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Fiery Millennials

Financial Independence from a millennial's point of view.

Monthly Status Report: March 2018

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Dis­claimer: some links may be affil­i­ate links. They help off­set the cost of keep­ing this blog running!

Side note: This will be the last month of this style Month­ly Sta­tus Report. Now that I don’t have a job and reg­u­lar expens­es any­more, I will be chang­ing up the for­mat for the report. I don’t know quite what it’s going to look like, but it won’t be the same!

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

Turns out, there’s lots to do in prepa­ra­tion for quit­ting your job and mov­ing to anoth­er state. WHO KNEW!? For­tu­nate­ly, as some costs got high­er, oth­ers got low­er, so it all kin­da bal­anced out for a not that bad month.

Check out below for my total spend­ing in March.

Screen Shot 2018 04 06 at 8.27.39 AM

 

Mort­gageNot includ­ing prin­ci­pal, which is account­ed else­where on my spread­sheet. A bit of good news, my pay­ment went down $10!
PhoneActu­al­ly have a cred­it this month thanks to awe­some Project FI! A com­bo of refer­rals and credits 🙂
Util­i­tiesCold + leaky old house = high­er util­i­ty bills
Misc
Doc­tor fee for a checkup
Enter­tain­ment Dou­ble bowl­ing date with my work friend
Shop­pingEtsy fees for new side hustle
Insur­anceHealth insur­ance was paid direct­ly from my paycheck.
HouseLock­smith fees for unlock­ing door and new keys
AutoLots of gas to see my long-dis­tance boyfriend 😍
Sup­port
Month­ly sup­port for my sister.
Food
Not too bad for hav­ing my kitchen packed up
Inter­netThe new nor­mal inter­net bill.
PetThe nor­mal lit­ter and food costs.
Blog The usu­al month­ly bills

Expens­es came in at a very rea­son­able $2,108.75 for March. Not too shab­by! This is rough­ly my tar­get amount for spend­ing. I don’t real­ly like for it to go over that. Now that I’m not work­ing, I’ll be inter­est­ed to see how my expens­es change. I can already say my car and food expens­es are going way down now that I’m not dri­ving to work and being tempt­ed by all the deli­cious food options.


Income

Pay­checks: $6,462.00
Rental income: $975
Online income: $50.75
Refund: $1,593
Inter­est: $4.53

Total: $9,085.28

My last offi­cial month of mak­ing bank from a com­pa­ny. One day soon I will replace that income with mon­ey from my own efforts!

Savings

401k: $1,033
HSA: $0
Roth: $0
Cash: $4,629.21

Total sav­ings: $5,662.21

It’s a good thing I am able to stash away so much mon­ey because high expens­es are coming 🙁

Net Worth

Screen Shot 2018 03 31 at 7.42.38 PM

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 away, which is March 2023! How­ev­er, since I quit my W2 job in March, I will no longer be using this as any sort of use­ful bench­mark. This is the last month I will share this bench­mark, as it won’t real­ly be applic­a­ble after this.

My total net worth end­ed the month at $209,901, up a mod­est .52% and $1k. Not too shab­by the way the mar­kets have been react­ing. I think sav­ing so much in cash off­set any drop in the mar­ket, which makes me feel a bit bet­ter about quitting.

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

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Hi Gwen! Con­grats on tak­ing a leap and leav­ing the w2 world. Maybe one day I’ll grow a pair and be able do the same. I start­ed fol­low­ing you a few months ago and want­ed to stop in and wish you luck on this new chap­ter your starting.

    Reply

  2. Well done Gwen.

    I’m very impressed with your ~$25K per year budget. 

    My prop­er­ty tax­es alone cost more than your entire hous­ing expense. I guess that’s the joy of liv­ing with­in com­mut­ing dis­tance of NYC. Grrrr.

    Reply

    • Thanks Jason! It fluc­tu­ates but I would love to get it down to $25k or even low­er.… someday!

      Reply

    • It goes.… I’m focused right now on get­ting more list­ings up so I can start to pro­mote it. I also want to start an insta­gram account for my stained glass activ­i­ties and pro­mote it else­where on the inter­net! SO MUCH TO DO!

      Reply

  4. Excit­ing times, it’ll be real­ly inter­est­ing to see these bud­get updates over the next year of life changes com­ing your way. Mov­ing for­ward, I think these updates will also be a great roadmap for every­one else who is con­sid­er­ing quit­ting their job!

    You should be real­ly proud of tak­ing the ini­tia­tive to share such an inti­mate look into your finances like this: These month­ly updates are a great tool to moti­vate any­one in a sim­i­lar life sit­u­a­tion that finan­cial inde­pen­dence is pos­si­ble. You moti­vat­ed me to do the same, and I real­ly appre­ci­ate that.

    Reply

    • Thanks MPF! I was so hop­ing it would come off as moti­va­tion­al instead of brag­ging. You and I are real proof this crazy thing called FIRE can be done! Welcome!

      Reply

  6. Kudos to you! I wished I caught the FIRE move­ment when I was in my 20’s. You’ll be set for life in no time.

    I lis­ten to your pod­cast on my com­mute. Thanks for shar­ing the use­ful tips and tricks, made my dai­ly com­mute in traf­fic man­age­able and I actu­al­ly learn a thing or two each day!

    Reply

  7. And just like that Gwen is out! Good­bye cor­po­rate life and hel­lo entre­pre­neur­ship. Bet this post felt good to write. Or was it weird?

    Reply

  9. Would you be will­ing to post a tem­plate down­load of your spread­sheets? I real­ly like the look of them lol. (I under­stand if you don’t want to, I’m sure you’re busy)

    I just dis­cov­ered your blog – I’ve been read­ing a lot about FI late­ly now that I just grad­u­at­ed col­lege and am start­ing a job at the end of July. You’re an inspiration!

    Reply

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