Monthly Status Report: August 2020

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

Wel­come to Juman­ji Lev­el 9 of 2020! Last thing I knew it was May. I’m not entire­ly sure where the sum­mer went. It’s crazy that it’s already Sep­tem­ber and will be fall soon. I’m kin­da look­ing for­ward to hood­ie weath­er, but I also don’t want the long sum­mer days to end. I recent­ly dis­cov­ered the mag­ic of fleece-lined leg­gings after I got some from my Buy Noth­ing group. Between those, hot apple cider, and my heat­ed mat­tress pad, autumn makes a pow­er­ful case for my favorite sea­son.

After hav­ing a big July bud­get-wise, I took it easy in August. I think I suc­ceed­ed for the most part! Check it out!

Hous­ing	The usu­al LCOL rent pay­ment
Util­i­ties	Sum­mer air con­di­tion­ing bills
Food	So much food. I tried a new meal plan but it was pricey for what I got. I also have a bf who eats
Phone	I love Google FI! I have an unlim­it­ed plan and one or two more phone pay­ments.
Auto	A true zero month
Inter­net	Got­ta have that fast inter­web access
Pet	More food and poop rocks for the floof
Blog	Nor­mal expens­es!
Enter­tain­ment	Stream­ing sub­scrip­tions (YT Music, Mario Kart, Net­flix) plus a new video game
Fees	Most­ly tax­es and pay­ment to my tax guy (who’s AWESOME)
Misc	Sup­port­ing local busi­ness­es
Gifts	A bou­quet of flow­ers to bright­en my bff’s day

Total spend­ing for August 2020 was $3,850. All in all not bad con­sid­er­ing I could­n’t put off pay­ing my tax­es for­ev­er. As it was, I was a month late thanks to stress from my bio dad going into the hos­pi­tal for Covid-19. He’s made as full of a recov­ery as he can, which is great news! It was very touch-and-go for a while.

Oth­er than food and tax­es, it was a qui­et month which is good con­sid­er­ing every­thing going on so far in Sep­tem­ber!

Income

Pay­checks: $6,333.34
Oth­er income: $5,174.64

Total: $11,507.98

My month­ly pay held steady at the nor­mal rate. I’m very grate­ful I’m still work­ing and earn­ing the same amount as there are many who can’t say the same. I also got more in my tax refunds than I thought I would. I need to adjust my with­hold­ings so I don’t get so much back next year. I like to aim for get­ting ~$1,000 back. Then again, my tax­es next year will be much sim­pler with me only work­ing for one com­pa­ny and liv­ing in only one state!

Savings

401k: $1,076.68
Roth: $0
Unal­lo­cat­ed Cash: $2,906.66

Total sav­ings: $3,983.34

Handy dandy spread­sheet says my sav­ings for the month was 66%. Much high­er than nor­mal thanks to the tax refunds com­ing in.

Liabilities

Chase Sap­phire Reserve: $2,408
Chase Unit­ed: $0

Total: $2,408

My cred­it card pay­ment at the begin­ning of the month. All paid off and my only debt to speak of.…. for now (duh duh duh­hh)

Net Worth

Accord­ing to this, my total net worth is $263,431! My first time crack­ing the $250,000 mile­stone! It’s so very excit­ing to see the num­bers recov­er and grow. Then again, this could all be a huge smoke­screen and could plum­met tomor­row. Who knows?! But for now.… I will enjoy it.

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