Money & Life Report: April 2018
May 7, 2018
On Money
Income
Our normal income comes from two full time day jobs. We earn 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 physical activity through Achievement (my introduction to it). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a (very) small commission to keep the blog lights on.
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines enough to prevent me from working.
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Side income! I happened across a side job that would fit easily into my normal schedule without having to commit to a set number of hours. That’s perfect for my incredibly limited free time! And very important for my peace of mind because we’ve got a slew of expenses coming down the pipeline.
Spending
We need to budget for:
- long term care insurance for both of us
- long term disability insurance for me.
- $2000 in car maintenance. Oy!
We don’t have these items budgeted yet because I haven’t been thrilled with the policies available to us but we do need to get ready to pay for them in 2019.
New dog. We welcomed NewPup to the fold and have been spending a lot of time on training. We still don’t know how it’ll go, especially if PiC really is allergic to her. We don’t know if that’s going to be controllable or not, but we’ve done a bit of necessary spending to start her off. It doesn’t help anything that JB has already accepted NewPup as zir little sister and exclaims that ze is SO HAPPY we have NewPup now.
Seamus needed another course of antibiotics. I avoided spending $150+ when the less experienced with us vet tried to make us come in for an exam, I asked for my message to be sent directly to his normal vet who knows Seamus has got lifelong issues and trusts my judgement. So we were “only” out $61 of antibiotics instead of having to lug ourselves into the office and be seen for what we already know is an allergy-related infection. I was vindicated by the 4th day of antibiotics.
WiFi Range Extender. All our security devices require an internet connection and the placement of our router for indoor use was bad for outdoor security. After struggling with poor connection for months, I caught a sale on this TPLink range extender. I’m still trying to decide whether it suits our needs.
Hydro Cell water bottle. After researching literally 50 water bottles with my million requirements (environmentally friendly means it has to last forever, it needs a straw that’s relatively easy to clean, high volume, insulated preferred but not a dealbreaker if this makes it too heavy because it also has to be lightweight), I settled on this one. Taking the 32 ounce bottle means that I can carry a whole lot more water in one go if I want, though I don’t have to, and it comes with an extra lid with a built in straw so I can choose to have the normal lid or the lid with straw. It insulates for cold or heat, which is great in those few times I need to carry a warm beverage, and doesn’t sweat. Now I have to be sure that the straw is easy to clean!
Highly recommend:
- Rechargeable AA batteries are amazing. This charger comes with 4 AA NiMH Rechargeable Batteries. I use these for my mouse (it drains regular batteries like nobody’s business) and our remote control. They’ve saved us having to safely recycle 12 batteries in the last 12 months. I wish we could get rechargeable C batteries too!
Wish list:
- Kindle Paperwhite. I brought this on myself. My many-years-old Kindle died last year and I’ve been saving up for it but each time I do, something else more necessary wipes out my funds.
Not spending
Couch surfing. We had an unexpected errand take us out of town at the last minute and unfortunately that meant that hotels in the area were $200+. I preferred to pay the money because I knew I wouldn’t get a good night’s rest at the relative’s place where we bunked for the night. I was not wrong. But we saved $200 so there’s that.
Vonda N. McIntyre’s Little Sisters and Little Faces. Free from Book View Cafe!
Months since last shoe purchase: Nikes, July 2017, 8 months!
Months since last clothing purchase: Jeans, October 2017, 5 months!
Saving and investing
Gas bill experiment. Our furnace is set to 65 degrees but because our bill is still pretty high each month, we’ve changed our habits a bit to cut the cost more. We rely on layers and a small space heater to keep us warm during the work day, leaving the furnace off entirely. I’m pretty sure that it saves us some to only run the furnace at night when more of us are home and we’d need to heat more than one room.
Our all time high was $200 earlier this year, we’ve gotten it down to $145-160. The lowest of $145 included a week where I left the furnace off entirely for 6 days so that’s probably the lowest it’ll go for a long while, minus months that include a vacation.
Fun Fact! It’s my ten year anniversary with Vanguard this month. A large part of that balance includes JB’s 529 so it’s not all my money but it’s good to see some progress made here. I do regret the loss of a 401K years ago, so much investing opportunity lost. Something in the neighborhood of $120,000 of investing we maybe could have done. I’m trying to make up for it by aggressively saving and investing now in our brokerage.
Apr 1, 2008 – Jun 30, 2008, Beginning balance $6,987.22
Apr 1, 2018 – Apr 24, 2018, Ending balance $217,495.74
Dog supplies
I’m on the hunt for ways to cut down food and treat costs without compromising on quality of care. I’ll report back with some results!
Miles & points
Alaska miles: 204,001 and $120 in travel credits
Chase Ultimate rewards: 310,262
Starpoints: 165,074
Net worth
Peeking up with an increase of 1.2% since last month and a whopping 1.9% from January. Up is good but meh and meh, generally speaking. We added a lot to cash this month but we also had a lot of big expenses coming through, mostly expected, some not budgeted, and that ate up a good deal of the increased income. It was one time stuff like work bonuses and tax refunds, so we never budget expecting that money to come in. I was going to raid the savings set aside specifically for expenses!
On Life
Gluten free trial. PiC convinced me to start this earlier than summer. It’s not great, I still crave so many delicious wheat-based or wheat-inclusive foods, but it’s going ok, so far. Read my weekly updates here: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3.
Chaos. This has been a tough month. Everyone has been out of sorts for all sorts of reasons. Part gloomy weather, part work stresses, part whatever else is going on. It’s not just isolated to our family, there’s been a bit of overarching IGH in the air. I hope May clears it out.
Congrats on you ten year anniversary with Vanguard! They don’t have my first 401(k) history anymore, so I will hit my anniversary in November 2020 – ten years after I made my first Roth IRA contribution.
I read a rumor that Chase will discontinue transferring UR points between certain types of cards, so we concluded to transfer them each month to the card with the best redemption value, which is the Sapphire Reserve. I am still uneasy about sitting on our 200k of UR points as usually I try to redeem quickly since you don’t know when a program might change. I assume they’ll get used for flights in the next couple of years though.
Like you, I’m quite uneasy about sitting on the pile of points, now, for more than one reason!
Sounds pretty chaotic over there. Don’t wear yourself out too much.
We’re signing up for a couple more cards this month. I’m getting a new HVAC so might as well grab the sign up bonus. I started a spreadsheet to keep track of them.
We’re trying! 🙂
I’d love to know what company you’re looking at for long term disability. I was declined by two different companies a few years ago and gave up trying to find a place that would cover me. If you can get long term disability from some company, I may have a chance with them, too.
Several years ago I got a set of rechargeable batteries, a charger, and adapter sleeves for different sizes of batteries. It’s Sony’s Eneloop brand, and the adapter sleeves let me convert AA batteries into C or D sized ones. Very handy, and the batteries have lasted me a long time.
I love Vonda N. McIntyre’s Dreamsnake book. It was a favorite of my youth and I bought an ebook copy last year. So glad to hear about these stories, even if they are no longer free. 🙂
Linda recently posted…Hiding and hoping
Let me dig into the companies and I’ll let you know!
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll look into it.
It might be really hard to find a good long term care plan. They are usually sold to people who are older. Also, people are living a lot longer then the actuarial tables predicted years ago and so companies are losing money. People are finding it’s hard to collect, even when they qualify.