Monthly Status Report: May 2018

Wel­come to the new month­ly sta­tus report! Now that I am no longer employed by any­one, I fig­ured it was time to change up the for­mat of the sta­tus reports. I didn’t want to get rid of them entire­ly as I feel it’s impor­tant to share what tran­si­tion­ing to self-employ­men­t/­Fi­nan­cial Inde­pen­dence looks like.

I’m going to break out my per­son­al spend­ing still, but it’s going to be on a high­er lev­el than I had been doing con­sid­er­ing I split some expens­es with my boyfriend now.

Oth­er sec­tions include expens­es and income for var­i­ous endeav­ors, like sep­a­rate sec­tions for blog spend­ing, rental expens­es and income, and any oth­er side hus­tles I have.

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 spend a lot of mon­ey on some­thing? Why? Did I earn a bunch of mon­ey on some­thing? Can I do that again?
• 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.

May 2018 Personal Statement:

Expens­es:

Edit

Hous­ing:	$700
Phone:	$2
Food:	$200
Auto:	$0
Pet:	$0
Health/Fitness:	$185
Shop­ping:	$115
Trav­el:	$1278
Gifts:	$30
Sup­port:	$150
Total:	$2,660

Notes: Phone was near zero thanks to Google Fi and their gen­er­ous refer­ral pro­gram. If you use my link to sign up for their plans (which I HIGHLY rec­om­mend!), you’ll get $20. I would get some, but I hit the cap 🙁 Still def­i­nite­ly worth rec­om­mend­ing though even if I’m not get­ting any­thing oth­er than sat­is­fac­tion from rec­om­mend­ing it. Oth­er expens­es were pret­ty rea­son­able, even though I did spend a bunch on trav­el. I’m thank­ful for my Pri­or­i­ty Pass and cache of Ulti­mate Rewards points. I def­i­nite­ly could have spent way more with­out those two things!

May 2018 Blog Statement:

Income: $28.12

• Con­vertK­it: $17.40
• Ama­zon: $10.72

Expens­es: $100

May 2018 Rental Statement:

Income: $0

Expens­es: $0

May 2018 Money Makin’ Endeavors Statement:

Income:

• Free­lance writ­ing: $40
• Inter­est: $3.05

Expens­es: $18

Combine it all together and.…

Income: $71.17

Expens­es: $2,778

Net worth: $201,668

Notes: I find it inter­est­ing to see what has changed in my spend­ing. Now that I only move my car about once a week, my auto expens­es have plum­met­ed, which is awe­some. My food bud­get has gone down sig­nif­i­cant­ly. If I had­n’t been out on the road so much in May, they’d be even low­er. How­ev­er, most of my food bud­get will be writ­ten off as a blog expense since I did­n’t buy food unless I was out to eat with peo­ple or buy­ing food for a meet­up. That will come in handy come tax time.

I also find it inter­est­ing my net worth went up a smidge (on paper since these are unre­al­ized gains and loss­es). Even though I don’t have very much mon­ey com­ing in right now, my invest­ments are still doing their com­pound­ing thing and chug­ging along. Go invest­ments, go!

I’m still includ­ing my pen­sion in my net worth cal­cu­la­tions since it is still an asset, even if I can’t cash it out now like I had planned. I’ve been told I need to watch the mail and wait for the chance my for­mer employ­er offers an ear­ly cash out option. I guess I’m only kind of count­ing my chick­ens before they hatch 😉

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