Monthly Status Report: November 2020

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

It’s begin­ning to feel a lot like Christ­mas! The weath­er has been excep­tion­al­ly mild so far here in St Louis, but I hope it gets cold enough to snow and have it stick for Christ­mas. Last year it was over 70 degrees on Christ­mas Day which meant I got to take a bike ride in For­est Park. Won­der­ful, but I’m old-fash­ioned and would have rather gone sled­ding down Art Hill. Last year I did­n’t have any vaca­tion so I could­n’t be with my fam­i­ly when they gath­ered for Christ­mas. Turns out that was great prac­tice as I won’t be able to be with them again this year. 

Novem­ber was a pret­ty calm month. Work ramped up, so I spent a lot of time think­ing about that and not much else. I was able to pre­pare a Thanks­giv­ing din­ner for my boyfriend and myself, which turned out well despite nei­ther of us ever hav­ing to cook the whole meal before. I cre­at­ed a Gantt chart to fig­ure out what need­ed to be cooked when and it worked flaw­less­ly! Despite all the extra food I bought, I man­aged to stay below my food bud­get for the first time in a long time! Yay me!

The end of the month also saw me do some shop­ping for peo­ple’s presents. Oth­er­wise, I did real­ly well in Novem­ber! See below for all the awe­some numbers 🙂

 

Hous­ing	The usu­al LCOL rent payment
Car pay­ment	For my sweet 2015 Mazda3!
Gas/Maintenance	A debt pro­tec­tion fee from the cred­it union that holds my loan??
Food	WOOHOO!! BELOW BUDGET!!
Phone	I love Google FI! No more phone pay­ment holllaaa
Inter­net	My life­line. Got­ta have it.
Util­i­ties	Pret­ty mild month meant low­er util­i­ty bills.
Sup­port	My month­ly sup­port to my sister.
Pet	Turns out buy­ing 100 cans of cat food at a time means you’re set for a long time.
Blog	The usu­al fees.
Enter­tain­ment	The usu­al sub­scrip­tions (Net­flix, video games, YT Music)
Shop­ping	Some Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions, some new pow­er strips and new clothes for me.
Misc	Dish­wash­er and deter­gent pods!
Gifts	More presents for birth­days and Christmas.

Total spend­ing for Novem­ber 2020 was won­der­ful­ly low at $2,940. I said last month my spend­ing need­ed tweak­ing and boy did I tweak! (I also twerked but thank­ful­ly there’s no proof of that.)

I attribute this to 3 main cat­e­gories: gas, food, and util­i­ties. I did­n’t buy any gas in Novem­ber because I did­n’t go any­where so that cat­e­go­ry would’ve been zero had it not been for that weird fee from my cred­it union. I sus­pect that fee has some­thing to do with the fact the State of Mis­souri sent me the title with­out them being a lien­hold­er. Whoops. Food was low this month because I did­n’t stock up on food any­where (Cost­co, the local prepped food place). I also behaved and did­n’t order out so much. Util­i­ties were low because the weath­er was mild and I was able to go sev­er­al days with the heat turned entire­ly off! I know that won’t be the case for the next few months (brrrrr) so I’m cel­e­brat­ing now while I can.

I’m also excit­ed I don’t have a phone pay­ment to make for the first time in 2 years. It was only $30 a month on a 0% inter­est loan so I let it ride but I’m hap­py to have slimmed down expens­es. I’ll also be mak­ing a point to pay for my next one in cash.

It feels weird to feel good about spend­ing $65 on dish­wash­er and deter­gent pods, but yet here I am. Dropps was hav­ing a 30% off Black Fri­day sale, so I stocked up. I now have enough dish­wash­er pods to last me months, and a ton of deter­gent pods for wash­ing my clothes. My boyfriend does­n’t have a wash­er in his apart­ment (part of the rea­son he only pays $450 in rent to split a 2 bed­room apart­ment) so when he vis­its, he brings his clothes with him. I’d much rather he do his laun­dry here as opposed to pay­ing some­one to wash them or risk get­ting exposed at a laun­dro­mat. Plus I don’t pay for water so it works out for us both.

I’m also proud of the gift I got for my nephew’s 4^th birth­day. He loves Blue’s Clues, so I found a shop on Etsy sell­ing the Handy Dandy Note­book, cray­on, extra pages and stick­ers of Blue’s paw. He then had to go on a hunt to find his oth­er present — a hood­ie with Blue on it. He’s in love and I feel like the best aun­tie ever.

Income

Pay­checks: $9,833.34
Oth­er income: $500.32

Total: $10,333.66

When I took my new job last year, I was under the impres­sion we did­n’t have an annu­al bonus. But, we do! And that bonus hit at the end of the month. It was $3,500 which after tax­es amount­ed to an extra reg­u­lar pay­check. I will take it! I also got the mon­ey from sell­ing my old car. Levi is offi­cial­ly not mine any­more. Farewell, faith­ful stead.

Savings

401k: $1,076.68
Roth: $0
Unal­lo­cat­ed Cash: $6,316.98

Total sav­ings: $7,393.66

Handy dandy spread­sheet says my sav­ings for the month was 72% for the month! Math is hard. This for­mu­la is appar­ent­ly 401k + Unal­lo­cat­ed Cash divid­ed by my pre-tax income. Pret­ty stoked to hit over 70% with bare­ly even break­ing a sweat! Too bad I can’t make this much every month or I’d be doing real­ly good. Instead of the pret­ty good I am right now lolol.

Liabilities

Car (Mazda3): $12,379
Chase Sap­phire Reserve: $1,575

Total: $14,333

My cred­it cards get paid off every month to zero. I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mind the mon­ey aspect of hav­ing the loan, but the logis­ti­cal side of things is annoy­ing. Espe­cial­ly to some­one like me with dys­func­tion­al exec­u­tive func­tion­ing skills. I moved $3,000 of my bonus to my car pay­ment account and am look­ing for­ward to get­ting the loan under $10,000 by the end of the year! I have 2 years to pay it off but am aim­ing for much soon­er than that.

Net Worth

Accord­ing to this, my total net worth is $269,370. WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE MARKET? I’m up $25,000 in one month! That is insan­i­ty. Pure crazi­ness. At this rate, I’ll cross the $300,000 mile­stone for the first time before the end of the year. Absolute­ly bananas.

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