Money & Life Report: January 2019
February 4, 2019
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time 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 tiny 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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Dividend income. We received $157 in dividends this month and year to date net dividends are not surprisingly, $157. I currently reinvest all our dividends.
BeFrugal cashback. After a week long tussle with them, they finally paid me my cashback and $10 join up bonus ($31). I’m so annoyed with their irritating nonsensical “verifications” that after I withdraw the last of my money with them, I’m closing my account. Their extra .25% cashback is not worth it. Strong do not recommend.
Spending
Paycheck deductions. Medical: went up $480 a year. Dental: went up $35 a year. Life insurance: went down $438. LTD: went up $18. Supp life insurance: went up $480 a year. Total increase: $575. Not awesome.
Car maintenance. We ended 2018 with car trouble and started 2019 with car trouble. I had taken the precaution of beefing up our large expenses fund in November, my Spidey sense was tingling and I’m glad I listened to it. 2018’s problems cost us time and energy, a friend helped us out and it was minor. The opening bid for 2019 has cost us a lot more though: 2 days of disruption and $1500 in repairs and tire maintenance. That was with taking advantage of the Costco New Year’s Day sale on Michelin tires with $70 off, and 25% cashback.
Health! Target had a BOGO 50% off vitamins and supplements sale right when I was running out of calcium so I loaded up: a year of calcium, 6 months of Vitamin B, and 4 months of probiotics for $115. It all came out of the gift cards I saved from the holidays. Here’s hoping my bones stay strong and my muscles stop doing that weird thing at night.
Household stuff. I’ve been holding off on these things for a long time. We finally needed them rather than just wanting them, so I used those gift cards I bought for 10% off: Pyrex: $26, Serving bowl: $11, Serving platter: $10, Squeegee: $7, Drano: $14. Total: $68. Annoyingly, of my last four orders with Target, three of them were missing something or damaged. Not a good rate of success, Target! I’ve asked them to fix all of those instances but it was a pain to have to do that at all.
Planned spending: More car maintenance. We needed to replace my car’s tires as well – we were on the lookout for another sale. Those tires are nearly bald! PiC snagged a set for $515 from Costco and we’ll be getting them aligned soon after mounting.
Planned spending: backpack. The strap on my 13 year old Swiss Army backpack has slowly been shredding. Not even splitting at a seam, it’s the fabric that’s worn through. It looks about one third or one half shredded through so it’s probably got 2 or 3 more heavy duty trips left in it before the situation gets precarious. We did some research and after days of deliberation between the Victorinox (which is more like the one I already have) and the Raven 28 which is way outside my comfort zone, I decided to try the Raven. Naturally, the day I decided, the price went from $80 to $110 so it’s back on the wait list until the price comes down.
Quick summary: We’ve been spending too much. Some of it is December’s spending finally landed in January, some of it is above. We were going to steal a little bit from our planned large expenses account to cover the bills due mid-February but as it turns out, the planned large expenses includes car maintenance! So those tires (times two) are in fact, covered. Don’t you love planning? Still, the spending is high and needs to come down.
Clothing.
- Accessories, 2019: $0
- Clothes, 2019: $32
- Shoes, 2019: $0
Not spending
Medication refills. We had a few problems with getting Seamus’s medication refilled, mostly on my vet’s side, but 1-800-PetMeds gave me an extra $10 courtesy credit anyway for the delay. It wasn’t their fault so I’m not sure why they did but I’ll take it!
Hemming. My $10 sweatpants bought on a trip to Oregon in 2012 have always been six inches too long. I finally found my spool of black thread and sat myself down for a bedtime hemming session. They finally fit right, even if the hem’s a bit crooked. Bliss.
Giving
This month a lot of my energy has been focused on decluttering things used well beyond their prime and releasing things that aren’t being used and loved to homes that will appreciate them.
For the former, we collect textiles for recycling – pants torn to oblivion, shoes without a bit of cushion left. PiC’S 20 year old dress shoes gave up the ghost in a spectacular way this month, the entire sole fell off in chunks! Whoops. This has made us realize we might hold on to things a little TOO long. But we know for certain that we got every last bit of use out of them.
For the latter, I’ve put together three sets of boxes: 1, hand me down box for friends with some toys that JB would have loved two years ago but doesn’t appreciate at this age, 2m for the DAV and 3, for Parca to pick up on their scheduled pickup days in our neighborhood. I’m also collecting pristine books that JB doesn’t appreciate to re-gift or to donate to local Little Libraries. There aren’t many of those but inevitably we’ll receive a pack of books where ze only cares about one of them and it’s such a waste to keep a book ze doesn’t care about when someone else could enjoy it.
I thought we might alternate between this type of giving and monetary giving monthly so it evens out but we ended up donating to the Milwaukee Homeless Shelter in advance of the polar vortex and to this GoFundMe for a friend of a friend of a friend: a mother of teens who is dying. Life happens.
Saving and investing
Remember that Ally bonus? Oh good, because I didn’t. I put $4000 of new money into my primary savings account just in time for that bonus, right before the October 31st cut-off and it was supposed to stay put through 1/15/19.
Then the market took that huge dive in December and I lost my head. I threw that money (and more) into our brokerage instead, completely forgetting to keep the balance at the November 1st balance levels. Oops, bye, $40 bonus.
To make myself feel better, I decided to calculate the difference in my dividends and it looks like the infusion of cash brought in more than I lost just after the reinvestment.
VTSAX, $83; VBTLX, $3
Over the course of this year, if the dividends stay the same, VTSAX will bring in about $333 more and VBTLX a staggering $36 more. I am now going to pretend that this mistake was entirely premeditated and I meant to sacrifice that one time $40!
Except for the part where I totally confessed here that I did this, the part where I’m not positive whether there was a totally unrelated increase in dividends (I don’t think there was ) and the part where I invested more than that $4000. Other than that, I’m going to take this as an accidental win. Also I’m not going to do any calculations for what it would have been if I had waited until after Jan 15th to buy though, because what’s done is done and I just wanted to know it wasn’t the disaster it first felt like.
Miles & points
Alaska miles: 248,947 miles
Chase Ultimate rewards: 320,638
Formerly Starpoints, now combined with Marriott: 611,635
Net Worth and Goals
Mini check-in for two of our money goals this year: Cash Investing: 25%. Mortgage Principal: $15,000: 1.6%.
We crossed a minor milestone this month but a lot of it came from the market so I’m a little hesitant to celebrate that or sigh relief considering who we still have running our country.
On Life
Meal planning doesn’t usually work well for us but we both knew our second week of January was going to be jam packed so we made a real effort to keep food from being a stress point. On Sunday, PiC got armloads of groceries, I prepped and cooked for hours. He would have helped with prep but I didn’t tell him I was starting. We tried a new deconstructed cabbage rolls recipe, I tried my hand at fake mac and cheese again (cauliflower instead of pasta) with additional broccoli that I should have parboiled first, and a big pot roast using turnips instead of potatoes for me. I also added potatoes for the family but I needed a less starchy alternative for myself. I’ll try radishes next time – the turnips were mushy which made them gross. We also had the standard grilled pork chops, sauteed spinach, oven roasted zucchini and Brussels sprouts. We liked the beef and cabbage even better the second day so that could be a good make-ahead recipe to have on hand.
All it takes is two. Two meals that were carb-heavy over one jampacked weekend wrecked me by Monday. I need to come up with better food options for myself when we’re going to birthday parties and going out to lunch. Oh and learn to resist the hash browns. SOB. But I love hash browns.
Dammit, Munchery. Munchery suddenly went out of business and I lost $100 in gift cards that I was hoarding with them. I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE USED IT.
HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR. It’s the Year of the Pig!
Nooooooo, Munchery gift card! On the other hand, y’all have really racked up a lot of UR points.
January for me was busy, but only in the usual way. I’m excited for some Lunar New Year celebrations. (I am a ram.)
We have! I’ve been hoarding them but I’ll cash them all out soon. My time with the CSR is nearly over.
After I saw your tweet, it reminded me to go cash out some BeFrugal money. It seemed to happen without a hitch? Even with my $10 bonus. Anyway, it got me scared that maybe some folks I referred are having trouble with it, too, but that wasn’t my specific experience.
I’m glad it wasn’t your experience!
My January was unpleasant spending-wise. I paid for my new loveseat, two years’ worth of vehicle registration and, most notably, the insurance deductible and rental car expense from my car accident. For a total of $1,600. Ouchie.
The last two months haven’t been any better, so I’m generally panicking about finances and trying to calm myself down. Par-tay.
Whew, that’s a bite out of the budget, definitely but at least for things that will last you a while or protect you!
Let the spending train stop with us this month. Or at least skip us.
Not sure what you’re looking for in backpacks but I have the Ogio Metro that I like (it was in the company store and i just liked it – I’m drawn to bags/luggage lol).
Thanks for the suggestion! I’m still looking, since the prices went up 😀
It has a few pockets. Let me know if you have questions haha. It’s frustrating when looking at bags online and there’s not a lot of info on the product.
Car expenses are the worst, because in addition to the money, there’s the kind of special hassle that comes along with your car being out of commission for a while.
If it salves the pain at all, our health insurance rates went up quite a lot in 2019, too…and we had the bonus of getting to put Baby AF on my insurance on top of that.
I’m jealous of all those miles and points! I feel like I hack a lot of cards but clearly I am doing something wrong here. Teach me the way, please.
You nailed it! So inconvenient.
Your pain doesn’t make me feel better, it just makes me feel back for both of us! 🙂
I’m not doing anything special, I’m just cycling through a few cards a year at most. It’s just that we haven’t had any chance to use them.
Do you pay to put the tires on and off your car?
I might have to start paying this year or learn to do it myself. I am tempted to learn but not sure if it is difficult.
I always see your 600,000+ Marriott points and my eyes get wide. Are you going to go somewhere with those points? That would give you a nice weeklong trip in a luxurious Maldives resort!! 🙂
We do have to pay them to install the tires. In this case, both sets earned 25% cash back for buying AND installing them.
I sure hope we’re going somewhere with these points! I’ve been hoarding them for a while but we haven’t made the opportunity yet.
Ugh, car repairs are NOT FUN. We spent 2,000 on my car in Dec, and 300 on my husband’s January. It’s the worst! Hopefully you’ve seen the last of it for a while.
And likewise!!
Costco is the place to go for getting your tires done. Our current car and the last car I owned, we bought tires through Costco and get free tire rotation whenever we need it. The only setback is that you have get there when they first open so you can the service done later that morning. I know you can make an appointment too but you have to wait a couple of weeks to get the next available date.
That was exactly our experience with having to go there first thing in the morning. That wouldn’t have mattered if we hadn’t waited so long to get new tires on!
We spent a lot in January. Mostly because I had to pay our property taxes. We also went skiing, booked travel, & did the normal stuff. I was traveling a ton, so there was more convenience baked in there as well (extra nanny money, more easy food options,e tc).
Oh yes, our property taxes did get sent out in January too! It’s baked into our saving/spending plan so I managed to forget about it once it was cashed.