Monthly Status Report December 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

Con­grat­u­la­tions, we made it through 2020! Woohoo!

Decem­ber was a pret­ty qui­et month with me being unable to trav­el to fam­i­ly. Christ­mas was a pret­ty qui­et affair as I chat­ted with fam­i­ly and stuffed myself sil­ly on Chi­nese food. Despite spend­ing more on Christ­mas presents than many years in the past, I still had a pret­ty chill month, bud­get wise.

Check out my spend­ing for the last month of 2020 below!

Hous­ing	The usu­al LCOL rent pay­ment
Car pay­ment	For my sweet 2015 Mazda3!
Gas/Maintenance	Zip Zero Zilch
Food	Not super high but also over bud­get
Phone	I love Google FI! No more phone pay­ment hol­l­laaa
Inter­net	My life­line. Got­ta have it.
Util­i­ties	The util­i­ty bill creeps high­er as the temps fall.
Sup­port	My month­ly sup­port to my sis­ter, plus her Christ­mas pressie.
Pet	Poop rocks and a toy for the fuzz.
Blog	The usu­al fees.
Enter­tain­ment	The usu­al sub­scrip­tions (Net­flix, video games, YT Music) and games.
Shop­ping	Most­ly new clothes for me.
Fees	Year­ly cred­it card fee.
Gifts	More presents for birth­days and Christ­mas.

Total spend­ing for Decem­ber 2020 was won­der­ful­ly low at $3,613.77. I’m thank­ful to end the year on a rel­a­tive­ly low note.

I real­ly like not pay­ing a whole lot for gas and car main­te­nance. I’m get­ting used to this “nev­er going any­where” kind of life. Even­tu­al­ly, that will change but for now, I enjoy get­ting an extra $200 back in my bud­get. Food was sur­pris­ing­ly low this month even though I loaded up on char­cu­terie plate good­ies. Work was exceed­ing­ly kind and gave every­one two $25 vouch­ers for food at the local gro­cery stores (not Aldi, though. Sad pan­da). My man­ag­er also gave me a gift card to a local restau­rant group, so I’m look­ing for­ward to using that when the weath­er is nicer and after we’re all vac­ci­nat­ed.

Income

Pay­checks: $6,333.34
Oth­er income: $0

Total: $6,333.34

A stan­dard month of income with not much else hap­pen­ing.

Savings

401k: $1,076.68
Roth: $0
Unal­lo­cat­ed Cash: $1,642.89

Total sav­ings: $2,719.47

Handy dandy spread­sheet says my sav­ings for the month was 43% for the month! Math is hard. This for­mu­la is appar­ent­ly 401k + Unal­lo­cat­ed Cash divid­ed by my pre-tax income. I think this will work out to be almost exact­ly an aver­age month for me based on the rest of the months in 2020. I’ll take aver­age. Aver­age is bor­ing and good when it comes to finances.

Liabilities

Car (Mazda3): $9,996
Chase Sap­phire Reserve: $904

Total: $10,900

My cred­it cards get paid off every month to zero. I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mind the mon­ey aspect of hav­ing the car loan, but the logis­ti­cal side of things is annoy­ing. The car loan is now under $10k! If all goes well, I’ll be able to pay it off entire­ly in 2021. The rate is good but it’s just annoy­ing to have hang­ing around. Mov­ing mon­ey between finan­cial insti­tu­tions is cum­ber­some and the cred­it union keeps call­ing me to get things like the title sent to them. Much sim­pler to pay in cash for a car.

Net Worth

Accord­ing to this, my total net worth is $284,033. Last month I was up $25,000 and this month I’m up $14,000! This mar­ket is on steroids. Def­i­nite­ly not com­plain­ing, but I’m also scratch­ing my head try­ing to fig­ure this thing out. I’m in for the long haul but this is a wild ride.

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