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Fiery Millennials

Financial Independence from a millennial's point of view.

Monthly Status Report: January 2019

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

It’s baa-aackk! Now that I can stand fac­ing my finances again, I can com­pile every­thing into a sta­tus report again. I got many emails, mes­sages, com­ments and paper air­plane notes ask­ing me to bring back the sta­tus reports. I heard you.… and here they are!

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

Jan­u­ary 2019 felt like it was nev­er going to end! The weath­er in DC, while much more tem­per­ate than I’m used to, was still on the dark and cold side. I am being mind­ful of the fact my finances are still in rebuild­ing mode, so I behaved myself.

I did allow myself one splurge though, and that was buy­ing a Nin­ten­do Switch with my first pay­check. I have got­ten count­less hours of enter­tain­ment out of it on the Metro and at home! I con­sid­er it mon­ey well spent as I am less tempt­ed to go out and spend mon­ey on enter­tain­ment when I have Mario Odysessy to conquer.

I have more things to say about liv­ing in a big met­ro­pol­i­tan area, but I’ll save that for anoth­er post as I have far too much to say here. Suf­fice to say for now that I love liv­ing here and am very hap­py with my deci­sion to move here!

Check out below for my total spend­ing in Jan­u­ary 2019.

Screen Shot 2019 02 02 at 11.49.20 AM

 

Hous­ing Zero line item, thanks to the gen­eros­i­ty of a won­der­ful couple!
Util­i­ties Also zero
Food All of my meal prep sup­plies are in a box, so this is most­ly eat­ing out for lunch­es at work.
Phone Thanks to Project FI open­ing up their refer­ral pro­gram again, I had cred­its to off­set my bill.
Auto One tank of gas and a month of Metro fare for my commute.
Inter­net Also zero.
Insur­ance Health insur­ance is paid direct­ly from my paycheck.
Pet None need­ed in Jan­u­ary after stock­ing up in December.
Health One trip to ther­a­py and oth­er misc expenses.
Blog Blog and pod­cast­ing expenses
Enter­tain­ment Afore­men­tioned Nin­ten­do Switch 🙂
Fees Start-up costs for HSA/401k/etc
Trav­el Rideshare expens­es for New Years
Gifts Belat­ed Christ­mas presents

I am grate­ful I have a place to stay to get a grip on my finances and fig­ure out what expens­es look like in this HCOL area. One thing is for sure, I won’t be able to find the same lev­el of hous­ing I had back in the Mid­west. A good deal around here is 1 bed­room with room­mates in walk­ing dis­tance to a Metro sta­tion for $1k/month. I’ve got a place lined up that fits that gen­er­al pro­file and will be mov­ing in March 1st if every­thing goes to plan.

These low expens­es are let­ting me pay off my cred­it cards and shore up my sav­ings a lit­tle. Had I had to pay for expens­es like rent, util­i­ties and inter­net, the process would’ve tak­en a lot longer. Still doable just not so quick. Jan­u­ary’s total spend­ing was $2,185.77 which seems in line with oth­er peo­ple’s expens­es around here.

Income

Pay­checks: $6,153.94
Oth­er income: $5.10

Total: $6,159.04

I am amazed at how nice it feels to get pay­checks again. I real­ly like the secu­ri­ty con­sis­tent pay­checks pro­vide! Espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing how lit­tle I made as a free­lancer. Every oth­er week, I get mon­ey in my account! It’s like mag­ic! The bulk of the non-work income was a pat­tern on Etsy, which means I’ve now sold 3 pat­terns. Woo…

Savings

401k: $153.85
HSA: $169.22
Roth: $0
Cash: $3,650.20

Total sav­ings: $3,973.27

Most of the unal­lo­cat­ed cash went straight towards pay­ing off my cred­it card before I get hit with fees. There “isn’t much” on it — just a few thou­sand dol­lars but I want it gone as quick as I can. I do not like debt!!

Net Worth

Screen Shot 2019 02 04 at 10.13.49 PM

 

Accord­ing to this, my total net worth is $203,295. That seems a lit­tle high, giv­en that I haven’t been earn­ing very much. I’m won­der­ing if I should take my car out of the net worth cal­cu­la­tion as I high­ly doubt I could sell it for $4,500. Accord­ing to Kel­ley Blue Book val­ue I could get $2500–3000 which seems more in line with my expeca­tions. Levi is a good car but he’s been around awhile and has a lot of miles.

I’m inter­est­ed to see my over­all net worth has­n’t fall­en too much since I last cal­cu­lat­ed it. This last month of putting mon­ey away and pay­ing off my cred­it cards has been more help­ful than I thought!

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

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I don’t include my car in my net­worth cal­cu­la­tions because I view it as a tool, not an asset. Just like I don’t include my lap­top. But that is my per­son­al preference! 

    My part­ner’s kid got a Switch for Christ­mas and now I want one so bad!

    Reply

  2. I’m glad to see that you are back on your metaphor­i­cal feet and are return­ing to finan­cial sta­bil­i­ty. Hope­ful­ly in a few weeks you’ll be able to set­tle into your new digs with­out any issues and start bank­ing more of your earn­ings again.

    I bought myself a Switch for my birth­day last year and while I haven’t been play­ing it as much as I thought I would, it’s still a pret­ty great lit­tle device and espe­cial­ly good for trav­el. Maybe I’ll play you online one of these days.
    Mitchell recent­ly post­ed…Month­ly Finan­cial Snap­shot: Jan­u­ary 2018My Profile

    Reply

    • Hit me up in a DM and I’ll give you my Nin­ten­do ID. I’ve been play­ing Smash, NES games, and Mario Odyssey. Can’t wait to bring it with me this weekend!

      Reply

  3. I still include my car because I paid less for it than I could sell it for… And as Jor­dann from MyAl­ter­nateLife says, she needs a car but not “this” car, so if things got tight, she could sell the nicer car and buy a beat­er for cash and pock­et the difference.
    Josh recent­ly post­ed…Ingre­di­ents vs. RecipeMy Profile

    Reply

    • This would be why I’m think­ing about low­er­ing the amount in my net worth lol
      Maybe I’ll look for a dif­fer­ent place to live now!!

      Reply

  5. Gwen, glad you are lov­ing DC so far! Have you giv­en any thought to sell­ing your car now that you live in DC? I went car-free in 2014 and haven’t missed it. Find­ing park­ing (unless you have a ded­i­cat­ed off-street spot) was more trou­ble than hav­ing a car was con­ve­nient. Plus, I redi­rect­ed costs spent on gas and insur­ance to my ride share bud­get. I rent a car when­ev­er I need one from Getaround, and that has worked out well. Of course, I would prob­a­bly wait until after you move to your new place to think about going car-free, as hav­ing a car is super clutch for haul­ing box­es and stuff you need to set up a new place.

    Reply

    • I’ve thought about it, but for now I still use the car on a semi-reg­u­lar basis as I live in the burbs of NoVa. Per­haps after I move to my next place in Capi­tol Hill I’ll con­sid­er get­ting rid of the car. After all, I’ll have to get DC plates, park­ing stick­er, and title for the car (plus who knows what insur­ance will cost there.…) It would be an ide­al lifestyle though!

      Reply

      • Oh yeah, hav­ing a car in the sub­urbs is still usu­al­ly impor­tant. Most of my friends have gone car free after a year or so in the city, but some folks def­i­nite­ly hold on, espe­cial­ly if they have par­ents they reg­u­lar­ly vis­it in the sub­urbs. I’ve been very hap­py with pub­lic tran­sit here.

        Reply

      • Thanks for the update. Good work on keep­ing your expens­es low, even in a high cost of liv­ing area. You always man­age to land on your feed and I real­ly respect that.

        If you do move into the city prop­er, it’s worth look­ing into Zip­car or oth­er car subscription/rental ser­vices as a replace­ment for own­ing. Kristy and Bryce did that when they were work­ing and have a post about it on their blog. Grant­ed, it may not be quite as cheap as own­ing a Vibe, but still a good idea to see what’s on offer.

        Reply

  6. I only include my car now since I have a small loan asso­ci­at­ed with it, but I will take it out once the loan is paid off by the end of this year. I nev­er includ­ed the val­ue of my pre­vi­ous car before that because the KBB val­ue was low, and I did­n’t even end up get­ting the KBB val­ue when I sold it. If you real­ly want to include it, drop it to $2K so it assumes you get some­thing for your car with­out skew­ing your net worth a ton.

    Reply

  8. I don’t include my car, but it’s less than 1% of our net worth now, so that seems fine. Glad you’re push­ing your­self to look at your finances again! Is your debt all gone since I see no lia­bil­i­ties on the net worth snap­shot? If so, yay!

    Reply

  10. This is moti­vat­ing for me to start track­ing ours! Incred­i­ble num­bers Gwen! I think I have a gen­er­al idea, but haven’t actu­al­ly put it down in writ­ing! Some­thing to think about!

    Reply

    • That would require me to track the stats! I try my hard­est to not look at the stats as I’m not into the mon­e­ti­za­tion of the blog. I’ve found that only leads to com­par­i­son with oth­ers, so I don’t track. If I did, I’d con­sid­er putting them out there!

      Reply

  13. You’re in great shape despite the bump you expe­ri­enced in the past sev­er­al months! I played over 100 hours of Breath of the Wild when it first released. What a beau­ti­ful game. I can’t remem­ber the last time I was so engrossed in a game. Unfor­tu­nate­ly I went back home one week­end and found my broth­er sold the Switch. There went all my progress 🙁 I still have my Wii boxed up and think­ing of sell­ing it and putting it towards a Switch hehe.

    Reply

  14. Ouch on the rent! I live in a LCOL area (Phoenix) so that hurts my soul to see. 

    My month didn’t go too bad­ly. I put away far more mon­ey than it felt like I saved. I guess because it went toward the mort­gage and into the IRA and sav­ings accounts oth­er than the main sav­ings. So it feels like I didn’t save any­thing, but I actu­al­ly did pret­ty well. Woot!
    Abi­gail @ipickuppennies recent­ly post­ed…Sav­ings coups: Cloth­ing editionMy Profile

    Reply

  15. Your expens­es are so low! That’s awesome!

    I have our cars in my net worth but have decid­ed to remove them once we get far enough past the $100k mark to stay above it with­out the cars. I think it’s fine to include any­thing that you can sell in your net worth though as long as you know what the true mar­ket val­ue is. 

    Nice car name btw! That’s my mid­dle name 🙂
    Mil­lion­aire Dojo recent­ly post­ed…Finan­cial Inde­pen­dence on Easy ModeMy Profile

    Reply

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