Money & Life Report: October 2019
November 4, 2019
***FYI: I am collecting donations for our Lakota families until Nov 17th. Details in the Giving paragraph of this post. Half of any proceeds from the blog during this time (see sidebar) will also be added to those donations.***
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks. That money is saved for future repairs or reinvested, respectively. We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. Our side income comes from Swagbucks and cash back sites (Ebates, Mr.Rebates). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running and I’ve added a way to support the blog in the sidebar.
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income by the time my health prevents me from working.
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Dividend income. We received $184 in dividends this month. Our year to date net dividends are $3,063.40. We are a long way from covering even one month of expenses with passive income. This means I’m still on the hook for working full time for quite some time. That worries me because most of my days are bad days, now.
Spending
Last jeans standing. PIC’s last pair of jeans finally fell apart. He had to buy two new pairs: $78. Then he had to buy some business clothes: $120.
Loading up on dog kibble. 6 sacks on sale = $270. Not having to stalk sales every two weeks for at least 2-3 months because we missed the sale by a day? Fabulous.
Planning travel. We paid $700 towards the cost of our summer travel next year.
Planned expense: taxes. I’ve been setting aside money monthly just for our property taxes. With all the Seamus expenses eating into those set aside funds, I’ve been holding my breath a bit over whether we’d have enough by the time the bill is due. We’ve saved enough to pay the first half this month! I’m so relieved. We now have 2.5 months to pull together the other half. EEK. Also I had to go hunting for the bill online because we still hadn’t received it by the last week of the month. It turns out that we can pay by e-check online so that’s useful at least. I don’t think it’s at all useful that the county doesn’t send out notices until the month before it’s due, when the tax bill is due on November 1st!
Household stuff. We picked up 2 40-foot extension cords for $23 after tax thanks to a sale at Target to run our generator during the power outage. We have been remiss in regularly adding to our emergency supplies and should have them already. I was kicking myself while the time our freezers could stay cool was ticking down.
Clothing.
- Accessories, 2019: $0
- Clothes, 2019: $340
- Shoes, 2019: $112 for four pairs, 3 for me, 1 for PiC
Not spending
I entertained myself on a rare solo weekend by cleaning and decluttering. I’ve sorted a medium box worth of things into trash, donations, and recycling.
Giving
Lakota families. A full post will be coming on this. We’ve been able to help multiple groups so far with clothing, diapers, wipes, food, hygiene supplies, and blankets. There are a lot more families in need with winter coming, so long as money is available, I will keep working at it. A post is forthcoming with more details.
When I get it all done, I’ll ask an employer to match the funds that we donated to double the impact of our giving. Thank you, everyone, who has given to support this project!
Saving and investing
This might be the first month all year where our saving and investing allocations out of cash flow wasn’t painful. It’s just a brief reprieve, though, we have some major bills landing soon. I’ve also been able to put at least half of our FSA reimbursements for daycare expenses into savings as well. I was originally hoping to save all of it but our cash flow was rough earlier in the year. I’m trying to decide how to categorize a reimbursement in our spreadsheet. Under Spending because it defrays that spending? Under savings if it goes there? Maybe both: Under spending when it’s first reimbursed and then under savings when / if I transfer to savings.
Net worth
It’s been 2.5 years of my current net worth tracking spreadsheet design that maps our actual expenses in a calendar style view for the entire year. I loved seeing all our expenses across a full year which let me easily total up our annual spending and saving. But I didn’t love the fact that I had to manual figure out how much was going to be left in our checking account with each bill. I’ve started testing out a new tracker: checking register style! I list all our bills due in a month, along with income, so I can see every transaction that comes in and goes out. It’s not perfect but it’s a little better.
I want to be able to see our personal expenses and our rental’s expenses in one place, but that’s not possible without making the numbers microscopic. Until I have a big brainstorm this can’t be the perfect detailed spreadsheet and a global (annual) view at the same time. I might just have to do two separate spreadsheets but that doesn’t feel very efficient.
Our asset allocation has stayed pretty consistent all year so I’m not going to show that graph this month, it’s nothing much to look at.
On Life
FOOD.
- Six thumbs up: An abundance of fresh limes from a friend inspired a lime coconut curry that I made up. Luckily, I scribbled the recipe as I experimented. PiC wants to see it again and he never would if I hadn’t taken notes along the way. I usually forget to! I meant to gift some to our food friends buuuut we accidentally ate it all. I’ll take another crack at it.
- Three thumbs up: Tanya saved me with this pizza chicken recipe when I was totally drained and couldn’t scrape two brain cells together. I did it totally wrong but still managed to make it work with homemade tomato sauce, cheese, sauteed mushrooms, and red bell peppers. We mostly liked it, I think PiC liked it best and wants to see it again. JB is an open question.
- Six thumbs up. We tried this honey lime chicken. After one bite, JB asked if we could save some for later. Ze wanted to make sure there were leftovers for the next day. My kind of hoarder. But probably not a habit I should encourage.
HEALTH.
JB brought home a nasty cold this month and we suffered greatly. At least it wasn’t the flu though everything feels like the flu because I come pre-loaded with musculoskeletal aches all the time. Worst bonus package ever.
Hi, friend! We have to pay our property taxes this month, too (first since ditching the mortgage, so no escrow account to help smooth things out.) It really plays havoc with the budget if we don’t plan for it.
I also struggle with how to account for the Dependent Care FSA money. But here’s my current approach: I have two spending lines, one for pre-tax (when I put money into the account each paycheck) and one for post-tax (when I cut a check to the daycare). When I actually reimburse myself, I put a negative figure in the post-tax line. I go with this approach because categorizing it as ‘saving’ kind of screws up my savings rate figures: it’s saved for a minute, then spent the following month. Anyway, just my approach.
I’m jealous with the smooth upward trend of your investment lines! Maybe we can chat about asset allocations: I did not like the volatility we’ve seen in the past year. :/
It’s a real slug in the arm, that first payment!
Oh that’s an interesting approach. I’ve got to ruminate on this a little bit more to figure out what’s going to work for us.
We can chat anytime you like! I’m not sure that my asset allocations alone are the reason the investments are trending upward, but I suppose they aren’t hurt.