By: Revanche

Money & Life Report: July 2020

August 3, 2020

If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?

Current total: Lakota, $1,713.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.

On Money

Income

Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from an investment property (which is all saved for maintenance) and investing in dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income 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 to the right!

Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.

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Dividend income. We received $193.60 in dividends in July.

Spending

Our new air fryer / toaster oven was $200 which worked out to approximately the same cost as replacing the toaster oven and adding a separate air fryer.

Health equipment: $60. My doctor wanted me to keep a blood pressure monitor on hand so I had to add that to my arsenal this month. I had Target price match the Amazon price since I can’t get to our local medical supply shop.

Home Depot and Target got a lot more of my money this month. I was finally struck with the inspiration I needed to really dig into my office organizing and it meant getting a lot more storage containers than I ever imagined to be necessary. The results are pretty amazing though. The office is coming together but that has spawned organization elsewhere too! My office and art supplies have homes in watertight container now so the mold won’t get them, their temporary homes (baskets) have become new homes for other things.

I had miscalculated the appropriate sizes of some storage and I could have returned them for money back but I took a look around first and realized they were the right solution for other problems in other rooms. One wrong-size bin became our games bin in the large closet, and my other 2 wrong-size bins became our underbed clothing storage.

Not spending

We donated three large boxes and one large bag of things to the VVA. Thank goodness they’ve begun pick up again.

Repurposing: the baskets from my office became JB’s to hold their plushies, my 10 year old cardboard boxes became the home for our medical supplies, and the somewhat broken down (15+ year old!) magazine holder was far better suited to holding JB’s lesson folders than my floppies (comics). I’ve done my best to envision new uses for all the old containers we own so we don’t fall into wastefulness: buying all new storage for everything and binning the old stuff.

It’s much slower this way, new solutions don’t occur to me all in one blast, but patience keeps waste out of the landfill so it’s worth the effort. Plus I can take pride in being resourceful.

Giving

This month was focused on small gifts direct to individuals in need. I used the #transcrowdfund on Twitter and also caught the crowdfunding efforts shared by friends for their friends in need.

Saving and investing

I’m having a struggle with wanting to continue giving and supporting local businesses generously and my instinct to hoard in advance of possible bad news. PiC’s company has planned layoffs and we don’t know how far and who they will affect yet.

Net worth

Ah ha! I finally managed to get a version of my report graph that isn’t uglier than a troll’s toe! I am mostly happy to have a goal line to reach for but I guess I should decide when I started the clock on that five years. I suppose it could span 2019-2024 since this graph starts with July 2019. 

On Life

Foods! We did some experimenting and mostly they were successes. I now have a peanut butter cookie recipe and PiC has a good keto friendly almost-cheeseburger for me.

Food adjacent. I’m super pleased that I spent the money on a new set of chopsticks. I hated our old ones. The all round shape were hard on my hands and we only had four and a half pairs so we couldn’t do two nights of chopsticks required meals without having to do some dishes. (I like to lump my chores.)

Entertainment. I started watching Giri / Haji which was interesting but I struggled watching Yuto’s story arc. He was far too similar to my own brother and his desire to have more than he was ever willing to work for in an honest way. Kenzo’s frustration with and love for his brother was too similar to my frustrations with my brother’s refusal to do something real with his talent and instead living off me like a hopelessly willfully oblivious leech.

Marlon James: Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Amazon, Indiebound, Bookshop.org). This was well written but I only made it 40% through. There was so much almost-casual sexual violence. I wanted to know how it ended but couldn’t keep going.

Cixin Liu: The Three Body Problem (Amazon, Indiebound, Bookshop.org). This subject was also too heavy for me to finish so I had to let it go halfway through after trying to wade through it.

Brian Jacques: Redwall (Amazon, Indiebound, Bookshop.org)

Seanan McGuire: Chaos Choreography (Amazon, Indiebound, Bookshop.org), Magic For Nothing (Amazon, Indiebound, Bookshop.org), and Tricks for Free (Amazon, Indiebound, Bookshop.org). I positively love the Incryptid series, I can’t get enough of these stories!

T. Kingfisher: Minor Mage (Amazon, Indiebound, Bookshop.org) and A Wizard’s Guide To Defensive Baking (Amazon, Indiebound, Bookshop.org). These are both billed as kids’ books and I suspect JB will enjoy them as much as I did when the time comes even if there’s at least one dead body in them. JB is pretty morbid already.

:: How was your month?

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