Monthly Status Report: November 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.

Spending

First off, I apol­o­gize for this going out so late. I real­ize I’m real­ly the only one that is hold­ing myself to any sort of sched­ule with these posts, but I still like to get them out clos­er to the begin­ning of the month.

I think every­one will agree on grace for me being late as I spent a good chunk of Novem­ber wrap­ping things up at one job, sort­ing and pack­ing all my stuff, dri­ving across the coun­try and then unpack­ing all my stuff as I prepped for my new job.

I was incred­i­bly for­tu­nate to have a num­ber of help­ing hands dur­ing the pack­ing-mov­ing-dri­ving stages of this move. My best friend road­tripped out to DC from the Mid­west, my sis­ter flew in from St Louis, and her friend joined us from Europe for a week of explor­ing Amer­i­ca via mov­ing truck. There were a few more mov­ing expens­es this time around as the dis­tance was greater and the time­line short­ened by quite a bit.

I also mis-under­stood my lease agree­ment for my apart­ment in North­ern Vir­ginia. I thought the lease said it was a 2 month fee to break the lease and that was it. What it actu­al­ly was, was a 2 month break­age fee AND I’m still on the hook for rent dur­ing that 60 day writ­ten notice peri­od, which effec­tive­ly dou­bled the fee and ate up most of my relo mon­ey. READ OVER YOUR LEASES!

So TL;DR my expens­es for Novem­ber and Decem­ber are super crazy and I hope to nev­er have this hap­pen ever again.

Hous­ing	.….ouch.
Util­i­ties	I expect util­i­ties to stay under that $200 limit.
Food	High­er than nor­mal with mov­ing my kitchen and buy­ing food for mov­ing helpers!
Phone	I love Google FI! Now with a new unlim­it­ed plan.
Auto	So much gas pur­chased for Levi and the mov­ing truck.…
Inter­net	Got­ta have that fast inter­web access.
Pet	Food and poop rocks for the kitty
Blog	I need to audit these expenses.
Enter­tain­ment	Var­i­ous expens­es for expe­ri­ences with friends!
Shop­ping	Some more clothes, some stuff for the apart­ment like fur­ni­ture and furnishings!
Mis­cel­la­neous	A bunch more ran­dom things that did­n’t fit into the oth­er categories.
Trav­el	This is where I put a lot of mov­ing expenses.

deep breaths

So, this was a lot, but hon­est­ly not as much as I was expect­ing. Novem­ber clocked in at a total of $9,222. Ouch. I did not have that much mon­ey on hand to spend, so the vast major­i­ty of that is chill­in on my cred­it card. I am for­tu­nate to be get­ting relo­ca­tion mon­ey in my first pay­check (Decem­ber 31^st) so I will short­ly have the means to pay most of it off. If not, I would be trans­fer­ring as much as I could back to my zero-inter­est cred­it card and pay­ing it off there.

In the grand scheme of things, one or two inter­est charges from the card will be a tiny blip in the radar. Cred­it cards can be a great tool when used respon­si­bly. I’m not wor­ried about car­ry­ing a high bal­ance like this because I know it will be gone in short order. Inter­est charges can and do sink peo­ple finan­cial­ly all the time when used irre­spon­si­bly. Make good choic­es, my friends!

Income

Pay­checks: $9,231.72
Oth­er income: $15.47

Total: $9,247.19

This is why I’m not nec­es­sar­i­ly super stressed about spend­ing a ton — I also earned a lot! Now, in an ide­al world, I’d be able to bank all that extra mon­ey but this is the real world. It’s amaz­ing what a dif­fer­ence an extra pay­check can make in your finances! Sad­ly, my year of extra pay­checks is com­ing to an end. My new job is back to pay­ing me twice a month no mat­ter where or when the days fall. I’m just grate­ful I get pay­checks again!

Savings

401k: $715.42
HSA: $277.07
Roth: $0
Cash: $0

Total sav­ings: $992.49

I’ve giv­en up on try­ing to explain my sav­ings rate for­mu­la. Most­ly because I don’t have one — I get my num­bers from my handy dandy spread­sheet that some­one else cre­at­ed. Said handy dandy spread­sheet says my sav­ings rate was .27% this month which is.…. not bad con­sid­er­ing all the mov­ing expenses.

Net Worth

 

Accord­ing to this, my total net worth is $225,243, which is a brand new record for me (again!). Keep in mind these num­bers were tak­en at the begin­ning of the month and look a bit dif­fer­ent now. I got a bit of a bump from going through my stack of mail and find­ing an HSA I did­n’t know I had. Appar­ent­ly my last com­pa­ny did­n’t just put mon­ey in the old one, so now I get to fig­ure out how to track down that extra thou­sand dollars.

This is usu­al­ly the sec­tion where I see how much time I have left until ear­ly retire­ment, but I’m not focus­ing on that kind of goal any­more. Instead, I’ll say I had a good month! Men­tal health is more impor­tant to me right now than sav­ing as much mon­ey as I pos­si­bly can. What­ev­er your goal, I hope you made good strides towards it like I did!

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