Monthly Status Report: July 2019

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

July was an inter­est­ing month. I feel like it was bro­ken into 3 dis­tinct chunks:

The first part of July was spent get­ting used to my new job and new com­mute. I was hired under the premise of work­ing at one loca­tion, but end­ed up at a dif­fer­ent loca­tion for train­ing. That would’ve been fine had my com­mute not dou­bled. I was in the car any­where from 45 min­utes to 2 hours one way! Traf­fic is a killer vari­able around the DC area, so that made it real­ly dif­fi­cult to make plans after work. I did, how­ev­er, man­age to get to see the Play­ing with Fire doc­u­men­tary again with a lot of my favorite DC mon­ey nerds after work one day so that was a lot of fun. I also got to go to the Choose FI Hamp­ton Roads meet­up where we ate some good food, swapped sto­ries with new and old friends, played some yard games and watched the Play­ing with Fire documentary.

The sec­ond part of July was switch­ing work loca­tions to the ini­tial loca­tion. My com­mute dropped to about an hour home, which is still crazy when you think of the fact I was only 20 miles away. This part was con­sumed with get­ting accli­mat­ed to a whole new office and team dynam­ic and MOVING. Why is mov­ing so time and resource inten­sive?? It’s crazy how it feels like it over­whelms every­thing else going on in your life. At least, that’s how it felt to me. I think I can also safe­ly say the same thing for my room­mate (for­mer room­mate now sad pan­da). I did get to do some fun things like play new games (CTR and Har­ry Pot­ter: Wiz­ards Unite!) and see the Play­ing With Fire doc­u­men­tary. Again. Yes. I saw it 3 times in one month and loved every minute of it! I’m good for a while now though haha.

The third part of July was get­ting all my stuff moved and get­ting set­tled in at the new apart­ment. It’s crazy expen­sive, but so incred­i­bly worth it. I was mar­veling over the space when I moved in. Every­thing has a place now! I’ve unpacked box­es that haven’t been touched for 3 years! I just feel bet­ter about every­thing when I’m not drown­ing in stuff and can actu­al­ly use my things. The cat was a bit unset­tled for the first week but has since adjust­ed. I think he likes all the space bet­ter too. I feel like I’ve been play­ing with him more than I have in the past, which is good for me and him! I feel like the last year I’ve been using him as emo­tion­al sup­port (he gives the best cud­dles when he wants to) and now I don’t feel like I need to lean on his com­fort as much. I’ve start­ed to use my sewing machine more and am cre­at­ing some won­der­ful quilts that I can’t wait to give to their babies and show everyone!

July 2019 was a bit of a pricey month, but I watched my spend­ing like a hawk and did­n’t go crazy, so I’m pret­ty chuffed with where I end­ed up.

Check out below for my spend­ing break­down of July 2019!

Hous­ing	My last month of pay­ing “low” rent for the DC apartment
Util­i­ties	We did a good job at keep­ing our util­i­ties low.
Food	I was under bud­get! Woo!
Phone	I love Google FI!
Auto	Most­ly gas now that I dri­ve to work every day.
Inter­net	Got­ta have that fast inter­web access.
Pet	I got the fuzz more poop rocks. They’re like pop rocks, but they don’t taste as good.
Blog	A low month of expens­es for the blog. Super stoked to not have pod­cast expens­es anymore.
Enter­tain­ment	Play­ing with Fire ticket!
Shop­ping	A cooooool t‑shirt!!
Fees	A stu­pid park­ing tick­et and some invest­ing account fees.
Misc	Glue for my car and oth­er ran­dom things
Hob­bies	Fab­ric and oth­er quilt­ing sup­plies to make baby quilts!
House	Mov­ing is FUCKING EXPENSIVE.

It’s a bit dis­heart­en­ing to feel like you had a real­ly good month and then real­ize one thing tanked your entire bud­get for the month. With­out all the mov­ing expens­es (which are over HALF of my month­ly spend), I would’ve done a real­ly good job. I did do a real­ly good job. I just also had to pay peo­ple to move all of my stuff (on a Mon­day, which was cheap­er), get fur­ni­ture and oth­er house­hold goods and put down a huge deposit.

I feel like I’m doing a good job at using what I have at home for enter­tain­ment. I have video games galore, books to read, movies to watch and quilts to sew. I feel like a home­body and I LOVE it! Espe­cial­ly when stay­ing at home means I can enjoy good food and maybe even a nice soak in my nice new huge tub (which is nei­ther peel­ing, water dam­aged, or full of lit­tle bugs like my last one). It’s crazy how your envi­ron­ment impacts your mind­set. I’ve been feel­ing much bet­ter in my new place even as I come to terms with the rent cost­ing over 55% of my after-tax take-home pay.

My month­ly expens­es came to just over $5,000 at $5,088.30.  Giv­en my mov­ing expens­es at $2,722, I’m pret­ty con­tent with how much I spent in July. August will be much bet­ter with life set­tling down.

Income

Pay­checks: $5,769.60
Oth­er income: $3.94

Total: $5,773.54

My new annu­al salary comes in at just a shade over $75k, if you’re won­der­ing. I get paid $36.06 an hour, with time and a half for OT, which I hope to have some com­ing up in Octo­ber for a con­fer­ence I’m sup­port­ing. Woo!

Savings

401k: $1,269.30
HSA: $83.30
Roth: $0
Cash: $0

Total sav­ings: $1,352.60

I fig­ured out how to account for my 401k match­es. Look at me crush­ing this adult­ing thing again. It does­n’t help any­thing that I went from beau­ti­ful, inter­ac­tive ADP pay infor­ma­tion to some­thing that lit­er­al­ly looks like it came off a dot matrix print­er. My sav­ings rate came out to be 11.81% and I’m thrilled. I thought for sure it would be neg­a­tive with all the mov­ing expens­es but hav­ing some cash on hand saved the day. Go me!

Net Worth

 

Accord­ing to this, my total net worth is $207,775. Thanks most­ly to the com­pound­ing inter­est in my invest­ment accounts, I’m up almost $4,000 this month from June. It feels pret­ty good but I can’t help won­der how long this is going to last.….

I also did a thing for the first time in near­ly 18 months. I used a retire­ment cal­cu­la­tor. It was super basic, so it’s not entire­ly accu­rate. I intend to play with anoth­er more detailed cal­cu­la­tor soon to get a more accu­rate pic­ture BUT. If I keep doing what I’m doing, nev­er get anoth­er raise at work and don’t inflate my spend­ing, I’ll be able to cov­er my expens­es with invest­ments at age 50. That feels like a health­i­er, more real­is­tic goal than what I pre­vi­ous­ly had. It’s also incred­i­bly reas­sur­ing to fig­ure out I haven’t com­plete­ly tanked my ear­ly retire­ment chances with the mess I made last year.

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