The stimulus is now deposited so I transferred that money to my C1-360 account where I keep the bulk of my EF.  We are officially at three months' expenses.  Haven't been there since the end of 2015.

_$9456.32 Balance Forward

_+1200.00 Amount Added

----------------

$10,656.32 New Balance

$10,261.35 is 3 month's expenses so we are $394.97 into the 4 month.  That means I need an additional $3025.47 to hit 4 months.  So that is my next mini-goal, on the way to my next milestone goal which will be $20,522.70 or 6 months.  Of course after that I think I'd like to work towards doubling that to a year's expenses or $41,045.40, just not at such an aggressive rate of spending.

Once we have hit the six month mark, I'd like to bump up the 401K to 17% in 2021 to max it out.  Since we are both over 50 now we can do the catch up max, which is $19,500 in 2021 instead of just $17,500.  And if we manage to do IRA's as well in 2022, we could each max out to $7000, so $14,000 total.  That is still a dream, because who knows what will happen between now and then.  Hopefully the pandemic will just go away and life can return to normal and there will be things like raises again.  It would be really cool, though if we could actually put $33,500 a year towards retirement in 2022.

Mom wants to give us the house for all the years of taking care of her, as long as she gets to live here for the rest of her life, barring the need to go into a nursing home.  With the new medication she is on, she is doing so much better both cognitively and physically, so I think we have a good chance of not ever having to put her into one.

We have to figure out how to do it in such a way that no one is getting hit with a huge tax bill or gift tax.  Still researching that.  I think she can use the unified tax credit to avoid that.  She could put it into a trust with us as the beneficiaries, but I'm not sure if she would lose the senior tax exemption by doing that or not.

Then we would have to decide after she dies whether or not we want to stay here or sell the house and buy or build one that is more handicapped accessible.  If we sell, the house is valued somewhere between $650 and $750K.  I would give $100K each to my sisters in that event, assuming they are both still alive, but at the gift tax amount over however many years it took so they wouldn't have to pay taxes.  Even at the lowest valuation that would still give us $450K to buy a new house in a warmer, lower cost of living area when we retire.

We may need to talk to an estate planner or real estate lawyer to get everything figured out properly.  If we have to do it in a way that puts it in our name now, we need to be able to afford the property taxes at the normal rate, which are $6000 a year, so we'd have to be able to save $500 a month for that.  It is doable, but not until after our EF is where it needs to be.  It's a lot to figure out.