Work and Retirement

It has been awhile since I have written about money and work.

I started this blog to help track my goals with money and motivate me to pay off the mortgage before I retire. My goal for both work retirement and mortgage retirement is less than 5 years. Yup, you read that statement right! Five years. I’ll bet that gets you to thinking “How old is the Witch, anyway”. I'll never tell; you'll just have to use your imagination for that one.

When I started things here I had a lot of information in public view in a series of sidebars. It was fun to keep them updated to watch them advance towards each goal. However, I took them down for privacy reasons, (my sister’s advice) and now I find it hard to blog about money anymore, which is a real bummer for me. So, in case you’ve been here from the start, here’s a little update.

I'm still paying extra every month on the mortgage as I have for the past two years. I wish we could continue in this vein, but it has come to the point now where we are probably going to have to buy another truck and that will eat up the money we are using to make the extra payments. That might mean that we will have the mortgage for longer than we planned and that may have an impact on my retirement date. Maybe we can still keep the vehicles going for awhile longer (one's 16 years old the other 10).

On a more positive note, I have met and even exceeded my emergency fund goal, it a real comfort to know that it is there as backup, and our modest little vacation was bought and paid for with money left over for next time. So, I guess I’m doing pretty well!

So I guess this is where the work part comes in. I work for a great company and have had a promotion to a new job for which I'm still training. It’s a very complex and difficult position but I really love the challenge. The individual who is my trainer is very knowledgeable and so far it has been fantastic to learn from him. I may be retired before he gets through teaching me, though. Anyway, I guess if the truck becomes a reality I might have to work some overtime to continue putting the extra down on the mortgage. At least I have the option of picking up the extra shifts. Hubby works a lot of overtime and we are both going to retire at the same time (hopefully).

As for the sidebars, I’m going to put a couple of them back up. That is, as soon as I can remember how to do it. I might have to call in my Tech Support Team. “Hey, Hubby! What’cha doing?”