Financial Worksheet

Baseline financial picture and plan. Compiled August 8, 2026.

The two dates

2031 is the edge of the map, not a financial event. Judge decisions by whether they improve the 2043 position.

Income

Confirmed against the August 7, 2026 pay statement: sixteen paychecks at exactly $4,877.52.

Flat income is an assumption, not a forecast. Nothing here depends on a raise. If pay instead keeps up with inflation, every projection improves: 401k contributions rise with it, worth about $48,000 more in today's dollars by 2043, and fixed-dollar debts get easier every year — the $1,688/mo mortgage payment costs $1,015/mo in today's money by 2043. Flat income is the floor this plan is tested against, not the expectation.

Gross to net

• Health, dental, vision, and disability premiums are inside these numbers. No separate budget line.
• $4,400/yr goes into the HSA — $3,800 from pay plus a $600 employer match. Savings, not a premium, and the first stop for medical surprises against a $5,000 HDHP deductible.
• The HSA balance is missing from the assets table. Add once known.
• Counting the 401k and HSA, $12,009/yr is saved before the paycheck arrives.

The monthly budget

If something has to give: subscriptions $450/mo ($5,400/yr), giving $165/mo ($1,980/yr) across five organizations.

The last line is a residual

"Food, Fuel, Fun" is not a target but whatever remains after the fixed items, spent without tracking. Every line above it is on autopay, so the residual absorbs changes both ways:

• Cost increases self-absorb. If escrow rises the residual shrinks — the pending property reassessment needs no plan of its own.
• Freed money self-absorbs too. A paid-off loan becomes ordinary spending by default.

The second is the biggest risk in this plan. Every projection depends on redirecting freed payments. The fix is mechanical: when the $820/mo autopay stopped in August 2026, an $820 transfer to savings started the same month. Repeat at every payoff.

That $820 is the first cash savings line there has ever been. The 401k and HSA were accumulating, but neither reaches a transmission repair.

Wage lines round down to $3,250 against $3,265.98, the mortgage line up to $2,000 against $1,995. About $32/mo lands unbudgeted in the residual.

The biweekly effect is the only slack

• $6,500/yr is the entire discretionary surplus — extra debt paydown or a vacation.
• There is no travel line because the third paycheck is the travel line.
• A $3,000 vacation leaves roughly $3,500/yr flexible.
• One extra paycheck to savings reaches $10,000 in about six months instead of ten.

Costs that arrive without a line item

No budget line; these land in the residual:

• Home maintenance — a $320,000 house typically averages $3,000–$6,000/yr
• Vehicle maintenance, tires, registration
• Medical costs beyond premiums — deductibles, copays, dental

Truck insurance (~$1,721/yr) is the exception, paid from savings. Because the residual is untracked, there is no way to say how much of the $2,064 these consume. A $1,400 transmission repair takes most of a month.

Debts

Mortgage

Escrow and PMI confirmed from the mortgage statement; P&I is what's left:

• $1,995 − $268.15 escrow − $38.40 PMI = P&I ≈ $1,688/mo — within $9/mo of the $1,679/mo that $266,000 at 6% implies, so the balance estimate holds up.
• PMI ≈ $461/yr, well under the $804/yr this plan had been carrying as a placeholder.
• Implied original loan ≈ $281,000; down payment ≈ $39,000 (about 12%).
• Loan-to-value: 83% of purchase price, 82% of the Zillow estimate.
• Principal paydown ~$350/mo and rising; interest ~$1,330/mo.
• Home value up 1.9% in four years — a loss against inflation.

Auto loan

• Interest costs about $124/mo.
• Positive equity on a current-model-year vehicle is unusual. Implied original loan ~$24,100, so the down payment was several thousand.
• The extra $29/mo goes to paying ahead — advancing the due date, not reducing principal. Cheap at $29, and a disrupted income month would not create a delinquency.

That matters once the snowball starts — see Confirm the lender applies extra to principal.

Furniture loan

• True 0%, not deferred interest. Deferred interest requires an end date; this has none. No retroactive interest risk.
• At $100/mo it clears about August 2029. The minimum alone would retire it by February 2031.
• The extra $27/mo ($324/yr) earns nothing at 0%; against the 6.49% auto loan it would.
• Never use this card again. The 28.99% purchase APR carries $0.00 today. A new purchase would draw the minimum to the 0% balance while the expensive one compounds.

The full picture

Non-mortgage debt: $26,605. The auto loan at 6.49% is the most expensive and the correct next target.

The mortgage costs eleven times more per month at a lower rate. Rate says which dollar is expensive to keep; balance says how many there are.

Savings and emergency fund

• The bathroom work exceeds the entire savings balance — doing it today leaves savings ~$300 short before the truck premium.
• Flange quoted at $500; floor quote outstanding, carried at $4,000. Neither is urgent.
• Free buffer net of the truck premium: about $2,500, or two weeks of expenses.
• A three-month fund on a stripped-down $5,000/mo budget is $15,000.
• Get the floor quote. A $4,000 placeholder carries a lot of weight, and bids that size often spread $1,000.

The $820/mo freed in August 2026 rebuilds savings at $9,840/yr, from the ~$2,500 free and assuming the bathroom work stays deferred:

$10,000 arrives around June 2027 — ten months, or six with one extra paycheck. That supports the August 2027 switch to the car snowball. Re-run once the floor quote lands.

The $4,500 of bathroom work is a claim against every figure above: $10,000 with the work outstanding is really $5,500 of free buffer.

Assets and net worth

Net worth ≈ $295,600 today, falling to ~$291,100 if the deferred bathroom work proceeds.

Home equity and retirement are 99% of it. The $4,200 of savings is the only part reachable without selling or borrowing — which is why the $820/mo now running to savings matters most.

The plan

The live decision: where the $820 goes first

The standing plan is a snowball: roll the $820 into the car payment, making it $1,320/mo against the 6.49% auto loan ahead of the 6% mortgage. Correct on the arithmetic. But with the truck premium covered and the bathroom work ahead, there is effectively no emergency fund.

Take Option B. Option A runs a negative buffer for eighteen months, after two years that produced a $48,000 tree event and a crushed sewer line. The next water heater goes on a card at 28.99%, undoing more than the snowball saves.

Option B costs eight months on the car and ten on the mortgage. The house still clears at 60 or 61 — cheap for going from two weeks of coverage to two months.

Splitting the $820 between the two mostly slows both.

Confirm the lender applies extra to principal

The lender treats the extra $29/mo as paying ahead. At $29 that was trivial; at $820 it is not.

• Simple interest — the usual structure. Payments cover accrued interest first, everything above reduces principal. The snowball works as intended.
• Precomputed interest — interest baked in at origination. Paying early does not reduce total interest, and $820/mo buys nothing but prepaid due dates.

Ask: "Is this a simple interest loan, and does an extra payment reduce my principal balance or only advance my due date?"

If it is precomputed, send the money to savings and then the mortgage instead. Make this call before the first $1,320 payment.

The debt runway

Under Option B — $820 to savings through August 2027, then the car:

$1,458/mo freed against today, with the mortgage the only debt left well before October 2031. Option A shifts both payoffs earlier — eight months on the car, ten on the mortgage — at the cost of no buffer through 2027.

No tight stretch remains: the $820 came free in August 2026 rather than October 2027, and the Grange premium matches what escrow already collects.

The mortgage outlives the retirement date

The mortgage runs to 2052; retirement is October 2043. At that point the loan still has nine years and $136,000 left — $1,688/mo of principal and interest, plus escrow of $400/mo or more. Roughly $2,100/mo of housing against $67,000/yr of income is nearly 40%.

The third row needs no change to income or spending — only that each payment rolls forward:

Age 61 instead of 76 on the same income and outflow — only the destination changes. The single highest-value decision in the plan.

The ordering is right — 6.49% before 6% saves more interest — but the payoff date turns on how much gets redirected, not which debt goes first.

Insurance

Escrow

Taxes are $1,565 — 0.49% of home value, low even for Tennessee, with room to rise. The confirmed disbursement runs $224.80/yr above the sum of the three lines above — likely a required reserve cushion rather than a missing cost, worth confirming on the next statement. Outside escrow: truck insurance ~$1,721/yr from savings, umbrella policy $220/yr. Homeowners deductible $1,000.

The new carrier

Coverage is moving to Grange before the October 6, 2026 escrow disbursement.

$372/yr under plan against the $1,800 assumption, and at 0.44% of home value still below the $1,700–$2,000 typical for Tennessee. The flat deductible matters too: a 1% wind/hail structure would have meant $3,200.

The feared escrow increase does not happen

The Grange premium ($1,428) is exactly what escrow already needs to disburse for insurance, so that line needs no adjustment. Escrow itself is confirmed at $268.15/mo — about $19/mo more than the $249/mo this plan had estimated from taxes and insurance alone. But confirmed PMI is $38.40/mo, well under the $67/mo placeholder, and the difference roughly offsets the higher escrow — so the mortgage payment still holds at $1,995. The $95–$205/mo increase this plan was bracing for does not arrive.

Two things could still move it: the pending property reassessment, and a one-time shortage catch-up if the account under-collected last year (a lump-sum payoff avoids the surcharge).

Confirm on the Grange policy

A cheaper premium is not cheaper if the coverage is thinner. Check the declarations page before it binds:

Roof settlement matters most. Actual cash value pays depreciated value, wasting this house's biggest advantage — a July 2026 roof.

Two more asks: price the truck bundled (~$1,721/yr separately; bundling saves 10–25%, but compare both totals since home claims can affect the auto side), and price a $2,500 deductible so the number is known once savings can support it.

PMI removal

The appraisal route costs $400–$600 up front, which the budget cannot absorb. Plan on reaching 80% of the purchase price on the normal schedule.

The request is not automatic. At 78% the servicer must drop PMI on its own; at 80% only if asked. Sixteen months separate them — at $38.40/mo confirmed that is ~$614.

Make the call in November 2028. Expect to need a written request, good payment history, and no second lien. Some servicers want confirmation the value has not declined; a 2026 roof should handle that.

Retirement

Contributions

The full employer match is captured. 6% against a 3% cap leaves no free money behind — a 50% instant return on the first 3%, better than anything else here.

The 3% match is the only income figure not confirmed by the pay statement, which shows an HSA match but no 401k match line. Verify against the plan summary.

Projection to retirement at 67 — October 19, 2043

17.2 years away, with contributions continuing at $11,413/yr:

Take $1.1M as the working figure:

• Compounding contributes more than three times what gets paid in. The $232,000 already banked does most of the work — the argument for not touching it.
• In today's dollars at 3% inflation, $1.1M is about $661,000. At a 4% withdrawal rate, roughly $26,500/yr in today's money.
• Interim checkpoint: about $400,000 by October 2031.

Social Security

Full retirement age 67, credits earned, earnings record reviewed. Estimates assume $121,682/yr of continued earnings against the actual $126,816 — marginally conservative.

Claiming at 62 locks in 68% of the full benefit permanently. Waiting to 70 adds $10,740/yr for life over 67, a 26% increase; $121,608 of foregone benefits breaks even around age 81. A 2043 decision, and the largest lever left by then.

Retirement income at 67

Against $84,915 of current take-home, a 79% replacement rate — inside the 70–80% usually considered adequate, and understated, because expenses fall too. Take-home minus mortgage principal and interest ($20,261/yr) leaves $64,654 as the real cost of everything else. With the house paid off, $67,000 covers that with room to spare.

The whole picture turns on whether the mortgage is gone. If not, $1,688/mo comes off the top for nine more years and the margin disappears.

Catch-up contributions unlock October 19, 2026

• Turning 50 unlocks roughly $8,000/yr of extra 401k room and $1,000/yr of extra IRA room. Eligibility applies to the whole calendar year, so it is live for tax year 2026.
• The $820/mo is already committed to the emergency fund and then the auto loan. Revisit once the car is paid off in 2028.
• SECURE 2.0 forces catch-up contributions to be Roth above ~$145,000 of prior-year wages. At $126,816 the pre-tax option stays open, with about $18,000 of headroom.

The Rule of 55, as a contingency

• Separating from an employer in or after the calendar year of turning 55 allows penalty-free withdrawals from that employer's 401k. Opens in 2031.
• Only $44,000 in the 401k qualifies, not the $188,000 in IRAs. Normal penalty-free IRA access begins at 59½, in April 2036.
• Rolling a 401k out to an IRA destroys Rule of 55 eligibility for that money. A one-way door — pause at any job change after 55.

Where things stand at the horizon

If the runway plays out and freed money is redirected, the position on October 19, 2031:

Roughly $275,000 of improvement on flat income, from debt clearing and compounding rather than earning more. That is the thesis. Assumes the truck is worth ~$14,000 and home value holds at $326,000.

What has to be true

1. The Grange policy binds before the outgoing one lapses, with no gap.
2. Each freed payment rolls forward instead of being absorbed. This decides whether the house is clear at 61 or at 76.
3. The emergency fund is rebuilt before the car snowball starts. At ~$2,500 free against $4,500 of deferred bathroom work, it is the single point of failure.
4. The emergency fund reaches about three months ($15,000).
5. Retirement contributions never pause.