Monthly Status Report: May 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:

The word that best describes this month is Trav­el! I start­ed out the month in Oma­ha for the Berk­shire Hath­away meet­ing, which (parts of) was tons of fun! I stayed close to home for the next two week­ends, and then hopped on a plane to hang out with my best friend from col­lege in St. Louis for the week­end. My local air­port added a direct flight to St. Louis, which meant trav­el­ing there was a breeze! (and South­west made it a super fun trip. They did­n’t pay me to say that, btw.)

Then, this last week­end I FINALLY got to go to Seat­tle! I had an absolute blast at Camp Mus­tache. It was very dif­fer­ent from my expe­ri­ence at the Chau­tatuqua this fall, but a good dif­fer­ent! I got to see some famil­iar faces from Ecuador (Mr. Mon­ey Mus­tache, Paula Pant, her part­ner and sev­er­al oth­er atten­dees!), so that was very excit­ing. I also got to meet tons of new peo­ple! I real­ly enjoyed get­ting the chance to talk to every­one and learn their sto­ries. I’ll have a more detailed write­up of Camp Mus­tache lat­er, but just know for now that I had a great time.

Oth­er than that, I hung out at home, played sports and gen­er­al­ly just relaxed.

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

 

Rent	Stil­l­l­ll pay­ing rent. It’s actu­al­ly slight­ly high­er this month as I paid for access to my spare key fob. Don’t ask, I’ll get mad all over again.
Util­i­ties	Util­ties were super low again this month. Prob­a­bly the last month for awhile now that it’s get­ting hot out :/
Food	Most of this could actu­al­ly be attrib­uted to travel.….
Phone	So low. I love Project FI!
Auto	A few longer dri­ves to Oma­ha and Min­neapo­lis made for more gas costs, and park­ing was ridicu­lous­ly expen­sive at the airport.
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	Just some more wet food and lit­ter for the furball.
Sup­port	I’ve start­ed sup­port­ing both of my sis­ters in var­i­ous ways.
Misc	Most of this is med­i­cine from my facial bac­te­r­i­al infec­tion from Oma­ha. Bleargh.
Trav­el	Sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er this month! One plane tick­et and an incred­i­bly expen­sive Uber ride in Seattle.
Shop­ping	Bought some stuff on Ama­zon and some clothing.
Fees	Nor­mal fees charged to my invest­ment accounts.
Gifts	I’m par­tic­i­pat­ing in a bike ride for MS in June!

 

All told, my spend­ing totaled $3188.26 for May. Much much much much bet­ter than April! My total sav­ings rate for the month was 42.88%, which is almost 10% high­er than last month. My nec­es­sary bud­get was up a bit this month, but dis­cre­tionary spend­ing went down a lot. Go me!

Income

Gross: $5,581.45

Adjust­ed: $3338

Tax­es: $1,180.32

A bit nor­mal than high­er thanks to some cred­it card rewards I cashed in!

Savings

401k: $2,091.60

Roth IRA: $450

HSA: $100.00

Total sav­ings: $2,641.60

I wish I had been able to save a bit more out­side my retire­ment accounts, but one month won’t derail my plans.

As of April 30^th, my net worth sits at $97,068.98. I’m THIS CLOSE to hit­ting 100k!! THIS CLOSE I TELL YOU!

Accord­ing to the Lab over on Mad Fien­tist’s site, my FI date is now 9 years and 7 months away. I added two months to my time­line this month which is no beuno. For­tu­nate­ly, June looks like it’ll be a low­er spend month! Phew!

 

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!