Money & Life Report: October 2022
November 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. The sidebar has ways to support the blog and our charitable giving.
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 $216.40 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
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Many Californians should be getting a Middle Class Tax Refund between October 2022 and January 2023. Whatever we get will come in useful.
I’m getting ready for a lean start of the new year. Traditionally our income is always much lower in the first half of the year thanks to pre-tax contributions. Why did it take me so long to finally remember this is a pattern?
Now that I DO remember, I’m trying to stash some cash ahead of the turn of the year.
Spending
Unplanned. Somehow we broke the clip on Sera’s collar, so I had to go through a whole load of rigamarole to get her a usable replacement. $$. PiC needed some new biking gear and new shoes. $$.
Semi-planned. We put down some money towards next year’s travel plans. $$$!
Continuous. We keep paying for therapy and JB’s self defense classes and daycare. All good things, all expensive things: $$$$!
Not spending
I was able to cook dinner a few times a week most weeks this month and that’s such a huge improvement over this time last year. You’d think that would have saved us some money but I’m not sure that it did. The cost of groceries is WAY up. But my discovery of frozen udon from Weee! is an amazing addition to our meals. It goes wonderfully with broth and my Japanese curry. Less wonderfully for my budget, I discovered salted egg chips are exquisite and oh so expensive. They’re a very sometimes treat.
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 donated to Black Girls Code and a handful of friends pooled our funds to send a supply of snacks to Penny for her students, a good half of whom are hungry this season. I picked a selection of starches, fruit, and protein, same as I would for my own kids, and Penny will make sure this turns into several meals. I may make some of those foods a recurring thing if possible. We can’t solve all the world’s ills but we can at least try to get some food to some kids.
***** Lakota! *****
Family 19! A grandmother was asking for clothing, bookbags and school supplies for her 3 grandsons. She herself was in need of socks, tied tennis shoes, sweat pants, blouses, sweater or hoodie. We were running quite low on funds but we still managed to kit them out with 3 tees and a pair of pants per boy, plus socks for the younger two, and a hoodie for the youngest. Grandmother was sent socks, two sweatshirts and two pairs of pants. I try to send full outfits wherever possible.
Shipment number 20 was a set of medications for the Allen community sent to the Allen Youth Center: 6 bottles of 300 count ibuprofen and 2 bottles of 500 count acetaminophen (extra strength).
I’m now gathering warm gently used hand me down clothes and COVID test kits to ship to the AYC directly. I can get the test kits for very little and don’t know how long that’ll last so I want to get those out there as soon as possible.
We launched an extra special push for our Lakota families last week for this year’s Thanksgiving holiday and in honor of November being National Native American Heritage Month. Recognition of heritage is so important and so is clothing and feeding people.
If you’re interested, I’m sharing the semi sort of real time progress updates in this thread but also in my weekly posts because frankly who knows how long we’ll still have a functional Twitterverse.
Saving and investing
My remaining two CDs will mature in December and January. Since the interest rate on the CDs is getting outpaced by interest on my Ally savings account, I’ll cash those out and send them to the savings account since these are part of our emergency savings. I’ve parked a third of our savings in iBonds so they can earn more interest for the short term and hopefully make up some of the ground we’ve lost to inflation.
Net worth
Nothing exciting to see here: little bumps up and down. We’ve contributed lots to our brokerage this year and you don’t really see any of that but 🤷🏻♀️. I’m not going to worry about market movements before I have to. I track this monthly because I like having our history, boring or not.
On Life
Entertainment.
The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison (Amazon).
The Human Division (Amazon) and The End of all Things (Amazon), John Scalzi.
A Local Habitation (Amazon) and An Artificial Night (Amazon), Seanan McGuire. Already love this series and want more.
I started playing She-Hulk in the background and it’s pretty great. I already liked Tatiana Maslany so seeing her as Jen Walters was a little brain shift but I enjoyed her turn as She-Hulk. Loki was fun as well.
The Bastard Son and the Devil Himself was unexpected. Also very gory. And a bit disturbing. But intriguing. Still, more stress than I should have signed up for considering it was only supposed to be background.
Partner Track was similarly distracting. It was frustrating to watch the slew of microaggressions and backstabbing.
Why not buy CDs through your brokerage account as they are way outstripping savings accounts. Can easily get 4.5% on a 1 year term. Even a 3 month is over 3%.
Wow have the rates changed dramatically since I looked at them end of September/early October! Thanks for the thought, I’ll look into it!
Have really enjoyed SheHulk as a low energy/commitment watch!
Rates are going up so much I’m actually starting to pay attention to savings accounts again…
Yes! I’m very sad there was just the one season to enjoy.
It’s rather astonishing how much they’ve gone up in short period!