By: Revanche

Money & Life Report: March 2018

April 2, 2018

On Money

Income

Our normal income comes from two full time day jobs.

We experiment with earning money on the side, including minimal cash flow that we don’t touch from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks.

Our side income comes from Swagbucks, infrequently selling on Poshmark, using cash back sites like Ebates, Mr.Rebates, and tracking activity through Achievement (my introduction to it).

The long term goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines enough to prevent me from working.

***

NOTE  I didn’t realize many people thought that cutting off Dad meant we’d be rolling in cash. How I wish that were so. We had to cut him off because our expenses skyrocketed (tripled) when we moved last year!

That, in the process, he was revealed to be a terrible person was just the awful icing on a crappy cake.

Tax refund! Our refund is going straight to savings, as it always does, though I did have to temporarily borrow some to cover bills I paid for April early.

Spending

Life insurance. The $700 premium no longer comes due on my birthday (terrible present), but it does suck to find out that I managed to leave it off my list of budgeted annual expenses. You’d think I’d know better! The bill hits at the same time as our monthly therapy bill for JB and car registration and can’t be charged to a credit card for rewards. Hockey pucks on all fronts.

Taxes are filed! The filing was 43 pages, cost $450, and I only spent 2 hours before (completing spreadsheet and files) and after (reviewing the final filings and editing). In years past I spent many more hours combing through everything trying not to screw up our return with W-2 income, misc income, my home office, our rental property, anywhere up to a dozen sources of investment income and thirty deductions.

Vacation! I booked a vacation using a combination of travel credits and then I discovered Alaska Airlines’ guaranteed airfare credit policy! I submitted a claim each time I saw a possible price drop – we’ve recouped $120 worth of travel credit! If you’re not sure, just enter your name and confirmation code to see, they’ll tell you if you’re eligible! I am extra excited by this!

Wish list:

• I already have a pair of slippers to love but if I didn’t, it would have been these. POM POMS.
• Sincerely wishing that I’d bought two of these mini muffin pans to start instead of just one. Now I’m debating whether 3 is overkill.

Not spending

Free recycling: Our county offers free disposal of hazardous waste (toxic, corrosive, flammable or reactive) products like paint, paint thinner, toilet bowl cleaner, and rat bait. Per storage capacity limits and state regulations, we’re allowed to dispose of 10 gallons or 50 pounds per appointment. They’re serious about requiring appointments, though, they won’t even tell you where the location is, aside from the city, until after you’ve set an appointment. You can also recycle used motor oil and filters, sparing our waterways and landfills.

Reuse: The same hazardous waste collection center turns around and offers the items they collected that remain in good condition free – common household cleaners, auto supplies, fertilizers, wood preservatives, stains and latex paint.

Refunds/credits: This was a good month for customer service refunds.

• I complained to Comcast on two separate occasions for their service dropping out and interrupting my work a heck of a lot. They credited my account $10 and $5, respectively. I could have just checked the outage link and stayed annoyed but I took 5-10 minutes on the chat to ask for a status update and get a credit on my account.
• T-Mobile did an unusually terrible job handling the removal of Dad from my account, and I asked for a courtesy credit from them as well: $15. They also tried to charge me for an extra month of increased data, which I disputed because I definitely followed their rules for starting and stopping it, so that was another refund: $33.
• Our hotel room in Monterey was kinda cruddy. When I very politely mentioned one of the problems at the front desk at checkout so they could fix it, the person there immediately applied a discount to our bill before I could even ask for one. Savings: $35

Months since last shoe purchase: Nikes, July 2017, 8 months!
Months since last clothing purchase: jeans, October 2017, 5 months!

Saving and investing

Move to CD: I haven’t opened the 9 month CD yet, I’ve been distracted by wondering if I have the nerve to reduce our emergency fund from 18 months to 12 months. This would free up funds to invest, theoretically making our money work harder.

Miles & points

Alaska miles: 204,001 and $120 in travel credits
Chase Ultimate rewards: 308,930
Starpoints: 161,620

Net worth

Peeking up with an increase of 0.6%. It hardly seems worth mentioning since it didn’t even make up for last month’s drop of 1% even after a couple large deposits. Our market holdings are still semi depressed so I’m focusing on maximizing returns outside of our stock portfolio.

Goals!

MONEY

• Max out retirement and 529 savings: His IRA – DONE! My IRA – 3/12ths done. 529 – half done.
• Mortgage principal: $3387.02 paid to principal/$15,000.
• Charitable donations: I did one Donor’s Choose project this month – we had a very high spending month so I had to keep our cash close by and roll the donations over to next month.
• Side money: $738.78/$5000

LIFE

• We made vacation plans for this summer! I maxed out a bunch of our travel credits before they expired uselessly, and we’re staying with a friend to keep it affordable. Booked the dogsitter, flights, a rental car. Excitement is slowly building. VACATION OMG. I am making it happen!

HEALTH

• Seamus loves apples! I’ve added some sliced apples to his diet.
• I started taking a daily probiotic to help with my serious stomach pain I’d been getting after every meal. It seems to be helping at least a little bit, the stomach pains are a whole lot less frequent now.
• I’ve been tentatively diagnosed with rosacea. Because I really needed yet another incurable disease for my collection! So far it seems to be responding a little bit to medication. A change in diet might be the next thing to try. I love my carbs, though, so it would be pretty dang sad if true.  🙁

On Life

I cooked a lot, and baked a little. We ate reasonably well this month, and healthy mostly. Lots more produce for snacks, less processed foods, though we still love our crackers and cereal (and English muffins, and bagels, and and and …!)

I’ve started doing some research into changing my diet to cut out gluten for a trial period of 6-8 weeks. I wasn’t planning to start the full trial until after we travel because I wanted to use up our store of gluten-laden ingredients (hello 5 pound bag of whole wheat flour) but maybe that’s just silly.  Icould just continue to bake with those ingredients for PiC and JB, it’s just terribly inefficient to make two batches of everything and really don’t even want to. I’d just bake for them and abstain. Humph.

I’ve started adding GF foods to our diet just because that’s easy (more rice, potatoes, fruits, veg, etc) and will replace a few of our staples so that I don’t accidentally gluten myself during the test (GF soy sauce exists!). Tanja, LGR, and Gwen have been helping me figure out some of those basics, for which I’m incredibly grateful.

The time change kicked our butts. The first night was fine! In bed by 8, all smooth. It was every other night since that we’ve not been able to get ourselves in order to get to bed by 8 pm like normal.  It’s frustrating that we can’t seem to get ourselves back on track.

:: Spring has sprung! How did March treat you? Were you among the unluckily snowbound?