By: Revanche

Money & Life Report: April 2021

May 4, 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.

***

Dividend income. We received $207 in dividends from the stocks portfolio. Our YTD monthly average is $120.

Spending

Some big bills landed this month: my orthodontist charged the remaining balance to my credit card.

I paid for our annual homeowners and earthquake insurance.

We have a massive tax bill coming due but it’s nice to have that pushed out to May. We had the money set aside in anticipation but it still stings to see it go.

Not spending

While reviewing this year’s tax return, I realized there was an error in the past three years’ returns. We are slowly working through them now. I’ve sent off amendments for 2017 federal and state but I am kicking myself down the hall and back for missing the postmark date for the state amendment. Cross your fingers they will still take it and refund my money? I wouldn’t be surprised if they were petty about it and refused though. The state of CA has plenty of money problems right now in various places and they’re probably intending to hold on to every penny they can. We still have to file corrections for 2018 and 2019. The error: some of our stock sales reporting was missing a cost basis. That meant the sales were calculated with a $0 cost basis and our tax was lot higher than it should have been.

*****

We haven’t reintroduced childcare as a line item yet but that might maybe be back sometime this year.

Giving

We’ve been doing smaller direct / mutual aid this month but the brain fog is intense right now so I can’t remember all of those contributions.

A fabulous friend set up regular contributions to our Lakota Giving Project and I’m so chuffed that that’s how they chose to support me.

If you have some spare cash, the Yellowhammer Fund supports reproductive justice in the South and their latest fundraising goal is far from being met.

Saving and investing

I increased our automated savings amounts a little bit back in March and it looks like we still made it through the month ok. I’ll see if we can make it a full quarter of lumpy spending without our cash flow running dry. Current projections say no.

I talked money management strategies with a financial advisor friend, lamenting my inability to track spending at the granular level I prefer anymore. There’s just no time for that as much as I enjoy playing with the data. It was nice to hear that their firm generally just advises clients to set a savings rate and as long as they spend no more than the remaining balance, they don’t worry about it. That’s my current management style and it works for us but it’s nice also to hear it validated.

On a related note, I was thinking about my habit of creeping our savings rate up every so often just to see if we can bear the increase.

Our savings rate determines our money left for spending. Psychologically, I have this need to keep moving the savings rate up to reduce the amount of money available for spending. But it’s a bit silly when I don’t actively do anything else to reduce our spending. We are in that good middle ground between saving well and spending in reasonable ways that make our lives as comfortable as they can be right now during a pandemic. But comfortable makes me nervous. It makes me worry that we’re being complacent and will be blindsided by a big shift. Like childcare whenever that comes back into our lives. That’s going to be a huge bite out of our budget.

Net worth

It’s crept up a bit. Nothing exciting here. Normally I’m all about slow and steady. After my return to work, I can’t help but wish for exponential growth.

On Life

Where did this month go? I did some reading, some writing, a whole lot of not sleeping. I’ll have to do a better update next month.

We’ve been enjoying testing out a variety of prepared Indian food this month.

We had a couple really hot sunny days and I soaked that up as much as I could. I tried to work outside but it was actually so hot my computer was too hot to touch after 20 minutes in the sun. Darn.

:: How was your month?

Sharing is caring!

Email

Twitter

Pinterest

0