Monthly Status Report: March 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:

Where to begin? March was full of as many up and downs as the weath­er. For those who have yet to have the plea­sure of expe­ri­enc­ing Spring in the Mid­west, the weath­er changes often. The old say­ing goes “If you don’t like the weath­er, just wait. It’ll change in a few hours.” We ran the gamut from balmy Spring days to bliz­zards and tornadoes.

My spend­ing was equal­ly tumul­tuous. I pre-paid for sev­er­al upcom­ing trav­el events and had some unex­pect­ed expens­es pop up. I did, how­ev­er, also par­tic­i­pate in events that were basi­cal­ly free, like going over to a friend’s house for a fierce Rise of Nations LAN-par­ty or Scrab­ble and play­ing dodgeball.

March had sev­er­al hol­i­days, so I cel­e­brat­ed St. Patrick­’s Day and East­er in style (mean­ing cheap­ly and responsibly!).

I also rejoined the hunt for a mul­ti-fam­i­ly rental prop­er­ty in March when my first deal fell apart. I got my earnest mon­ey back and returned to scour­ing the list­ings for poten­tial prop­er­ties. The one I did look at this month was not inspir­ing in the slight­est, but I refuse to get dis­cour­aged. There have been 3 new prop­er­ties in as many days, so maybe now the mar­ket will swing into seri­ous gear. Good thing look­ing is free!

With­out fur­ther ado, I present my spend­ing (for bet­ter or for worse) for March 2016.

 

Rent	A nor­mal month for rent. Mov­ing out ear­ly isn’t in the fore­see­able future for me :/
Util­i­ties	Now that nicer temps are here, the heat has been turned off! I’m thank­ful to live on the third floor so all of my neigh­bor’s hot air ris­es into my place!
Food	Way, way way over. Thanks to sev­er­al events like hap­py hours, dates, and hol­i­days. Next month should be better.
Phone	So low. I love Project FI!
Auto	Gas prices are now accel­er­at­ing rapid­ly instead of creep­ing up. Still, 3 tanks of gas for less than $60 is pret­ty good! I also had to buy new screws for my license plates since the old ones were too rusty to con­tin­ue using.
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	For the first time in a few months, I had to buy more dry food. He should be set for months now!
Sup­port	I’ve start­ed sup­port­ing both of my sis­ters in var­i­ous ways.
Blog	The site is a year old! This fee cov­ered the domain renew­al so I can keep writing 🙂
Misc	Tax prep fee (first time I’ve ever paid for it and I’m so glad I did) and an activ­i­ty fee.
Enter­tain­ment	$1 for an app, and $109 for my annu­al MLB.TV subscription.
Trav­el	My flight is pur­chased for Camp Mus­tache, and I also got my tick­et for Fin­Con in September!
Fees	Sigh.…… I’m ashamed to admit I got charged a late fee and a finance fee on my CC. I did­n’t want to pay the whole thing off so I could have a big­ger down­pay­ment. Now I have a big­ger fund, fees, and no house.
Gifts	My mom’s birth­day present! Next month is my niece!
Health	I had an eye appoint­ment this month for new con­tacts. Update: I’m still blind.

 

All told, my spend­ing totaled $3174 for March. I knew March was­n’t going to be kind to my bud­get, but I did­n’t exact­ly help myself as I splurged on lunch­es at work and an extra drink or two at var­i­ous events. Being a social 20-some­thing is hard to do with a lim­it­ed food bud­get. That being said, I still hit my tar­get base bud­get spend­ing even going over in a few categories.

I’ve nev­er paid to have my tax­es done before, but I’m very glad I did as they were more com­pli­cat­ed than I knew what to do with. That was an extra fee this month, but I’ll save more over get­ting audit­ed by the IRS!

Look­ing to April, it’s going to be anoth­er high expense month. I decid­ed to go to anoth­er Car­di­nals game, so I’ll need to pur­chase those tick­ets and the flights to get there and back. I’ll also be spend­ing some time with my fam­i­ly, which means more dri­ving than I nor­mal­ly do. Final­ly, I’ll be meet­ing up with fel­low FI blog­gers in Oma­ha at the end of the month which means more dri­ving and a hotel room, along with one or two drinks 🙂

Income

Gross: $5,810.00 

Adjust­ed: $2,966.82

Tax­es: $1,180.32

My raise came through! It was only about 2%, but every lit­tle bit helps. I thought I might get my tax return this month, but it looks like that come through in April instead. I wish I had some rental income to share, but I’m back at square one in the house search so that won’t hap­pen for a few more months.

Savings

401k: $2,091.60

Roth IRA: $450

HSA: $100.00

Total sav­ings: $2,641.60

My raise added almost $100 to my 401(k) con­tri­bu­tion! I will def­i­nite­ly be max­ing it out this year, maxed bonus or no.

As of March 31^st, my net worth sits at $90,434.24! The mar­ket most def­i­nite­ly helped my net worth grow. I’m excit­ed to break the $90k bar­ri­er for the first time! I real­ize this is entire­ly depen­dent on the mar­ket, so I won’t be sur­prised to see it fluc­tu­ate over and under $90k sev­er­al times. I’m on tar­get to hit $100k by May or June. Let’s see if I can do it!

Accord­ing to the Lab over on Mad Fien­tist’s site, my FI date is now 9 years and 6 months away. A year ago, I was at 13 years! Crazy to see how much progress I’ve made in 12 short months!

 

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!