March 1st, 2022 paycheck

Created:

Reduced 401k allocation to 16 percent.

Part of my finance spreadsheet is for tracking 401k contributions.

I put in the maximum contribution allowed, the estimated number of paychecks remaining for the year, and how much has been contributed. This way I know ahead of time if I should increase or decrease my allocation. The goal is to always have the allocation percentage to be:

  1. high enough to receive full employer match (6 percent in this case) and
  2. low enough to not hit the maximum contribution limit by the end of the year (maximize employer match as I don’t have a true-up provision).

Because of changes to how I pay rent I’m going to hold a balance of 1,000 USD in the operating expense account. This will give me a chance to see how lean I can run that account moving forward; just don’t feel comfortable with the 100 USD I was keeping.

I also received a bonus this paycheck and was able to throw more at the extended market index fund. This also means I will need to reduce the 401k contribution for the next paycheck.

The IRS

Section titled The IRS

Received another letter from the IRS. This one stated they received my correspondence from January, which I knew because it was sent certified mail and the enclosed check was cashed. However, this wasn’t the, “the case is now closed,” letter I was hoping for.

Instead, it was another letter informing me they would be in touch again within 90 days.

I’m starting to think this won’t be over until they review each return year I requested in 2021. At this rate it could take a while.

Such is life. Definitely an interesting experience.

The pies

Section titled The pies

The insurance deductibles pie now has a value that can cover my insurance deductibles if necessary.

Chances are I won’t sell or withdraw from it unless I need to cover it all in one go. Instead, I’ll pay out of pocket and divert the money that was going to that pie to other investments and savings.

FI experiments

Section titled FI experiments

Details are in the January 15th, 2022 paycheck.

The hypothesis is when the Mark 0.0 mix is down, it’ll be down more than the others. Further, when the Mark 0.0 is up, the others will be up and not too far behind the Mark 0.0. We will track the change since the previous paycheck as well as the change since we started tracking January 2022.