Money & Life Report: September 2019
October 7, 2019
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks. That money is saved for future repairs and reinvested, respectively. We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. Our side income comes from Swagbucks and cash back sites (Ebates, Mr. Rebates). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running and I’ve added a way to support the blog in the sidebar to the right!
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income by the time my health prevents me from working.
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Dividend income. We received $313 in dividends this month. Our year to date net dividends are $2,879.40.
Bank bonuses. HSBC finally paid up! I’m so glad to be done with them. They are the absolute worst.
ALSO our long awaited tax refund also finally arrived! Woo! I promptly deposited it into our anemic account meant for paying the property taxes – it’s way behind the mark it should have hit in order to pay it in full on time.
Spending
Visitors. We had out of state chosen family show up for a week half a day’s drive away. We haven’t seen them in over a year and won’t be able to see them again for another 2 years at least so we loaded everyone up and drove many many miles to spend a couple days with them. $370 on hotel ($147 was covered by our CSR travel credit), $191 on food (we treated the group to dinner one night), and $70 on an activity for PiC (which was a return treat from friends). I was really happy that he got to do that activity with them, he had so much fun! Those two days were NOT cheap at $561 but was much less than half the cost for our flights to see them so I’m glad we did this mini trip.
Health. I need an eye exam, a dental cleaning, x-rays, and bloodwork. The eye exam was covered by our insurance, no copay, and so was the bloodwork. The dental cleaning and bloodwork remain to be seen.
Ouch. I had a stupid minor accident in the car. While I’m grateful that it was minor and no one was hurt, it cost time and money when both are very tight these days and I really didn’t appreciate my self incurred stupid tax.
Seamus refills. $450 on two medications. *shaking head* *flops on bed in despair*
Clothing.
- Accessories, 2019: $0
- Clothes, 2019: $143
- Shoes, 2019: $112 for four pairs, 3 for me, 1 for PiC
PiC needs a better source of t-shirts. He buys Jcrew tees on clearance for about $9 a shirt and they sprout holes within months. We are hard on our clothes but we normally get years out of the clothes before having to recycle them. I have sworn off Target tees for the same reason, though their tank tops are top notch. We’d welcome your suggestions!
Not spending
Footwear. JB received the gift of new shoes this month after completely destroying three pairs in quick succession. I didn’t have the time or the budget in this month’s spending to find replacements quickly so we are so (so so) grateful to have that extra bit of help.
Food. I’m not religious but I don’t know what the word is other than blessed in this scenario. A friend came by and dropped off a grocery trip’s worth of amazing groceries including starches, produce, and proteins. They were sharing a bounty they received and it was such a wonderful surprise. We appreciated every single bit of it and were able to share some of the produce that we couldn’t have gotten through fast enough.
Other side of the Ouch. Our garage was kind enough not to charge for the labor to jury-rig a solution for now.
Giving
Long term gifting. This isn’t charity. I’ve been collecting free books and comics to share with niblings. I hope we’ll see them at Christmas so I can give it to them directly. I’m also rounding up a stack of books to give to our local Mini Library outside the big library.
***This IS giving.*** I’m organizing gifts (food+winter gear) for Lakota families again this year. Last year, we were able to put together a total of $605 and gave gifts to 7 kids (separate families) plus warm clothes for an additional family.
This year, I’m starting early because I’ve got a LOT on my plate but I still want to make this happen. Since the holiday Okini isn’t available this early in the year, I plan to focus on necessities more than holiday gifts: keeping people warm and fed is important. I’d love to fully support the need lists of one small family (1-2 people) and one big family (5-7 people). More would be wonderful but I don’t want to be unrealistic.
If you want to donate, you can send as a gift (otherwise PayPal will take fees out of it) to admin [at] agaishanlife.com specifying that it’s for the Okini. If you’re sending on mobile, make sure to click on the arrow next to “paying for goods and services” to select “send as a gift” because that’s tripped up more than one person.
When you send your contribution, please let me know if you want to receive email updates regarding the developments as I shop sales, navigate shipping restrictions (a lot of families get their mail at PO boxes and a lot of stores won’t ship to them) and so on. I won’t include you on the update emails unless you specifically ask. I know people missed it last year and wanted in, so I’ll post a reminder at the top of my posts for maybe 6 weeks. Perhaps it’d be reasonable to collect from now through November 17, and shop carefully when we have enough to make a dent in a needs-list.
We’ve already gotten three great donations and I’m researching our first family’s needs. Yay!
Update: One important reason I’m doing this work: every dollar we raise will be matched by one of our employers so we will be able to help families directly AND the organization will get a matching donation at the end. Win win!
Saving and investing
I had to mentally slap my own hands for reaching to raid the investing budget this month because I’m feeling squeezed. We ended the month with $10.44 in the checking account – our cash buffer has been decimated. We’ll be squeezed for at least another month or two but I’m hoping that I’ll find a way to rebuild that buffer soon.
This is more under the umbrella of money management but while I knew about this for ages:
It just sank in recently that I should just change the due date of one of our credit cards to land on the 6th instead of the 1st of the month so I never have to worry about when our paycheck lands in relation to our auto-debts. DUH.
Holidays and weekends tend to delay paychecks for at least one of us and because we’ve just been making ends meet, figuring out how to cover the next month’s bills before the next check lands sometimes turns into a bit of a thing. Because like 76K says ….
Net worth
On Life
Aging. We celebrated my birthday with a lovely day in the City and my other present to myself was this set of brushes to properly clean JB’s water bottle and silicon straw which has been defying me for months. It was SO satisfying to clean that out properly! (My first present: #7)
Pain frustrations. I’ve been hunched over my desk after lunch every day as my spine and neck seize up and my teeth are gritted with pain. Sometimes it’s because I gave in to a craving and had a touch of sugar, sometimes it’s because I’m way behind on work and so stressed. The only consistency is that it’s at least 5 days a week and it’s really getting old. I hate this and I hate having to push myself to work through the pain. I hate everything in the world in those hours, and wish I didn’t have to work to make money, that I could go lay down when I needed to.
Food this month
- Three thumbs up (one of each of us): roasted sweet potatoes, baked salmon, and pan fried snow peas. Used bits from this recipe though I am unconvinced of butter on salmon. “Super good, mama!”- JB
- One thumb up (from PiC): ginger-soy ground turkey, green beans, tofu, and carrot stirfry. This was good, the meat was seasoned correctly, but I just didn’t like it. JB ate it but was indifferent as well.
- Three thumbs up: I recreated a sour catfish stew from my childhood, twice! I even served it to guests who approved of it wholeheartedly.
- Two and a half thumbs up: bulgogi, rice, broccolini. We love it for the yum and the convenience but the marinade is also (too) seriously sweet. Which of course means that JB loves it while we are a little less enthused.
- Six thumbs up. I got so tired of food and thinking about food one day that I just sort of gave up. I fried up three pork chops and tofu, boiled shrimp, with sliced cucumbers and plopped them atop rice noodles with a dash of fish sauce. Everyone was thrilled. We ate this four times in one week and JB dug in with gusto every single time. We added Thai Basil for the adults and it was, to quote JB: “Super delicious, mama!”
- Two (of two) thumbs up: Costco roasted chicken drenched in salsa verde. I was thinking of Abby and her slow cooker salsa chicken when I made a bowl of this for lunch every day.
- Two and a half thumbs up: my zucchini lasagna, the redux, was still really soupy even with cheese (which I missed on my maiden voyage). I’m starting to think my problem is using jarred sauce is an insurmountable problem. Also that maybe I’m using too much sauce.
- All the thumbs up: braised dove with vegetables. The doves were a gift from a friend and it was such fun figuring out how to treat them properly with another friend. I was suitably impressed and then JB ate three bowls. So much for leftovers!
- PiC made breakfast tacos with eggs, crimini mushrooms, and cherry sausage. I usually make breakfast and it’s usually boring, so this was a treat. I topped it with the new Trader Joe’s tomatillo and roasted yellow pepper salsa but that was a disappointment. It had a nice heat but lacked flavor. We’ve been thoroughly spoiled by fresh salsa from friends and the taqueria across the way.
I’m going to miss all the summer produce: nectarines, peaches, grapes, and apples have been our dessert every night for weeks, and we’ve had a lot of zucchini and broccoli for dinner. I don’t really see what bounty fall brings in the way of food. Though I am now converted on the subject of sweet potatoes! They are good. I miss avocados, we’ve been lacking avocados for months.
PiC went to a seminar on plant-based diets recently and felt like it made a lot of sense. He isn’t prepared to go there entirely but we’ve been naturally progressing in that direction, replacing more meat with soy because I love love love tofu, and it’s no hardship to make that addition. It’s less a substitute and more a slow inverse situation where the more tofu we eat, the less meat we need. Neither of us are going to press the issue, this kind of change sticks better if we let it progress organically.
Seamus. Old age is really taking the stops off Seamus’s personality. He wants what he wants and he wants it NOW. Time for breakfast and PiC hasn’t let him in after the walk fast enough? HA-ROOOOO!!! HA-ROOOOO!!! I’m working too late and haven’t walked him yet? HA-RUFFF! RUFF!
He wants water and we’re not in the room to see him punch the bowl? He drags the bowls across the room as loudly as possible. SCREEEEEEECCHHHH.
His dinner lacks a side of veggies? BLASPHEMY!!!
Also? He’s super picky now. He has two possible filtered water choices and he only wants THAT one. He doesn’t want the water in his bowl, he wants the water in her bowl. It’s so weird.
But meanwhile, he still loves everyone, defends JB, remains the sweetest guy ever who gets along with every creature alive. So of course between that and his past history, well. What Seamus wants, Seamus gets.
Heat wave. We finally got two hot days this September and it was glorious. Except for the part where no one could sleep. We’ve been living in cold and fog for weeks and we usually get one beautifully hot week in September, but as the month wore on, I thought we were going to miss out this year.
Quick poll: Do you include your CC bills due in your NW? I don’t include any bills because they’ll reduce my cash later anyway so it’ll show up.
September was okay. I went back to work earlier than expected, so there was a lot going on with that. Plus a trip to Boulder for work, and the start of an international business trip. Now, recovering with jet lag. It’s been super warm for us, but much cooler in the evening. Yesterday, for example, it was 85 at our house.
Now that one school sport is done, and another wraps up this week, things are definitely settling down, schedule wise.
I didn’t realize you went back earlier, was that your choice?
I like to set up all auto pays, like the mortgage and HOA dues for the 6th too! That way, I don’t have to worry about how much money is in the checking account on the first.
I am SO GLAD it finally occurred to me to change the due date!
I don’t include my CC bills in my net worth, or the cash in my checking account that I pay them from. I usually don’t pay attention to the due date and pay it off about 2x a month, one of those being right after payday. For whatever reason, large numbers on my CC bill weird me out, no matter how much cash I have on hand.
September and October can be some of the warmest months around here, but you are right, this year was quite chilly!
It feels like I just got lazy. I include the cash in the checking account but not the CC bills because I don’t include any of the bills because I didn’t feel like having to round those up, I figure it’ll all come out in the long run.
September wasn’t a bad month for us at all. I started working in my first ever big-girl full-time job, and it’s been difficult. I got my first paycheck which is nice (I get paid once per month). We bought tickets to fly to see family for Thanksgiving break, which was a large expense. We do not have Halloween plans, but I’m an occupational therapist so I plan a lot of fine motor crafts around the holiday themes. We made cotton ball ghosts one week, making tape mummies, hammering golf-tees in a pumpkin, lacing spider rings through paper plates to make a web, etc. I love fall! I love the leaves changing colors, the pumpkin flavored everything, the scented candles, sweater weather, just everything.
Paychecks are wonderful! I hope the difficulty level of the full time job dissipates soon.
Those crafts sound like a lot of fun, we might have to borrow a few.
For the Lakota giving, is there a way to pay through Venmo or other means for those of us without Paypal? I think it’s an absolutely wonderful idea and I’d like to participate if I can.
At the moment, I only have blog Paypal and Kofi accounts, I don’t have other anonymous money transfer accounts but I’d be happy to ask a friend if they’d be willing to be a go between if that would be acceptable to you. Would you like me to email you if so?