By: Revanche

Money & Life Report: September 2025

October 8, 2025

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 $82.50 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.

Spending

Book gifts. I’ve been buying loads of books from BookOutlet for nibling holiday gifts and for birthday gifts for kids inviting SmolAc to their parties. Unfortunately the selection is hit or miss, but that’s the tradeoff for the bargain prices stretching our dollars further. $$ this month but $$$ this year.

We had a last big home maintenance to finish up this year that was an estimated 5 day job but turned into a 7 day job. I always forget how much of a pain it is to have work happening while I’m also parenting and working and all the things. The interruptions and the coordinating schedules and all that is extra mental load. But it’s necessary work, and we’re running out of year, so glad to have it done. $$$$, still TBD.

Not spending

The kids each earned 3 free pizzas from Pizza Hut’s Bookit summer reading program over the summer. They have deeply enjoyed the fruits of their “labors”. They love reading, or being read to, so thankfully it’s not labor for them. It was nice having their lunch or dinner treat handled once a month.

The kids have plenty of access to screens. All old: 20 year old TV, occasionally our laptops when warranted, a hand me down iPad for reading library books (and once in a while PBS kids games) and a couple old hand me down handheld devices. The only new tech we buy is an essential like our phones or the family laptops. They only get new to them tech, old tech that friends have upgraded from, and I was debating whether that’s me being cheap. I am choosing not to buy tablets and game consoles, but I’m also not looking for them. The hand me downs were offered by from friends and family who are done with theirs. We work with what we have. The iPad is too old to upgrade to the current iOS, for example, so I can’t download some kid friendly apps. But we figure do what we need with what we have and it’s not on our list of new stuff to buy. Maybe when they’re older it’ll become a need.

Giving

We have worked really hard and been very fortunate that our hard work paid off in significant ways that I only 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.

A lot of our giving this month is direct aid. Fighting fascism and helping the community:

• making a home safer for kids,
• Fyre needs a mobility aid,
• Quiara always needs some assistance as she lives on the most barebones of income.
• Lily Meade and her mother are unhoused and running out of savings (Her story really resonates with me. She works so hard and has serious health issues. That was me. But if I had been a little less lucky in any number of ways, her story could be mine with even less support. I Venmo her cash to avoid fees @Lily-Meade-1).
• GFM for Melissa McCoul, PhD fired from her position as a Senior Lecturer at the Texas A & M University for teaching LGBTQ+ content and “gender ideology” in her children’s literature courses.
• WaPo fired Karen Attiah for making critical comments about *men who are white supremacists*. Apparently the male white supremacists must be a protected class now, which fits this timeline where POTUS can say that criticizing him or being mean to him is a fireable offense. Her words on what happened and why. Support her Resistance Studies Series to fight back.

I also increased the number of 501(c)(3)s we donated to monthly for a bit. I’m planning ahead to when we will get less benefit (lower tax deductions) from our charitable giving. We don’t give because of the tax benefit, but it does give us a bit more cushion so we can afford to give more, so I’d like to get the most out of that while we still can. It’s a bit of a delicate balancing act between giving to established charities that will reach more people and to give direct aid all without borking our cashflow like I did last year.

Saving and investing

With a bit of extra cash coming in I’ve been giving a lot more. There are so many people in need now. When we maybe have a bit left over, either invest or pay down the mortgage, it always feels like eliminating the mortgage is a safer bet in normal times. Obviously these are 100% not normal times and I wonder how long we’ll be nominally “safe” – will we survive this administration? We’re not white passing so it’s only a matter of time before the target lands on us. b) the math says not to pay down the mortgage while our interest rate is so low.

Net worth

I keep debating whether I need to move the black line up another chunk of notches. The cost of healthcare is so unpredictable and it’s such a political football. My heartburn cannot handle relying on hoping that the government will do the right thing when it comes to healthcare access outside of a workplace plan. I especially can’t fathom relyng on the Congressional Dems to hold firm on things like the cost of healthcare when they’ve rolled over on so many other human rights issues without a fight.

On Life

Reading.

Seanan McGuire, Backpacking through Bedlam and Installment Immortality. I know the Price family is composed of trauma glued together by more trauma but I’m very attached to them.

Martha Grimes, The Man with a Load of Mischief, DNF. This was just too slow going for me. Well written enough but it felt like I was plodding when I normally race through books.

KJ Charles, Copper Script. Excellent. KJ’s prose is always such smooth reading. I know it seems like faint praise but prose without hiccups is rare in my reading experience. For an example, authors can tend to repeat phrases and word choice, especially across series or within series, and I find those patterns distracting. Ursula Vernon almost never does this. KJ Charles, so far across multiple books, either doesn’t do it at all or does it so sparingly I can’t yet spot the pattern. I love that. It’s such a pleasant read when I don’t trip over “oh I’ve seen that phrase 6 times now”.

Jesse Q Sutanto, Dial A for Aunties. This had my friends cackling and sending me screenshots of the page they were on. I was reading it through painsomnia so I wasn’t capable of viscerally enjoying it like that but it was good enough to keep me reading straight through from start to finish.

I treated myself to a rare preorder of Seaman McGuire’s Lead and Silver so I have to read all the books that came before it first. I’m still on my read-through.

:: How was your month?