This year has been pretty much status quo, I returned to work after having a year off for research. My wife has worked hard to pay off her student loans, which were finally paid off this month. But otherwise no big changes. My plans for 2016 are to get our car debt paid off, once that is accomplished we will be pretty much debt free. That’s after entering 2015 with over 80k in debt. I say pretty much, because we still have federal tax that we owe from last year, and will probably owe some more this year, although not as much due to changing the withholding on the W2.

I’m far from being the most frugal person on the planet, but I have been getting better about it. I have started to pay attention to the sale signs at the store, now I basically buy what is on sale and plan the meals around that, so what we eat depends on what is on sale that week. Also decided to start doing self haircuts, however this does not really make a big difference, I think YTD maybe have saved 320$ between myself and son. The main benefit is not having to wait in line at the barber shop.

According to the year end summary from Mint.com, I am now worth 80k. Given that I have been working since I was 16 this seems like nothing. But I think that in the next several years my savings rate is going to improve. We have been locked for the past decade in one of the highest cost areas in the US, the D.C area. I have been here for my job, but starting in mid 2017 we will finally be able to move. I suspect the changes in rent alone will allow me to save an additional 10% of my income. Starting in mid 2016 my youngest child will be moving into kindergarten, and ending finally his daycare expense, which is 150/week after the subsidy my job provides. That will be an extra 600/mo for savings and investment.

My wife has finally paid off her student loans, this is after paying 3-4k a month towards them for about 2.5 years. We made this a priority which could be debated if it was the best course, but it’s what we decided. Now she is student debt free. It’s really amazing how long it took to pay off, given how much extra she was paying. When she graduated with her masters degree, she was in the top 1% of her class. She was offered a spot in the PhD program, but we declined, because the student debt would have been horrible, and the final pay would not change much if at all, probably the best financial decision we made so far. Sometimes if you just avoid bad things financially, that goes a long way. My wife has friends that owe several multiples of what she did, I’m not sure they will ever pay it off.

Combined we owe about 40k in car debt, 25k me and 15k her. Really really dumb. I bought a nice SUV 2 years ago for 34k, which was used and half the cost of new, wife got a brand new RAV 4 for 30k. What I didn’t realize was how much my vehicle would depreciate, even buying used. It has dropped in value from 30k to 18k over the past 2 yr. Her’s is probably worth around 20k or so now. The big goal for 2016 is going to be to get the car debt paid off before year end. At which point we will be debt free. I will never buy another expensive car, it’s just not worth it. I’m not sure how to explain it, maybe I was insane at the time. I certainly knew better, but I just ignored the logic side of my brain.
Summary 2015

Gross Income Family: 220k
Additional Savings: 10k
Debt paid off: 100k
Debt remaining: 40k
Investments: 58k (50 in index, 8 k self managed)

Family Net Worth 70k
Savings Rate: 10k/220k=4.5%

Goals 2016:
1. Pay off 80-90% of car debt 40k
2. Invest 10k, into either index or self managed accounts
3. Start TSP investing 2k/year (166/month).
4. Improve savings rate to 10% (22k)