529 [via the minimum required distribution]. Today, that money has grown enough to pay off our mortgage without touching the initial principal. Today we sever ties to debt forever. Today, we say thank you to [Kim’s dad] for the sacrifices he made and the foundation he laid that made it possible. THANK YOU!!”
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Of course after l finished reading the letter I was like... 🥺😭. Truth be told, I still kind of feel that way. It’s part of why it took so long to share the details of paying off our mortgage. Losing a parent is hard.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Pictured is my dad and I... my favorite picture of of us. He passed away 6 years ago on NYE. He was only 62. After he passed, I found out I was “entitled” to receive part of his pension. Omar and I decided to use some of this money to pay off our mortgage. This is how we were able to pay off most of our $54k balance 7 days into this year.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This is the short version, but if you want the full details, we wrote a blog post sharing:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• a recap of our initial mortgage payoff plan + payoff journey
• some background info about the pension + how we almost cashed it out when we first found out about it
• the breakdown of the $$ that it took to make this happen + why we did it this way
• how some things didn’t go as planned
• and each of our thoughts in regards to all of this
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
You can find the link in our bio.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“In all that I do, I strive to make my parents proud. I like to think my dad would be damn proud of me... of us, for this one.” Kim #piecesofsomeday
#tbt To last Thursday (1/7/2021) when we became mo #tbt To last Thursday (1/7/2021) when we became mortgage free!! Yes, you read that correctly! We are 100% debt free! Like debt free, debt free. 🤣
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
To be honest, it’s been a week and it still doesn’t feel real to us yet. But it was real watching that money disappear from our account and no longer seeing our mortgage balance when we signed into our credit union account. We must say, our credit union works pretty fast! Lol.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We didn’t even get around to sharing our mortgage payoff goal for the year with one of the little cute pictures explaining how we were going to do it. But here’s a quick recap of the numbers that we were working with...
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• mortgage principal: $54,507.37
• mortgage interest: $35.84
• reconveyance fee: $69.00
• paying off our mortgage... definitely not priceless, but oh so worth it!! 😂🙌🏽
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We’ll share more in depth details soon because you’re probably wondering how we came up with that amount of money 7 days into January. It definitely wasn’t from hitting the lottery! Lol. But until then, just know that...
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
WE’RE MORTGAGE FREE!!! #piecesofsomeday
So we took some Christmas / family pictures back i So we took some Christmas / family pictures back in 2020 (as if that was so long ago), but I never got to share them. 😩 So here’s one. I actually like the fact that it’s in front of our house. #piecesofsomeday
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
And I also wanted to add that we finally did another blog post after quite some time. Maybe we’re the world’s worst bloggers. 🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♂️ But if you’re interested, we’re sharing a recap of quarter 3 and quarter 4 from our mortgage payoff journey. We’re also sharing what our mortgage payoff goal is for 2021. We’re a bit excited about it! You can check it out at the link in our bio.
2020. This has been a year that I’m sure none of 2020. This has been a year that I’m sure none of us will ever forget. While this year has been ok for us for the most part, there are many people that it’s been a really really tough year for. Whether it’s been financially, emotionally, health wise, etc. etc. etc. So here’s to hoping that next year will be much much better, for everyone, but especially for those who had a tough time this year. ✨♥️
We started 2020 off with owning 43% of our house a We started 2020 off with owning 43% of our house and we now own 69% of it. We had paid off 39% of the mortgage loan and we’re finishing the year out at having 66% of it paid off. (These 2 numbers are not the same for us because of our 5% down payment as well as when we refinanced to a 15-year mortgage.) It’s been really exciting to see these numbers increase this year.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
(Annnnnd this concludes our December numbers. I can’t believe I managed to share them all before the end of the year!! 😂)
Q4 was our best quarter by far, mostly due to the Q4 was our best quarter by far, mostly due to the RSUs that we were able to use. However, even if we hadn’t been able to use them, Q4 would have still wrapped up nicely thanks to us still being able to stick to our 70/30 plan.
For December we were able to color in 4 rectangles For December we were able to color in 4 rectangles. This puts our mortgage balance for the end of 2020 at $54,507.37.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• 132 rectangles total
• 88 rectangles colored in
• 44 rectangles to go!!
The total of our mortgage principal payments for D The total of our mortgage principal payments for December was $3514.74.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
$995.13 came from our regular payment and $2519.61 came from our budget.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This put us at meeting our second stretch goal of putting a total of $45,000 towards our mortgage principal for the year! Yes, we did a little magic with our budget in order to get it at exactly $45k, but I’m sure that’s what we all do in when we’re trying to hit a certain number!! Haha.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We’re soooo happy that we were able to meet this goal because we really weren’t sure if it was going to be possible or not!
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