Monthly Status Report: February 2021

Dis­claimer: some links may be affil­i­ate links. They help off­set the cost of keep­ing this blog running!

Why do I do a monthly status report?

I find it best to do a month­ly sta­tus report for a few reasons.

• It helps me eval­u­ate how I did the pre­vi­ous month. Did I hit a tar­get reduc­tion in spend­ing or did I go way over bud­get for a par­tic­u­lar cat­e­go­ry? Did I earn more? What was my over­all sav­ings rate?
• It helps keep me account­able. How can I make an extra pur­chase know­ing I’ll have to explain myself to all of you? Talk about awk­ward when the blog­ger can’t walk the walk and talk the talk.
• I want to prove this crazy thing called finan­cial inde­pen­dence works!
• It pro­vides an exam­ple of real-world bud­get­ing and expens­es. Some of the peo­ple I talk to haven’t ever seen a prop­er bud­get or seen one put into action and part of the pur­pose of this blog is to lead by example!

I use Mint to help me track my spend­ing and keep an eye on my accounts. I also use a real­ly awe­some and super in-depth spread­sheet. So many for­mu­las….. Some peo­ple use Per­son­al Cap­i­tal and oth­ers use You Need a Bud­get (YNAB). What­ev­er tool (or a com­bi­na­tion there­of) works best for you and your needs is the best one for you, since every­one and their bud­gets are different.

Spending

Now that it is almost April, I fig­ured it’s a great time to get Feb­ru­ary’s month­ly sta­tus report out. A good chunk of Feb­ru­ary was spent pour­ing over real estate sites, debat­ing the pros and cons of the 3 hous­es for sale in our area. I’m exag­ger­at­ing but only slight­ly. We looked at many hous­es, put in a few offers and final­ly got an offer accept­ed. This means my favorite cat­e­go­ry of spend­ing is back in the bud­get: House. Can’t wait to spend all the monies at home improve­ment stores again! It snowed, the KC Chiefs lost the Super Bowl, my mom retired, we went through a super ridicu­lous cold snap and then the weath­er final­ly start­ed warm­ing up. I got to put my sun­roof to use and I love it. 

Feast your eyes on my Feb­ru­ary 2021 spend­ing below! 

Hous­ing	The usu­al LCOL rent payment
Car pay­ment	I pre­paid it and I did­n’t catch the lack of auto­pay. Meh.
Gas/Maintenance	A few tanks of gas
Food	IN BUDGET!!
Phone	I love Google FI! No more phone pay­ment holllaaa
Inter­net	My life­line. Got­ta have it.
Util­i­ties	Just over bud­get. Not terrible.
Sup­port	I missed this one too — but I dou­bled it in March.
Pet	No poop rocks or food need­ed this month.
Blog	I renewed the blog for anoth­er year!
Enter­tain­ment	The usu­al sub­scrip­tions (Net­flix, video games, YT Music) and games, plus my WaPo sub renewed.
Shop­ping	My PJ’s gave out and I got a planner
Fees	Quar­ter­ly main­te­nance fees
Trav­el	My Scot­t’s Cheap Flights sub renewed.
House	Inspec­tions are expen­sive, but not as expen­sive as not get­ting one!
Gifts/Donations	Sup­port­ing my favorite author on Patre­on and oth­er dona­tions to those in need.

Total spend­ing for Feb­ru­ary 2021 was about aver­age at $4,074. I vowed to do a low to no spend month and par­tial­ly suc­ceed­ed. If I had­n’t had that inspec­tion, I would’ve spent $2,694 which is actu­al­ly amaz­ing­ly incred­i­ble. So I am glad the low spend month worked oth­er­wise I would’ve had that high home inspec­tion pay­ment on top of my usu­al spend­ing. No thanks!

In the mid­dle of the month, I did­n’t see my car pay­ment hap­pen. I paid off a big chunk with my bonus, so my lender was going to let me catch up. I man­u­al­ly paid it in Jan­u­ary and did­n’t in Feb­ru­ary, so a lit­tle bit of that bonus pay­ment is erod­ed now. Ah well. 

I came in under bud­get in food for the sec­ond month in a row. My part­ner sent over an Ama­zon Prime deliv­ery to off­set all the extra mon­ey I spend on food when he comes over, which was very help­ful. It all evens out in the end. 

The name of the game was renewals for Feb­ru­ary. I renewed the blog host­ing and domain, my Scot­t’s Cheap Flights sub­scrip­tion renewed and my sub­scrip­tion to The Wash­ing­ton Post renewed. I read far more arti­cles than their fire­wall allows and want to sup­port good jour­nal­ism. I also even­tu­al­ly want to fly again in 2021. There are some great deals to be had for the upcom­ing months!

I’ve start­ed sup­port­ing some friends and peo­ple doing awe­some things out in the world each month in the form of reoc­cur­ring dona­tions. I high­ly rec­om­mend it, if you’re able. 

Income

Pay­checks: $6,500
Oth­er income: 0

Total: $6,500

A stan­dard month of income. Noth­ing spe­cial here!

Savings

401k: $1,105
Roth: $0
Unal­lo­cat­ed Cash: $1,321

Total sav­ings: $2,326

Handy dandy spread­sheet says my sav­ings for the month was 37% for the month! Math is hard. This for­mu­la is appar­ent­ly 401k + Unal­lo­cat­ed Cash divid­ed by my pre-tax income. It’s not great, but it’s bet­ter than noth­ing. Since I got a raise, the amount I’m putting in my 401k also went up. 

Liabilities

Car (Mazda3): $9,703
Chase Sap­phire Reserve: $2,401

Total: $12,104

My cred­it cards get paid off every month to zero. I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mind the mon­ey aspect of hav­ing the car loan, but the logis­ti­cal side of things is annoy­ing. The car loan is now under $10k! If all goes well, I’ll be able to pay it off entire­ly in 2021. The rate is good but it’s just annoy­ing to have hang­ing around. Mov­ing mon­ey between finan­cial insti­tu­tions is cum­ber­some and the cred­it union keeps call­ing me to get things like the title sent to them. Much sim­pler to pay in cash for a car.

Net Worth

Accord­ing to this, my total net worth is $287,239. Slow­ly going up. Seems like the clos­er you get to a big mile­stone, the slow­er your net worth goes up. Let’s go $300k!! We can do it! 

Thanks for read­ing! What did your month look like? Did you stick to your budget?