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Fiery Millennials

Financial Independence from a millennial's point of view.

Monthly Status Report: September 2018

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Wel­come to the new month­ly sta­tus report! Now that I am no longer employed by any­one, I fig­ured it was time to change up the for­mat of the sta­tus reports. I didn’t want to get rid of them entire­ly as I feel it’s impor­tant to share what tran­si­tion­ing to self-employ­men­t/­Fi­nan­cial Inde­pen­dence looks like.

I’m going to break out my per­son­al spend­ing still, but it’s going to be on a high­er lev­el than I had been doing con­sid­er­ing I split some expens­es with my boyfriend now.

Oth­er sec­tions include expens­es and income for var­i­ous endeav­ors, like sep­a­rate sec­tions for blog spend­ing, rental expens­es and income, and any oth­er side hus­tles I have.

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 spend a lot of mon­ey on some­thing? Why? Did I earn a bunch of mon­ey on some­thing? Can I do that again?
  • 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.

September 2018 Personal Statement:

Woo! Sep­tem­ber was a whirl­wind of stress, anx­i­ety, hard work and FUN! I start­ed off the month cel­e­brat­ing as I got my hands on the check from sell­ing The Din­gle House. I have mon­ey now! I’m not flat broke! WAHOO!

I also spent a good amount of time prep­ping for Fin­Con 2018 in Orlan­do and even got to sneak in a vis­it with my fam­i­ly back home. Octo­ber looks like it’s going to be less busy event wise, but more busy work wise so thank good­ness for that! Over­all I’m feel­ing much more pos­i­tive about this whole free­lanc­ing thing than I was a month ago.

Expens­es:

Hous­ing: $650
Phone: $45
Food: $274
Auto: $149
Pet: $125
Health/Fitness: $107
Shop­ping: $25
Trav­el: $70
Gifts: $50
Fees: $454
Util­i­ties: $111
Misc: $195
Total: $2,215

Notes: Over­all, I’m pret­ty pleased with keep­ing my spend­ing in check. Hav­ing very low costs for Fin­Con real­ly helped here!

September 2018 Blog Statement:

Income: $608.70

  • Con­vertK­it: $8.70
  • Site­ground affil­i­ate link: $50
  • Coach­ing: $550

Expens­es: $515 (between pod­cast & blog stuff)

September 2018 Rental Statement:

Income: $12,497.81

  • House sale!!: $11,024.85
  • Refunds: $1,472.96

Expens­es: $200

Note: I’m done with The Din­gle House! WOOO!!!! I final­ly made mon­ey off the rental! I have yet to do full account­ing of this, but I know I have two more pay­ments to make to tie off the loose ends.

September 2018 Money Makin’ Endeavors Statement:

Income: $131.12

  • Inter­est: $1.12
  • Stained glass: $45
  • Stu­dio mon­key work: $40
  • Misc: $45

Expens­es: $0

Combine it all together and.…

Income: $13,237.63

Expens­es: $2,930

Net worth: $203,295.43

Screen Shot 2018 10 05 at 9.55.31 AM

I feel much more sol­id know­ing that my num­ber are actu­al­ly my num­bers instead of inflat­ed slight­ly around the val­ue of the house. I also real­ized I’m com­plete­ly debt free again and I LOVE IT! Hav­ing debt is like hav­ing an invis­i­ble cloud hang­ing around your head. Even though mine was “good debt” I’m hap­py to have got­ten rid of it! Sure, my net worth went down on paper because I sold it, but I con­sid­er this to be the real number.

More impor­tant­ly, that cash num­ber is up so I feel like I actu­al­ly have more mon­ey now than I did last month. Hav­ing eas­i­ly acces­si­ble cash does won­ders for the brain!

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

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I’ve had back-to-back expen­sive months, but for wild­ly dif­fer­ent rea­sons: August was a 3‑paycheck month, so I tried to do some­thing good with the mon­ey and made over $1,000 in extra prin­ci­pal pay­ments to my mort­gage. But then life hap­pened and I need­ed 4 new tires for my car and then the hot water heater went kaput and I end­ed up spend­ing 18 days with no hot water so I threw a bunch of mon­ey at the prob­lem right before Fin­Con, which also was­n’t cheap. But as of last Fri­day Im back on sol­id foot­ing from those two months and I can get back to send­ing all of the excess to my brokerage!
    Great to final­ly meet you last week!! 🙂

    Reply

  2. Bril­liant, Gwen! Con­grat­u­la­tions on a ban­ner month. 

    Epcot’s food & wine fes­ti­val is so fun. My favorite part might have been putting ‘stick­ers’ in my ‘pass­port’ for ‘coun­tries’ vis­it­ed ;). (Also, did you get to ride Soarin’?)

    Reply

  3. Con­grats on the awe­some month Gwen! It’s got­ta feel so nice to have the Din­gle House off the books and out of your life. So cool to see the uptick in income from mon­ey mak­ing endeav­ors too! Glad you had an awe­some month but sad I couldn’t attend Fin­Con to see you again. I’ll be at the next one!

    Reply

    • It was.…..? Maybe for you.…. just kid­ding! Miss you already! I hope I get to spend more time with you in 2019!

      Reply

  7. Down with the Din­gle house! Con­grats on a good month. All of your posts on Fin­Con and Chau­tauquas have me con­sid­er­ing going in 2019…

    Reply

    • Hip Hip HOORAY!!! You should absolute­ly go to the Chau­tauqua! It was the turn­ing point in my adult life. I’m so hap­py I got to go not just once but twice!

      Reply

  8. Awe­some for you and hop­ing to emu­late this some­day! Just need to fig­ure out what job I can do remote­ly while traveling 🙂

    Reply

  9. Yay for being done with the Din­gle house and no longer hav­ing debt and get­ting some income out of it!!! Real­ly curi­ous to see the final full accounting!

    Reply

    • Woot woot! I’ll get around to it even­tu­al­ly when I feel like I can han­dle the results lol

      Reply

  10. I think “good debt” feels very dif­fer­ent when it’s your per­son­al res­i­dence vs a fluc­tu­at­ing rental house. We’ve had invest­ment debt in the past / will again in the future, and I get pret­ty focused on pay­ing that off quick­ly so every­thing that comes in from that is income, not just back to pay­ing off the debt.

    Reply

    • Total­ly! As some­one who has­n’t real­ly ever had debt, even the “good debt” stressed me out.

      Reply

  11. Giv­en your ear­ly exit from the cor­po­rate world in pur­suit of FI, what’s your medi­um to long-ish term plan over­all? Assum­ing a 4% swr of ~$650/month, that means you need to net ~$1350 from your side busi­ness­es to the­o­ret­i­cal­ly not be draw­ing down on your sav­ings in order to sup­port ~$2000/month of per­son­al expens­es. I know every­one hates spec­u­la­tion, but the fact is that rates are ris­ing means that we are going to enter some form of a reces­sion and poten­tial­ly a stock mar­ket pull­back with­in a year or two…the fed will sim­ply keep rais­ing rates until this happens…it’s just a fact of the eco­nom­ic cycle. I guess that also what I’m ask­ing is that although it’s uncom­fort­able to think about, do you have a plan for the real­iza­tion of down­case sce­nario giv­en that a reces­sion, weak job mar­ket, and 20–50% pull­back in stocks are very real pos­si­bil­i­ties for the next two years. Not try­ing to call you out, but then again I am, I don’t think you’ve real­ly explained your end goal. Where do you see your­self in 2 years (pos­si­bly with the coun­try in a reces­sion), and giv­en that, where do you see your­self in 10 years?

    Reply

  12. Very sol­id month, Gwen. Thanks for shar­ing. Mrs. Groovy and I will each have a nice glass of wine to cel­e­brate the sale of Din­gle House. We’ve had a cou­ple of Din­gle Hous­es in our lives and there’s noth­ing more sat­is­fy­ing than when one was loosed from our hairy finan­cial lives. Cheers.
    Mr. Groovy recent­ly post­ed…Build­ing Groovy Ranch: Update 32My Profile

    Reply

  17. Hi, new­com­er here. I’ve read some posts on your blog, but I still haven’t fig­ured how you man­aged to accu­mu­late over 200 000 dol­lars in your net worth. Did you start from 0 dol­lars and just spent almost noth­ing and saved almost every­thing from when you worked? Or am I miss­ing anoth­er income source for your net worth? How many years did you work to accu­mu­late 200 000?
    nor­we­gian­fire recent­ly post­ed…Bor­row, don’t buyMy Profile

    Reply

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