August 1st, 2022 paycheck

Created:

New employer 401k will be in a straight S&P 500 fund, for now.

First paycheck from my new employer. First time receiving a signing bonus as well. The numbers I use for my distributions aren’t changing inside the spreadsheet, income is income. At first, I was thinking I would put the entire signing bonus into the Tax account. The rationale was that there is a one year “clawback” provision, so, if I don’t stay with the employer for a year, I would owe them the signing bonus money back.

The rationale for not putting it into the Tax account.

  1. I’m liking my new employer so far and don’t imagine I will be leaving of my own volition within a year.
  2. While my natural cadence is odd (1 year, 3 year, 1 year), I’ve never had a W-2 Permanent position for less than 1 year; history is not a predictor of the future, of course.
  3. I want to continue taking advantage of the markets being down; buying a dip.

We add all the income together. Then there are minimum and maximum ranges to put toward the various accounts:

  1. Operating Expense account: The minimum is the total balance of credit cards and rent; the maximum is 100 USD extra. I will be putting in the minimum.
  2. Runway account: The minimum is the total of my tracked known future expenses; the maximum is the same. I will be putting in the minimum.
  3. Tax account: The target is 2 percent of the income received; plus or minus 1 USD. I’ll put in the minimum.
  4. Investing account: The target is 23 percent (between the regular taxable brokerage account and the HSA); the minimum USD amount is the percentage and the maximum is based on forecasting. I’ve already hit the maximum on the HSA for the year and I’m goin to put in just over the maximum.
  5. Savings account: The target is 8 percent of income; the minimum is based on forecasting and the maximum is the percent. I’m going to put whatever is left this time.

By the spreadsheet calculations this should be almost the entire signing bonus into the savings account. This gives me the cash to continue buying the dip, if I choose to continue doing so. It also gives me the starting capital for my Roth IRA contribution, if I can make one.

I’ll be buying into the multi-factor fund with the investing account money. The extended market account has been just above 30 percent down from the 52 week high, so, I’ve been buying it when I buy the dip.

Rolling over the 401k

Section titled Rolling over the 401k

Still holding the old 401k for the moment. I’m not in a rush and it will take a month or two for the whole transaction to happen.

I get no tax benefit for selling at a loss. I’m still psychologically okay because I can still look at it as losing two-thirds of my employer contributions. I’m thinking of setting two triggers. One is a percent and the other is a date.

Something like:

  1. If the value is only down 10 percent, go ahead and roll it over to the Traditional IRA.
  2. If the date is after October 1, 2022, go ahead and do the rollover.

Again, not a in a rush.

Other projects

Section titled Other projects

I released the 4th Earth site, well, my alter ego (Alexander Midknight) released the 4th Earth site.

I’ve also somewhat resurrected the Amos project, which is a project for developing websites. More guidelines, guardrails, and patterns than a full-fledged CMS. It’s based on work I’ve done with my one regular freelance client and all of my current sites.

I’ve been torn on Amos as an actual project for various reasons but, with multiple sites using the patterns and sample code, I’m thinking it might be stable and flexible enough to act as an alternative to other full-fledged systems and frameworks. As a developer, I’m appreciating it. As a designer, I’m appreciating it. And, as a content creator, I’m enjoying it.

At least, I’m enjoying it better than anything else I’ve used or created over the years—and the list is pretty extensive.

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.