Monthly Status Report: November 2017

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 com­bi­na­tion there­of) works best for you and your needs is the best one for you, since every­one and their bud­gets are different.

Spending

Novem­ber was spent enjoy­ing time with fam­i­ly, wrap­ping up var­i­ous expens­es for the year, and rev­el­ing in the unusu­al­ly warm weath­er. I def­i­nite­ly enjoyed a brief respite from the cold. Where I live, the air has a ten­den­cy to hurt my face in the win­ter when I breathe out­side.…. which is, you know, any time I need to leave my com­fy apartment.

Novem­ber was also focused on fam­i­ly. My eldest sis­ter is in town so we got to spend some qual­i­ty time togeth­er, which nor­mal­ly includes play­ing awe­some games like Pro Pin­ball: The Web and CTR: Crash Team Rac­ing. I wish both games would get a remake for PS4 as our fam­i­ly’s PS2 is start­ing to show its age. I also got the chance to spend more time with my boyfriend’s fam­i­ly and real­ly enjoyed get­ting to know his sis­ters and fam­i­ly better.

I don’t know what it says about me that I’d rather spend time play­ing games made in 1995 over new­er games, but I can say that my per­son­al spend­ing was low­er this month because we did stay in.

Check out below for my total spend­ing in November!

 

Mort­gage	Not includ­ing prin­ci­pal, which is account­ed else­where on my spread­sheet. Actu­al pay­ment is $705.43 a month!
Util­i­ties	My house bill is back with a vengeance as win­ter descends.
Food	Slight­ly high­er due to hol­i­day meal contributions.
Phone	Slight­ly over due to trav­els but at least I’m with Project FI and did­n’t have to pay $500 over!
Auto	Gas, park­ing, and rideshare costs.
Inter­net	The new nor­mal inter­net bill.
Insur­ance	Health insur­ance is paid direct­ly from my paycheck.
Pet	More ken­nel fees from the end of October.
Sup­port	Month­ly sup­port for my sister.
Blog	Renew­al fees, new equip­ment, and pod­cast fees.
Enter­tain­ment	A date with my boyfriend, and a movie!
Fees	Tolls in the Chicagoland area #exces­sive
Trav­el	Hotel and oth­er trav­el expenses
House	The last of the ren­o­va­tion expenses!!

Non-house spend­ing went up big time to $4,531. I had a lot of expens­es for the blog, pod­cast, and life in gen­er­al.  Add in the final ren­o­va­tion costs for the emp­ty unit and my final month­ly expens­es for Novem­ber are $5,587. I’m real­ly glad that’s com­ing to an end because my cash reserves are far low­er than I like and am accus­tomed to.

Income

Pay­checks: $3,194.07
Rental income: $600

Total: $3,794.07

Get­ting a new ten­ant in soon which will help me get more $ 😀

Savings

401k: $2,171.24
HSA: $220.82
Cash: $0

Total sav­ings: $2,392.06

The new nor­mal for me now with the move com­ing up.

Net Worth

 

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 6 years and 9 months away, which is August 2024! How­ev­er, since I plan to quit in March, I will no longer be using this as any sort of use­ful bench­mark. I plan to con­tin­ue inputting my num­bers until then, though.

My total net worth shot up this month to $188,772. In light of the cur­rent polit­i­cal hap­pen­ings, such growth makes me incred­i­bly ner­vous. I’m start­ing to view this growth as less of a good thing and more of a, what is the mar­ket doing??? Still, I can’t com­plain with an extra $7k in my pock­et this month so, thanks Mr. Market.

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