Welcome back…

First off, I apologize for being gone so long. A lot of things going on in my personal life that took precedents over writing on the site. That situation has stabilized for the moment anyway so I’d like to get back to writing on a more frequent basis.

For my first post back, I thought I’d do an all-encompassing update that touches on all things financial in my life. So here goes…

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Our house in Michigan sits empty (aside from a bed and TV I left there for my visits for work.) It is on the market and priced competitively with other properties in the area but the housing market in and around Detroit is very slow at the moment. Between the Big-3 laying off workers and salaries stagnating or falling there just isn’t a lot of demand for housing. Many people are leaving the area as well (as we have) which has had the effect of increasing the supply of real-estate on the market. To top it off, foreclosures are at double the rate of the nation as a whole so banks are dumping these homes on the market as well, at much lower than previous market value.

We’ve had several people interested, but nobody with enough money to buy the place, or even justify a showing. It’s a great property and I know it is just a matter of time before it sells, but uncertainty is something I’ve never liked. I’d also like to have the cash to put into stocks as I think we’re on the verge of a very good market for the next year or two.

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About every two or three years we meet with our insurance agent and make sure our homeowners and auto coverage are appropriate for our needs. Personally I think it’s a way for our agent to try and sell us some more coverage, and it usually works out for him, but I can’t really say anything he’s suggested has been something I hadn’t considered.

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March was an atypical month, both for income and expenses. First off, my wife’s last severance check arrived which was essentially six months’ worth of her income in one shot. I also received a somewhat unexpected bonus. These were good things…

On the downside, financially speaking, my wife is having some surgery to repair her face from an old car accident. She was in a head on collision about 10 years ago and severed her 7th facial nerve. She also had a lot of glass in her chin, broke her nose and damaged her upper lip.  She’s had several surgeries already but the Personal Injury insurance ($50k) ran out during the last round.  Total cost to finish fixing these things is $8,500 which she paid up front (surgery is on the 6th). We expect to be reimbursed for part of it from our health insurance but I am not counting on it for now. Reading over my description above makes it sound like she appears monsterous, she doesn’t.  Personally I think she’s beautiful just the way she is but if it will make her happy it’s worth it.

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I missed the open enrollment for my benefits at work. Not a huge deal, just means I’ll be keeping the same life insurance as last year. I had thought about buying a term-life product a while back but got too busy. (bad excuse I know…)

Again, we’re still adequately insured just not as permanently as I’d like.

I’m not fat but am a little heavier than I should be. I’m 5′11″ tall and weigh in at around 215lbs. Ideally I’d like to get down around 185 or so.

As I wrote earlier, I’ve been researching Term Life Insurance coverage. As some of you may know, there are different classifications for insurance including Normal, preferred, preferred plus etc. I am generally in very good health, have no history of serious illness in my family (grandfather did die of cancer but he was relatively old at the time) so I assumed I’d be able to get the best rates for term life. In looking at the quotes however I see that I need to weight a bit closer to 200 in order to qualify. The difference in premiums for the $500k of insurance I am looking to buy is around $70 a year. Not a huge amount of cash but a pretty big percentage increase (> 20%).

So, new goal. I am going to attempt to lose 15 lbs by the end of December. I can wait until then to obtain my insurance as my current policy at work will continue until then. I don’t mind taking on the risk for a short while as I’ll still have 1.5x my salary in life insurance paid for my my company.

My company’s open enrollment for benefits is happening now. I get my medical, dental and long-term care insurance through my wife, but have life insurance (on both myself and her) as well as disability (Long Term) and Group Legal through my employer. Life and Group Legal are the only things that I actually have to pay for our of pocket. I was going through the open enrollment process and started thinking about the cost of this insurance and whether there might be a better way to do this.

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It took a couple of weeks but I finally received the check for cancelling my Whole Life Policy today. I also received a $20 rebate check for a hard drive I bought a few months ago. (I had totally forgotten about that. I love found money!)

The check is for a little over $1000. Right now I think I’ll put it in the savings account until the end of November and then buy more iBonds with it. Alternatively I could put it in the brokerage account but right now I’m having trouble finding stocks I really want to buy…

It’s been a couple of months since I last posted about my goals. I’m continuing to track our expenses in MS Money with some interesting results.

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A while back I wrote about cancelling my Whole Life Insurance Policy. It’s been a while and it kept slipping my mind but I finally took care of it today. Getting just over $1000 back. I paid in well over $2000, not a good investment…

I plan on taking the money and investing in some more iBonds. Still need to decide whether or not to do so in October or November. More on this later.