It’s been a few weeks since I last posted. It might have some correlation with my/our financial situation. When our situation’s going awesome, I love to think about how we’re making progress towards our goals – getting closer and closer to financial independence and early retirement. But when setbacks and/or stagnancy occurs, my excitement vanishes and I mentally choose to ignore it all. (FYI, our November monthly net worth increase is barely an increase).
Today, on Thanksgiving, I’m making myself reflect. We’ve had a pair of fortunate and unfortunate events happen this month. Despite my mind dwelling on the temporary setbacks, I can and should be thankful for everything we have and our life situation. And I should look forward to the fortunate events that arise when you don’t expect them.
At the beginning of the month, my wife was informed she no longer had a job. Based on the type of business she was in, we knew that was a risk but you never really expect not to have a job until you don’t. On the brighter side, she got a small severance and paid out some vacation time. This will give us a month or so of continued income. She’s dusted off her resume and is interviewing with several firms.
At the same time, my role at my organization was under review with our HR organization. That sounds bad, but at my company it happened to be good. Via my boss, I was told I wasn’t getting a promotion which I had been gunning for. However, they did a review of my role and decided to collapse two roles – my role and the one above me. In other words, my old role was going away and I would be bumped to the next level. Because I was being bumped to the next level, they needed to adjust my compensation due to being outside of the pay range. Fortunately, this equated to a juicy 10%+ raise. While this doesn’t get close to making up the lost income from my wife, it’s certainly welcome and couldn’t come at a better time. Overall, with bi-weekly paychecks, bonuses and my 401k match, this should have a net benefit to our situation by $20K. This non-promotion is awesome.
I’m confident that my wife will find a job soon and that a temporary loss in income is just that – temporary. I am fortunate enough to work for a great organization that rewards hard work and compensates employees fairly.
We should be reminded that the fortunate and the unfortunate don’t always happen so close together. We’re thankful to have had Mrs MORE’s income while we had it, saving some of that income as well as getting a nice match for some of her 401k contributions. In addition to my generous income, we’re thankful for a bump in that income… and I look forward to more bumps in the future Image may be NSFW.
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What money events/things are you thankful for?
