Monthly Status Report: January 2021

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

Here, have a very belat­ed wel­come to 2021. 

*shoves it across the table* 

Jan­u­ary was only notable to me in that I went just a tiny bit crazy get­ting myself all the things I had on my Christ­mas list that I did­n’t get from friends and fam­i­ly. Cool t‑shirts, some com­fy pj’s, and frames for some of the art that I ordered a few months ago. I thought my spend­ing was way worse and had a moment of pan­ic think­ing that I was some­how at -$3 in my slush check­ing account. I was­n’t but it goes to show even sea­soned per­son­al finance blog­gers make mistakes/think they make mis­takes. In my case, Mint had­n’t updat­ed and I was going off the wrong bal­ance. It updat­ed, my pay­check showed up, and my heart rate slow­ly went back to normal. 

So, that being said, behold! My spend­ing for the first month of 2021 below! 

Hous­ing	The usu­al LCOL rent payment
Car pay­ment	For my sweet 2015 Mazda3!
Gas/Maintenance	A few tanks of gas
Food	IN BUDGET!!
Phone	I love Google FI! No more phone pay­ment holllaaa
Inter­net	My life­line. Got­ta have it.
Util­i­ties	GME Stonks aren’t the only rock­et head­ed for the moon
Sup­port	My month­ly sup­port to my sister
Pet	Poop rocks and food for the fuzz.
Blog	The usu­al fees.
Enter­tain­ment	The usu­al sub­scrip­tions (Net­flix, video games, YT Music) and games.
Shop­ping	Most­ly new clothes for me with a few masks in there
Fees	Year­ly cred­it card fee and a late fee :O
Misc	Most­ly car insur­ance for the year. Sigh.
Hob­bies	Basic leather­work­ing tools!
Gifts/Donations	Sup­port­ing my favorite author on Patre­on and oth­er dona­tions to those in need.

Total spend­ing for Jan­u­ary 2021 was high at $5,053. I’m not exact­ly thrilled at start­ing the year with such high spend­ing but what’s done is done. 

I actu­al­ly had to spend mon­ey on gas this month. An imme­di­ate fam­i­ly mem­ber had a bro­ken bone and need­ed some assis­tance for a few days, so I had to dri­ve home and back. I’m in awe I man­aged to stay in my bud­get for food. It’s the first month for a while that’s hap­pened. Win­ter is here in St Louis at last so my util­i­ty bills are much high­er than nor­mal. Old build­ings with cool archi­tec­tur­al fea­tures are super awe­some until it comes time to heat them. 

Shop­ping was high­er than nor­mal as I spread the joy of my stim­u­lus pay­ment. I got a stand­ing desk from a local ergonom­ics shop, an anti-fatigue bal­ance board, a few cus­tom and or cool t‑shirts, and a few Poke­mon but­ton-up shirts that total­ly pass as busi­ness-pro­fes­sion­al. I also some­how man­age to for­get every year that Jan­u­ary is when my car insur­ance bill hits and get unpleas­ant­ly sur­prised every time. 

I’ve start­ed sup­port­ing some friends and peo­ple doing awe­some things out in the world each month in the form of reoc­cur­ring dona­tions. I high­ly rec­om­mend it, if you’re able!

And final­ly, I actu­al­ly spent some mon­ey on my hob­bies for the first time in a long time. I haven’t been doing much of any hob­by-ing late­ly, but I hope that changes soon. This par­tic­u­lar pur­chase was pre-loved leather­work­ing sup­plies from Craigslist as I have a whole roll of leather to do something(s) with. 

Income

Pay­checks: $6,500
Oth­er income: $600.32

Total: $7,100.32

My raise kicked in! It makes my weird mon­ey nerd self hap­py to get paid in such nice round num­bers. I also qual­i­fied for a whole sec­ond stim­u­lus check and had some inter­est kick in. 

Savings

401k: $1,105
Roth: $0
Unal­lo­cat­ed Cash: $942

Total sav­ings: $2,047

Handy dandy spread­sheet says my sav­ings for the month was 28% for the month! Math is hard. This for­mu­la is appar­ent­ly 401k + Unal­lo­cat­ed Cash divid­ed by my pre-tax income. It’s not great, but it’s bet­ter than noth­ing. Since I got a raise, the amount I’m putting in my 401k also went up. 

Liabilities

Car (Mazda3): $9,703
Chase Sap­phire Reserve: $2,107

Total: $11,810

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 $284,835. Last month I was up $14,000 and this month I’m up $800! This mar­ket is messed up. There was a lot of volatil­i­ty in Jan­u­ary with the whole Gamestop thing going on, so real­ly I’m just grate­ful I held the course and did­n’t go down at all. 

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