By: Revanche

Money & Life Report: May 2023

June 6, 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 $969.74 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.

Spending

To maximize the current Amex Offer, I made two $50 payments this month on our internet account to get $5 back for each payment. I’ll do this again in June for a total of $20 savings across four months of bills. Added to the $20 per month reduction I’d negotiated, we’ll temporarily have a $25 reduction in internet bills.

I purchased a $50 Amazon Gift Card and got a $5 on a promo early this month. We don’t shop Amazon frequently but we do need them every so often for things we can’t get elsewhere. I spent that gift card on car parts and the $5 promo on a small gift for our Lakota family sponsee. (We’ll call them A.) I have a few months to put together a birthday box so I’m strategically buying as much as I can with coupons, earned rewards, and on sale to stretch our dollars. It’s not practical to buy all the things from one place and have it shipped free so we will be shipping it all in a flat rate box.

Prices everywhere are still going up dramatically. A case of wipes used to be $17. Three months ago, the same case was $22. Now it’s $27. I still think this is all down to corporate greed.

We’re also facing another rate hike on water and sewer, they want a 7% increase across both. Arghh.

The costs of JB’s camps and Smol Acrobat’s daycare happening at the same time makes me a bit ill. We’ve paid $300 this month already, June will cost $4000, and July will run about $3000.

Not spending

I’m recycling a couple items at Staples this and next month to get a total of $20 in recycling money by August. We don’t need anything from them immediately. It’s just nice to have the credit against future needs. Maybe we’ll sell enough art cards to need more supplies by then! *hopeful face*

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.

We donate to organizations that help people and animals in need and do direct aid. The Lakota Giving Project is year-round and we always welcome donations to support Lakota families. See how you can help at the link.

My friend dropped off a literal vanload of donations at our house. It took me by surprise, we’d only agreed that she was going to give me large packing boxes for coat hunting and gathering at the end of this month. But she had also gathered up so many other things to donate that they filled half a room. I went into hyper sorting and packing mode immediately because we couldn’t function with all these bags and boxes blocking up our main room. The kids helped. “Helped”, sometimes. We shipped out about 150 lbs of clothes and household goods to the Allen Youth Center in one week!

I held onto a large sack of little pins that are cute but frankly I can’t imagine them wanting any more than they had already been given (she’d sent lots already), so I’m finding homes for them with the local elementary schools. JB’s teacher is happy to take some, and I contacted another local teacher at our low-income elementary school to offer them for their prize bins. She was really happy to accept it for the kids so we made a special run to that office after school let out.

We’ve had to pull back on our direct aid significantly because we’re spending double on childcare in June and July and somehow I hadn’t actively processed that information when I was signing JB up for summer camp.

Saving and investing

Starting next month our savings rate will drop 25%. This alone doesn’t make up for the increased expense of daycare. Our FSA reimbursements on daycare money spent earlier in the year should make up the rest of that gap. It’s a shame when it seems like any raise we get early in the year is swallowed up before midyear.

I’ll have to adapt our investing schedule as well.

Net worth

Confession: I’m intermittently really impatient with our snail’s pace progress. It’s hard not to itch with the need to do more to get us to our goal faster. Realistically, we’re still making progress and that feels like a minor miracle. I mean, hello COVID-related and childcare headwinds, among other things.

This graph covers 29 months. During that time, we’ve gone from 39% of the goal to 57% of the goal. That’s progress! If we can carry on at this rate, steadily, we could potentially get there in roughly 7.5 years. Actually, it’s that conditional that makes me so itchy isn’t it? My history doesn’t allow me to take the “IF we don’t hit any large financial icebergs, if we don’t have any emergencies, if if if” with any equanamity. I want to be there now because my early adulthood history still makes me go to the worse case scenario. If we need to rely on things going well to reach a goal, all the bad things will happen first.

On Life

I’ve hated Mother’s Day since my mom passed away. I always wanted to crawl into a hole and be left alone. Some years we’d ameliorate that by seeing heart friends who’d also lost their mothers. Other years we didn’t. This year was a didn’t year. But with young kids, I’ve had to come around at least for their sake. Maybe eventually for my own too.

We had donuts and a walk on the cliffs above the beach, freezing in the wind we really ought to have anticipated, and that was just right.

I’m still sad about my mom. I still miss her. But she’s been gone from my adult life as long as she was here for it. She died when I was 28, I’m 40 now. The asymmetry will soon fully tilt in the other direction. The edges of the grief are a little less sharp, a little less intense when I catch my breath. The depth of the grief is the same. But I can live my life with the grief in a way I could not when she first passed. The guilt feels less complete, the understanding that I couldn’t have done more for her grows with therapy. The hope that I’ll do better for my kids when I heal more grows.

Queen Charlotte on Netflix was breathtakingly sorrowful and beautiful and somehow hopeful as well.

Also truth (and I say this as someone who lives on the spectrum of pain daily):

:: How was your month?

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