Money & Life Report: November 2018
December 3, 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.
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Mini-windfall, Tweetchat: The random number generator loved me and gave me a win for the many tweetchats I’ve participated in this year, a big Amazon gift card! Woo! This will be really helpful to defray normal household costs – I’ve got a huge list of things we’ve been holding off on buying until we have the money for it and we’ll get a few of them. I’ve also allocated a small part of it to buy one random person in need of help a small gift from their wishlist because I believe in passing on the luck / love.
Dividend income. This was a huge month for dividends: $504.44 which is our highest month of the year. It’s just the way the quarterly dividends shake out. Most months are typically around $200 but they’ve grown little by little each month. Our year to date net dividends are now $2,855.80. We don’t spend our dividends, these go right back to work for us purchasing more shares of something.
Spending
Black Friday. Most of my shopping was for our Lakota families for the holidays and to help with supplies for the winter and I picked up a few items for us: 2 professional sweaters from Kohl’s, and a couple of small presents for JB from Target. We might just be doing early returns if my stuff doesn’t fit but I hope they do. All my professional long sleeve shirts are 6-12 years old and have sprouted holes. PiC’s long broken electric razor was replaced this holiday weekend for a much better price than we could have hoped for at any other time, too, so I’m grateful we saved money on that.
Our furnace, omigosh. We are using the heat sparingly, even though we have it, because we need to see how efficient it translates to on our bills. Cross your fingers!
Clothing.
- Accessories, 2018: Sunglasses, $30
- Clothes, 2018: Dresses, $62; Sweatshirts, $50, Pants, $50
- Shoes, 2018: $80
Giving & not spending
Black Friday. Since I was so focused on wringing every possible bargain out of the sales weekend, I had zero focus left for shopping for ourselves. This was mostly a good thing! I know there are things we need but nothing is critical enough at this point that we had to rush into buying.
Charities. We support a number of charities that we’ll need to make end of year contributions to but that’s going to be pushed to early next month.
Saving and investing
Auto-pilot! Which is good. This is always set on auto and we’re going to have to draw the balances down in a big way very soon with the January credit card bill for the furnace and the February bill for the property tax. It’ll hurt but because we have the savings on auto, the money will be there and I will never not be grateful for that.
Miles & points
Alaska miles: 316,140 and $120 in travel credit
Southwest: $120 in travel credit
Chase Ultimate rewards: 316,974
Formerly Starpoints, now combined with Marriott: 553,901 + 1 free night with the SPG card.
I SHOULD have cashed out a ton of Ultimate Reward points and deposited them in savings for the Ally Bonus. Hindsight!
Net worth
We inched up a whole one percent this month! That’s fine. I’m holding steady and keeping calm.
On Life
Hitting walls. After so many gifts of good days or at least days where I could come back from activity-filled days with some vigor, I had two weekend where my exhaustion was so deep and complete that upon laying down on the ground, head on pillow, just to rest a minute, I was unable to wake up again for hours. This from the person whose pain is usually so bad that, even tucked into a very comfortable bed with the splurge mattress, sleep is usually hours in coming. The fatigue was that bad. I try to be grateful that these episodes are less frequent with the past months of diet adjustments but it’s hard when the exhaustion remains deep in the marrow even long after a rest period, so much so I have to sit for food prep because standing for ten minutes is too long.
Work is a monster right now. I can’t get into details but it’s been one major setback after another and we are struggling to keep head above water. Hence the limp update. All I’ve been doing is working and feeding my family, working some more, sleeping, feeding my family in the morning, working, walking the dogs, working, and repeat endlessly.
Sick and tired. Everyone is a little or a lot sick, and a lot tired, and it’s taking a toll on us. We’ve had a lot of visitors lately which is lovely but layered on top of the elevated work and home maintenance stress, we didn’t get to enjoy it like we wanted to. We’ve even resorted to takeout pho for sad throats and you know we’re in dire straits at that point. May December bring good health good fortune!
I’m sorry you’ve had a rough month. Hope you get some respite with the winter holidays coming up.
Yet Another PF Blog recently posted…All The Clothes I Bought In The Second Half of 2018
Thank you! We won’t be out of the woods for three months at least but I hope that’s all we have to deal with next.
[…] My usual donation to Planned Parenthood, but this month also included a donation to Revanche as she’s pooling together funds to help multiple Lakota families for gifts/winter clothing […]
Rough months are the worst. We had one in October and we still haven’t quite recovered. Hang in there!
So sorry to hear you had tough November!! Hopefully you will get enough rest for the with the holidays coming up.
My goal for next year to invest more into dividend stocks. I do have some in my portfolio but I feel like I need to buy more so I can reinvest more of it.
Oof – hang in there. My husband is just getting over something and it’s headed on to me… plus a house purchase, move, and a crapton of work – I’m just spent this month. I keep thinking it will settle down but it never quite does..
Ugh sorry to hear work has been tough. It’s so rough, the grind of working and then coming home then eating and then getting kid ready for bed and then repeating it again. Here’s to financial freedom so that we can choose how we want to spend our time!
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I’m so sorry to hear about work & the exhaustion. I’ve been feeling “okay” so far this month, but was rear ended on my way to work on Wednesday. What a giant hassle, waste of time, and a literal pain in my neck. Hoping I’m back to 85% or so by tomorrow for work. It hurts to look at the computer for any extended period of time. 🙁
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