Financial Status

This is Wealthier and Healthier.

Thus far, the focus of the blog has been entirely on the "Healthier" portion of that. It's time to get to the other half.

Obviously I won't post daily updates on my financial status; the situation simply doesn't change often enough to warrant it. I will post summaries on a semi-regular basis though.

Our financial situation right can be summarized as follows:

• We "own" a home, insofar as we live in a house that we own roughly 2.85% of. Yay mortgage.
• We don't have any outstanding consumer debt, though there are a line of credit and a government loan left over from our days as students.
• Our investments are paltry, but do exist.
• We both have pretty good jobs and make solid salaries.

The long-term plan is to get ourselves into a situation that allows us financial independence. I don't think either of us needs to be "rich", we just want to be able to pursue goals that make us happy, without having to go through the monotony of corporate life.

To get there, we need a plan. Step 1 is consolidation of bank accounts. As it stands, we have accounts at 5 different banks. We pay monthly fees to 3 of them. We want to consolidate that down to 3, at most. We'd go lower, but we like that our online bank (ING) pays good rates on our emergency fund. We also have employer funded retirement accounts through a bank other than the one we're going to do our day-to-day banking with. We don't currently pay any fees on that account above and beyond the regular investment fees, so there's no strong desire to move that money until that changes (or we are no longer with the same employers).

Changing banks sounds like it should be easy, but it isn't. There's a long list of things to do. In my next post, I'll go over that list and let you know which parts were easiest and most difficult in our situation.