Monthly Status Report: October 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

Con­grat­u­la­tions! We made it to Novem­ber 2020. Every­body take a deep breath, low­er your shoul­ders, and unclench your jaw. Stare at some­thing over 20 feet away for 20 seconds.

Octo­ber was a decent month for me per­son­al­ly. I am now an Offi­cial Old as I cel­e­brat­ed my 30^th birth­day in the mid­dle of the month. My boyfriend and I cel­e­brat­ed with many of my favorite foods and a Leg­end of Kor­ra marathon. My best friend came in for a social­ly-dis­tanced week­end that saw us run a bunch of errands and take a stroll through the vibrant col­ors of the Mis­souri Botan­i­cal Gar­den. The errands involved Cost­co which always hits my bud­get hard. Covid makes it hard to linger so I got out rel­a­tive­ly light this time (espe­cial­ly as I found a 2 pack of gluten-free bread for $.97! I wish I had more freez­er space as I would’ve snatched more up. The usu­al price is $9!)

I also man­aged to get in a quick vis­it with my fam­i­ly. The hard­est part about the pan­dem­ic for me has been the social iso­la­tion from my friends and fam­i­ly so Octo­ber went a long way towards heal­ing those wounds. My friends and fam­i­ly com­bined to get me thought­ful gifts like new crayons, col­or­ing pages, socks, and sweets. I also bought myself a few gifts like the Adi­das x Cray­ola shoe col­lab. They were too amaz­ing for me to pass up 🙂

The rest of the month was fair­ly unevent­ful. More com­ments on my Octo­ber 2020 spend­ing below!

 

Hous­ing	The usu­al LCOL rent payment
Car pay­ment	The first of many. *cries*
Gas/Maintenance	A lit­tle bit of gas, a lit­tle bit of extra car insurance.
Food	Soooo much food. I had a few meals deliv­ered, tried a new food prep place and Costco.
Phone	I love Google FI! This month is my last phone pay­ment. For real this time.
Inter­net	My life­line. Got­ta have it.
Util­i­ties	I turned the heat on. 2020 sucks enough with­out being mis­er­ably cold, too.
Sup­port	My month­ly sup­port to my sister.
Pet	Stocked up on canned wet food for the floofs!
Blog	The usu­al fees.
Enter­tain­ment	The usu­al sub­scrip­tions (Net­flix, video games, YT Music)
Shop­ping	A lit­tle high as I bought some dec­o­ra­tions for fall and new shoes.
Misc	I went to the dentist.
Gifts	More presents for birth­days and Christmas.

Total spend­ing for Octo­ber 2020 was stu­pid high at $5,126. I absolute­ly love the new car and not hav­ing to wor­ry about it break­ing down on me, but I for­got how much I dis­like hav­ing a car pay­ment. I need to men­tal­ly adjust to hav­ing all that mon­ey spent, as I don’t think I’m there yet. Octo­ber I still spent like I did­n’t have a car pay­ment and that needs some tweaking.

Appar­ent­ly, I’m inca­pable of read­ing my phone bill. Octo­ber was the last month of my phone pay­ment, not Sep­tem­ber. Look­ing at that bill was sad but come Novem­ber the bill will go down. Huzzah!

Food was crazy high this month. I’ve been exper­i­ment­ing with dif­fer­ent food options this year. First I joined a CSA and cooked the food for myself. There was a lot of food waste, so I stopped that. Next, I paid a gluten-free chef in my neigh­bor­hood for a few meals and sides each week, but it was expen­sive and I was still eat­ing the same two meals a week so I stopped that. Now I am try­ing a place that preps all the meals for you and all you have to do is cook it. I real­ly like this option as there is zero work involved for me oth­er than slid­ing it in the oven. No time prep­ping, and no dirty dish­es beyond my plate! I also stocked up on the basics at Cost­co like their gluten-free piz­zas, seltzer, almond flour, and pro­tein bars.

I also went to the den­tist this month for the first time in a real­ly long time. I had braces as a teen, but my wis­dom teeth came in and pushed my teeth out of align­ment. This office offers Invisalign and had a good deal going on, so I signed up. $1,500 is the amount I put down as a down­pay­ment and put the rest on Care Cred­it. 12 months at 0% inter­est works bet­ter for me than pay­ing it all right now or putting it on my cred­it card. They removed my per­ma­nent retain­er on my low­er teeth (that I’ve had for half my life now!!) and I already feel bet­ter about my teeth.

Income

Pay­checks: $3,963.19
Oth­er income: 0

Total: $3,963.19

The usu­al month­ly salary (after tax this time). A fair­ly bor­ing month income-wise. No spe­cial sales, no tax refunds. Can’t have that every month!

Savings

401k: $1,076.68
Roth: $0
Unal­lo­cat­ed Cash: $194

Total sav­ings: $1,270.68

Handy dandy spread­sheet says my sav­ings for the month was 19%. Math is hard. This for­mu­la is appar­ent­ly 401k + Unal­lo­cat­ed Cash divid­ed by my pre-tax income. Not so much unal­lo­cat­ed cash this month 🙁

Liabilities

Car (Mazda3): $12,701
Chase Sap­phire Reserve: $3,226

Total: $15,927

My cred­it cards get paid off every month to zero. The car will not get paid off to zero at the end of the month. As much as I dis­like hav­ing the debt, it is fun to watch the num­ber go down each month. My bonus this year will take a good chunk out of the remain­ing loan. It’s nice to see I already have equi­ty in the car, in case some­thing were to hap­pen to it. But as I intend to keep this car for many years, it does­n’t mat­ter much in the grand scheme of things.

Net Worth

Accord­ing to this, my total net worth is $244,895. My net worth is trend­ing down again, but then again so is the gen­er­al stock mar­ket which makes up the vast major­i­ty of my net worth. Since I’m tak­ing the long view on the mar­ket, I’m not over­ly wor­ried about tem­po­rary dips.

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