Monthly Status Report: August 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

August was a qui­et month for me. I spent some time fur­ther orga­niz­ing my new liv­ing space, play­ing Har­ry Pot­ter Wiz­ards Unite with oth­er local com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, and vis­it­ing with friends when they came into town. I fin­ished one of my baby quilts and sent that off to a friend, which is a pret­ty cheap and engag­ing way for me to spend time at home. I get more skills and they get a quilt! It’s a win-win for everyone.

I also spent some time prep­ping for Fin­Con, which hap­pened at the begin­ning of Sep­tem­ber and was a ton of fun. If you want to read that break­down, check out the recap here if you haven’t already!

Check out below for my spend­ing break­down of August 2019!

Hous­ing	Ahh there’s the ridicu­lous hous­ing cost
Util­i­ties	A small, new build apart­ment with the win­dows open most of the month.
Food	I was way under budget!!
Phone	I love Google FI!
Auto	Gas and car insur­ance premiums.
Inter­net	Got­ta have that fast inter­web access.
Pet	Bartholomew is spoiled rot­ten and need­ed a new water foun­tain when his died.
Blog	I bought a tick­et to go to the Finan­cial Free­dom Summit!
Enter­tain­ment	A movie, some music, some mobile game spending
Shop­ping	A few more pieces of cloth­ing and oth­er house­holdy things
Fees	A stu­pid toll fee and oth­er misc fees from accounts
Trav­el	My flight to Camp FI SW!
Hob­bies	I’m pick­ing up count­ed cross stitch again
Gifts	Que­so for a friend going through a breakup and a bday present for some­one else
Health	I went to a climb­ing gym and picked up some oth­er stuff for work­ing out.

I am so proud of my expens­es for August! I feel like I crushed it! Life in the Wash­ing­ton, DC metro area is expen­sive, but there are ways to mit­i­gate that. There are so many free things to do around here, it’s crazy.

So crazy, in fact, that I only spent $3,838 dur­ing the month! It’s been a while since my spend­ing was this low (for DC) so I’m pret­ty hap­py. I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly thrilled over that food bud­get. Turns out beans and rice real­ly are cheap and filling!

Income

Pay­checks: $5,794.01
Oth­er income: $283.58

Total: $6,077.59

I sold some stuff on Etsy and peo­ple sent me mon­ey via Pay­Pal for some oth­er stuff. I’m glad these reports are so detailed! ha!

Savings

401k: $461.56
HSA: $166.66
Roth: $0
Cash: $0

Total sav­ings: $1,611.34

Every time I get stressed out over how much I’m not sav­ing any­more, I just remem­ber I’m still com­ing out pos­i­tive every month and that’s real­ly what mat­ters. My sav­ings rate for August 2019 was 33.76%! Way bet­ter than I thought it would be. Fun­ny how I’m almost more proud of a 33% rate in a HCOL area than I was of a 70% in a LCOL area.….

Net Worth

 

Accord­ing to this, my total net worth is $203,371. July was a ban­ner month for mar­ket growth, while August was.…. not. I’m down about $4,000 from where I was in July, but that is a‑ok.

Most of my net worth is tied up in retire­ment accounts. If all goes well, I won’t be need­ing that mon­ey for many decades to come so I’m not wor­ried about these minor fluc­tu­a­tions when I look at the long term view. If you’re a Mil­len­ni­al like me, just keep stick­ing to the plan. Every­thing will work itself out in the end!

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