By: Revanche

Money & Life Report: October 2018

November 5, 2018

On Money

Income

Our normal income comes from our 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, occasional sales on Poshmark, 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.

***

Micro-income, freelance: I had almost made a resolution to really buckle down on generating new gigs in October but that would have been a broken promise because the rest of life was unbalanced in the direction of too much work. But I did polish up some works in progress and that brought in a wee bit of cash.

Micro-income, Craigslist: PiC unloaded another piece of bike equipment, $30. This is a double win: getting things out of our crowded home and bringing in a bit of money.

Spending

Bully sticks galore! Combining a birthday discount and reward last month, I was able to bring the per bully stick price down dramatically so I bought a huge order of them last month and the butcher’s bill landed this month. OUCH. It’ll last 3-4 months but still, ouch.

Dog food emporium. Our local pet food warehouse had a sale on the kibble that keeps Seamus from being a mass of open sores. I picked up two bags, which will last us 6 weeks, and asked PiC to pick up a third one. He bought four. We’ve refilled their food bin and are stocked up for 4.5 months! It cost a round $270.

Open enrollment. We always pick the cheapest health care plan available because we’re happy with their services, this employer carries really good insurance across the board, but premiums are going up again. That takes another little bite out of our monthly income.

Wasteful Target spending. I bought a cheap $1 spatula online at Target so of course it melted the first time I used it in our cast iron. Sigh. I should know better! I found two KitchenAid spatulas rated to tolerate up to 450 degrees for $13 instead. I should have done that in the first place. Paid for by gift card from credit card bonuses, as was our stocking up on Tresemme conditioners (84 oz) and shampoo (28 oz) because they had a Buy 3 get $5 gift card promotion. I like to keep things in my cart until they will generate a new gift card. I also watch the prices, the single conditioners were marked up a dollar but overall we came out a little bit ahead. Three large bottles of conditioner and one of shampoo came out to 112 ounces for $10 which isn’t amazing but it’s still better than the Costco prices per ounce ($12 for 40 ounces, about $0.31 an ounce).

Clothing.

• Accessories, 2018: Sunglasses, $30
• Clothes, 2018: Dresses, $62; Sweatshirts, $50, Pants, $50
• Shoes, 2018: None yet but I’m long overdue. My feet have been hurting for months and I didn’t realize it was because my shoes aren’t providing adequate cushion.

Not spending

Climate Credit. I’m still not 100% sure of all the details but we got both the gas and electric Climate Credits from CA this month and it reduced our bill by $60. That may be not much in the grand scheme of things but I sure appreciate it. With our property tax coming due this month and again early next year, even though I budgeted for it, I’m feeling a pinch!

Comcast reprieve. I thought it was time for another argument with Comcast or a weird dance of starting new service and cancelling the old in order to get a new promotional (aka reasonable) monthly rate for just internet. Apparently we have another year of the $40 internet. I took too long to talk to them so we paid $10 of the first month’s upcharge but I just had to remove the $15 speed upgrade for now, saving us $170 over the next service year. It all adds up.

Giving

I’m embarrassed/annoyed to say that I honestly cannot remember what this month’s giving was or if it happened. We’ve cut back on a couple areas of monthly spending because our cash flow was not flowing properly and this may have fallen by the wayside. It’ll likely have to wait a little longer while we recoup. I am working on another donation bag, though, so that will likely need to serve in lieu of monetary giving for a few months. Even though things are tight for us right now, we are still remarkably blessed and lucky and I never want to forget to give even if it hurts a little. There are a whole lot of people in much worse straits than we are.

Saving and investing

Last minute bonus. It’s not much but we jumped on the Ally Payback bandwagon at the last minute to get a 1% bonus on all new deposits before October 31st. I shifted some money that we don’t expect to need until after January into our savings account, the money has to stay there until then, and it’ll bring in a little cash for us. I like all cash!

Dividend income. I keep going back and forth about how to report dividends, it’s not quite interesting enough to report in a separate monthly report, I’m not awesome at doing the quarterly reports. I’m going to fold them into these monthly net worth reports for now and see how that works. In September, we received $302.20 in dividends, and I spent $4503.95 on a new block of shares. In October, we received $175.40 in dividends.

For several months, I’ve been considering whether I wanted to sell off this whole portfolio and put the money entirely into index funds but I think so far the return on investment works out to be approximately the same so I didn’t want to take the tax hit. Obviously that’s off the table for right now with the market drops – I’d rather take the tax hit than profit less overall. If we dive into a recession soon, I’ll get to see how the portfolio and its income holds up in a down market. Our year to date net dividends are now $2,351.36. I currently reinvest all our dividends into new stocks.

Miles & points

Alaska miles: 215,045 and $120 in travel credit
Southwest: $120 in travel credit
Chase Ultimate rewards: 316,394
Formerly Starpoints, now combined with Marriott: 552,470

Net worth

It’s said that the markets lost more than $2 trillion this month. We certainly felt our share of the loss though it didn’t feel like a big dramatic thing because for now, our investments are largely ignored. It was significant enough to set our annual NW progress back to approximately June and I assume that it’ll continue downward for a while.

My focus is on building up our cash during this period so we can invest some more, in theory while the market stays down, but also so we have cash on hand to pay for any house maintenance we’re likely to need to cover. We’re still so early in our investing, IMO, that I don’t want to even consider selling stocks for income for another ten years.

On Life

Handy and crafty. I’m very proud of myself, I cut up an old sheet that we never use, picking out the stitches carefully so I could use up every side and every bit of it, and made my first drawstring bag by hand! As I get better at these, making more mistakes along the way I’m sure, that sheet is destined to become a couple more toy bags for JB, 6 shoe bags and a laundry sack for our suitcases. With these skills, I shall conquer so many old fabrics! Now I’m wondering what else I can make.

General election, Nov 6th. Our county is entirely vote by mail (if you want to) and I LOVE IT. But it’s a little fraught protecting our ballots from an earnest preschooler who wants to color everything. At least for this one thing, ze actually asked before doing anything. Usually it’s destroy first, ask permission after.
Can I tear this off? (To be removed ONLY by elections official) Nooooo!
Can I color on this? (the actual ballot) Nooooooo!
Can I help you do the bubbles? Nooooooo!

WORK STRESS. Several things took a turn for the worse at work in September and while I thought our troubles would be solved by the start of October, exactly the opposite happened. Hence my dropping down to just one post per week – there’s simply not enough time for most normal life things right now. We’re still not done …. cross your fingers for me! My current guesstimate is it’s going to be bad for another two or three months. May that be too pessimistic and may things improve a whole lot faster.

Cooking. For the first time in our lives, PiC composted something I cooked immediately after we had the first serving. It was that bad. (When a rice recipe calls for 2 tsp of turmeric, and your turmeric accidentally dumps about 3 Tbsps instead, RINSE IT OUT.) I’ve never in my life ruined rice that badly and I’ve been cooking for 30 years.

Health. The dietary changes have mostly been good for me. Subtract gluten (and by extension) carbs, and subtract lots of added sugars and high glycemic index foods, add more meats and vegetables, and a daily salad. Result: The daily pain has been a little lower, the daily fatigue is more like a heavy pile of dry blankets, not wet wool blankets pinning me to the ground.

But for this update? I am TYPING like a TYRANNOSAURUS REX. Because once again, my body lied to me. It’s been feeling PRETTY OK which, for me, is actually quite good. It usually means that pain is at a low ebb and not in more than 5-7 places in my body.

The aforementioned work stress and anxiety wasn’t good for me though, I could feel it in my bones and my ribs, so after walking the dogs and feeling not horrible afterward, I thought, sure. Why not? Let’s tackle that one hedge. Pulled out my fabulous new hedge shears and worked on giving that unruly hedge a hair cut. It was good! Looks terrible but it’s not trying to reach out and grab passersby anymore. I wasn’t putting a lot of time and effort into this, I’ve still got 40 metric tons of work to finish. 20 minutes, tops. Tossed everything in the compost bin and cleaned up. 20 minutes after that? My arms were jelly. Thanks, body.

Podiatric pain. I mentioned my chronic (past six months or so) foot pain to my massage therapist and she strongly recommended that I replace my shoes. I tried wearing them with ultra thick hiking socks while waiting to pick new shoes and I think she’s right, the pain was significantly less. Of course, it doesn’t help that my right foot has been hurting for two weeks because Sera is a total klutz and slammed full body, full speed, into my ankle and feet, flipping me face first into a fence mid-month. It hurt so much I thought it was broken but I was able to put weight on it painfully, and there was no swelling, so it was “just” hurt. May that particular foot pain stop SOON.

7 years in – still happy! We celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary this month with a quiet day in and a nice dinner out (subsidized by gift card of course). Here’s to 7 times 7 more, plus 7 more after that. And then maybe a few more after that if we’re still healthy.

:: How was your October? Did you celebrate Halloween this year? How are Black Friday ads ALREADY up?

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