Money & Life Report: March 2025
April 2, 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 $472 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
Spending
I set aside 37% of our bonuses for short term (donations and a few fun activities for me to try to maintain sanity) and long term spending.
Not spending
Negotiating: our promotional rate for Internet was expiring mid-April, so I got on chat with Comcast to ask for their best offer. It wasn’t a very good offer but it was better than the normal price for that speed: $94/month. I wanted to keep it at $55, best I could get was $65 with banking autopay. It occurs to me that I can still just pay ahead by credit card when I have cash back deals to use. AmEx is giving 5% back for cable and internet services until June so I’ll prepay that way first. I also got $25 worth of credit applied to my account for the three service outages. The first two are always $5 automatically, they always deny me a third credit through the outage credit page so I have to take to chat and find an agent. They made that nearly impossible two months ago, no amount of asking for an agent gave me an agent. I gave them the world’s worst feedback for that experience and I find it interesting that this time, it only took five rounds with the AI assistant to get an agent. Maybe other people also gave them negative feedback.
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.
Saving and investing
We invested 63% of our bonuses. PiC can choose to invest his bonus in his 401K so we do that every year to get us closer to the max. This year I do have a 401K but can’t elect to contribute any bonus to it, so I continue to manage that investing separately. It took me a few rounds of calculations to find a happy medium between the savings and spending of the bonus. I’m still contributing aggressively to make the most of that tax-advantaged savings. Even though I intend to hang on to this job through the end of this year (fingers crossed I don’t eat my words), I’m still planning and contributing as though I won’t last the year. Things are that hard at work right now – I have to stay extra aware that even if I have good intentions, I may not make it through the second quarter.
Speaking of retirement savings and planning, I may need to hoard a bit more cash towards the end of the year to make sure we have better cash flow in the first 2-3 months of the year. Those first months are always leaner, it’s time to be more intentional and compensate for that so that my automated contributions can stay steady.
Net worth
Whoops. I accidentally deleted this whole section. Update forthcoming!
On Life
Books. TJ Klune, Somewhere Beyond the Sea. Back to the magical island with the magical children, this was a nice comfort type read, even with the pending stressful Thing they have.
Alix Heintzman / Alix Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird. Whoof this was beautifully written. Not a comfort read at all but so well done I had to finish it.
A Fellowship of Bakers and Magic, J Penney. This really needs another round of editing to tighten up the prose. There are too many juuuust a bit awkward word choices and phrasings. While I’m no prose editor, I caught myself marking up sentences mentally to drop unnecessary words and it was at least a little distracting. The characters and the story are sweet, though, even if the plot was relatively thin and I liked how it ended.
My month was good AND also expensive. I was out of the country for 2 weeks, and I just paid a small local company to totally plant my yard with low-water pollinator-friendly plants. It’ll be exciting to watch it mature. It’s also been good to have this to focus on, so not sure where I’ll put that mental energy next!
Two great things!
Hope your jetlag is better now.