Monthly Status Report: July 2016

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:

Over­all, July was a fun month! It was­n’t quite as cheap a month as I had hoped it would be, but I still man­aged to reduce my spend­ing a bit and come in under bud­get. A good chunk of my month was tak­en up with obsess­ing over Poke­mon Go. I reduced my spend­ing as I was encour­aged to go out­side and ride my bike around (or walk, or rollerblade), although I might’ve dri­ven a bit more to get to areas to go hunt in. I con­sid­er it a wash, really.

I end­ed up dri­ving back to my home­town twice in July: once for my sis­ter’s grad­u­a­tion par­ty and once to meet my mom to dri­ve to St. Louis for her moth­er’s day present! We had a blast even though the Car­di­nals lost to the Dodgers.

I also got the plea­sure of meet­ing Jason from Phroo­gal! He dropped in for a bit on his Road­trip to Finan­cial Well­ness tour. I was very glad I got to meet him, as he inspired a lot of great think­ing from not only me, but the audi­ence. I have a post in the works about the expe­ri­ence that I’ll work on get­ting up soon. I’ll be excit­ed to see the con­clu­sion of his trip at Fin­Con in September!

Oth­er than that I stayed close to home: read some books, watched a few movies, worked on my side hus­tle, and played more than a few soft­ball games.

But I’ve segued far enough from the num­bers. With­out fur­ther ado, I present my spend­ing (for bet­ter or for worse) for July 2016.

Rent	Stil­l­l­ll pay­ing rent.
Util­i­ties	They’re start­ing to creep high­er. Not sur­prised since we had a LOT of days with temps and or heat index well over 100. Stu­pid corn pushed the dew point wayyyy too high.
Food	Yep. Way over bud­get. Total­ly worth it. #nor­a­grets
Phone	So low. I love Project FI!
Auto	Hap­pi­ly under bud­get! I’m slight­ly sur­prised- I did a lot of dri­ve time.
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	I stock­piled sup­plies well last month.
Sup­port	Month­ly allot­ment to my sister.
Blog	I got some dope busi­ness cards for the blog! I can’t wait to hand them out to people!
Misc	Seems high due to buy­ing the tick­ets for the Cubs. My friends have already paid me back for some and I’ll get the rest in a few weeks. Also bought some fabric 🙂
Trav­el	Only a few bus tick­ets this month 🙂
Shop­ping	My ward­drobe con­tin­ues to age. I real­ized sev­er­al of my favorite clothes are start­ing to be home only 🙁
Enter­tain­ment	I bought a few games this month. They’re a lot of fun!

All told, my spend­ing totaled $3038 for July. I’m not a huge fan of spend­ing so much, but I did have sev­er­al repay­ments which can­celled out some of the big­ger totals. I also bought sev­er­al things that need­ed replaced, which is a nat­ur­al part of the clothes cycle. My total sav­ings rate for the month was 42%, which is almost exact­ly equal the aver­age rate for the year. While I wish I could’ve done a low spend month, I’m con­tent with where I end­ed up.

Income

Gross: $5503

Adjust­ed: $3259.19

Tax­es: $1,180.32

Slight­ly high­er than nor­mal due to repay­ments. Oth­er­wise, same ol, same ol.

Savings

401k: $2,091.60

Roth IRA: $450

HSA: $100.00

Total sav­ings: $2,641.60

A very nor­mal month for savings.

As of 1 August, my net worth sits at $103,331.79. Yes, that’s right. I HIT $100k! Every­time I get to type that I just get so hap­py 🙂 Hope­ful­ly this last pay­check and 401k deposit help keep that above the $100k line, as I had a few days where I dipped below it in July.

Accord­ing to the Lab over on Mad Fien­tist’s site, my FI date is now 9 years and 7 months away. I dropped 4 months from June’s report for an esti­mat­ed date of Feb­ru­ary 2026. It seems so far away!

Side Hustle

This month: $115

Total: $715

I added a few more sup­plies that I dis­cov­ered I was miss­ing, despite buy­ing what seems like half a guy’s garage off Craigslist. I’m start­ing to pro­duce some prod­ucts now and they’re being very well received! I want to make a few more before I tell you all what I’m doing 🙂

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

Dis­claimer: This post con­tains affil­i­ate links. They help off­set the costs of bring­ing you new and excit­ing content!