Monthly Status Report: February 2016

Quick note: Astute read­ers may notice a change in this report. Mint is act­ing up again, so I’ve decid­ed to switch from show­ing updates from it to updates from my spread­sheet. Much more reli­able, even if it is a bit more work. I also decid­ed to show a more com­plete snap­shot of my finances and include my income and sav­ings rate. With that, let’s begin! In addi­tion, this post will now con­tain affil­i­ate links. This helps me keep the lights on around here, so to speak, and helps off­set the costs of run­ning the blog.

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 com­bi­na­tion there­of) works best for you and your needs is the best one for you, since every­one and their bud­gets are different.

Spending:

I acci­den­tal­ly on pur­pose turned this into a Fru­gal Feb­ru­ary. Acci­den­tal in that I did­n’t know ahead of time, and on pur­pose because it was a very delib­er­ate choice to be so ‘fru­gal’. I put fru­gal into quotes because I real­ly was­n’t being fru­gal, I just was mak­ing the choice to not spend much mon­ey. Did I man­age to hit all my goals? No, I’m still human. But, I did man­age to reign in my spend­ing quite a bit and made a huge impact.

It helped that my super duper fun plans had to be post­poned. I was sup­posed to go to Chica­go to hang out with some friends. Hang­ing out includ­ed some shop­ping, a Mon­ster Truck Ral­ly, copi­ous amounts of drink­ing, great food, and a lot of fun. While I did­n’t get to expe­ri­ence any of that, I also did­n’t have to expe­ri­ence 10 hours of dri­ving and the mon­ey asso­ci­at­ed with the planned events.

How­ev­er, just because one week­end did­n’t turn out as planned does­n’t mean I did­n’t have some fun the rest of the month. Feb­ru­ary was full of house stuff: look­ing at prop­er­ties, mak­ing an offer and then mak­ing plans. All of that was (kin­da sor­ta not real­ly) free- or at least, it did­n’t cost me any­thing upfront besides the gas I burned run­ning around town. I also vol­un­teered with a polit­i­cal cam­paign (free), par­tic­i­pat­ed in sev­er­al sport scrim­mages (most­ly free- I chipped in a few dol­lars to help cov­er the gym rental fee) and hung out with friends (the best kind of free!).

So, with­out fur­ther ado, I present my spend­ing (for bet­ter or for worse) for Feb­ru­ary 2016.

Rent	A nor­mal month for rent. I’m excit­ed to move some­time soon (hope­ful­ly) to low­er this bud­get category.
Util­i­ties	Pret­ty darn low still. Much bet­ter than last year’s cost ($338!!!)
Food	I HIT MY BUDGET! IT’S A MIRACLE!
Phone	So low. I love Project FI! See my review here: http://www.fierymillennials.com/google-project-fi-review/
Auto	Thanks to the still-low-but-slow­ly-creep­ing-up gas prices, 2 tanks cost me $33. I also had to get new plates for my car, thanks to my move to a new state. Instead of cost­ing me $110, I only paid $87. Hav­ing an old car is so much cheap­er than a new car. Costs can run over $200 for a new car!
Inter­net	Same price as always.
Insur­ance	Health insur­ance is paid direct­ly from my pay­check, and the oth­ers are an aver­age from my 6 month payment.
Pet	He did­n’t cost me any­thing this month, although March will see his nor­mal costs resumed (kit­ty lit­ter and cat food).
Sup­port	I’ve start­ed sup­port­ing both of my sis­ters in var­i­ous ways.
Misc	I’m very glad to see this so low. Nor­mal­ly it’s quite a bit higher :/
Shop­ping	I bought a book and a dig­i­tal anten­na for my TV. Hel­lo basic cable!
Trans­fer	I took out some cash for things like Girl Scout cook­ies (they have Gluten Free ones now!!) and gym fees for my var­i­ous sports.

 

All told, my spend­ing totaled $2014 for Feb­ru­ary. I was stoked to see it so low, but it also took a lot of delib­er­ate actions to get there. No run­ning to Domi­nos if I did­n’t feel like cook­ing. Forc­ing myself to cook so I’d have left­overs to bring to work instead of just get­ting food from the cafe­te­ria. Choos­ing to go home for lunch when the rest of my cowork­ers went out for our week­ly lunch at an area restau­rant. My weak­ness is def­i­nite­ly food, so by mak­ing bet­ter choic­es (cough not being lazy cough) there was a huge impact to my bud­get. I also resist­ed the urge to go out shop­ping for clothes. Win­ter is wind­ing down around here, so I know sev­er­al things I want are on clear­ance to get them out of the store. I’ve made it this far, and I can “suf­fer” a bit more with­out them.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, March will not be kind to my bud­get, no mat­ter how many sand­wich­es I bring in for lunch. I have sev­er­al year­ly expens­es due in March, some of which I will be can­cel­ing and oth­ers I’ll let renew, so I know my spend­ing will be high­er. How­ev­er, a few more sand­wich­es def­i­nite­ly won’t kill me and will def­i­nite­ly help trim the fat from my budget.

Income

Gross: $5,676.00

Adjust­ed: $2,908.58

Tax­es: $1,139.40

This is a pret­ty stan­dard month for me. I have no oth­er income streams (at the moment) except for maybe a dol­lar or so in inter­est per month. Lat­er, things will get more com­pli­cat­ed when I start my side hus­tle and rental busi­ness. Next month, I’ll have my tax return to add to this as well as a raise! It’s not much but every lit­tle bit helps!

Savings

401k: $1998.36

Roth IRA: $450

HSA: $100.00

Total sav­ings: $2,548.36

When you add in the unal­lo­cat­ed ~$450 left over, it makes for a whop­ping 60% sav­ings rate this month! Woot woot! I wish I could hit this amount more often, but life is more than just my sav­ings rate. It’s impor­tant, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not going to sac­ri­fice the things that mean the most just so I can save more. For instance, I real­ly like to trav­el and I think the $5k (on aver­age) I spend a year is total­ly worth it.

As of Feb­ru­ary 29^th, my net worth sits at $84,511! My goal for this year is to break $100k, so I’ve got a fair bit to go. Hope­ful­ly the mar­ket helps out a bit!

 

Thanks for read­ing! Let me know what you think about the for­mat change in the com­ments. What did your month look like? Did you stick to your budget?