Monthly Status Report: February 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

While Jan­u­ary went by at the speed of molasses, Feb­ru­ary was in and out in what seemed like a blink of an eye.

Because I’ve been slack­ing, I write this post from the view­point of a very crazy March. In hind­sight, Feb­ru­ary was such a nor­mal month. My neigh­bor­hood had their reg­u­lar asso­ci­a­tion meet­ing. I got new glass­es. My boyfriend and I made our rela­tion­ship offi­cial after Valen­tine’s Day. I had a day off to enjoy doing noth­ing on Pres­i­dents’ Day. The Nerdy 30’s Wom­en’s Meet­up group attend­ed Har­ry Pot­ter Triv­ia night (my team fin­ished in 4^th place for points, but 1^st place for our team name which was Sweat­ing Like a Hor­crux in Church). I record­ed a guest episode for a friend’s pod­cast. A nor­mal, sim­ple life. I was unpre­pared for the month to fol­low, but I’m hap­py I cap­tured the details of what a nor­mal month looks like.

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

 

Hous­ing	New and improved low­er rent pay­ment. I love LCOL areas!
Util­i­ties	The weath­er got ever so slight­ly warmer, and util­i­ty bills went down slightly.
Food	Sev­er­al date nights and a CSA account refill.
Phone	I love Google FI! Now with a new unlim­it­ed plan (and pay­ing off my phone).
Auto	Woah! My 6 month auto insur­ance pay­ment hit this month.
Inter­net	Got­ta have that fast inter­web access.
Pet	I stocked up on food.
Blog	I renewed my web­site host for anoth­er year.
Enter­tain­ment	Sub­scrip­tions and con­cert tickets.
Shop­ping	Mis­cel­la­neous stuff for the house.
Mis­cel­la­neous	Cash out for var­i­ous cash only events.
Trav­el	A year sub­scrip­tion to Scot­t’s Cheap Flights
Health	Some med­ical sup­plies and my ther­a­pist cost.

The trend line of my month­ly spend­ing con­tin­ues to go down! I spent $3,895 over the course of Feb­ru­ary. No sur­prise as it was a short month and I was final­ly done with all my expens­es from the East Coast. I spent more on food than I thought, but I got some real­ly good dates out of it so I don’t mind. Mon­ey well spent! I for­got that my car insur­ance would hit in Feb­ru­ary, or else I would’ve spent about $600 less. Got­ta be a legal to drive!

I bought con­cert tick­ets to see Ras­cal Flatts with my sis­ter in July. Here’s to hop­ing we can go! The deal was I buy the tick­ets, and she’ll wor­ry about get­ting us there and feed­ing me before the show. A good deal for both of us coun­try fans! I also bought a sub­scrip­tion to Scot­t’s Cheap Flights in prepa­ra­tion for my trip to France at the end of May. How­ev­er, I decid­ed I was­n’t going to go, and I don’t see myself fly­ing any­where for a long while now. So this $50 is kind of a waste, but in the grand scheme of things $50 is not much so I’m not going to beat myself up over it. I do rec­om­mend it if you’re look­ing to fly in the future — you can get some good deals!

Income

Pay­checks: $6,383.34
Oth­er income: $508.68

Total:$6,892.02

My pay­check includ­ed an extra $50 well­ness perk as I com­plet­ed a webi­nar. Check and see if your employ­er offers some­thing sim­i­lar! I also got my $500 deposit back from my old apart­ment com­plex and had a few Etsy sales.

Savings

401k: $1,067.68
Roth: $0
Unal­lo­cat­ed Cash: $450

Total sav­ings: $1,526.68

Handy dandy spread­sheet says my sav­ings for the month was 42%. I need to look at the for­mu­la again, because I’m not entire­ly sure that’s cor­rect. I guess it depends on whether or not you go off gross or adjust­ed pay and what all counts as savings.

Liabilities

Chase Sap­phire Reserve: $1,534
Chase Unit­ed: $0

Total: $1,534

I did­n’t get it all paid off in Feb­ru­ary but the last of it is easy enough to pay off.

Net Worth

Accord­ing to this, my total net worth is $212,464. I’m down about $16,000 or 10% from the peak, and the dam­age will only get worse from here. It’s impor­tant to note these are unre­al­ized loss­es. You only lose when you sell. The val­ue of my shares might be down, but I’m in this for the long run so I have no inten­tion of real­iz­ing these loss­es any point soon.

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