By: Revanche

Money & Life Report: August 2020

September 7, 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, $1,732.74; 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 $739.94 in dividends in August.

Claiming Funds. I spent quite a bit of time this month following up on cash back and money owed to us:

• It took all month to get Achievement to pay up. I don’t know what’s going on with them but it’s really frustrating that their responsiveness has been so terrible. I’m on the verge of dropping them completely.
• I had to submit claims to Mr. Rebates since the tracking on some of my purchases failed to register. Their customer service is great, though of course they are limited in what they can do during a pandemic with the stores.
• I’m still trying to get our FSA to release our dependent care funds.
• I finally joined ibotta and started inputting some receipts for their Any Brand credits. We don’t do much specific brand name shopping but I figured why not get money back for the shopping we already do? It’s tiny but I’m happy to take what I can get if we’re already spending – it just takes 20 seconds a piece. I could string those small 20-second bits of time into some side hustle if I were determined but frankly, I’m not prepared to take on any real commitment anyway so this isn’t a diversion that’s taking away from a grander purpose. It’s just spare change.
• I finally had enough Swagbucks banked to redeem a $25 Visa gift card a couple months ago. They are 13% off which is 1 whole percent more than the standard monthly 12% discounted redemption discount, soI’d been saving them to coincide with a Birthday Swag-up. The $25 cost 2120 Swagbucks instead of 2175 (or the 2200 for a standard discounted redemption). I haven’t redeemed one for several months so this was nice.

Spending

Organizers! I found a few sets of containers from Michael’s to house our small tools, jewelry, and accessories. It took a couple false starts but we got enough for both of us to impose a bit more order on our things. I also picked up a stash of paint pads for JB (JB’s gone through a whole 40 page paint pad already) and stamp pads for me while I was at it because they were on sale (and because I wanted pretty ink).

Planning ahead. I’ve made the decision to use Pyrex when we start making freezer meals so I’m looking out for a good sale on the specific sizes I intend to use.

Home planning ahead. PiC has been doing a ton of research on the yardwork we need to do to tackle our moisture and mold problems. But everyone being stuck at home has pushed the construction and all construction and home improvement industry into a boom here, and we do not have the kind of disposable income required for a contractor to take notice of our needs. One particularly audacious fellow quoted us $55-85k ballpark for one of our two yards, and then produced an itemized quote that added up to $125k. Nossiree, that’s not happening.

Not spending

Refinancing. Does refinancing fall under not spending? I’d been looking at rates for months and never gotten anything worth considering until now. I went to Costco thanks to Stacking Pennies and got a few quotes there, then lucked out with a few BankRate lenders. Triumph Mortgage came highly recommended by @dollarrev but sadly they do not work in CA. JB asked me what I was working on. “A project to save us money”. “Good,” they said, “good job!”

Repurposing. To balance our buying new, I still keep an eye out for all the ways we can repurpose things we have.  My five year old Danish cookies tin from Trader Joe’s has done duty as a cookie tin, then as a dog treat tin, and now that it’s a bit rusty at the bottom, our newest compost container. It’s flimsy so I don’t have a lot of expectations for its longevity but hey, it’s on the third job of its little life with us and as long as we can keep stretching the lifespan of each thing, every little bit we can keep out of landfill longer is a good thing.

Giving

A thought on giving that I liked: “I heard this guy (maybe a priest?) say in an interview once about whether he was ever taken advantage of. His response was that he “gave his advantage away.””

Sometimes, once in a while, I wonder if I’m making a mistake giving money (and time when it comes to the giving drives) to strangers but I prefer to reframe it as a gift I freely give with hopes that it helps those who are struggling get by a little easier.

Saving and investing

The Rental Property: We are selling it! I am hoping this moves along smoothly.

Net worth

We briefly touch a milestone this month but then immediately drop back down again because of a number of huge bills coming to roost in a week or two. That’s ok.

On Life

Discomforts and creature comforts. I’ve been spending time and money on bits and bobs and a wide swath of organizing tools. It’s stuff I’ve always wanted but have been making do instead. When I had a certain amount of routine and relative ease (generally uninterrupted workdays, generally a high level of control over how my weeks were running, education and childcare set up for my kid to learn and socialize independent of us), it was relatively easy to ignore a lot of clutter irritation. I ignored the hulking towers of boxes in my office for two and a half years because I always had something better to do.

Now? It’s not that I don’t have anything better to do, quite the contrary, but in these days of pandemic, constrained outdoor options and little to no safe out of home choices during the wildfires, my attention turns inward quite sharply. I need my inside space to be clean and organized and soothing in a way that my mind cannot compel on its own. It’s scraped raw by so many other difficulties that the more sensible choice is to spend the money to impose order and I’m slowly hacking away at the chaos.

It doesn’t feel great that I can’t just MacGyver everything but that simply has to take a backseat to my need to have a space that is functional and enjoyable for indefinite, round the clock, occupation. We have so many challenges bashing us about between worrying about who is hungry and left behind in this economy, remote kindergarten, two jobs, two dogs, a kid to raise, a home to maintain, amid a pandemic where our national government has been nothing but a disastrous failure, I need some things to be a little easier.

Entertainment.

Brian Jacques: Mossflower (Amazon, Bookshop.org, Indiebound)
Mattimeo (Amazon, Bookshop.org, Indiebound)
Mariel of Redwall (Amazon, Bookshop.org, Indiebound)
Roselle Lim: Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune (Amazon, Bookshop.org, Indiebound) This was a perfect meld of family, community, growth, magic, food, and light romance. I loved it. Can’t wait to read her next book.

Mental Overload. There was just so much going on in August I’m at the very edge of my ability to bounce back from each new thing that jumps up and smacks up.

:: How was your month?

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