Here's To Well Defined Goals!

Photo by Vek Labs on Unsplash

Over the past 7 months, we have purchased two new Teslas – a Model S P100DL and a Model 3 Dual Motor Long Range. Doing so meant we took out a total of $148,100 in loans. Our combined minimum monthly car payments are $2,209. That’s a lot. It’s more than our house payment was a couple years ago when we were living in Arizona.

We are actually paying $2,625 a month towards the loans. That’s what we have budgeted and we can, thankfully, afford that much while still putting aside enough in other savings accounts for other things such as emergencies, etc.

You might think that taking on such a huge monthly payment would worry me a bit, and you would be right. The future is uncertain and this is one of the reasons we have an emergency fund built up.

Yay For Debt?

But, now that the loans have actually been taken out, in a strange sort of way, I welcome them. You see, back before we got the cars, we were saving $2,625 each month towards their purchase. So having that monthly loan payment hasn’t really changed anything from the perspective of our budget. The only difference is I’m sending the money to the loan company instead of to a savings account. (I’ve already explained that the EV tax credits we received more than cover the interest costs of the loans, so we’re not losing money by taking out loans and paying interest.)

When I was saving up our funds, the money was going into an account and accumulating. Saving seemed like something that was just going to go on forever. Now that the money is paying down a loan balance, the end is in sight.  By having a loan, I’ve got a very well-defined end point.

It's All About That Bass Motivation

It turns out, I get more excited spending money to pay down the loans than saving the same amount of money for the cars in the first place. I know this is because the finish line is so specific. While I was saving up money over a period of years, my target was always changing. As time went on, the cost of the Model S kept rising, making it seem like I was not making progress. Likewise, I never fully defined what kind of car we planned on getting for my wife. I just threw money into an account each month and figured we’d decide on something when we got a decent sized amount saved up. I never defined what a "decent sized" amount was.

Both of those goals were very fuzzy. It’s hard to get excited about progress towards a goal when the goal isn’t clearly defined.

Well, we’ve now got a clearly-defined goal – two paid off loans!

My wife’s loan has the smallest balance ($44,100) as well as the highest interest rate, so that’s the one I will concentrate on paying off first. This is really exciting to me because I have been saving for a car for her in some form or another for at least 3 or 4 years. Paying that loan off means freeing up money in our budget that had been allocated for years! Once her loan is paid off, the money we sent towards that will get redirected to my car loan, increasing that payment by over 66% and enabling that loan to be paid down even faster!

And when those two loans are paid off – jackpot! We will have freed up a crapload of additional money each month. No more car payments. No more saving towards a car. Instead, we’ll have an additional $2,625 each month that can be used to save and invest. That is truly exciting to me! That is a goal I can really get motivated to work towards!

Audew 12V Portable Air Compressor Pump Review

This week, I’m posting a review of a new portable air pump I recently received. Although it was provided to me by the manufacturer, the comments and opinions here are my own. Please see my disclosure page for full details.

Back when I was 16 years old, I got my first car – a small, used pickup truck. It cost $4,000 and I paid for half with money saved from working summers and my parents paid the other half. It was great to finally be able to drive myself places and just head out on my own without my parents. When I was 16, we were still in the Dark Ages – there were no cell phones and the Internet wasn’t around. Us computer nerds dialed up to local bulletin board systems to post messages on forums. Those were dark days, indeed.

The lack of cell phones meant if your car broke down somewhere, you had to walk to find a pay phone – another long gone relic – to call someone to come help you. To avoid that, I had some basic repair tools that I kept in my car. A spare tire and jack, of course, but also a small air pump that I could plug in to the cigarette lighter in case I needed to add air to my tires. That thing was bright red and had a short 1 foot long hose to connect to the tire. The hose was so short that if your car was stopped with the valve stem at the top of the wheel, the pump could barely touch the ground when the hose was connected. It was tiny and loud as jack hammer and took forever to pump up a tire. I also used it inflate beach balls, basketballs, air mattresses, and anything else that was too big for me to blow up manually. Using it was somewhat scary because if you ran it for more than 10 minutes, it got really hot and started to smell like something was burning. You had to let it cool before you could pick it up to put away.

I transferred that pump from one car to another as the years passed and other cars came and went. Believe it or not, it was only a few months ago, when I was transferring items from my old Prius to my new Tesla, that I threw it out. After hauling that thing around for almost 35 years, it was time to say goodbye.

Finally, An Upgrade

But I am pleased to say I now have a replacement. The Audew Portable Air Compressor is a portable 12V pump that is perfect for stowing away in your car for emergencies. Unlike my old compressor, this one features a digital readout of the pressure. You can also set it to your desired pressure and it will automatically shut off once that pressure is reached. Easy-peasy.

The unit comes with a 2 foot long hose that can connect directly to a tire valve stem and three other adapters – two for inflating things like rafts and mattresses and a needle for basketballs, volleyballs, and the like, as well as a spare fuse.

As you can see from the pictures, the unit is fairly compact. It’s also lightweight and easy to carry. The air hose is stored on one side of the unit and the 12V power cord on the other. The air hose is sufficiently long enough to connect to a tire without any issues. There are two lights on the top of the unit that can be set to either flash or remain on continuously.

I let a bit of air out of one of my tires and used the pump to bring it back up to 45 PSI. Here’s a video of it in action. The pump bounces around a bit as it runs, but that might be due to the sloped and pebbled driveway I was using it on.


The lights point straight up, which may be good as a warning sign to other drivers at night when they are set to flashing. If you need to shine them on something, the pump is light enough to pick and point the lights wherever you need, even while it is in operation.

My sole complaint is the storage mechanism for the power cord. As shipped, the cord fits nicely in the side of the pump. But I know there is no way in the world I’m going to get it to fit that nicely ever again. As you can see below, the connector end slides nicely into an interior pocket, but the cord just ends up something of a mess that you have to jam into the slot. I would like to see a couple of posts that you can wrap the cord around.

The connector stores away nicely.

The power cord, not so much.

All in all, I think the Audew 12V Air Compressor is a good deal for the price. I plan on keeping one in my frunk for emergencies.

Model 3 Delivered!

Deliverance

Wow... The process of buying my wife's Model 3 was so much smoother and faster than what I went through buying my Model S! We pulled the trigger and ordered the car on February 19. We drove it home on March 2 - just 11 days later. And we could have actually had it as early as February 26, only seven days after ordering it, but we weren't ready that soon. (Because both of our names will be on the title, we both had to be present to pick it up and we just couldn't find a time we were both available.) Compare this with the 6 weeks it took to get my Model S!

I suspect the increased speed is because the options for the Model 3 are severely limited. Our only options were the paint color (5 choices), interior color (2 choices), wheel size (2 choices), and the enhanced autopilot feature. All cars have the enhanced AP hardware installed, so it's just a software configuration to turn it on. There is no difference in the build process. This means there are very few changes between each Model 3 produced, so they can roll off the assembly line faster.

The trade-in process was much easier as well. No photos of the trade-in were required, contrasting with my trade-in experience. As I mentioned last time, it seems how thoroughly they inspect your trade-in is dependent on how expensive your new car is.

As was the case with my Model S, the timing worked out such that we didn't need to waste money on licensing the old car for another year. My wife's registration on her Prius was set to expire 17 days after we traded it in. Unlike some states, Washington does not give you a refund if you sell or trade your vehicle before the registration expires, so this saved us $156.

I did run into one hitch. We were scheduled to pick up our car on Saturday, March 2. On March 1, we got an email asking us to log into our account and verify our pickup location and that we were trading in a car. This was the day after Elon Musk announced the $35,000 Model 3 was now on sale.

Friday morning, the Tesla website was getting hammered. I couldn't log in to verify our purchase info! After trying to about 30 minutes, I finally got logged in, only to discover my order was not listed! Considering I had just wired my deposit over the night before, that was a smidge disconcerting, to say the least.

I called Tesla and they said the site was swamped and they were having the same issues on their end accessing it. The person I spoke with said links weren't going to the correct pages and other weird behavior was happening. He confirmed he still saw my order and that they had people working to get the website fixed. He suggested I try again that evening.

After about 2 hours, I tried again and was able to get in and confirm my order.

The pick up went just as smooth as when I picked up my Model S. We signed some paperwork, handed over our old car keys and got our new Model 3 keycards. This time, the car was parked outside, instead of in the showroom like mine was. There were several other people there picking up cars, so space was limited. Since we already knew how most of the stuff worked, there was no need for anyone to give us an overview, so we got in and drove away!

Shiny!

Accessories

Once again, I ordered the all weather interior floor mats. We also bought a second high power wall charger. This will be wired in a load balanced configuration with my existing wall charger so they can share the same 100 amp circuit.

Due to the trade-in, we actually have an extra $5,000 or so we could have applied to our down payment. I didn't want to do this for fear of messing up the loan. I was afraid if the loan amount changed, even if it went down, the approval process would have to start over again. Granted, it went super fast and was completely transparent to me, but I didn't want to do anything that might delay the purchase.

The extra money will be used for the second high powered wall connector and its installation. There should be a couple thousand left over, which will go towards paying down the car loan and I'll send it in as soon as I get the electronic payment process set up.

My wife has been enjoying the last couple of days with the car. We're still configuring some of the options like the HomeLink garage door opener and connecting her phone, but it should be all set up the way she likes it in a few days!

New Worth Update: End of February 2019

At the end of each month, I post an update of my net worth, including a brief discussion of any notable events that might have occurred. The latest month's figures can always be found under the Featured menu in the menu bar at the top of the blog.

Last updated: End of February, 2019
Net Worth: $934,845
Change from last Month: +$26,297

Events Of Note Last Month:

Ava hit 10,000 miles! I still love the car!

Heading home to charge

I can't believe I've put 10,000 miles on the car in just over 5 months of ownership, but 3,200 of those miles were from our holiday road trip to Arizona.

My SQL courses on Udemy generated $62.69 of income. My courses on SkillShare, meanwhile, earned $23.59. I also received a year-end bonus from my work. After taxes, I netted $6,300.

We had some big expenses this month. Foremost, obviously, was the cost of buying a new car. The bonus really helped on that.

We also replaced both my and my wife's cell phones. We each had an old Galaxy 6S Edge that we've dropped several times and each of our phones had cracks in the screens. My wife already had her screen replaced once. Verizon has stopped issuing security and OS updates for the phones, so I felt it was time to get new ones. We went with Google Pixel 3 XLs purchased directly from Google. This ensures we will continue to receive OS upgrades in a timely manner. Of course, the week after we bought them, Google dropped the price $200. *sigh*

I did manage to find a used phone buyback company that paid us $20 for our old phones. It pays to shop around. Several companies I found either wouldn't give us anything at all or only offered $5 or so. iReTron gave us the highest price for our really old phones. Even if you only get a couple bucks, please send your old phones to a recycler rather than throwing them in the trash! They will properly dispose of the materials that do not belong in a landfill.

We also took a trip to Las Vegas. We have a gambling budget and I plan on losing half of it each trip. This time we did slightly worse than planned, losing about two-thirds of our budget. We had a good time though. Lots of good restaurant eating and we got free tickets to see the String Cheese Incident, which was... interesting. Good music and lots of good people watching!

Net Worth Update

Huge increase in our net worth this month! Most of it came from investment (stock market) growth.

January 2019

February 2019

Although it looks like our cash position took a big jump, in reality mostly it's because I moved our Tesla down payment from a brokerage account ("Investments") to our checking account ("Cash"). Given that our investment total went up $12,000 even taking into account our moving about $18,000 out of it, we had some really awesome stock market gains!

My work bonus also helped drive up our cash position.

Credit card debt looks high, but it's under control. I put the $2,500 Tesla deposit on a credit card plus we paid about $2,000 for new cell phones. (Holy crap, when did cell phones get so expensive?) We've got the money to pay those off, and I actually entered the payment in my credit union's bill pay website already, but I scheduled it 3 weeks after the charges were incurred to take maximum advantage of the float.

Next week - photos of the new Tesla!!

If you have any questions or suggestions for topics, please drop me a line in the comments section!