By: Revanche

Money & Life Report: October 2025

November 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 $246.60 in dividends from the stocks portfolio. All reinvested.

Spending

Thankfully reimbursable, we had to replace our modem this month ($$$). Our connection was so bad thanks to changes at Comcast that it was slowing my work down significantly and frustrating the daylights out of me.

Regular expenses this month: my therapy, my trainer, JB’s tutoring, renewing our subscription to Cal Academy for 14 months.

Semi regular: donations – so many, $$$. Picking up supplies for SmolAc’s birthday party. The school fundraiser festival – the kids got to play a ton of games and redeem their tickets for prizes. We got to pay for their games, raffle tickets, and prize draws. We did win a couple items so that was nice, and the school benefited.

This month: new tires for the van, $$$$.

Not spending

We don’t usually pass out candy for Halloween since we’ve never had trick or treaters in our neighborhood, this was the first year in 8(!) we saw a group on our street. Unfortunately that meant we were caught totally flatfooted.

We enjoyed the city’s Halloween festivities for the first time, it’s usually scheduled at a time we can’t make. The kids dressed up and did the trunk or treat, played games, and waited patiently (ish) while I petted the shelter dogs.

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 given over $5000 in direct aid this year, excluding tax deductible charitably giving which is tracked elsewhere, and it feels like need is going to be exponentially more than that next year. Things are tough out there.

I launched the fall fundraiser.

Saving and investing

Maintaining a slow and steady pace here. I keep setting aside money for big expenses coming up: Our property tax bill is up another $1k; there are smaller home maintenance repairs that need doing; car maintenance; someday travel; someday a dog again. That all sits in a savings account because it has to be liquid but I still count it as cash savings because I don’t know how else I’d want to categorize “cash that is not long for this world/my pocket”.

I continue to be freaked out about the state of the world as it relates to our savings and investing plan: will all the work I’ve put in for the past 20 years be for naught? Will our world change so dramatically in this presidency that everything we’ve built will fall apart under the pressure of AI garbage artificially driving up the market and fascism and and and? I don’t know. I keep staying the course even while my heartburn ramps up.

Net worth

Every so often I wonder if we need to adjust our 5 year goal amount. I’m fairly sure we’re not hitting it in the next two months (Jan 2021 to Jan 2026) and I’m also very concerned that the “aim for the sky” amount still won’t be enough to cover our expenses. Back in 2021, I couldn’t anticipate the cost of non-employer-sponsored health care. Now in 2025 with the threats to basically move us back into cost-reality of the pre-ACA days, it’s back to “impossibly expensive if you have pre-existing conditions”. I used to price out healthcare coverage for my mom back in the 2006-2008 era and it was $6000 a month because she was a diabetic with some occasional blood pressure issues. We’re looking down the barrel of that reality again. I simply don’t know how we cope without employer-sponsored healthcare in the price ranges.

On Life

Work.

Dominates my life now, in more than the “this is the source of my income” way and I’m hating it right now. No signs of it letting up any time soon. I’m feeling too old for all of this.

Garden.

Both Thai basil plants are dead but one of the two Italian basil plants has, weirdly, made a come back? It’s leafy and bushy and that’s odd. I see that it’s trying to put out flower buds so we’re going to nip that – literally – in the bud. If the plant is going to survive, I don’t want the leaves to be bitter.

Reading.

Sangu Mandanna’s A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping was quite literally heartwarming. I could feel the cozy emanating from the book to me as I read it cover to cover.

It was finally my turn on Kate Elliott’s The Witch Roads and it shouldn’t have surprised me that it ended on such a cliffhanger after I’d become emotionally invested but now I’m glad it took so damn long for my loan to come up. Book two comes out in November!

Jesse Q Sutanto’s Well, That Was Unexpected was fun. Especially with the layer of knowing what living with our version of the oppressive Chinese-Indo parents is like. It’s maybe not social media hijinks but there were definitely weird awkward matchmaking hijinks in my early 20s. Thankfully it was at one remove, my mom wouldn’t seriously do that to me but she was not above enjoying the hilarity of someone else attempting to do that to me. Once in a while I wonder if that guy’s alright. I’m oblivious enough to guys directly flirting with me that it bounces right off, I sure wouldn’t have known that his family was laying a trap for me if my mom hasn’t thought it was so funny she had to tell me. Sadly it wasn’t as full of delicious foods as maybe Cassandra Khaw’s writing was, or was it another Malaysian author … It was full of coffee which is of little interest to me personally. But it sounded like a great place to take PiC to do a little coffee tourism, someday. I can enjoy the aroma.

:: How was your month?