Back out for another 'Wog' tonight. Seems I overdid it a bit last week & my patellar tendons were aching (might have been the jump-rope!), so I took a few days off. Feeling a bit better tonight, so hopefully I can continue with the plan.
Managed two nights in a row for the cold shower challenge, and will be having my 3rd tonight. I actually took a digital thermometer in with me last night & I was surprised at how 'not cold' it was. I thought it was freezing - turns out the coldest I could take was 72°F! The 1st night though, I did a 'hands & feet' cold water routine, although I didn't use any ice. It's fairly cold here, so the water from the tap was only 50°F, and it felt every bit of it! Started with my feet, sitting on the side of the tub. They didn't hurt so much as ache, but according to everything I've researched, if you push through it, that will eventually stop. Once it no longer hurts, you're supposed to remove them (keeping them in no longer than 8 minutes for safety). I managed to do 5 minutes, and the ache/pain did lessen, but never went away. Same with my hands (5 minutes as well), but I learned something interesting. If you don't move while you're in the water, your body sort of builds up a little insulating layer of warmer water, which makes it less taxing. Want to make it harder? Try slowly stirring the water - I couldn't believe how much colder it was when I moved my hands around! Anyway, I think you're only supposed to do the hand/foot thing once or twice a week, so I can wait a bit on those again.Somewhat surprisingly though, my hands & feet are already not getting as cold as they used to, so that's pretty cool! (Ha, see what I did there!?)
I also might be buying JWC's old Volt. He thinks he'll be looking for another car soon & wants to sell, so I asked him his rough selling price & it's in my wheelhouse. I know I just got done debating travel costs, but this seems like a smart purchase. I would end up storing my truck for a while (maybe a year or two) until I determine whether selling it would be a good move. I currently spend around $1500/year on fuel for the truck (without taking any long-distance trips - it gets 16mpg city, only 21mpg highway!).
It would take me three days of driving to work & back to 'empty' the battery on the Volt (about 30-35 miles total), and at current electric prices, he said it costs him just over $1 to fully charge it. Not counting other driving, it would only cost me $80 to drive to work for the *year* (or less, now that I think about it - I can charge the car for free at work - that's what he's currently doing!). Add in some longer trips (and the small amount of gas it would require) & it might cost a total of maybe $250-300 for all of my driving for the year - that's $1200/year in fuel savings (unless, again, I charge at work). That alone means that the car would pay for itself in 4.5 yrs or less, if I get it for the price he mentioned (right around $5500).
If I end up not needing the truck, I can sell that for $6500-7000, and I'd be ahead immediately. All of this depends on him finding a newer car he wants, and of course, agreeing to that price. (he also offered to throw in a wall charger for it for free). He's maintained the car really well, and even converted it to flex-fuel, meaning I could run it on anything from straight gas to E85 with no issues.
As for travel costs, I did some data crunching with my spreadsheets & figured out that if I can keep going out to bars/restaurants down to 1-2 times/month, I can save around $3200/year towards travel (based on what I spend last year). If a trip I decide to take doesn't require that much, I can always have an extra night or two out if I want.
Even with all of this financial juggling, and having raised my 401K contribution up to 20% this past week (YaY, for a down market, buy cheap stocks!), it's still not going to push out the Dodge schedule by more than 2-3 months. The only thing I have to do is postpone the new vinyl siding for the house one more year. Honestly, I don't even have to do the siding unless/until I sell the house, but it would definitely improve the curb appeal.
So anyway, things are somewhat 'looking up'!? I'm feeling a bit better about the future, at least, which is a big change for me.
6:06 p.m. - 2019-01-07
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