Money & Life Report: July 2023
August 8, 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 $223.60 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
We’re both working on other ways to bring in income on a small scale. Me with my banking and credit card bonuses, him with his bike commuting to earn rebates. They’re not great gobs of money but they add up.
Spending
I had to buy JB a couple of swimsuits for an event because I’d flubbed packing our bags. Luckily there was a buy one get one free deal at Target, so they got two new suits for $21. I estimated their size wrong and had to exchange the smaller one; the promotion made that a lot harder to do. Smol Acrobat trying to participate in the call hollering “hi” every few seconds made it even harder. In the end, they arranged to send me a larger size at $0 net cost. It was a mishmash of gift card refund, red card charge, and red card refund but we got it done. Now they have three suits for the price of one.
We traveled this month. We made do with squishing into our existing car instead of a rental car that would have been $$$$. We did board Sera ($$$$) because we were going to be on the move a lot. It’s not fair to keep making her go go go or stay alone in a strange hotel room while we’re out and about. All she wants to do is lounge with friendly people or puppies and sleep a lot. She gets that with her sitter so while we were out gallivanting, she got cuddles from small humans and friendly canines. It was well worth the money for my peace of mind and her safety and comfort. I’ll get the travel spending update together later.
In a surprising twist, PiC found the family minivan. I had planned to finance it to spread the cost across months or years when the interest rates were so much lower. Since they’re dramatically higher than last year, it costs less to pay cash ($$$$$) than to take a car load now. We’ll take the rest of the year and part of next year to recoup the cash.
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 now and we always welcome donations to support Lakota families. See how you can help at the link.
2023 has been a tough year for giving and for people who are closer to the margins. We’ve continued to offer direct aid where we can, but our own costs (daycare, the new car, other home maintenance) are unusually high this year. None of it is actually a surprise but no amount of preparing mentally for the increase in spending can make up for the reality of the constrained budgets.
Saving and investing
A few years ago, I bought shares of a bank stock, the name eludes me now, but at some point it was bought out and my shares were converted to the new bank. Since I didn’t pick it, I don’t really want to keep it but I find myself puzzled about the bookkeeping end of things. It’s been several years since I last sold any holdings, and I’ve not had to do bookkeeping for shares that were converted in any way before.
At some point, I’ll need to dig into it to see how the accounting works to unload them.
Net worth
Cash is way down this month, as expected. Investments dipped a little, too, so the total net worth followed that dip, a shuffle step backwards. We’ll focus on making up that lost ground the rest of this year. We haven’t budged from this 50-60% to goal range and I’m feeling a little stuck. We hit the 50% point for the first time in October 2021, but since then, our numbers pingponged back and forth. Up a bit, down a bit, up some more, down some more. Between expenses skyrocketing, trying to help folks and raises not making up that much of the gap, I didn’t have high expectations but it feels starker when I look at how long we’ve been doing this waltz of no real increases.
On Life
Reading.
I read through Book 16 of Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series this month. We’re missing the last two books published in 2023. I’m both pleased there are still two more and grumpy they came out too late for the library to purchase them as part of my special requests. Fair to say I really like them!
Devon Monk’s Wayward Souls books were reasonably good, though it feels very unfinished.
Only read 8 books this month, partly because we were traveling for a good chunk of that time and I was exhausted.
