Money & Life Report: May 2026
June 3, 2026
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 $1,108.90 in dividends from the stocks portfolio which all gets reinvested.
Litter 1: JB and I picked up litter and found 4 extra Safeway receipts which netted 100 Fetch points and $2.85. I appreciate every penny!
Litter 2: We picked up trash on our way out of a store and ended up with 5 random receipts that scored big at Fetch: 5500 and 1100 points in addition to the usual points for the more mundane receipts (75). Yay for cleaning up and getting points for things I don’t normally buy. That’s about $6 worth of points.
Litter 3: Grocery shopping yielded 2 extra receipts on the sidewalk (50 points).
Spending
Nibling holiday gifts were almost all done except for one in this particular group (I do cash for most of the other niblings). I picked through a Carter’s Memorial Day sale + Chase cashback + Rakuten cashback and got them a decent pile of next size up clothing to go with the stack of discount books (Sangu Mandanna!) from Bookoutlet.com that I’d already picked out for them.
I’m annoyed that my timing for my this-year’s eyeglasses was all off. I ordered too early to take advantage of the Memorial Day sale and the AmEx $20 cashback offer that came up a week after I bought them. Humph.
I finally got sick of being too cold every night (with a few side quests of waking up drenched in sweat and still being cold) despite a heating pad, a light sherpa blanket, a quilt AND my Oodie piled on top of me. Sidebar: Turns out this may well be an ME/CFS thing. I found another CFS person whose ability to regulate their temperature went straight to hell like mine did many months ago. I found a clearance Oodie blanket and some joggers, all thick Sherpa-lined, and ordered them so that maybe, just maybe, I can get warm enough to sleep through the nights. It felt overly indulgent to spend as much as $80 on myself and then I realized: I’m classifying being warm enough to sleep through the night “indulgent”. As if sleep isn’t a basic need. The layoff is definitely getting to me.
Spending (less). PiC and SmolAc discovered a Bimbo Bakery Outlet and scored bagels for $1.50 for half a dozen (normally $4 in store) and $1 for 4 sourdough bagels! He declared they’re never buying from Costco again but I think that’s overly optimistic – the sale will rotate through whatever flavors they want to unload that day or week so there are going to be weeks we don’t see anything we like.
Not spending
We’re leaning on more Costco frozen foods to reduce our takeout reliance. It’s really a trade, rather than a not spending but it’s a reduction. Mostly.
We attended a party at the lunch hour and the host had overordered by a lot so we took home an XL pizza that was worth two dinners ($40).
PiC’s work catered a lunch and they overordered so he was able to bring enough home for the two of us ($35). It was actually quite good, too.
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.
I’ve had to scale way back on direct aid while I figure out our position and what’s ok to keep spending and what’s not – I usually cashflow some of the bigger expenses and that won’t be as smooth this coming year so I have to pay them down and set aside money for next year before my income stops. I have reserved cash for the folks who live with the least to try to keep helping them a bit.
Saving and investing
I thought I dropped the ball when I discovered there was a VTSAX equivalent that had a lower expense ratio (0.03% instead of 0.04%) but it turns out that I hadn’t made any investing missteps, VITSX has a $5M minimum investing threshold. I don’t qualify!
I’ve put the kids’ cash funds into a 4.10% APY CD for a year, and holding a chunk of our cash to do the same with that unless I get my ABLE account eligibility documentation. If that comes through, I’ll be putting that cash into the ABLE account instead. I’m still at the research stage for the ABLE stuff anyway.
Net worth
Had to jimmy the graph a bit because the top line kept getting chopped off. I’m not positive the new goal line is the right amount but for the moment that’s where I’m aiming our yellow line (all investments). Can’t do a whole lot about moving it myself – we’re at the mercy of irrational markets more than usual since I’m going to have to stop actively contributing. We’re going to need all our cashflow for a while.
I should be pleased by the growth but I actually don’t trust any of it since 2024. The AI bubble is affecting, and contorting, everything. While it seems like it’s doing so in a positive way for those of us who are invested, I know that it has to burst at some point. Sooner than later, one hopes.
On Life
Watching. (or “watching”. Listening, really)
Heads of State was absolutely silly but Idris Elba and John Cena peck at each other was nice background.
Red One was silly and fun. I’m also a little bit of a sucker for redemption and growth.
I started Deadloch but it required more attention than I had. Save for later.
Reading. I did a lot this month.
The kids get to participate in this reading challenge in elementary school where they take Accelerated Reading quizzes after reading books (not all books have quizzes unfortunately) and JB did a great job on theirs through the years. For fun, I started taking the page counts on the books I’ve read in the month. May was unusually high. The page count: 6926 pages. If we guesstimated (according to a few random sites that guesstimated it) about 280 words per page, that works out to 1,939,280 words. But I’ll stick to the page counts since I am not sure how accurate that average WPP is.
Shannon Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi. I couldn’t remember why I’d put this on hold but I’m glad I did, it was good.
S. Usher Evans, Drinks and Sinkholes; Fiends and Festivals; Secrets and Snowflakes. Cozy little fantasy mysteries. Easy to read and soothing for the brain.
Breanne Randall, Spells, Strings, and Forgotten Things DNF. The protagonist was just too annoying for me to stick with it.
Saara El-Arifi, Faebound.
Jennifer R Donohue, Burn up in Victory. Shakespeare!
7 Seanan McGuire Incryptid short stories from Patreon. I can never get enough of the Incryptid world.
Martha Wells, Home (short story). The brevity caught me by surprise but I’m glad that this one delved into that in-between time that was glossed over in the longer novels.
B.B. Alston, Amari and the Metalwork Menace. JB thinks this is the best Amari book in the series so far, I think I agree. I’d love for the world to be built out even more but the characters are well written.
Robert Jackson Bennett, The Tainted Cup. Very different feel from his Divine Cities series but well written and engaging.
Ilona Andrews, This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me. The first time I read this, in the excerpt, I wondered if I would bounce off it. The first two chapters were not engaging, I already feel at the end of my tether and the MC needing to be very resilient to survive hit far too close to home. But I’m glad that it got far enough away from those desperate feeling that I could get into the whole story. It doesn’t hold me the same way that most of their other books normally do but it stands alone well enough. Curses to it ending on a cliffhanger! Why didn’t I see that coming??
Kate Quinn, The Alice Network. This definitely felt like a bad idea to start at night, and indeed I stayed up half the night to finish it and then had bad dreams all night, but what a compelling read.
Breanne Randall, The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic. Given the last book by this author, I was a little hesitant to start this one but it held together well enough for me to finish it.
Sangu Mandanna, Kiki Kallira Breaks a Kingdom. A fun vetting read before I gift this to a nibling.