Monthly Status Report: February 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

In hind­sight, Feb­ru­ary 2019 was a lot of fun! I felt like I was super stressed most of the month, but look­ing back it was­n’t so bad. I took an unex­pect­ed trip out to San Fran­cis­co, so some of my spend­ing is a lit­tle high­er than I thought. I did have a fan­tas­tic time in Cal­i­for­nia for a few days, even if I end­ed up not get­ting the job. I don’t mind not get­ting the job as that means I get to real­ly set­tle in here in DC and explore every­thing the area has to offer when it’s not cold, rainy and/or gross. Bik­ing, vol­ley­ball, hope­ful­ly some soft­ball and Fris­bee golf are all call­ing my name!

Check out below for my total spend­ing in Feb­ru­ary 2019.

 

Hous­ing	Zero line item, thanks to the gen­eros­i­ty of a won­der­ful couple!
Util­i­ties	Also zero
Food	Sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than nor­mal thanks to the trip to SF. It’s a gluten-free per­son­’s paradise!
Phone	Thanks to Project FI open­ing up their refer­ral pro­gram again, I had cred­its to off­set my bill.
Auto	No car expens­es, but I did top up my Metro card sev­er­al times.
Inter­net	Also zero.
Insur­ance	Health insur­ance is paid direct­ly from my pay­check plus a trip to the phar­ma­cy for some meds.
Pet	Got some more food and lit­ter for the Fuzz.
Shop­ping	Some new clothes and new fur­nish­ings for my new place!
Blog	Blog and pod­cast­ing expens­es — anoth­er year of host­ing has been pur­chased #year4
Fees	Stu­pid speed­ing tick­et. Thanks DC. >:(
Trav­el	A plane tick­et to hang out with friends and a rideshare or two.
Gifts	My friend is hav­ing a baby!

My time at my friends’ house in Vir­ginia is com­ing to an end. I’ll miss stay­ing with them, but I’m ready to get my own place again too. My awe­some-tas­tic friend Erin from Reach­ing for FI had a room in her place open up when her room­mate unex­pect­ed­ly moved out in the mid­dle of their lease. Her loss! I’m pret­ty excit­ed to move to DC prop­er and explore the area. It looks like I’ll real­ly enjoy it and I’m hop­ing I won’t need to dri­ve my car very much. (The check engine light came on a few days ago so I need to take it in the shop and get that fixed. I don’t have a friend with a garage full of tools to fix my car this time. Sad pan­da.) I’m mulling over just get­ting rid of the car entire­ly. It seems rather expen­sive to keep it what with DC reg­is­tra­tion fees, plate fees, park­ing fees and insur­ance if I’m just going to use the car a few times a month. I’m going to keep an eye on the expens­es and see what works out bet­ter in the long run.

I’m pret­ty excit­ed about March. I bought a plane tick­et to hang out with my friends at home in Chica­go! While I’m there, I’ll grab my stuff from my friend’s house and dri­ve the box truck back to DC. It’s prob­a­bly not the best use of my time or mon­ey, but it just worked out that way. I have a feel­ing some things will be stay­ing behind as they will not be need­ed in DC.

My expens­es held pret­ty steady from last year if you take out the deposit for the apart­ment. $1050/mo is a STEAL in DC, so I don’t mind pay­ing it. As much, any­ways. My spend­ing totaled $3,753 for Feb­ru­ary. We’ll see how they go in the next few months as I set­tle in to my new place, start cook­ing again, and start doing oth­er excit­ing things like join­ing a gym!

Income

Pay­checks: $5,788.38
Oth­er income: $249.84

Total: $6,159.04

My pay­checks from work were a lit­tle light this month thanks to the short month and the unpaid day off I was forced to take when snow blan­ket­ed the DMV area. Hope­ful­ly they’ll go back above $6k every oth­er month.…. the woes of a gov­ern­ment con­trac­tor. Sigh. Oth­er income con­sist­ed of my reim­burse­ment from expens­es incurred while inter­view­ing and 3 Etsy sales. WOO! I’m up to 5 pat­terns sold now, so I got that going for me, which is nice.

Savings

401k: $153.85
HSA: $169.22
Roth: $0
Cash: $1,588.63

Total sav­ings: $1,911.70

At this point, with the move loom­ing over me, I’m hap­py I did­n’t spend more than I brought in!

Net Worth

 

Accord­ing to this, my total net worth is $193,636. I find that inter­est­ing as that’s a full $10k drop from last month, even though I only dropped my car val­u­a­tion by $2k. Oh well, it just means I get to hit that $200,000 net worth mark­er all over again 🙂

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