Money Musings 💭 we saved by shopping 🛍
This summer, J and I decided to purchase something that cost hundreds of dollars but would save us money in the long-run - a lawnmower.
We live in Hoboken which is a far cry from the burbs but we have a small yard and it cost us $40 every other week from April through October to have someone come and mow it. I think the hassle of getting to our lawn with all the equipment accounted for most of the cost.
With some extra time on our hands, quarantined at home, we started to wonder if it would make sense to purchase a lawnmower. The lawnmower itself would cost $600 (J has expensive taste) and then we would need a place to keep it. We would probably get a $150 storage house for the lawnmower to live in (the things you don’t think of…). 😂
The $750 “investment” would pay off in 19 lawn mows ($750 / 40) and we probably have our lawn mowed 17 or 18 times per year. It would probably pay off in a little over a year.
That being said, we’d have to actually mow the lawn ourselves to make this work. Would either of us want to do that? Would the extra work be worth it to save $600 per year starting next year?
J decided he’d be up for it so we did it! So far, it’s been a meditative and relaxing task for J (I hope he’d agree lol), E likes to watch him mow (quarantine toddler entertainment!), we can decide when works best for us to mow (i.e. right before playtime outside on a weekend) and we’re excited to have shaved $600 off our spending for next year.
Are there any purchases you’ve been considering in order to save money over the long run? How do you go about making your decision?
MONEY MOVE OF THE WEEK
Have an annual retirement check-in. Throughout the pandemic, I’ve recommended we all stop tracking our investments. And I stand by that! Why stress ourselves out over dips in the market when we’re investing for the long-term? That being said, it’s important to check in on our investments periodically. For our retirement investments, especially if we have a way to go until we retire, once per year is plenty.
What should we do at this check-in? It’s a great time to see if we can and want to be contributing more. Run through a retirement calculator (or two) to see if you are on track to reach your retirement goal. If you do want to put more money aside for retirement, you can set up reminders to increase your contributions by 1% every few paychecks. It’s a sneaky way to save more without feeling it too much!
It’s also a great time to check in on your asset allocation (your mix of stocks, bonds and cash). You can use a calculator (or two) to see what’s recommended for you. For a quick check, take 120 minus your age, and that’s how much should be invested in stocks vs. bonds. If you are 30, you’d want 90% (120-30) of your investments in stocks and 10% in bonds. Throughout the year, with the ebbs and flows of the market, this can get all out of whack. You can reallocate during your annual check-in or change your contributions going forward.
YOU GOTTA SEE THIS
Birth control and financial equity. ICYMI, on July 8th, the Supreme Court ruled that companies can cite religious and moral reasons to opt out of providing no cost birth control. It’s estimated that 70,000-126,000 women will lose their birth control due to the change. What does this have to do with personal finance? Women having agency over their bodies (and health - 14% of women take the pill for other medical reasons) is inextricably linked to our financial well-being. We learned from our friends at WeBravelyGo that birth control was directly responsible for a 15% increase in women’s workforce participation from 1970 to 1990. 250,000 women were able to obtain bachelor’s degrees as a result of contraception access. Having birth control reduces the number of women living in poverty by 8% and also reduces the number of children living in poverty by 7.4%.
Our hero, Justice RBG, wrote in her dissent - “In accommodating claims of religious freedom, this Court has taken a balanced approach, one that does not allow the religious beliefs of some to overwhelm the rights and interests of others who do not share those beliefs. Today, for the first time, the Court casts totally aside countervailing rights and interests in its zeal to secure religious rights to the nth degree.”