By: Revanche

Money & Life Report: February 2025

March 5, 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 $1076 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.

I finally picked a credit card for points churning.

Spending

How on earth did we manage a $300 gas and electric bill? Was January that much colder than other months? It’s historically our high cost month of the year but it’s weirdly high this year. I scrutinized the bill and the daily charges but couldn’t pin down what it was.

Not spending

First time savings on chopping off my own hair! It’s amateur but less hair is amazing and I saved about $65 (if I had gone to a regular salon) or $45 (if we’d gone to Supercuts). I’ve been emboldened by my first attempt. I might try to take off a few more inches of length next month. Save on shampoo and conditioner too. We’ve been cutting the kids’ hair for years and been estimating our savings to be $25 per kid. PiC hears from another parent that the going cost for the kid friendly barber is now $40 a cut! 😱

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’ve been giving so much direct aid to folks in need that I accidentally borked our cash flow and I hit the limits on transfers allowed on my accounts. First time that’s happened and likely not the last. I need to figure out a better way to give.

My shopping timing was good for Penny’s students: we lucked into a good sale at Costco so I was able to send them much more than usual for almost the same amount of money we’d normally spend. This will almost last them until the summer! I will keep my eyes open for another Costco sale on snack staples between now and May.

We covered three Lakota families this month. Family #1 needed many space heaters for themselves and their extended family. Done!

Family #2 was temporarily hosting many people whose homes could not hold off the cold. We sent them piles of blankets along with all the food and household supplies I could swing.

Family #3 was a request from an Elder who needed cleaning and hygiene supplies, pantry food, towels and washcloths, paper goods, snacks for the kids. We spent the last of our cash hoard to send them a big pile of towels and washcloths, clothes for Grandma, shampoo, conditioner, toothbrushes and toothpaste, bar soap, and food for the family. I wanted to include laundry detergent but we ran out of money on that shopping trip

Saving and investing

I kept having to tweak our cash flow all month and only just realized why. Yes partly because I keep giving money away but also I’d been putting away money for larger expenditures into a bucket account. But because I had to pay for some of the materials already, I’d been paying for those costs upfront. I’d doubled the “budget” without realizing it – saving the money to spend plus spending it! Oops. I’m paying our cashflow back at least one big chunk so that will remove a few of those negatives from my tracking spreadsheet. There are still some in negatives in April that I have to figure out but this is a good step in the right direction.

Once I fill up some of the spending buckets, like for the roof and small family trips, I’ll trickle money into the longer term buckets like for a car / car maintenance and pets. Dog adoption won’t happen anytime in the next year but (I hope) they will eventually. Saving for them now feels right.

Net worth

On Life

LIFE in the US right now??? I mean, I know y’all are feeling it like I am. My pain flares have been the worst they’ve been since 2019 before I started therapy, when I felt like I’d hit rock bottom physically. I have lava-like pain spikes almost daily now and it’s draining. I’ve talked to my doctors and we’re trying a combo of increasing meds and trying new ones. 🤞 It might also be time for an anti anxiety med but I’ll wait for another month or two before I ask for that, let these meds settle down first.

Books.

Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop. Hwang Bo-reum. This was a very slow read. Exhaustion played a big role there, of course. I almost never sleep without reading first but my many late nights working left so little energy for reading that some nights, I’d maybe get through a page or two. The pacing of the book with no big events or dramatics also contributed. It’s almost a sleepy book. While that’s not my usual speed it wasn’t bad, it was a peaceful sort of mood and that’s quite nice for this moment in time.