Money & Life Report: August 2018
September 3, 2018
On Money
Income
Our normal income comes from two full time day jobs. We earn money on the side, including tiny cash flow 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.
The long term goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines enough to prevent me from working.
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Micro-income: Achievement. Another 10,000 points combined for diligently answering my chronic pain surveys and being active equals $10 in PayPal. Not bad. I do wish I had a better app to connect than Google Fit though. That earns a paltry 6 points per day of activity instead of points according to the amount of activity.
Micro-income: Craigslist. PiC is our winner this month. He sold bike gear, car gear purchased for the previous car, furniture, and another thing I can’t think of right now. $400!
Micro-income: Freelance writing. A concerted effort to knock out a significant handful of wee gigs to bring in some cash worked! This covered my library quest donation (see below).
Micro-income: Poshmark sale! After a long drought of sales, an idle five minutes on Saturday night sharing other people’s items for sale and sending a lower price offer to all the likers on a large clothing item brought in a sale! Woots! $40!
Contemplation: We’ve had a really good side income month but that’s totally random. I’m hyperaware of how all of these little rivulets require lots of hands on attention and work and could easily dry up anytime. Like our day jobs, on a smaller scale. I’m of the “make hay while the sun shines” mindset with these dribs and drabs because they’re also centered around being environmentally kind, so that’s worthwhile in and of itself. But also I’m contemplating what more sustainable ventures that don’t require us to be extremely hands on for every single hardearned sale we should invest time into.
Spending
Car maintenance. My car’s basic maintenance has been taking a back seat for months because nothing was that serious but also I’m keenly aware that “not that serious” can become “very serious” with enough time, aka neglect. We finally buckled down, expecting to run up a $2000 bill. We still have another 2-4 months on these tires, probably, so I’m not breathing a sigh of relief yet but everything else they recommended “only” cost $500. Cross your fingers that the tires and alignment don’t cost the remaining mentally budgeted $2000!
Lowest electric/gas bill alert! Partly because of our travel last month, we found a new low for our PGE bill in a year: $87. It typically hovers around $105 and I’d like to get it down more consistently but I don’t blow a ton of brain power on that.
Credit card churning: Citi Premier. We are targeting a $4000 spend in 3 months for this card. I’m putting all our car insurance, car repairs, groceries not from Costco, business expenses, and utilities on that card. Had I timed this even a week earlier, I could have swiped the card for $2000 in vet bills and knocked out half that spending in a hurry. Ah well. I know for next time.
Library Quest. I’ve been looking for great SFF books in my library’s e-catalog but their selection is sad. It occurred to me that some of our donation money might-could come in handy for this so I asked if they were open to me giving them book lists to buy for the e-book collection and money specifically earmarked for those books. They were hugely receptive! They also asked me for as many recommendations as I cared to give in that area because they had lost the person who read those books and made recommendations in the past. You’d better believe those are coming!
Clothing.
- Accessories, 2018: Sunglasses, $30
- Clothes, 2018: Dresses, $62
- Shoes, 2018: None yet
Not spending
Promo code and refund: Rover. For the first time, a T-mobile Tuesday offer was useful to us! We had to book a Rover sitter several weeks ago for a fall wedding we’re attending. I was able to redeem the T-mobile Tuesday $50 promo code for Rover, add it to our account, then emailed them to add it to our booking. $50 refund to my credit card, score!
Refund: REI. PiC received a $50 gift card and bought me a sunhat with full coverage. It was a lovely thought but it looks ridiculous and I couldn’t bring myself to wear it. I might have gotten over myself but he bought it full price and the combination was too much. They were happy to refund the purchase total to our credit card instead of giving it back as a gift card so that was a nice bonus.
Travel Credit: Southwest. PiC spotted a fare sale on Southwest for tickets we bought last month and with a phone call, the agent was able to credit us $40 per person.
Saving and investing
Rebalancing. Note: We have no insight into PiC’s index fund with Fidelity through his employer so I’m ignoring that for now. I finally did the math. I’m holding 8% bonds across our entire portfolio (dividend stocks, index funds). That is awfully low so I’m exercising forced discipline and making myself buy more bond funds (VBTLX) when I move cash into Vanguard instead of more stocks as normal. Growth is vitally important for us though, and this comment made me think on this subject more in the context of our approach to investing and it helps me define a reasonable limit. We have 12 months of reserve cash and we have another 6 months in bond funds we can sell off in case of prolonged job loss, so I don’t feel the need to aim for more than 10% bonds.
Miles & points
Alaska miles: 215,045 and $120 in travel credit
Southwest: $120 in travel credit
Chase Ultimate rewards: 314,072
Starpoints: 174,710
Net worth
Our asset allocation is largely the same. I’ve moved a lot over to investments from cash and we want to reduce real estate debt but we can’t have both at the same time. Overall nothing dramatic is happening here – we’re working hard to bring in extra money, we’re saving as much as we can while still enjoying life a bit. I was considering replacing this total assets graphic with one that includes our debt data points, though, for the most complete picture but I can’t seem to get the graph to cooperate with data points. The gap between total NW and Debt are wide that the Y axis data points have to spend a huge range, that may be what’s making it unreadable. What do you think? Should I try and make that one work?
On Life
Weather and wellness. For 6 or more weeks, we’ve been living in a bizarre twilight of fog. The sun peeks through for a few seconds or minutes but mostly, my workday is groggily lit by some minor “it’s daytime” light coming through the window. We rely entirely on the LEDs of our recessed lights, and I’m beyond grateful we went with built in lighting like this. The light is evenly distributed and bright enough to prevent eye strain. It’s very lucky I don’t suffer from SAD because these are prime conditions for a major depressive bout far too early in the summer season. Thankfully, I have two dogs to love on to combat any downward spiral and I ward off the aches from the constant cold with a little space heater while leaving the furnace off during the work week. Saves money and keeps my body functioning – win win!
Pool party. We went to a friend’s place for lunch and to play in their pool. I normally feel like we have to be in Hawaii or SoCal to enjoy pool or beach time because it’s just too cold here in the Bay Area! But their place gets just enough sun, and they have a great economical heating system, to make pool a pleasant experience even for a shivery wimp like me. My arms, though, whew. They wanted to fall off after an hour of gently paddling in the pool.
Weeds everywhere. One of the unforeseen consequences of home ownership in a less than totally desirable neighborhood (no matter what the real estate brokers say) – the weeds are taking over! Wherever there’s a crack in the sidewalk, in the street, in the pavement, in the driveway – weeds are creeping out. I spent an hour just digging them out with my fingers because you can’t get a shovel in there. I came away with two huge handfuls of weeds, nearly skinned fingers, and a medium-small amount of satisfaction. The dogs were attached to my hip so they could enjoy the rare sunny afternoon but after a while they were annoyed that I kept moving around. Next day update: Regrets! My body was NOT ready for all that work on top of the cooking and cleaning and playing outside.
Nice job with the micro income. That’s a great month. I haven’t made much micro income in a while. I signed up for a research group, but I’m not sure if I’m going to get picked or not. Probably not.
Oh, thanks for reminding me about credit card churning. I need to get one before the end of the month. I have a $3,000 estimated tax payment coming up and that will help meet the minimum spend.
That’s a convenient way to hit your minimum spend!
I keep 30% bonds because I have never invested through a bear market and I don’t know how rational I can stay when faced with losing >50% of my investments. So more bonds until I am proven strong enough.
I like that you have a 12 month cash cushion. And I agree that you won’t need more unless you are suspecting imminent job loss. Gotta keep those $$ working and making money babies.
Yes, investing in a bear market requires a heck of a lot of fortitude.
The trouble with planning for imminent job loss is it feels like a very short timeline. That’s the trouble with bad news, isn’t it?
Do weeds really discriminate by neighborhood? 🙂 I pulled some weeds yesterday and filled a good portion of our yard debris bin… but there are always more weeds to go!
We really need to get on the Craigslist selling, but it seems overwhelming to deal with. I am sure it will be worth it!
It does! By age of the roads, really 🙂 There are tons of cracks in the roads here and the weeds are taking full advantage.
Just do one thing at a time!