Money & Life Report: September 2018
October 8, 2018
On Money
Income
Our normal income comes from our full time day jobs. We earn money on the side, including tiny cash flow we don’t touch from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks.
Our side income comes from Swagbucks, occasional sales on Poshmark, using cash back sites like Ebates, Mr.Rebates, and tracking physical activity through Achievement (my introduction to it). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a (very) small commission to keep the blog lights on.
The long term goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines enough to prevent me from working.
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Micro-income, freelance: I eked out a trickle this month. In any month we travel, even just a long weekend, the routine disruption eats up all freelance work time. That stinks – travel costs money and it also costs the opportunity to earn extra. +$80!
Micro-income, Craigslist: PiC knocked out a sale at the end of the month. +$50!
Micro-income, credit card churn: We finished our minimum spend on the Citi Thank You Premier this month and I am contemplating how to convert those 50,000 points. I think 30,000 will turn into Target money to cover normal needed household spending. I haven’t decided about the other 20,000 points yet but my goal is to use it only to cover necessities and thus preserve $500 in cash flow.
Spending
Using gift cards. I happened to have an old Gap giftcard on hand to cover my sweatshirt tunics that I just picked up, though. I’ve been on the hunt for presentable tunics for many months. These two are purely at home and running errands comfortable tunics, but those will get a whole lot of use since that describes most of my days. I’m still looking for two presentable tunics for going to meetings and getting out. Then I can phase out the long sleeve shirts from 2008 or earlier that are sprouting holes like weeds.
Double spending. Very little annoys me as much as paying for the same thing twice. My curling iron, newly purchased last summer, and my flat iron both disappeared sometime between last July and now. That’s well before the expected replacement time and having to spend the money to replace them, at least one of them, chafes. Maybe it’ll turn up now that I’ve bought the replacement? (Hasn’t happened yet)
Kohl’s gift cards. I had a handful of money from Kohl’s that I spent on clearance kids’ clothes to stock up on handy gifts for kids when we’re invited to birthday parties and new babies are born. When this money runs out, I might need to plan ahead to get clothes from consignment and thrift shops, perhaps, but for now, this suits my energy and time limitations.
Travel. We had to take a three day weekend trip for family events and good grief were those logistics complicated! Quick summary of costs: flights, $585; Lyft, $50; Rental car, $142; Hotel room, $250; Food, $50; Gas, $50; Dogsitting, $135 (considerably reduced thanks to both AmEx offer and TMobile Tuesday promo) = $1216. Considering the miles trekked, and the two big events we were attending, that could have been a lot worse but I haven’t sent the gift yet so it WILL be worse.
Clothing.
- Accessories, 2018: Sunglasses, $30
- Clothes, 2018: Dresses, $62; Sweatshirts, $50, Pants, $50
- Shoes, 2018: None yet
Not spending
Not using gift cards! I’ve been hoarding a couple gift cards that it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever use. I sold one of them at a discount to a fellow PF blogger (no fees for both of us yay!) and I’m trying to decide what to do with the other ones.
Fallen Fences. I was starting to price out the cost of fixing a fence that seemed to blow over overnight (it didn’t), last month. When I happened by our neighbor, I stopped to ask them if there was a good time to chat about fixing it and thank goodness I did because they considered it their responsibility so it was fixed this month, free to us! WOOT.
Sleep woes. We were going through a really tough stretch with JB not sleeping at night and constantly needing us to be there. It took us weeks to get through but it felt much more like months. During that time, I was buying (and returning) speakers, trying to find one that would independently play an uploaded playlist. None ever fit the bill though this came close. I’m hoping we don’t circle back to needing it again but who knows!
Giving
I keep going back and forth on whether this should be a standard section. It probably should be. Last month we gave to our library to fund their e-book collection, this month we gave to folks with acute medical needs (non-501(c)(3)).
Saving and investing
JT TEN WROS. When I decided to get firm with myself about not hoarding cash anymore, I opened yet another brokerage account, this time with Vanguard: joint tenancy with right of survivorship. PiC and I have a brokerage account over at Ally for buying individual dividend stocks rather than index funds and transactions are still cheaper at Ally. It’s possible that one’s still only in my name because it was originally my TradeKing account predating our relationship… I should check that. Anyhow, I’ve been shunting cash into the joint account brokerage account and feeling like a maturing adult. Mostly.
Recession worries. Even with a game plan, I’m occasionally struggling to just breathe normally and be calm about whenever a recession might hit. I’m not sure why this is, exactly. Is it because my hindbrain viscerally remembers failure and confusion and assumes it’ll be like that all over again, only worse because now I have my own family to take care of? That’s silly, ten years ago, I still had my own family to take care of, it was just different family. I didn’t feel less responsible for them then!
Miles & points
Alaska miles: 215,045 and $120 in travel credit
Southwest: $120 in travel credit
Chase Ultimate rewards: 314,781
Formerly Starpoints, now combined with Marriott: 550,404
Net worth
Nothing truly interesting happening here – the totals are just inching up little by little each month.
Our allocations are shifting from 30%+ cash to less than 20% cash. That’s good in the general scheme of things – I want our cash to be working hard for us, not just sitting around earning between 1-2% interest.
On Life
What season is this? We seem to have skipped over both summer and fall and gone straight into winter. The characteristic bone-chilling cold that I remember of SF and the Peninsula in the first years that PiC moved here are BACK. It’s c-c-c-c-old!
Health stuff. I’m keeping up with my gluten free diet which helps my pain and fatigue a little, my dual medication regimen seems to be helping to get the rosacea under control but it’s still squatting, and I’m committed to getting massages every 3 weeks to help with the pain as well. The new massage therapist I found is nearby and costs $100 an hour but it’s paid out of our FSA to take the sting off. Unfortunately she doesn’t take SpaFinder or other discounts but on the bright side, I feel better for longer after her massages than any other.
Dietary stuff. I’ve said before that I don’t like homemade salads much. I adore salads made by other people but even when PiC puts together a massive beautiful salad with all kinds of toppings, my reaction has always been meh. That said, it’s felt like an imperative to eat more salads and get more greens in our lives so we spent one week eating salads for dinner the entire week. I’m still not enthused about them but I think we felt a lot better when we did it, so somehow that’s convincing my body to enjoy the eating experience a little more. Also I think using the right kind of greens makes a big difference. I can’t get excited about field greens but crunchier lettuces do the trick. Spinach and baby kale are good too.
An unanticipated side effect: I don’t crave sweets and carbs like I used to (all day everyday).
Middle of the night wake-ups. Courtesy of Seamus this month. I leapt out of bed in the wee hours of the night as the sound of hork!-hork!-hork! triggered the reaction in my half conscious brain and nearly caught his vomit before it hit the carpet. It was undigested carrots and part of his bully stick the first time, just carrots the second time. I’m not sure what to make it of it. He was fine the next day whether or not I withheld food for the full 24 hours, all other systems appeared normal. It’s still got me a little on edge trying to figure out why he’s returning food to sender in the middle of the night. It can’t be an obstruction if he’s able to eat, drink, and do all the other normal doggy things like clockwork for weeks at a time.
Playdates … are awesome when you have them with kids whose parents are fun and low key. We had one of those this month and everyone was happy at the end. Except the kids who were sad and crying because they had to part ways after playing for hoourrssss. Besties for life, I hope!
So. Much. Vomit. Dog vomit, thankfully, not human, or I would not be here dealing with life but rather scrubbing myself with bleach and hiding in a corner. I don’t know why it’s easier to deal with dog stuff but probably because I’ve been dealing with gross dog stuff since I was 12 and am generally inured?
Seamus had his two rude awakenings, which meant I also had two rude awakenings, earlier this month with an upset stomach and vomited his entire dinner and snack. Then on the last day of the month PiC and I spent hours in the middle of the night taking Sera outside so she could vomit. She vomited ten times over the course of four hours until there was nothing left in her system. That was totally inefficient, Sera. I’m not terribly concerned right this moment. We withheld food for the standard 24 hours for Sera since, unlike Seamus, she spent hours getting it all out of her system. I wanted to be sure she was really ok, like he was. But what IS it with these dogs and vomiting this month?
Aren’t you glad I delayed my September update so that you too could share in the joy?
Our September was remarkably low on expenses, which is good because it had 2 fewer workdays than normal and, for reasons too long to get into here, we’re forgoing the guest house rent for the in-laws for a couple of months. That’s a big hit for us (about $800 between the two), so nothing is going into the main savings account this month. But we did increase the car fund contribution to $300 a month. The hope is to have a huuuuuge down payment when the car eventually dies. Hopefully, several years from now.
Ouch that’s a big hit for most of us, I’d warrant!
My fingers are crossed that your car lasts at LEAST ten more years.
Are you worried about keeping so many points from your credit cards? I cash out so often just to make sure I don’t lose out when and if the programs change and the points are worth less then they used to be.
I DO, I’m just stuck in a moment of indecisiveness over whether I should use them to redeem for actual travel or cash but I’m strongly leaning toward the cash.
September was mostly Not Much Fun due to a family issue. However, I did get to attend the Financial Blogger Conference in Orlando, where I pointedly skipped the theme parks and cleaned up at the Expo Hall.
****Blatant plug here: I’m giving away a Big Box of FinCon swag. If you can’t win it, then one of your readers should. http://donnafreedman.com/giveaway-fincon18-box-of-swag/
I’m trying like mad to keep costs down due to impending holidays, and mostly succeeding. However, I did buy a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of discounted gift cards for upcoming services. In the big picture, I’m saving about $30. But I had to spend to save. How counterintuitive that sounds…
The end of summer usually means harvesting the last of the garden veggies and fruits. Since I spent the entire month of September out of town, though, I missed all the good stuff. Oh well. Next year.
Sorry to hear of the UnFun Family issue but I’m glad you and Abby made it through FinCon unscathed this year.
Same as you, I’ve been spending to save over the long term and it’s rather painful!
I usually try to use credit card points to cover normal spending too. Often these days, it’s already budgeted for travel and then I send the amount to savings, which is nice.
Yay for opening the joint Vanguard brokerage account! We did that back in July. I think 10% is a reasonable limit on cash for me, but then we promptly found a house in August, so now we’re back to hoarding cash for that for the next while.
Our September was weird as it was mostly a lot of moving money around between various buckets and a bit expensive since we had a trip. And all sorts of re-running of financial plans to make myself believe that buying this house will be fine financially.
I hope Sera and Seamus feel better soon!
Thanks, they seem to be doing well now so I am hopeful we might be through the grossest parts of their feeling unwell. Now we just have to deal with their allergies.
10% cash sounds great (for me: if in theory that was 10% of a quite large foundation of assets). 😀
If you’re looking to get more greens in your life, I love this recipe for broccoli (also works with cauliflower and Brussels sprouts). http://benandbirdy.blogspot.com/2012/01/crack-broccoli.html?m=1
Ooh thanks! I already make broccoli almost like this – I’m eliminating any unnecessary sugars from our diets right now but it seems like it’s really very necessary for this to work? I’ll find another place to make up those excess sugars so I can test this!