Monthly Status Report: January 2018

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

Spending

The first month of 2018 has come and gone already! It’s so hard to believe, although I am more than ready. It was one COLD month. I got to escape for a bit to Flori­da for Camp FI: South­east and even that was­n’t super warm. The air did­n’t hurt my face while I was there, though, so I guess I did win in the long run. I also got to hang out with some real­ly rad people!

Speak­ing of win­ning in the long run, I’m gear­ing up to quit my job. Pret­ty much every­one at work knows now though occa­sion­al­ly I find some­one who does­n’t know. Lots of peo­ple are sad I’m leav­ing. I am not one of those peo­ple although I’m sure I’ll have to fight off sad­ness and tears when I throw a big par­ty after my last day at work.

I’ve been pret­ty good with my spend­ing this month. Noth­ing major hap­pened and I was pret­ty good about con­trol­ling the fun stuff.

Check out below for my total spend­ing in December!

 

Mort­gage	Not includ­ing prin­ci­pal, which is account­ed else­where on my spread­sheet. Actu­al pay­ment is $705.43 a month!
Util­i­ties	Super cold + leaky old house = high util­i­ty bills
Food	Meal plan­ning fail.
Phone	Actu­al­ly have a cred­it this month thanks to awe­some Project FI! A com­bo of refer­rals and credits 🙂
Auto	Lots of gas to see my long-dis­tance boyfriend 😍
Inter­net	The new nor­mal inter­net bill.
Insur­ance	Health insur­ance is paid direct­ly from my paycheck.
Pet	The nor­mal lit­ter and food costs.
Sup­port	Month­ly sup­port for my sister.
Blog	The usu­al costs to run­ning the blog.
Fees	Quar­ter­ly 401(k) fee
Misc	Doc­tor bill and laundry
Trav­el	Camp Fi costs
House	Earnest mon­ey and some grounds work

I am lov­ing the new low­er expens­es. They feel just as good as they used to! Actu­al­ly, they might even feel bet­ter now that I remem­ber what crazy expens­es feels like. Total spend­ing for Jan­u­ary was $2,599. I did­n’t meet my “bud­get­ed spend­ing amount” thanks to high util­i­ty bills. It was real­ly cold this month and I’m pret­ty sure this old pile of wood does­n’t have any insu­la­tion in it at all. Wait till you see next mon­th’s bill… ouch! How­ev­er, high spend­ing on util­i­ties was off­set at least a lit­tle by low phone costs. A com­bi­na­tion of cred­its and refer­ral monies from Project Fi 

Income

Pay­checks: $6,462.00
Rental income: $1,250

Total: $7,712

I am soak­ing up these last few high­ly com­pen­sat­ed months. I will make mon­ey when I quit my job, but I’m not kid­ding myself and telling myself I’ll earn replace­ment mon­ey right out of the gate. I can sure hus­tle my butt off though!

Savings

401k: $1,033
HSA: $750
Roth: $0
Cash: $3,303

Total sav­ings: $5,086

I feel a bit like Smaug, hoard­ing all the cash I can get before I quit. I’ve low­ered my 401(k) to the match (6% but real­ly 10%) and I’m not putting any mon­ey into any account but my bank account. No HSA, no Roth IRA, and def­i­nite­ly no Tra­di­tion­al IRA. I need this mon­ey to be read­i­ly on hand to help cov­er costs of tran­si­tion­ing to solo­pre­neur. My employ­er did put an annu­al con­tri­bu­tion of $750 in since I have a high deductible health plan, so just know next month will be a real zero in the HSA ledger.

Net Worth

If I were going to keep on my cur­rent tra­jec­to­ry, my FI date accord­ing to the Lab over on Mad Fientist’s site would be 5 years and 3 months away, which is April 2023! How­ev­er, since I am quit­ting my W2 job in March, I will no longer be using this as any sort of use­ful bench­mark. I plan to con­tin­ue inputting my num­bers until then, though.

My total net worth end­ed the year at $211,195, a gain of 5.76% and $11k! Giv­en how Feb­ru­ary has start­ed in the mar­kets, I prob­a­bly won’t be see­ing gains like this for a while. But then again.…. what do I know about what the mar­ket is going to do? Stay steady friends!

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