By: Revanche

Money and Life Report: February 2021

March 2, 2021

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 and cash back sites (Rakuten, 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 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 $775.14 in dividends this month from my  stocks portfolio. Our YTD monthly average is $79.18. That’s nowhere near a good FI ratio so we have a long way to go.

Merch. I was hugely excited to have a shirt sale. My first in over a year!

Spending

Ana Mardoll’s thread about the pandemic tax is sobering and hits home for us.

Our utility bills keep going up. We need more electricity, better internet, run the dishwasher more often. We eat more food with everyone at home (PiC’s work previously provided drinks and snacks). We traded the dollar cost of childcare for stress and impacted mental health, and added the cost of extra tutoring to make up for JB’s non educational kindergarten experience. I’ve started my brain therapy again plus the occasional massage when my pain flares up too badly, my health costs outside of insurance run around $800 a month. This is all out of pocket because Kaiser doesn’t have MH care providers available nor do they specialize in the therapy I need to function.

We are scoping out the safest possible childcare options for open spots but we don’t know when we’ll feel comfortable using it if it even becomes available.

We paid for a bassinet rental that seemed nonsensically outrageous but we are literally paying for sleep. At this point, it’s necessary. I don’t want to completely crash and burn and that’s where we were headed.

Not spending

We aren’t planning any travel this year. We’ll see about next year but I’m not making plans.

Giving

I need to find time to write up our recent families but we were able to provide much needed goods to a few more families in January and February.

We personally supported the Genesis Women’s in Texas, sent direct aid to folks in Texas during and after that terrible storm, and helped out a few other folks who are having a tough month.

Saving and investing

I keep watching the price of VTSAX go up and wonder if that’s sustainable or if it’ll pop and drop. I have no idea but I am doing my best to ignore it lest I fail to stick to my plan of steady, aggressive investing.

Net worth

I had initially considered this our 5-year goal for our net worth which would put me at 56% of the way to the goal, but I think it would be wiser to make that the goal line for our investments. I’m undecided as to whether it should be all investments including JB’s 529 or excluding that account since we wouldn’t be using that for our living expenses. I set this goal in August 2019, so we’re at 18 of 60 months and 41% of this goal.

On Life

Reading.
Do you dream of Terra-Two? (Amazon, Bookshop.org, Indiebound) By Temi Oh. This made me feel much like Rivers Solomon’s The Deep. So engaging and also deeply reinforced my personal desire to never go to the deep sea or into space.

The Lightning Thief (Amazon, Bookshop.org, Indiebound), The Sea of Monsters (Amazon, Bookshop.org, Indiebound) By Rick Riordan. I started this series at the behest of JB’s 9 year old buddy who loves reading and wanted someone to talk to about it. It’s a quick and easy read, just the sort of thing I want to enjoy when I’ve got pandemic fatigue.

Love Lettering (Amazon, Bookshop.org, Indiebound) By Kate Clayborn.  This was a national “Together We Read” book club selection highlighted by the library. I just picked it up since it was readily available. There are worse reasons to start reading a book! It was cute, but the thing that stood out to me was the character growth that happens to parallel some of the work I’m doing in therapy of learning to recognize old patterns and learning to build new ones.

Ginga (Amazon), Kia and Gio (Amazon), Anyway (Amazon) By Daniel José Older. All short stories from his Bone Street Rumba world. He packs a mean plot punch in a small package. Highly recommend picking up anything he’s written.

Sleeping Giants (Amazon, Bookshop.org, Indiebound) By Sylvain Neuvel. I made it 66% of the way through. The style is unique and really quite good if you’re in the mood for that kind of thing but I just couldn’t get into the “compilation of primary and secondary sources” style.

TV.
I’ve been rewatching Grimm while pumping and just hit the end of Season 4. I find myself yelling at Nick and crew in my head for not thinking to secure the premises or update his mom with the current information and state of affairs. When someone breaks up with you, you change your email passwords! When someone is dangerous and breaks up with you, change everything!! Sigh.

We did a special matinee of the Whitney Houston Cinderella on Disney+ (technically Rodgers and Hammerstein but really, Whitney Houston is the important part here) and it finally occurred to me to ask why her glass slippers didn’t disappear with the rest of the magical attire. In every version, all of Cinderella’s magical gear disappeared. Why didn’t the slippers?

:: How was your month?

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