Monthly Status Report: December 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

Oh Decem­ber, how I love thee.

I feel like this month was super chill, espe­cial­ly when you con­sid­er the mad­ness that was Novem­ber. I start­ed my new job Decem­ber 9^th, so I had a whole week off to unpack the apart­ment, set­tle in and explore my new home. It’s been inter­est­ing to com­pare my expe­ri­ence liv­ing in St Louis with all of the trips I’ve tak­en here in the past. Life is dif­fer­ent as a res­i­dent, which makes com­plete and utter sense.

I’m lov­ing my new job so far. I already feel 10 times more at home and use­ful at this job than I did at either of the oth­er com­pa­nies I worked for in 2019. It helps that I already knew my new man­ag­er out­side of work, so I feel more com­fort­able at work know­ing he’s there to help me out with any­thing that I need.

The 14^th saw me head home for an ear­ly fam­i­ly Christ­mas. I love, love, love being able to get back home eas­i­ly for impor­tant events like this. I got a lot of joy and sat­is­fac­tion from watch­ing my fam­i­ly mem­bers open the presents I gave them. They gave me some pret­ty awe­some presents in return like a Corelle dish set and a heat­ed mat­tress pad. Let me tell you, I’ve nev­er slept so well. Pure bliss. My sis­ter and I then attend­ed a con­cert in St Louis to see her favorite group play. This was my sec­ond time see­ing them, so it was nice to rec­og­nize some of the songs this time around.

The next week­end saw me head­ed back home again for anoth­er round of Christ­mas events. My for­mer Gold Award advi­sor hosts a Chick­en n Noo­dle night/White Ele­phant gift exchange with our group of Girl Scouts. Lots of fun and laugh­ter to be had, as I haven’t been able to attend for a few years. The next day a dif­fer­ent friend group of mine had our annu­al-ish What the F for $1 or Less White Ele­phant exchange. We keep our eyes peeled for weird crap through­out the year and then exchange it. Nobody peed their pants laugh­ing this year, so I need to up my game for next year.

Christ­mas was a peace­ful day for me this year. My fam­i­ly met up at my aunt and uncle’s house, but it was too far away for me to be there with no vaca­tion time. Instead, I had a lazy day doing what­ev­er I want­ed, which includ­ed gluten-free con­fet­ti pan­cakes, a high tea with fan­cy chi­na, a nice long nap, a 5.5 mile bike ride in the 70 degree weath­er and a show­ing of my favorite Christ­mas movie The Holiday.

The rest of the year closed out qui­et­ly. No major expens­es popped up and I spent a lot of time reflect­ing on the events of 2019, and try­ing to fig­ure out what I want to focus on in 2020.

Check out below for all the details of my spend­ing in December!

 

Hous­ing	.….ouch. The last month of dou­bled rent! No more crazy HCOL DC expenses!
Util­i­ties	I hon­est­ly have no idea what to expect for util­i­ties in this old apartment.
Food	High­er than nor­mal with mov­ing my kitchen and buy­ing food for mov­ing helpers!
Phone	I love Google FI! Now with a new unlim­it­ed plan.
Auto	So much gas pur­chased for Levi and the mov­ing truck.…
Inter­net	Got­ta have that fast inter­web access.
Pet	Food, poop rocks for the kit­ty, and his very own cat tree!
Blog	I need to audit these expenses.
Enter­tain­ment	A con­cert, a date night, City Muse­um and a new video game! (Mario Party)
Shop­ping	Some more clothes, some stuff for the apart­ment like fur­ni­ture and furnishings!
Mis­cel­la­neous	Reim­burs­ing friends for mov­ing expens­es, mostly.
Health	Had to go to the doc­tor and get some meds. Being sick sucks.
Gifts	It’s Decem­ber. I exchanged a lot of gifts.

I end­ed 2019 on a high note with regards to per­son­al atti­tude and spend­ing lev­els. I’m sure Novem­ber and Decem­ber 2019 will go down as two of my high­est months of spend­ing. So worth it to get out of DC and into St Louis!!

I’m very much look­ing for­ward to expens­es going down now that most of the mov­ing costs have come in. I’m spend­ing less on rent and gas for the car, and will be work­ing on low­er­ing my food costs. It helps when every­thing is so much cheap­er here in St Louis com­pared to DC. Gas is $2.09 a gal­lon in places and hap­py hour spe­cials can be found for $2/drink.

I have been kind of ballin’ out when it comes to fur­nish­ing the apart­ment and explor­ing St Louis. The cat got his very own cat tree (which he actu­al­ly uses!!!), I’ve been buy­ing things that look nice/are more func­tion­al for the apart­ment, and I’ve not hes­i­tat­ed to spend mon­ey on St Louis expe­ri­ences (hel­lo Arch tick­ets and the Botan­i­cal Gar­den Glow!). I’ll talk more about this in a future post, but I’m going to start spend­ing more delib­er­ate­ly on things that bring me joy and/or hap­pi­ness.…… even if it’s not the most eco­nom­i­cal choice (see also, if I need to spend mon­ey on something).

Total spend­ing for Decem­ber 2019 was.…… drum roll please .….….. $8,073! I fer­vent­ly hope this is the last month of super high spend­ing and I can get it to a low­er lev­el for 2020. I’m tired of get­ting a lot of mon­ey and then spend­ing it all. I want to save some!

Income

Pay­checks: $16,620.28
Oth­er income: $9.79

Total: $16,630.07

MY RELOCATION MONEY CAME IN! WAHOO!!!

In order to get me a relo­ca­tion bonus of $8,000, I need­ed over $12k in pre-tax income! Tax­es on bonus­es are absurd. I also was paid for 3 weeks of work as I start­ed work in the mid­dle of a pay cycle. I’m eager to see what a reg­u­lar pay­check looks like so I can fore­cast a bud­get more accu­rate­ly. The oth­er income came from inter­est earned on accounts, a $4.50 rewards check from Cap­i­tal One and an Etsy sale.

Savings

401k: $787.57
Roth: $0
Unal­lo­cat­ed Cash: $7,744.50

Total sav­ings: $8,532.07

Handy dandy spread­sheet says my sav­ings for the month was a respectable 51%. That would be the case if I had been able to keep the cash. Alas, it was not meant to be. Many of the expens­es in the last two months went on the cred­it card. The day my pay­check came in, most of the mon­ey went prompt­ly right back out to get the cards paid down.

Liabilities

Chase Sap­phire Reserve: $9,079.19
Chase Unit­ed: $1,565.94

Total: $10,645.13

Remem­ber, this is a snap­shot of how things stood the last day of the month. These bal­ances are no longer accu­rate, but this is what it was. The updat­ed num­bers will be reflect­ed in Jan­u­ary’s report. I am incred­i­bly grate­ful these cred­it card bal­ances were short-lived. These bal­ances would be rough to dig out from under with­out all the extra cash com­ing in. I would’ve been much more stressed out had I not had the assur­ance of the mon­ey com­ing in (much like I was at the end of last year, actually.…)

Net Worth

 

Accord­ing to this, my total net worth is $226,621. This is a slight bump from last month when you fac­tor in the lia­bil­i­ties. Oth­er­wise, I would’ve been rak­ing it in! I’m def­i­nite­ly not a fan of hav­ing to put things in the lia­bil­i­ty col­umn so that cred­it card will be wiped out as fast as I am able. The mar­ket con­tin­ued its record tear and I am glad I am able to ben­e­fit from it.

This is usu­al­ly the sec­tion where I see how much time I have left until ear­ly retire­ment, but I’m not focus­ing on that kind of goal any­more. Instead, I’ll say I had a good month! Men­tal health is more impor­tant to me right now than sav­ing as much mon­ey as I pos­si­bly can. What­ev­er your goal, I hope you made good strides towards it like I did!

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