Money & Life Report: April 2023
May 2, 2023
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 $223.60 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
Note to self: We spend way too much at Costco. Our rewards hit about $450 this year.
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Setting the wheels in motion: I applied for two Wells Fargo checking accounts for their $300 bonus. (Not a referral link) If you’re interested, it’s relatively simple as these things go. Open with a minimum of $25, then direct deposit (must be ACH) $1000 within 90 days. If you can float $1000 for 3 months then you will get the $300 and can close the accounts after. I’m using it both to get the $300 bonus but also to redeem my $225 from the Wells Fargo credit card offers I completed earlier this month. These efforts won’t pay out until about the end of July.
I planned to use this money to cover direct aid to friends in a bind, and we also need a bit of extra cash to even out our own cash flow. It’ll all go to some good use.
Spending
I bought myself a pair of Totoro earrings and a Christmas present for our earrings-wearing friend. We also splurged on a bunch of other small treats: two boxes of girl scout cookies, two donuts, a box of chewy pretzels (I ate them all during my week of stomach hates food). PiC also needed to replace his electric toothbrush.
I’d love to get the bulk of Christmas gifting done before the summer and I’m making a little progress there. Update: I bought clothes for the niblings on sale, 45% off. Roughly half my shopping is done. I also need a stack of books and some cash for red envelopes to hand out.
We don’t often participate in the school restaurant fundraisers but we chose to pick up burgers from a chain to support the latest. They were ok. Nothing to write home about. If we’re getting takeout, we’ll probably spend a little more for better burgers.
The cost of daycare unbalanced my whole yearly spending plan. $2300 had to come from somewhere and I hadn’t faced up to adjusting our other spending until this month. Do not like. It’ll increase again in the fall. Whee.
Not spending
On takeout (this month at least). PiC had time to cook in addition to handling all the grocery shopping so we went a whole week without needing takeout. We’re still paying a bit more for prepared meals from Costco but per meal it’s still much less than a full take out meal.
On haircuts. I’m just letting my hair grow out and saving that way. This doesn’t work for PiC and the kids so we cut their hair, irregularly. We took care of both kids’s haircuts and saved approximately $60.
Giving
On giving: we have worked really hard and been very fortunate that our hard work paid off in significant ways that I couldn’t have 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.
Family L was our Big Challenge this month. A family with 16 minors, 9 of whom were listed as needing clothing along with many household/cleaning supplies and food needs. We weren’t able to fulfill anything but clothes this round but we DID get every kid listed clothes. Of the 9 original kids listed, we managed to get them at least 3-4 changes of clothes. The additional 4 kids added to the list after I was halfway through shopping received the pants they requested. Everyone got socks and underwear. They still needed food and household supplies but we had gone through our whole substantial budget to clothe everyone.
And just before ending the month, a dear friend dropped off a surprise vanload of goods to donate and slipped me $200 for the pool of funds to cover the shipping I’d paid for weeks ago and shipping these goods. The kids helped me fill three giant boxes of household goods and clothes to send out this coming week. I’ll be packing up three more giant boxes soon. Bounty! What a great way to close out the month on a giving note.
Saving and investing
After May, we have to reduce our saving by at least 25% to even out the cashflow. If we don’t, full time daycare will chew through our one month buffer and then some by the end of the year. I suspect the reduction would probably need to be more like 30-40% but I’m trying to hold on to some hope.
Net worth
I’m mainly watching that yellow investments line, it’s finally crept over the 50% to goal mark. 57% there, to be precise, buuuut that’s artificially inflated. I’d moved half our emergency fund into the Vanguard money market account temporarily to earn an additional 1% of interest for a while. It’s tracking upward very slowly outside of that. I continue to invest what we can, weekly.
On Life
Health. Meeeeh. Most of April was flare-up city, and the last week was the hardest. Difficult People, lots of Difficult People, and that’s always decidedly draining. My therapist is great and helped me with the processing bits, as are some of my Extremely Online friends who are wonderful about lending me an ear as and when I need to vent.
Gotham Knights. I can’t watch this in real time but I like Misha Collins and I have a fondness for Bat stories, so I’m picking up the shows as they post on CW.com. It’s packed full of goodies.
As I listened to the show, I mulled that living in Gotham must be depressing. Then the GCPD showed up in a scene and the characters weren’t sure if things had gotten worse or better. It hit me that WE are living in Gotham. If police show up, that’s probably NOT a good thing. They certainly aren’t protecting the vulnerable, look at Uvalde and a hundred million other examples of how cops lie, cheat, steal, rape, and more.
The Winchesters. I had high hopes for this show and it delivered. For me, it did. I really appreciated how they handled the back stories of the characters, the character development (oh Carlos), and the stories themselves. I had a real soft spot for SPN but I hated how they treated the characters and their development at times, I hated how traumatized the characters were repeatedly, I hated how they dodged character growth and relationships and killed off women repeatedly.
Cal Academy visit. We finally managed a trip to the CAS for the first time in ages. They had great kids activities: a build your own boat with a “river” to float the craft down, and a roll your own seed ball cart where the kids loaded up their pockets with seed balls to grow plants. We tossed them in the potato planters for now. We’ll see if they come up.
I hung out with this adorable teenage penguin who seemed to be friendly, swimming back and forth in front of me.
We roamed through a gem exhibit I didn’t even know they had. This isn’t a great photo, the kids were dragging my attention backwards, but it was taller than me! Granted, I’m not that tall but that’s still quite a thing.
The butterflies were stunning on this visit. They’re usually always in the air or landing too far off for us to admire but they were divebombing people and feeding on plates near us.
