Monthly Status Report: May & June 2019

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.

MAY

I’m doing things a bit dif­fer­ent­ly for this post. I am kin­daaa behind on the sta­tus reports, so instead of doing 2 posts, I decid­ed to put them both into one. I also found in inter­est­ing to put the two months side by side to see what changed!

Spending

May was an action packed month of fun! I went to a few base­ball games, start­ed dat­ing a new guy, saw a few Mar­vel movies in the­ater, it was Bike to Work Day (and week for DC), I left a job, and got to go hang out with friends at Camp FI Mid-Atlantic. It’s no won­der spend­ing was a lit­tle high­er than I pre­fer — espe­cial­ly food! I also left the pod­cast and dropped a bunch of side hus­tles in an effort to sim­pli­fy my life.

 

Hous­ing	A steal of a deal for DC proper.
Util­i­ties	My half of the util­i­ties for the apartment.
Food	Hey fun things in DC with friends that revolve around food!
Phone	I love Project FI! I am pay­ing off my phone and used a bit more data than normal.
Auto	Gas, some replace­ment car parts, and Metro replenishments.
Inter­net	My share of the inter­net bill.
Health	Some health relat­ed expens­es for health stuff.
Pet	No food or lit­ter need­ed thanks to my stock up.
Shop­ping	Some new clothes and pay­ments towards the styl­ist consultations!
Blog	Blog and pod­cast­ing expenses
Enter­tain­ment	Movies and base­ball games and video games, oh my!
Misc	What­ev­er did­n’t fit nice­ly into anoth­er category.

Food was super high for four rea­sons: sta­di­um food isn’t cheap, a new part­ner means eat­ing out more than I do nor­mal­ly, Cost­co and Camp FI. Cost­co is rough on my bud­get. I’m not used to going there yet, so I tend to over spend in excite­ment of being there. I would work on that, but I don’t intend to keep going there after I move into my own place. It’s good for once a year stock­ups, but not every day gro­cery shop­ping for a sin­gle per­son. Plus I impul­sive­ly bought a tent there and while it’s amaz­ing and some­thing I’ve been want­i­ng for a long time, I prob­a­bly did­n’t need to get it then and there.

My total spend­ing for May came in at $4,262 which is sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than I spent in April, so I’m happy!

Income

Pay­checks: $4,038
Oth­er income: $7

Total: $4,045

I don’t actu­al­ly know what my pre-tax income is since I no longer have access to the old job’s pay sys­tem. Save your paystubs, kids.

Savings

401k: prob­a­bly not much
HSA: peanuts
Roth: $0
Cash: def­i­nite­ly went neg­a­tive this month

Total sav­ings: NO IDEA.

So.….…. this is messy. No clue what this actu­al­ly is. Can you tell I was occu­pied with oth­er things in May/June?

Net Worth

 

Accord­ing to this, my total net worth is $193,350. The mar­kets are super volatile, so I lost mon­ey in May between that and spend­ing more cash. Onto June’s details!

JUNE

Spending

After the crazi­ness of May, I tried to keep it slow in June. I kin­da suc­ceed­ed? My spend­ing was low­er than May. I went to the Play­ing with FIRE show­ing in DC, hung out at a local Choose­FI meet­up with friends in Vir­ginia, found some video games to play, start­ed a new job, found a place to live, did a fun 30 mile bike ride around the area and broke up with the new partner.

(side note on that: I’ll be shar­ing less per­son­al life details in regards to my rela­tion­ships here on the blog in the future. It’s not fair for me to let you get attached to the idea of a new guy and then be sad when we break up. Maybe I’ll intro­duce a new part­ner after they’ve been around for a while. Maybe. It’s also rough on me to have to explain what’s going on and live it at the same time!)

 

 

 

Hous­ing	A steal of a deal for DC proper.
Util­i­ties	My half of the util­i­ties for the apartment.
Food	I came in under bud­get! .……most­ly because I bumped up the food bud­get to a real­is­tic amount instead of an aspi­ra­tional amount lol
Phone	I love Project FI! I used a lot of data again this month. My com­mute pret­ty much required Google Maps if I did­n’t want to spend 2 HOURS get­ting home every day.
Auto	Gas, tolls, and Metro card.
Inter­net	My share of the inter­net bill.
Health	Some health relat­ed expens­es for health stuff.
Pet	No food or lit­ter need­ed thanks to my stock up.
Shop­ping	Some new clothes. Updat­ing my wardrobe a bit at a time. Lots of com­pli­ments on my new nerdy shirt!
Blog	Blog and pod­cast­ing expens­es — last month of super high expens­es here!!
Enter­tain­ment	Most­ly for dif­fer­ent show­ings of Play­ing with FIRE lol
Fees	Annu­al cred­it card fee.
Hob­bies	Fab­ric and pat­terns for baby quilts!
House	Fees for my new apart­ment. It is NOT cheap to find a place around the DC area!

Food was down, auto expens­es were up. So life goes, ebbing and flow­ing like a riv­er. My new job is going well, but I was a bit mis­lead in the inter­view. I thought I was going to be at a loca­tion that was clos­er to me, but I end­ed up at one that’s 30 miles away. On a good day, I spent less than two hours total in the car. On bad days, it was over 3! I also had to take a toll road that cost $9 a day! YIKES! So I pushed and after 3 weeks got trans­ferred to the office that is clos­er. Phew! Life is bet­ter now that I’m not spend­ing so much time and mon­ey on the com­mute every day.

I also spent a fair amount of time and effort to find a new place to live. My room­mate is aban­don­ing me mov­ing in with her part­ner, so it was a clas­sic case of who is real­ly leav­ing who? At the end of the day though, she’s off to her new place and I’m off to mine. I’ve got mixed feel­ings about leav­ing, but in the end I think it will be good for both of us. I’ll have room to spread out and do crafty things, and she won’t have to deal with the cat try­ing to kill her and wor­ry­ing about the ther­mo­stat all the time.

I’m a bit appre­hen­sive about mov­ing out. With it comes all sorts of new expens­es — mov­ing (again), util­i­ties not being split, and shoul­der­ing the cost of rent all by myself. I just real­ized it’s been almost 2 years since I had to pay a com­pa­ny direct­ly for util­i­ties so that will be a mind­set change for me. My rent is going to dou­ble, pret­ty much, and my pay is less with the new job. This is a good exer­cise for me in con­trol­ling my spend­ing like a good FI blog­ger should, too. I need to get bet­ter at that at any rate.

My total spend­ing for June came in at $3,508 which is again low­er than May, so I’m pret­ty pleased. I’ve been con­scious­ly say­ing no to things that require mon­ey so I can save up for the expens­es to come!

Income

Pay­checks: $3,892.71
Oth­er income: $440.81

Total: $4,333.52

Again, after tax income as this is all messed up from me leav­ing the one job, start­ing the new one, ben­e­fits all messed up, and PTO being tak­en out of my last pay­check from the old job. Finances can be messy, mkay? The oth­er income comes from things online and maybe my 401k deposit for the new job? I think? Should prob­a­bly go in the sec­tion below but it all ends up in the right place at the end anyways.

Savings

401k: prob­a­bly not much
HSA: I don’t know if my new one is up yet?
Roth: $0
Cash: $1,573.85

Total sav­ings: Some­thing over $1,573.85

I spent less cash in June so I have mon­ey saved up for the Things to Come (mov­ing, deposits, new stuff for the apart­ment, new to me car, etc etc)

Net Worth

 

Accord­ing to this, my total net worth is $206,876. The mar­kets are super volatile, so my net worth is now $13,000 high­er from doing almost noth­ing. It’s inter­est­ing to see the swings in my accounts now that I have more in them. It’s a lit­tle unset­tling to real­ize you lost more or gained more in the mar­ket than you made at your day job that day. It’s only going to get worse/better as time goes on too!

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