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Fiery Millennials

Financial Independence from a millennial's point of view.

Monthly Status Report: July 2017

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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 com­bi­na­tion there­of) works best for you and your needs is the best one for you, since every­one and their bud­gets are different.

Spending

If June was an inter­est­ing month, July was a roller coast­er ride of a month. I start­ed out on vaca­tion in Las Vegas and had an absolute blast! It was my first time vis­it­ing so I had no idea what to expect. I was blown away by the lights, crush of human­i­ty, and odd­i­ties that were every­where I looked. (Think fat man in a biki­ni and bun­ny ears.)

vegas 1 e1501681082125

The next week­end after that I hung out with my par­ents and built a loft bed for my stu­dio unit. I spent a week haul­ing the wood around in my car until my boyfriend came into town and was able to help me assem­ble it in the house. Oh yeah, how could I for­get start­ing to date him!? Hard to believe we’ve already been togeth­er a whole month. Time flies when you’re hav­ing fun!

The last week­end in July was a lot of fun in par­tic­u­lar as we went off into the wilder­ness, unplugged from soci­ety, and enjoyed the beau­ti­ful land­scape, weath­er, and spend­ing unin­ter­rupt­ed time with each other.

camping 1

In oth­er, not so hap­py lovey dovey relat­ed news, I did end up fir­ing my con­trac­tor for “fail­ure to com­plete the work in a time­ly and qual­i­ty man­ner”. She was not very hap­py and is threat­en­ing legal action. I’m not very hap­py either- I wast­ed two months and over $5,000 on her shod­dy work. Again, this is some­thing that deserves a post of its own, so I’m going to leave it at that. For­tu­nate­ly, I only paid her a lit­tle bit more before I fired her which of course is reflect­ed in the spend­ing below.

Here’s how I did on over­all spend­ing in July!

jul 17 budget

 

Mort­gage Not includ­ing prin­ci­ple, which is account­ed else­where on my spread­sheet. Actu­al pay­ment is $705.43 a month!
Util­i­ties Low house bill yay!
Food I’m still in denial about how much food I eat. Don’t judge me too much. I should prob­a­bly bump this up now that I am buy­ing food for two peo­ple every now and then.
Phone So low. I love Project FI!
Auto All gas. Dat­ing some­one 5 hours away means more dri­ving which means more gas.
Inter­net I still haven’t fig­ured out what my bill amount actu­al­ly is….
Insur­ance Health insur­ance is paid direct­ly from my paycheck.
Pet The cat likes to have food every­day and clean lit­ter. What a weirdo.
Sup­port I’m real­ly slack­ing on this front. Sor­ry sis! It’s on my to-do list I promise.
Blog Month­ly fees for sup­port and email.
Shop­ping New con­tain­ers for food prep.
Fees I hope to get some of these refunded!
Misc Cash out for repay­ments and oth­er misc stuff that does­n’t fit nice­ly in a category.
Trav­el Flight to Ecuador for the Chautauqua!!!
House Wast­ed mon­ey on the con­trac­tor. Yippee.

All told, my spend­ing for June totaled $4,542,49 with the house project pay­ment, and $3,542.49 with­out it! I’m hap­py to see my spend­ing went down, even with vaca­tion­ing in Vegas and buy­ing my plane tick­et to Ecuador. I would say I’m look­ing for­ward to my spend­ing going down, but with the amount of trav­el I’ll be doing in the next few months com­bined with more spend­ing on the house.….… I doubt that will be the case 🙁

Income

Pay­checks: $3,194.07
Rental income: $600

Total: $3,794.07

I did­n’t get the ten­an­t’s rent mon­ey for July before I told him I was kick­ing him out soooo les­son learned there. I won’t have any income from that unit in August either. Sad, sad panda.

Savings

401k: $2,171.24
Roth IRA: ——
HSA: $220.82
Cash: $0

Total sav­ings: $2,392.06

Now I have my Roth all set up with Fideli­ty, it’s time to resume my auto­mat­ic deposits. I’m behind a few months now!

Net Worth

assets jul17

Accord­ing to the Lab over on Mad Fientist’s site, my FI date is now 7 years and 0 months away, which means I’m at June 2024! Last month I was at Sep­tem­ber 2024, so I went back to “my time­line”. Astute read­ers may note I includ­ed my pen­sion in my net worth cal­cu­la­tions for the first time. I did­n’t include it before as 1) I had no idea how much was in there and 2) I was­n’t vest­ed so I could­n’t have tak­en it with me if I’d left the com­pa­ny. Now, how­ev­er, I’m vest­ed! If I work until I’m 31 and don’t take the pen­sion until I’m 65, I can be rea­son­ably sure of get­ting $1100 a month. My com­pa­ny is one of the few out there that still offers a pen­sion and 401(k) options.

With the pen­sion inclu­sion, my total net worth jumped 9.07% to $172,479 this month! I’m pret­ty pumped about the jump! (Even if it’s more or less man­u­fac­tured- I’ll still take it!)

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

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I’m look­ing for­ward to hear­ing about your expe­ri­ence with the con­trac­tor. That sounds like a pain. I don’t see how she can do any­thing legal­ly if you already paid her for the work she had done. Unless it’s in the contract?

    $1100/month in retire­ment sounds great! Is that mon­ey that you had to put in your­self, or your employ­er put in? Pen­sions are weird and I don’t under­stand them.

    Reply

    • We lit­er­al­ly have no con­tract, so it’s not like she can come after me for breach of con­tract or any­thing like that. 

      This is mon­ey the com­pa­ny has set aside for me. It’s com­plete­ly sep­a­rate from my retire­ment money.

      Reply

  3. I’m still pissed at that con­trac­tor! Jerk face she was. Here is to a bet­ter August with the house. 

    As for the NW jump — yeah for you!! My num­bers have been al shod­dy since start­ing to pay rent at Johns. For some rea­son I can’t get a grasp! Then, of course, The Beast had to break down and will soon need new tires. On the oth­er hand, with new rental income com­ing in things are about to be look­ing up!! Just in time to kill it at Fin­Con. What’s the secret pass­word to get in to your pad?? Mama needs some time in the infin­i­ty pool. 😉
    Miss Mazu­ma recent­ly post­ed…Make The First MoveMy Profile

    Reply

  4. Just when I final­ly catch up to your NW num­ber, you go ahead and give your­self a boost with your vest­ed pen­sion! Arggh!

    But! My FI date moved up to 6 years, 9 months so at least I’m pulling ahead of you there!

    Hope the house sit­u­a­tion gets bet­ter soon.
    Mitchell recent­ly post­ed…Month­ly Finan­cial Snap­shot: July 2017My Profile

    Reply

  5. I know stan­dards of liv­ing are dif­fer­ent all over the world, but from my spot in the world, your food bud­get for a month is cheap!

    Reply

  7. That’s unfor­tu­nate about the con­trac­tor, they’re such a mixed bag. Once I find some­one (plumber, elec­tri­cian, etc) that’s good, they’re MINE until the day they die. They’ll always have work from me.
    MrSLM recent­ly post­ed…Finan­cial Update – July 2017My Profile

    Reply

  8. That’s awe­some that you’re vest­ed with your pen­sion now. Although I under­stand from a busi­ness per­spec­tive why there is a wait­ing peri­od for vest­ing from a per­son­al per­spec­tive but it can suck… Espe­cial­ly if the job isn’t what you dreamed it would be. 

    Last week I final­ly got added to my com­pa­ny’s pen­sion (I’m part-time so it took about 2 years to qual­i­fy). Your pen­sion sounds to me like a Defined Ben­e­fit pen­sion where­as mine is Defined Con­tri­bu­tion (which isn’t as nice but still bet­ter than no pension).

    Def­i­nite­ly enjoy your blog, keep it up!

    Reply

    • Hi Jim thanks for the com­ment! You’re right, I just vest­ed my defined ben­e­fit pen­sion plan. It took me 5 years!! I am also incred­i­bly for­tu­nate to have access to a defined con­tri­bu­tion plan which vest­ed in 3 years. Con­grat­u­la­tions on get­ting vest­ed! It’s a great feeling.

      Reply

    • You do bring up a fair point, but I’d say I still need to up it since I eat more often when he’s around. Oth­er­wise I skip meals here and there!

      Reply

  11. You have a BF now? That’s awe­some! Con­grats to you. I seem to have 8.5 years to go on the FI Lab. I took a decent chunk out of my stash to pay cash for a 1 bed­room place, but it seems like my time to FI isn’t real­ly too dif­fer­ent from before. Maybe it added a year? I don’t real­ly remember.

    I’m start­ing a new job next week, so I can final­ly start mak­ing some progress again. It pays a lot less than I’m used to, but my hous­ing costs are less than 10% of my pre­tax wages, so I would guess that it should sup­port a pret­ty sol­id sav­ings rate to. Plus my tax­es will be notice­ably low­er too. Bum­mer is the new employ­er does­n’t have a 401k. Argh. I’d guess my time to FI might decrease just from hav­ing month­ly expens­es in AZ replace the high­er ones in CA.

    Reply

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