Monthly Status Report: March 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

Wel­come to the increas­ing­ly ridicu­lous month­ly spend­ing report for March 2021. We bought a house!! And since we bought a house, my usu­al spend­ing and bud­get­ing went out the win­dow. You know, since I nor­mal­ly don’t need to buy a wash­er, dry­er, fridge or din­ing room table set. But I did buy all those things in March and was even excit­ed about it! 

I’ll note, since I’m mov­ing into the house with my part­ner, my spend­ing reports aren’t going to show the full pic­ture of my finances any­more as he will be cov­er­ing his fair share of the expens­es. And by fair share, I mean he’s already cov­ered approx­i­mate­ly 95% of the house expens­es so I will be cov­er­ing more of the bills in an attempt to equal­ize our con­tri­bu­tions. By my reck­on­ing, it should only take me 4 years and change to do so. 

Keep on read­ing for my share of expens­es in March 2021!

Hous­ing	My sec­ond to last rent payment.
Car pay­ment	The usu­al payment.
Gas/Maintenance	A few tanks of gas.
Food	Slight­ly over bud­get again.
Phone	I love Google FI! No more phone pay­ment holllaaa
Inter­net	My life­line. Got­ta have it.
Util­i­ties	Just over bud­get. Not terrible.
Sup­port	My usu­al month­ly con­tri­bu­tion for my sister.
Pet	Poop rocks and food for the kitty.
Blog	Slow­ly win­now­ing down paid ser­vices for the blog.
Enter­tain­ment	The usu­al sub­scrip­tions (Net­flix, video games, YT Music) and games, plus my WaPo sub renewed.
Shop­ping	Some art, some books, and a plushie from my fav author
Fees	Stu­pid cards and their stu­pid late fees.
Hob­bies	Yarn for a new sweater I will even­tu­al­ly knit.
House	Appli­ances do not come cheap.
Gifts/Donations	Sup­port­ing my favorite author on Patre­on and oth­er dona­tions to those in need.

Total spend­ing for March 2021 was above aver­age at $6,752. Y’all, fur­nish­ing a 2500+ sq ft house is EXPENSIVE. A reminder we actu­al­ly spent more on the house than this but this is my por­tion of the expenses. 

Gas and car expens­es are grad­u­al­ly creep­ing up now that I am in my car to do more than get gro­ceries once every few weeks. 

Food was slight­ly high­er than my set bud­get but that’s to be expect­ed since I was busy pack­ing up my kitchen and run­ning back and forth to the new house. 

I decid­ed I’d also like to sup­port local jour­nal­ism and sub­scribed to the local news­pa­per. I was tired of con­stant­ly run­ning into the fire­wall and fig­ur­ing out how to get around it. 

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. 

Income

Pay­checks: $6,500
Oth­er income: $1,438.92

Total: $7,983.92

A nor­mal month of pay, plus the last round of stim­u­lus checks and some mon­ey made online from sell­ing stuff. I *bare­ly* squeaked in under the lim­it for the stim­u­lus checks and do not feel bad about tak­ing it, since I turned around and spent it all on appli­ances and fur­ni­ture for the house. Look at me go, stim­u­lat­ing the economy!

Savings

401k: $1,040
Roth: $0
Unal­lo­cat­ed Cash: $146.92

Total sav­ings: $1,186.92

Handy dandy spread­sheet says my sav­ings for the month was 15% 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. Hon­est­ly, this was a pret­ty good rate for all the spend­ing I had to do on the house. Coul­da been bet­ter but it could’ve been way worse, too. 

Liabilities

Car (Mazda3): $9,425
Chase Sap­phire Reserve: $3,708

Total: $13,133

My cred­it cards get paid off every month to zero but it does fluc­tu­ate from month to month. With the house, I’ve been putting more on it. Just that stage of life. The car loan is slow­ly going down. I’m going to get a decent amount back from tax­es so I’ll prob­a­bly throw more mon­ey at it. 

Net Worth

Accord­ing to this, my total net worth is $302,715. I crossed $300,000!! WAHOOO!!! Here’s to pass­ing com­plete­ly arbi­trary mile­stones! Accord­ing to sev­er­al com­pound inter­est time­lines, I am now halfway to a mil­lion. The first $100k is the hard­est and then it only accel­er­ates from there. Keep on grow­ing for me, my lit­tle dol­lar army!

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