Money & Life Report: March 2023
April 4, 2023
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 $342 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
Spending
This is the third month of astronomical heating bills. Though we keep our thermostat below 62 or off entirely during the day and avoid peak hour usage 3/4 of the time, our monthly bill nudges $300. We’re not the only ones, local coworkers report the same hikes on their bills.
Regular big ticket spending on my therapy and the mortgage continue apace, daycare costs go up this month again because of our switch to full time care. I’m expecting it to go up again in the fall when they do their annual increases.
Not spending
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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.
One Spirit has partnered with this great program where you can buy a UPS shipping label for $20 and ship up to 70 lb boxes to the Okini Market or nearby programs. There are still some hiccups in the program. I have to email them every time I purchase a set of shipping labels to get errors corrected, but eventually it works and overall, it’s an excellent idea.
We can ship good quality second hand or like new goods for a reasonable price. My local friends and I packed up six large boxes of clothing from friends who were cleaning out estates: adult men’s clothing, baby clothes, kids’ clothes, never used tumblers, organizers, art supplies. 100 lbs of men’s clothing went to the Okini Market for them to use, and about 200 lbs of clothing went to the Allen Youth Center.
When I gather up as many good used kids’ coats as I can get my hands on in June, we’ll be able to ship them for $20 per box. This is exciting!
We’ve shipped NINE large bulk boxes to the Allen Youth Center and Okini Market for their use, purchased 6 pairs of new jeans from Old Navy from their clearances to the AYC, and helped one extra large family who were taking in 2 more grandkids with: a bunk bed, 2 mattresses, 2 bedding sheet sets and blankets, 4 pillows, socks / underwear / shirts / pants / hoodies for the kids, art supplies, and basic hygiene supplies (toothpaste, toothbrushes, bar soap, hand soap, lotion).
Extra large families under the care of an elder or two are quite common on the reservation, so I try to send along extra household supplies for the others in the family whenever possible.
As always, donations are welcome! I’m hoping we can gather enough funds to help two more families this month.
Saving and investing
Our Ally savings account is up to 3.75% APY but I noticed that my settlement fund (that holds the cash I intend to invest) at Vanguard, VMFXX, lists a 4.77% 30-day SEC yield. The fund is saddled with a 0.11% expense ratio that the online savings account doesn’t have but the 30-day SEC yield has already accounted for that, so it’s a full percentage point more than the Ally account. I’ve put half our emergency funds in the VMFXX account to earn a bit more money. I’ll note: because this is my settlement fund, I can only use this fund. If I wanted to get the most efficient fund, I might open VUSXX instead. I don’t feel like opening a new fund just for this, though, this is good enough.
Net worth
On Life
Reading!
I really struggled with non fiction this month. Beaver Land (affiliates: Amazon, Bookshop) was a nice lot of history about beavers though this sidebar about coyotes made me chuckle as I grew up with and still have urban encounters with coyote, and well written, but I had trouble sticking with it: In Chicago, Dr. Stan Gehrt, who heads up the longest urban coyote research project in the country, has identified a generation of coyote that now teach their young to wait at traffic lights and avoid eating rats, saving the coyote from getting hit by cars and from ingesting fatal doses of rat poison. Meanwhile, beaver have held up the subways in Toronto, and every year Herb is called to trap beavers living in the banks of the Connecticut River in Hartford.
I loved Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn (affiliates: Amazon, Bookshop). I did not have trouble with getting through this and am asking the library to get the second book post-haste!
Ryan La Sala’s Reverie (affiliates: Amazon, Bookshop) had been on my library wish list for so long I didn’t remember what drew me to pick it in the first place. I don’t usually like memory loss plots but this one was handled well.
Brigid Kemmerer’s Defy the Night (affiliates: Amazon, Bookshop) was a Twitter recommendation like so many of my current reads are.
