Money & Life Report: May 2025
June 11, 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 $1,349.52 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
I’m still underpaid because the administrative branch of the company is crap and hasn’t processed any of my paperwork required to get my raise. Annoyed.
I had a shirt sale on Amazon earning $3.60. That’s my first shirt sale since 2022. That makes 8 shirts sold since 2019. Not the income stream that my friends have from their shirt sales. At their height, they were selling $60K in tees! No wonder they were optimistic about alternate income streams if they retired early. But it’s also a good thing I remained skeptical because clearly my own ventures are much less lucrative. It’s not even pin money, it’s “amusing surprise that I sold anything” money.
Spending
I should have done this two months ago but we simply hadn’t gotten ourselves in order enough to before now: we’ve laid in a bit more than usual of our basic supplies: rice, ramen. I see that prices are already up 20-30%. We aren’t doing an extensive a stock up as we did in 2020 because I don’t want to dump money wastefully, so we’re just buying a little more than usual for now.
This is the first time I’ve spent full price on a wardrobe but the business clothes are needed very soon so I didn’t have time to wait it out looking for sales to piece together something that fit and wasn’t too expensive. I settled on a mix of very cheap (jeans) and very expensive (trousers), with less expensive tops.
Not spending
Free chicken: I complained to Foster Farms about the quality of their whole chickens about 9 years ago and they sent me two coupons for free chicken up to $7 each. We’ve carried those coupons so long they have nearly fallen apart, so I suggested that PiC use them before they disintegrated. This is when we discovered that Foster Farms is no longer the predominant brand carried by Safeway. He had to hunt a while to find something he could use them on and came home with ten drumsticks.
PiC’s old phone trade in was approved and we got $50 back.
The climate credit DID show up on our PGE bill this month. I confess to seriously doubting the customer service who claimed it would last month, so yay!
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
Our savings are automated and generally running smoothly but I have to make some adjustments to the second half of the year soon. We’ve gotten into the habit of maxing out 401k(s) in the first half of the year in case of layoffs. PiC’s company has had layoffs every year for the past 7-9 years, I may never stop being hypervigilant about layoffs. The second half of the year we should have enough increased cash flow to increase our savings rate.
Net worth
The market has been a weird rollercoaster this year. I ignore it outside of these updates because I’m not going to change anything by fussing over market movements I have no control over.
Also I took over managing a friend’s portfolio and changed it to mimic my holdings. After two months they saw more growth than they had the entire five years before I took it over. #proud
On Life
Food. Initially I was going to try making this Penzey’s chicken parm using drumsticks (weird, but that’s all I had) but upon realizing we lacked bread crumbs and mozzarella cheese, I pivoted to adapting this Budget Bytes roast chicken instead. I couldn’t recall if we had oregano but I had just ordered rosemary powder and white pepper so I subbed those in for oregano and black pepper. I also doubled up on the garlic powder and onion powder, going half regular garlic powder and half roasted garlic powder. All Penzey’s sourced seasonings. Ten drumsticks, 3 of which were only seasoned with garlic powder and salt for Smol Acrobat just in case, a tray of roasted asparagus, and 2 boxes of Annie’s mac and cheese. The only thing left after that dinner was one drumstick. SmolAc still ate like a sloth but they all plowed through that mac n cheese like there’s no tomorrow. PiC loved my prep of it but I find myself feeling very meh about the Annie’s boxed mac now. I’m spoiled by the Trader Joe’s frozen mac which is rich and creamy and always good.
I made a triple batch of this braised pork with eggs so I could freeze 2/3 of the batch. Future Me is going to be very appreciative of this effort.
I taste tested an overpriced can of Sanzo calamunsi sparkling water. It was lightly tart, not bad, but not good enough to try again.
I’ve also reorganized our spices in a different cabinet to make them easier to check and use for cooking. This was a result of my attempt to try new recipes, so it hasn’t spawned more cooking than usual, but it definitely made it easier to execute on those plans and to use the spices for more everyday cooking. I like Penzey’s Justice seasoning for breakfast eggs.
Books. Drop Dead Sisters, Amelia Diane Coombs. CW for an attempted assault. Reasonably good, actually, despite sibling dynamics that would normally have been too uncomfortably close to home for me.
A Sorceress Comes to Call, T. Kingfisher. I spent the entirety of this book tense and on edge. It’s a very good book, it just did the horror aspect of the job too well.
Starry Hollow Witches, Book 1-3, Annabel Chase. Did not love the Harry Potter reference in the first book but this was published in 2019 and I vaguely remember that being around the time I started seeing JKR being a noxious TERF online.
Mother’s Day. I have a complicated relationship to this day. I lost my mom too early to health problems that I felt responsible for as a carer who was too young and too financially unstable to properly help. Now I am a mom and I have all the feelings of responsibility that I cannot fail, and yet so much about their lives will be out of my hands after a certain point. I started the morning exchanging thoughts about it with a dear friend who also lost their mom too early. Then my family surrounded me for the next few hours: breakfast, a card, taking SmolAc to get a booster, then heading out to SF for a little exploratory adventure. The kids fought over holding my left hand one too many times (what’s wrong with the right hand? Oh, yes, your sibling isn’t already holding it) and clung to me a few too many minutes, so I was both exasperated (touched out) and aware that this won’t happen much longer.
We overindulged in Magical Donuts, explored the SF Spark park thing, found a kid’s park nearby where they played for a little too long and picked up a strolling lunch coming back to the car. SmolAc and I were thoroughly exhausted by the time we buckled up. Thank goodness it was only a short drive out of there. After a couple hours rest, I tackled making a triple recipe. While that simmered, we had delicious leftovers for dinner and ate the rest of the donuts for dessert. I opened my cute little toy present and had to tussle with SmolAc for it back because they wanted to play with it. They hassled me the rest of the night to open it so they could play with it.
