Money & Life Report: May 2021
June 1, 2021
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and 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 (Rakuten, 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 $801.61 in dividends this month from the stocks portfolio. This was an unusually big month and that’s all reinvested.
While I work hard to cultivate our alternative income streams, they’re still too tiny for us to make any changes to our work lives. Unfortunately, we’re still very dependent on our W-2 income unless and until we live in a lower COLA. That isn’t as simple a fix as people would have you believe, since PiC’s job with the good salary and the great benefits are right here in the Bay Area. Don’t think I haven’t considered it! But there’s a bigger picture involved. It would cost us a whole lot of money to move, we’d be giving up our community we’ve taken so long to build here which is a huge deal for me because I do NOT make friends easily, and neither of us are prepared to take the risk of going down to one income / career right now. With two incomes, we have some options and flexibility. We can save aggressively, we can give money to causes we care about, we can pay to solve problems that are bigger than we can handle. I think about that for the future, though.
Spending
We did a LOT of take out one week this month. I’m sort of squinting at the totals.
We’re still paying for tutoring because far worse than losing academic ground this year, we worried that the dismal instructor has deeply impacted JB’s love of learning in the classroom. I have no bandwidth for home schooling so they’re going to need to learn how to deal with the classroom based learning for some while and their tutor has been critical to helping us keep them engaged in learning and building those academic skills they didn’t get this year. They do still love learning new things, but after four years of being deeply engaged in the classroom at the daycare, so much so that they’d be wistful for the classroom, they declared they hate kindergarten. I’m also still paying for other virtual activities.
We are planning to do some more maintenance around the house before the end of the year. It’s something like a Russian roulette between figuring out how to resolve garage door’s alarming noises, fixing the insulation problems, and replacing the water heater.
Oh, and our family computer is slowly circling the drain. I keep delaying that purchase because I’m trying to smooth out our spending across months but also because I hate breaking in new computers. Also also because JB uses that computer for schoolwork and I have trouble making my peace with the idea of them using a brand new computer. Last reason: Whatever I pick has to be something I can use as a backup for my work computer in case it poops out. When that happens, it’s not easy to get a replacement because I have to organize that myself. which brings me back to “I hate breaking in new computers.”
Not spending
We skipped a week of Indian vegetarian meals and I skipped a week of therapy which saved a bit of money. It was only cancelled for scheduling conflicts but I never mind holding on to some money.
Giving
I spent a fair bit of time getting ready to give away copies of Quinisha’s book: that’s happening today! WOOT!
Saving and investing
I keep tweaking my scheduling of our automated savings. I’m trying out making one lump sum transfer instead of twice a month because the scheduled transfers keep shifting. It’s annoying!
Net worth
On Life
Eating! I made a meatloaf with hearts of palm since we didn’t have zucchini on hand. It worked well enough even though it made for a pretty dense loaf.
Getting back into cooking at all has been a challenge.
Reading! The Lost Hero (Amazon, Bookshop.org), The Son of Neptune (Amazon, Bookshop.org), The Mark of Athena (Amazon, Bookshop.org), Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Book 1: The Sword of Summer (Amazon, Bookshop.org)
At first, I only downloaded the free copy of The Inconvenient God, by Francesca Forrest (Amazon, Bookshop.org) to help out Cloud’s ratings but I really enjoyed the book. I’m now looking forward to the next one.
I love all Incryptid books, so the related Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire (Amazon, Bookshop.org) was a no brainer when someone was giving away copies. I don’t usually do ghost stories but I make exceptions for Rose Marshall, Mary Dunleavey, and the ghostroads.
Ughhh yeah my laptop is in its golden years and my phone as well (new problems keep arising and now it won’t back up… this week I need to back up as much as I can manually through different routes, then bite the bullet and get a new phone)
Good luck with your phone back ups and phone replacement, I always wish that was more fun that it feels.