By: Revanche

Money & Life Report: December 2024

January 1, 2025

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 $501.10 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.

We banked $260 in gift cards for participating in a big study. That covers a lot of household essentials.

Spending

3 years of hosting for this blog: $500 after negotiating a 20% discount. I have developed an expensive hobby these past 15 years.

We bought another $500 in Target gift cards during their 10% off sale: $450. We use these for teacher gifts and to fill our gift card bank to defray the costs of future household spending.

I also caught a 30% off sale on underwear for most of us so I loaded up on multiple packs: $50.

We tried out a new book discounter, Bookoutlet.com, that had deeply discounted books. I goofed up my order in two ways, and ended up paying $76 for 3 fewer books than my original order. Sigh. I should have just left well enough alone the first time. Anyway, they were swamped so they didn’t get around to my email asking for help until a few days after I placed the order. I couldn’t wait, everything had to be here by Dec 15 to be delivered to their recipients in time, but they gave me loyalty points to make up for the $5 offer I lost at least. That was nice. Also cool, we both get $5 off if you want to try them and use this referral code. I thought their shipping was going to take FOREVER and the shipment wouldn’t arrive in time for wrapping gifts but it arrived in fewer than 10 business days so I’ll be searching them periodically for gifts in 2025.

I caught sight of an American Express offer: Get a $10 statement credit to spend a minimum of $50 in one or more purchases to pay US bill payments for cable and/or internet services made directly with the provider by 12/31/2024. Limit of 2 statement credits (total of $20). I made two payments of $50 just before the cutoff. A $20 savings should come back to my card in the next billing cycle. Always nice to save a little on the internet.

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.

This has been a big month of direct aid. This one was one:

Help a Single Mom and Her Kids Find Shelter

Saving and investing

I’ve had to figure out how to jump up our savings rate for 2025. “Figuring out” right now consists of just changing the automated transfers and then fiddling with the results in the spreadsheet to see how and where we have to do what to shore it up. Might be reducing contributions to the 401k for a bit, might be something else.

Net worth

Looking back to Jan 2021, I picked a high number as the 5-year goal for our investments. I didn’t do the math at the time, but doing it now: that’s a 250% increase. That was one of those “aim for the stars” moments without thinking too hard about it, then I buckled down hard to get as close as we could. The game plan: being frugal where we can, aggressively saving, and investing anything I could. That got us 4/5 of the way there (almost 200%) but I don’t see us making up that last 50% in the next year. Between the planned expenses ahead of us and another Trump administration starting, there’s so much apprehension about what’s in store financially and otherwise. Part of me wants to pull back and go heavy on cash, anticipating things being bad for a lot of marginalized people. That’s fear trying to drive. We’ll stay the course: continue squeezing every dollar out of every point of income we can, build on that money, keep giving direct aid to marginalized people. Somehow.

I’m also (in a worst case scenario planning) considering career path changes and what might need to happen there to ensure our incomes continue to come in steadily.

This month, we closed out the year a little down from earlier months. Markets doing what markets do.

On Life

Books!

I have so many books on hold at the library right now, and none are available to read yet. I’ve heard many good things about How to Become the Dark Lord (and Die Trying), Django Wexler.

Red One: I watched this for Lucy Liu and there wasn’t nearly enough of her. It was lightly amusing but in this year of hardships for so many, I couldn’t help feeling that feel-good holiday stories are a bit jarring.

The Dallergut Dream Department Store, Miye Lee, trans Sandy Joosun Lee. Thanks for the rec, Nicole & Maggie! This was really good! I liked the premise, it was well fleshed out, and it’d be neat to see more of these characters and this world. I was confused by whether the workers in the Store were also asleep or not, though.

Ilona Andrews’ Sanctuary: I read this on the blog and was delighted that the published book had a bit more story to it.

Preeti Chibber’s Payal Mehta’s Romance Revenge Plot: I don’t normally enjoy teen / romance because I suffer from secondhand embarrassment with teen stuff but this was so well written. And wow did this bring back a memory. A kid who wanted to date me in college said his Chinese mom was racist against my particular genre of Asian, so she’d just have to like the Chinese parts of me. I didn’t have the words back then but I knew he was out of his damn mind. I pretended not to recognize him 25 years later when we ran into each other (why, world, why, there are so many better people I’d like to run into again) and instead of gracefully taking the exit, he insisted on proving he remembered me. 🤦🏻‍♀️Our other friends who have known him for much longer whispered: he’s always been so weird.