Money & Life Report: May 2019
June 3, 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, rare sales on Poshmark, cash back sites (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 running.
The long term goal is to replace our day job income in case my health prevents me from working.
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Dividend income. We received $514.98 in dividends this month. Our year to date net dividends are $1,628.42. Our current monthly average dividend income is $325. I currently reinvest all our dividends into new stocks.
Spending
We may have to replace our washing machine and dryer. It’s too damp here to air dry clothes 80% of the year, so we can’t take this opportunity to ditch the dryer and attendant costs. It’s leaking, rusting under the seal on the body of the machine, and variably staining our clothes on a lot of wash cycles. Are these three separate problems that will cost as much to resolve as to fix or are they linked to each other?
My mental algebra: The cost of my time (an hour plus my physical health is X-squared) MULTIPLIED by the probable 2-4 hours I’d need, PLUS the cost of supplies. That might get us halfway there. We might also need to call in a repair person for an extra cost variable. Does that all add up to equal the cost of new machines? Both financially and environmentally, I hate to jump to “replace” but I have to take into consideration all these costs that we may sink before having to replace anyway.
I’m looking up local repair people before I make any decisions.
Taxes. Ugh. We adjusted our withholdings for 2020 after this year’s tax bill and it’s reduced our cashflow by $500 per month. UGH!! This is heavily impacting our giving. That’s a big enough sum that I’m having to do a lot of calculations and to spread out expenses from month to month to ensure we never dig into savings to cover day to day expenses. We watch every expense already and I’m having to reexamine them all closely to squeeze another nickel and dime out of every corner to create some breathing space. We’d just gotten some of that back when I reduced JB’s therapy sessions, and now it’s going to taxes. I hate this administration.
Clothing.
- Accessories, 2019: $0
- Clothes, 2019: $32
- Shoes, 2019: $0
Spending less
I decided that “not spending” isn’t the right phrase for this section.
AAA renewal. I meant to move our membership from the SoCal club to NorCal and was told that the SoCal club was more expensive. No brainer, right? Nope, they lied. I had to stop the transition when I found out that the NorCal fees were actually $50 more! Harumph. Wasted an hour dealing with that nonsense.
Swim lessons. Classes at the local swim academies were quoting between $115-130 a month, plus an annual fee, and required us to commit to continuous lessons month after month after month. I really didn’t like the fact that it left no wiggle room for travel or just taking a month off when life gets incredibly busy. Instead, we’re exploring swim lessons at the Y. They book in monthly sessions, so they’re only 4-5 week commitments, and costs ~ $94 for each session. So if we have a tough month coming up or need a break from endless fees, we can easily do so without having to break the contract following some set of obscure rules and being charged an annual fee every time we restart. Cross your fingers that the lessons are awesome! And maybe even JB’s friend can come take lessons with zir.
Giving
Care package. My dear friend needs a pick me up, long term, but the best I can do right now is a package of good things like a bit of aromatherapy, sweet treats, topical OTC pain management items. We’ll see if I can fit anything else into the box.
After running the numbers, I think we can swing a few donations outside of the care package: our local library next month, RAICES the next month, and CASA the month after.
Saving and investing
PiC tried to save on our grocery bill by changing his bread to a cheaper type but I’m skeptical that was a worthwhile tradeoff. The new cheaper bread is thinner and drier and much less tasty. Even at $1 a loaf, one loaf a week, $52 in savings, while a real sum of money, doesn’t feel worth it.
If we’re going to sacrifice daily taste for savings, my feeling is it should be a much bigger savings. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about pinching pennies. But we can be a little more strategic about it. It’s his choice of course but as his partner for something that he eats every day, I would personally rather he enjoyed his bread. I’d rather find another way to make up the difference.
Net worth and Goals
Mini check-ins for our money goals this year.
Mortgage Principal: $15,000: 1.6%. We haven’t made much headway against principal this year but this notice from the bank was rather nice. Being the pessimistic type, though, I see this as still having 76% left to go.
Cash Investing: 25%. I’ve been holding on to the cash intended for investing so this isn’t quite the non-progress it seems.
I assume the markets must have dropped this month because our holdings dropped. I don’t know, I wasn’t paying attention as one shouldn’t if one doesn’t want their anxiety through the roof! 
On Life
Seamus is having a rough month. He doesn’t express his pain by crying or whining, we’re just guessing how he’s feeling at any given time. We think that his excessive drinking and urination is related to his level of pain, and it seems that theory was borne out when he had a massive bout of incontinence. And I do mean massive. I was doing laundry for two days.
I adjusted his medications mix to add a “pure” painkiller to his current anti-inflammatories that are also painkillers, as his vet describes it and am watching him closely to be sure it’s the right mix. I’m also working up a senior dog daily log for a notebook for him so we can track his many doses of medications.
Bits and bobs.
– I love a lot of things about my phone, the photo quality and split screen action to name a couple, but it’s too big for my hands. I would like to have it all in a smaller package, please.
– Remembering how frustrating life was when Mom was sick and I was still paying for their expenses.
– I am uneasy having just a work computer and no personal computer for all personal stuff. But I’m also not ready to shell out for a new laptop that suits all my personal needs. Do you keep separate computers for work and life stuff?
Food!
Cooking this month has been meeeeh. But two experimental recipes turned out well: garam masala pork chops, and tomato stewed chicken. I’m now on a mission to find a go to protein patty to help me on days when I have no appetite and still need to eat lunch. That’s a lot of days, right now. Trader Joe’s had a selection so we started with them.
We tried the two cheapest options first because why on earth would I want to get attached to the more expensive versions if the cheaper ones work? The second least expensive one was a high protein veggie burger. Topped with melted chedder, avocado, and salsa, it’s Edible. Not Terrible. A bit cardboardy, as I imagine cardboard would taste anyway. No, that was not intended to be a ringing endorsement. Unfortunately this is the healthier version at 12 g carbs, 4 g fiber, 0 g sugar. I’m not terribly interested in fat content since I keep my fat intake low across the board on all other foods, I’m most concerned with the net carbs: 8 g.
The masala veggie patty, the cheapest option, that’s genuinely good all by itself. I would eat it plain and enjoy it. Of course, it makes me happy that it’s cheap too. But it’s 12 g carbs, 1 g fiber, 1 g sugar. So the net carbs aren’t great for me at 11 g. But I think that’s tolerable. We’ll see, I don’t always feel great after eating either one of them.
Stock market drop is because Trump announced new Tariffs. Starting June 10th produce (among other things) is set to get a more expensive. https://twitter.com/Celeste_pewter/status/1135299735349125121 for a script to ask your MOC to support S 287/H 940, the Bicameral Congressional Trade Authority Act which will stop Trump from being able to use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to increase tariffs.
Of course it was. I knew that had happened but forgot :/
We regularly air try our clothes even though we live in Raincouver haha. During the rainy season we tend to leave the clothes in a room and just open the windows. Takes longer to dry the clothes, but they eventually get dry.
I need to know your secret, ours smell moldy by the time they’re dry and you cannot get that out of the fabric! Well, I can’t.
I’ve only had a work computer for….gosh, a decade at least. I think right about the time I started using an iPod touch, and then an iPhone, I got less and less interested in hauling out a personal computer after work. Now I’ve had a work-issued laptop since 2013 and don’t even own a personal computer anymore. (I don’t do anything resource intensive like gaming.)
I only use my phone on nights & weekends, which is a bit of a pain but not bad. I do personal stuff on my work computer during the weekdays & figure if IT comes after me, then I’ll change my ways. I think they’ve got more important things to do though.
I know I can get away with doing personal stuff on my work computer but it worries me not to have a back up for both in case the work computer dies (as it’s done before and I’m responsible for dealing with it) and because I worry that one day I’m going to have to ship it back to the company with short notice and I’ll be without a personal computer for all the stuff I do need to do.
After about two weeks of buying parts and watching YouTube videos and fixing the dryer, Mr. Sandwich rented a truck from Home Depot and bought a used dryer via Craigslist. I don’t think repair costs would have been lower, and we definitely spent less than we would have if we’d bought a new dryer (including parts).
Have you had Seamus evaluated for Cushing syndrome? It’s not good, but it can be manageable.
It’s that two weeks of time I just really don’t want to spend. I don’t have any give left in my me.
We have, that was the first $1500. Not positive so far. Still could be.
I’m not a dog expert by any means, but Sundance had sudden voluminous thirst and urination, and Cushing’s turned out to be one of the things he was dealing with.
And, yes, the two weeks was not something I would have had to give (for different reasons, but still). But maybe the Craigslist part? I heard recently of an Uber-like moving company that can do this kind of pickup, but of course I don’t remember the name.
I do some stuff on my work computer that are not work-related like reading your blog right now…lol!!! I try not to do too much on my work computer for personal stuff, just some casual reading on the internet, youtube and some online shopping. With making credit card payments and other banking needs I’ll use my laptop at home.
LOL I log a lot of computer time during my weekdays, so some of it necessarily has to be on the work computer. I just don’t like that all my personal information is on the work computer too!
24% paid off is great – for motivation, compare it to where you’d be if you followed a normal amortization schedule and only paid the minimum! (That’s what I do, because I similarly read numbers like that as “76% to go!”)
I was a bit irrational and insisted on a new washer/dryer before the baby because we had a “laundry closet” unit that could only do smaller loads and didn’t have a reasonable “low” setting on the dryer. But, it wasn’t even broken. I don’t regret it, but we need to sell the old one off. Again, we are somewhat irrationally hanging onto it, with the idea that if T does not get tenure and we move out, we’d take our new washer/dryer with us and leave the old unit. That is a bit silly and maybe I’ll direct T to just get on with selling it now.
Sorry to hear Seamus is having a rough time 🙁