By: Revanche

Money & Life Report: February 2022

March 1, 2022

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, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. There are ways to support the blog and our charitable giving in the sidebar.

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 $911.31 in dividends from the stocks portfolio. February is always a big month for dividends and they’re always reinvested. Eventually this nest egg will grow enough to cover more than one month of our expenses, per year.

Spending

This month’s bills are scary big. There’s the usual stuff like the annual museum membership renewal, $$$ every month for brain therapy and $$$ for massage therapy once every several weeks to manage my pain. Then there’s the stuff that happened this month. Lots of donations piled on top of our spending below.

Medical $$$$: I made the mistake of letting my doc run several blood panels in November as part of my physical and the bill landed this year. It was a doozy, all the more so because I’m accustomed to an HMO plan that covers all diagnostics in full except last year we were experimenting with an HSA plan because the company offered free money to try it out. My labwork completely wiped out that free money. We didn’t spend any of the HSA money. I paid out of pocket, queasy and angry at myself, and left the HSA money to grow tax free. My hope is that it’ll grow to a decent nest egg for future medical costs and make this one year experiment worth the heartburn it gave me. The tax savings isn’t worth the fact that I absolutely avoid getting preventative or even necessary care under a HDHP plan.

Food. Ordering a meal or two at the start of the week helps us tremendously with the rest of the week’s cooking and meal planning, and has a bigger impact than a “because we survived to Friday and can barely see straight” take out meal. It does add up fast. The mental relief is palpable but this is an expensive way to cope. I suppose I could look at it as trading one huge expense (daycare) for another (takeout).

Car registration and smog checks. It’s that time again. I took care of the payments and PiC took care of the smog checks so our cars stay legally registered.

Gifts. People are having babies and new moms need something delicious to eat. That’s the rule.

Not spending (yet)

My phone is still hanging in. It’s getting less reliable and shutting off at random times but I’m still hoping that if I hold out until April, it’ll both be satisfying and I’ll get a better deal on a new model. Cross your fingers?

Heart rate monitor. My chronic fatigue doctor wanted me to get one in case it helps me manage my energy but I’m holding off until the next sale since that body blow of a medical bill. Maybe the summer sales will be the right time.

Socks. My socks are dropping like flies. One pair after another have holes too big in them for even me to ignore, and I’m hoping to hold out on replacing them for… I dunno. A while.

Giving

On giving: we have worked really hard and been very fortunate that our hard work paid off in significant ways that I couldn’t have dreamt of when I first started this blog. Though we have not reached our FI number where I can feel like all income is gravy, we’ve always felt it was important to lend a helping hand. Many people say they’ll give back later, when they’re financially set. I say that if we don’t practice and prioritize giving now, we won’t give later either.

All year round I run the Lakota Giving Project, donate to organizations that help people and animals in need and do direct aid.

We’ve helped five families this year to the tune of $1,335.96. We’ve outfitted families with much needed bedding, bath towels, winter clothing for the freezing cold, basic household supplies, many diapers for many little baby bottoms, hats and boots for the cold.

Donations. I usually spread out our donations a little more through the year but this month we donated to 6 organizations to support refugees and medical aid in Ukraine, and trans kids in Texas, and friends in need.

Saving and investing

I didn’t know that my Treasury Direct account would be next to impossible to recover. I last logged in several years ago, back in the days when I didn’t use a password helper, so when the very bored and very unhelpful lady on the phone advised me that I could just follow the password reset procedure, I figured I’d just recover it the old fashioned way.

Little did I know that they insist on a set of completely ridiculous methods to verify identity and recover access. For example, they want a very specific type of stamp from a bank or a Medallion Guarantee. My banks don’t have the stamp they want, and they refuse to authorize the use of the Medallion stamp for this purpose. Of the list of alternatives, they have a court clerk option. Except it has to be a federal court. A county court is not acceptable! So I’ll have to trek to SF, Oakland, or San Jose on a weekday to get a signature from a clerk. That’s at least a 2 hour round trip, probably more, super easy to do with no time, energy or childcare. Yep.

At this point, I’m just about ready to abandon the account entirely. I’m pretty sure (almost) that I only cashed in a very old savings bond seven years or so ago but I’ve got no way of verifying if I have any money left in the account and therefore if it’s worth keeping at this at some point. For now, I’m just shaking my head and thinking that they’ve got a great interest rate but I hate the UX of their site so much. Usability is as important to me as interest rates, it’s really hard for me to want to recommend the i-bonds.

It’s a recommendation with a caveat: if it’s worth the trouble of jumping through two dozen hoops to you, then the interest rate is very good for this six month period.

Net worth

Numbers are down this month, as expected.

On Life

Entertainment.

Raising Dion on Netflix got a second season, yay! Recurring character and what’s his face are completely entitled jerks and UGH. I hate that the character I hate is also the one who cracks the comics jokes that I get. “My very own Moira McTaggart.” Also, who seriously thinks that just because they mean well, and “tried to be good” for about two seconds, they should just automatically be forgiven all their crimes? Oh yes, entitled people.

I revisited One Day At a Time on Netflix and I’m still mad that I can’t access the fourth season. I like the characters and the fact that the show faces a lot of current issues today head on. Penelope’s parenting challenges are things that have been on my mind for ages, and that overprotectiveness? YES. Yep that’s me!

War Girls, Tochi Onyebuchi (Bookshop, Amazon). Well written but I had to stop partway through because my heart, so taxed by all the losses from the pandemic, couldn’t handle the emotional depth. I’ll have to come back to it in a time when I’m more at peace.

The Last Graduate, Naomi Novik (Bookshop, Amazon). It was a close thing with this book too. This plot was stressy as I came to the realization that the goal was huge but I also really liked the character development and the narrator’s personal issues were too relatable. It’s easier when the hard stuff feels like stuff I can relate to. Much harder for me to read when it feels similar to a struggle of someone I love. I wish the first book’s cliffhanger was resolved but it wasn’t and added a new one! September can’t get here fast enough for that third book release. Also I only understood the Pandavas reference because of Roshani Chokshi’s Pandava series so that’s fun.

Spirit Gate, Kate Elliott (Bookshop, Amazon). There’s so much going on in this book. In a good way but also in a dammit! I can’t sleep, I need to finish a … few … more … pages!! sort of way and that’s not super compatible with my life right now. But that made it the perfect book for my painsomnia nights, those nights when I can’t sleep no matter how much I want to, because there’s so much book (length) and so much going on (depth) it distracts me even from screaming pain. I had mixed feelings about the next two books in the trilogy.
CW for Shadow Gate (Amazon), there was a LOT of sexual assault there.
Traitor’s Gate (Amazon) ended with what was maybe an appropriate ending but one that I was dissatisfied with.

Mort, Terry Pratchett (Bookshop, Amazon). My library finally got this book into the digital collection and it was nice to see the origins of Susan that had always been alluded / referred to in the later books. I both want to read every single Discworld book and don’t want to have read them all because the delight of getting to discover a new to me book is a special gift.

Typhoid Mary, Anthony Bourdain (Amazon) It’s been a while since I’ve been able to read or watch anything of Anthony Bourdain’s. He was a hugely imperfect person but he seemed to genuinely care about substance, particularly when it came to sharing other cultures that were not his own, and I appreciated that.

The Girl and the Ghost, Hanna Alkaf (Bookshop, Amazon). This middle grade debut was REALLY good. I love mythologies so stories that incorporate them into the core story automatically gets my interest. The thing was I didn’t even realize that applied to this book, I can’t remember why I put it on my wish list but obeyed past me anyway and read it. And oh my goodness. Very worth reading.

Paladin’s Grace, T. Kingfisher (Bookshop, Amazon). I didn’t know what to expect here either. I knew I like everything else Ursula’s written (though I am absolutely avoiding her books actually billed as horror because I have no doubt it’ll creep me out way too much) so I trusted I’d enjoy this. I did! I didn’t expect to laugh at it so much or to like the characters so immediately.

Paladin’s Strength, T. Kingfisher (Bookshop, Amazon). Dammit, now that I’ve finished this one, I’m really sad there are only three books in the Saint of Steel series. The combination of adventure, funny, and romance were nicely balanced here IMO.

:: How was your month?

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