Monthly Status Report: April 2019

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

I’ve been in my new place for 2 months now and I am lov­ing life. My room­mate and I have lots of fun [which is great despite killing both of our pro­duc­tiv­i­ty] and get along well in our apartment.

The weath­er has been absolute­ly gor­geous, so I’ve been mak­ing the best out of it before the heat and the humid­i­ty set in. I have aller­gies now but it’s a small price to pay for see­ing so many beau­ti­ful flow­ers bloom.

Sev­er­al friends stopped by to say hey while they were in town this month. I can now give semi-inter­est­ing tours of the neighborhood/Capitol grounds/Mall area so if you want the tour, let me know when you’ll be here and we’ll see what we can do!

I also flew out to vis­it my friends in Long­mont for the pre­mière of the Play­ing with FIRE doc­u­men­tary. I had way too much fun hang­ing out with many of my favorite peo­ple and could def­i­nite­ly see me liv­ing in Col­orado at some point in the future. Way, way, way in the future.

That kind of fun does­n’t come super cheap but it is so worth it.

Check out below for my total spend­ing in April 2019.

 

Hous­ing	A steal of a deal for DC proper.
Util­i­ties	We do a good job at keep­ing our util­i­ties low.
Food	Bet­ter than last month, high­er than I’d like it.
Phone	I love Google FI!
Auto	Metro card top offs, a tank of gas and auto insurance.
Inter­net	Got­ta have that fast inter­web access.
Insur­ance	I have health insur­ance again!
Pet	Noth­ing need­ed for the fuzz this month
Shop­ping	New clothes and the pay­ment for the con­sul­ta­tion with the stylist.
Blog	Blog and pod­cast­ing expenses
Enter­tain­ment	2 tick­ets to the Cardinals/Nats game!
Shop­ping	Some replace­ment clothes and things for the trip from the Midwest.
Misc	State tax­es due :/
Trav­el	A plane tick­et and a rental car for Colorado
Gifts	A gift for my room­mate going through a rough patch

Let’s talk about food again. I’m prob­a­bly liv­ing in the land of delu­sion think­ing I can get my food spend­ing down to $250 again. I’ve been track­ing the expens­es since I moved to my new place in DC and I’m think­ing I’m going to have to bump it up quite a bit. Will that extend my time to FI a lit­tle? Prob­a­bly. Do I care? Not real­ly. It brings val­ue to my life to social­ize with peo­ple and if the way we do that is going out for drinks or din­ner?  Works for me.

For those that asked about the styl­ist, nev­er fear. I’ll have a whole post about it soon. Promise 🙂

I also spent some mon­ey on good ol fash­ioned base­ball games. My beloved St. Louis Car­di­nals were in town for a 4 game series. I got to see 3 out of the 4 games which result­ed in a series win for the Cards! Which is good, because we just got swept by the Cubs. At Wrigley. A cry­ing shame. Any­ways. I love watch­ing the Car­di­nals plays and want­ed to attend as many games as pos­si­ble. Giv­en that I don’t get to go to games often, I splurged on bet­ter seats and was blown away at how awe­some it was. I sat by the vis­i­tor’s dugout the first two games, sur­round­ed by fel­low Car­di­nals fans. I had a high old time cheer­ing for my team (and even made it on the TV broad­cast of the game!). I had two play­ers throw me a ball and man­aged to get Paul Gold­schmidt to sign one of them. Like I said, it was a ton of fun! Enjoy a pic­ture of the signed ball from my fan­cy all-inclu­sive seats the last game I attended.

 

My month­ly expens­es came to $6,119.  I was hon­est­ly sur­prised at how much I spent, as any one thing seemed rea­son­able and not crazy expen­sive. It goes to show how quick­ly the lit­tle things can add up! I expect this to go down slight­ly over the next few months, but again I’m still try­ing to fig­ure out what my new nor­mal lev­el of spend­ing is and what makes me happiest.

Income

Pay­checks: $8,762.92
Oth­er income: $23.68

Total: $8,786.60

My high­er spend­ing than nor­mal was matched by high­er than nor­mal income. This is all due to the fact I actu­al­ly got a refund from my tax return! I was ful­ly expect­ing to pay giv­en my lack­lus­ter year of free­lanc­ing. Hir­ing a tax accoun­tant to get that all fig­ured out was so incred­i­bly worth it. Thank you for the rec­om­men­da­tion of a tax pro­fes­sion­al in the DC area! If you need a guy for next year, I can hook you up.  The oth­er income came from Con­vertK­it affil­i­ates and an Etsy sale.

Savings

401k: $307.70
HSA: $123.07
Roth: $0
Cash: $2,235.91

Total sav­ings: $2,666.68

That refund helped me have a nice buffer between sav­ings and spend­ing. I would have been cut­ting it close with­out it! I saved 30.35% of my income in April. That is super low com­pared to year’s pre­vi­ous, but I also live in a HCOL area now and I’m mak­ing a delib­er­ate choice to see what lev­el of spend­ing makes me hap­pi­est. Safe to say, my sav­ings rate isn’t the most impor­tant fac­tor to me now.

Net Worth

 

Accord­ing to this, my total net worth is $204,375. I cracked the $200k mile­stone again. WOOOHOOO!!

 

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