By: Revanche

Money & Life Report: March 2024

April 2, 2024

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 $464.00 in dividends in from the stocks portfolio.

Spending

Gifts. I’m thinking ahead to the holidays. March tends to be a bigger month financially for us so setting aside the nibling gift money in the next month or two feels more comfortable than stuffing all the envelopes at the end of the year. Plus it saves me a little of that almost-inevitable fall rush that feels so stressy.

My Lakota sponsee asked for a piece of sports equipment so I ordered it. It was reasonably inexpensive, $22. Sponsee’s guardian asked me a few months ago to buy specific shoes for their end of school year and I finally found a good sale on them so those are on their way ($30).

I have promo credits expiring this month so was browsing Kindle books when I accidentally clicked the Buy with 1-Click button. So I accidentally committed to the Kate Daniels Wilmington duo. Of course I loved it and wanted more. And it looks like we will eventually get more!

Sera’s first medication costs $75 for a two month supply at the vet. I’ve been getting the second medication from Costco because they warned me that would be really pricey. Prescription #2 would cost $245 a month normally but the Costco pharmacy price for pets is $20 a month. I’ve got to get a Costco price check for Prescription #1 since she seems likely to be on it long term if she continues to respond. Her third medication to help her with her appetite cost $90 for 6 doses.

We’ve been averaging $1500-2000 on her labwork (every 2 weeks), medications, scans, etc. There’s no end in sight since she’s still not responding as well as she needs to be in order to be on maintenance.

via GIPHY

Not spending

I was doing some research comparing our internet pricing to prepare to negotiate for faster speeds at the same rate since AT&T has been making some inroads into our area and gave me leverage. Before I engaged in negotiations, though, Comcast emailed me: We’ve increased your internet speeds to show you our appreciation. You can now enjoy 2x faster upload speeds and improved download speeds for smoother connections when you’re working, gaming and streaming. We’re excited to share this increase to your current internet package at no additional cost. Not seeing the faster speeds yet? Restart your gateway. Enjoy!

Well! That saved me some trouble. I will enjoy.

Giving

We have worked really hard and been very fortunate that our hard work paid off in significant ways that I only 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.

We were able to help two families this month, but I’ll have to summarize them in next month’s update, I’ve run out of time this month!

Saving and investing

I’ve nudged our investing amounts up a little. I realized I’d been instinctively hoarding cash in the investing account a bit again. Even with the prospect of possible layoff starting RIGHT NOW, I am trying to stay the course on a more balanced approach to the hoarding of cash. We have mostly replenished the emergency fund thanks to some accounting shuffling and payouts in March.

If the layoff does happen, we’ll have enough in the can to cover our expenses between using my income, stopping our investing saving in the event of a layoff, continuing the regularly scheduled savings for the property taxes because THAT bill will come hell or high water so we’d better plan for it, and our savings will fill in the gaps for a good while. Our emergency cash amount is based on the worst case scenario of both of us losing our jobs or one getting sick and the other having to take time off work to care for them, etc. = any combination of losing both incomes. If we retain one income, we can stretch for a while. Our savings and investing will be stagnant and our future plans will be impacted, but at least our present day would be covered for about a year or more. That doesn’t take into account our stress levels worrying about the longer term and the job hunting, that’s not quantifiable so I won’t even try to mitigate that beyond what simple math can do here.

Net worth

On Life

Entertainment.

TV.

The 2016 Ghostbusters was delightful. I don’t remember if I ever watched the originals but I really enjoyed this one. Leslie Jones is a favorite. It irked me to see she wasn’t in any followup movies and then to see how badly treated she was when this came out, being subjected to racists on Twitter in droves and only being paid $150,000 to Melissa McCartney’s $13M. That kind of disparity in pay is insulting.

In my bits of kid- and work-free time, I watched a Korean show called Doctor Slump while I’m paying bills and prepping meds for Sera (the irony coming up is not lost on me) It’s about two overachieving high school rivals, Yeo Jeong-woo and Nam Ha-neul, who went on to become physicians and meet each other again at a particularly low point in their lives. They have a conversation one night about their troubles and Nam Ha-neul is lamenting her life choices. She had dedicated her entire life to her goals, putting off enjoyment of all things, and she’s kicking herself for ending up with no job and depression for her efforts. Yeo Jeong-woo surprises her with a bit of advice that resonated with me:
Yeo Jeong-woo: Since you’ve hit rock bottom…
Nam Ha-neul: I should stay strong?
Yeo Jeong-woo: No, just stay down. Let’s take a break while we’re at the bottom.

The idea that it’s ok to take a break when things are rough is so the opposite of my instinctive (or learned) response to challenging times.

The Resident. Background TV for working times. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about a doctor show, and then even more unsure when it seemed to be more truthful about the nonsense of the business of medicine and overblown egos and power trips (I chat regularly about this stuff with my doctor relative and it tracks way too well with the reality that they describe). But you know, it actually wasn’t bad. And they dealt with COVID, that’s the first time I’ve seen media address COVID like a real thing. The least believable moment was probably that daycare dropoff where they chided a parent for rushing off at dropoff, asking them to stay longer for transition. Are you kidding? Have you seen a real daycare? They’re very polite about it but they want you to rip the bandaid off and leave, not linger. That makes it worse, and harder, for the kid. I’ve only seen a couple kids continue crying long after their parent left, one of them used to come cry on my knees in the absence of their parent even though they didn’t know me, but their parent staying wouldn’t have helped them recover either. It took me 2 weeks to realize why I’d taken an instant dislike to one of the main characters (Conrad). It wasn’t just the “special genius cishet white male star” role, there was something more to it than that. It’s because he was Logan from Gilmore Girls and I never liked them there either! But his character developed better character and I grew to like him. It’s weird how many of the primary characters are roughly my age.

Books.

Christina Soontornvat, The Last Mapmaker (Amazon, Bookshop). THIS was an excellent book!

Sisters in Arms by Kaia Alderson (Amazon, Bookshop).

I just finished Fugitive Telemetry (Amazon, Bookshop) and was completely totally confused about how this leads to System Collapse. This doesn’t track. I tried Googling the answer which led me to this review that explained: Now, this one continues immediately from where Network Effect lets off. For the people who don’t know, the publication order and chronological order is different from Murderbot #5 – Fugitive Telemetry (Murderbot diaries #6) was published after Network Effect (Murderbot diaries #5) but canonically it occurs before the events in Network Effect.

Nope I didn’t know that! Did everyone else get a memo that I missed? Anyway I didn’t agree with anything else that the reviewer said. Just because you don’t like trauma, and the effects of it, doesn’t make the book bad for handling it in a very real way. While I was completely confused about what the root issues were reading System Collapse, the depiction of the trauma avoidance was spot on. Benefit from a lower page count my left foot.

Shadowed Souls edited by Jim Butcher and Kerrie L. Hughes (Amazon, Bookshop) piqued my interest because they were short stories from established writers which meant they have back lists to explore. Short stories are usually aggravating because they end right when I’m getting invested. As a longtime Incryptid fan, I loved Seanan McGuire’s contribution. I hadn’t read Jim Butcher before so I tried his Dresden Files Collection 1-6 (Amazon, Bookshop) and mostly liked it. I’ll poke around some more.

:: How was your month?

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