Andy Hough

The Coronavirus and my 2020 Plans

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This post was originally planned in December and was going to be about my planned around the world trip for Summer 2020 and my other plans for 2020. I procrastinated so long on writing this post that current events have made the plans I was certain of in December 2019 to be rather doubtful now.

Last November I found a flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo for just 16k Delta Miles. That is a great bargain since the price is usually at least double. It was too good of a deal for me to pass up. Since I already had plans to hike on the Appalachian Trail (A.T.) right after the end of tax season I booked the ticket to Japan for the first week of June, giving me a little over a month to hike and prepare for my Japan trip. Since I was planning so early I was able to select a bulkhead seat for just $40. On a transpacific flight having the extra legroom that you get with a bulkhead seat is easily worth $40. My plan at that time was to buy a cheap ticket from Japan to Thailand leaving after about a week in Japan.

I had over 60k in Virgin Atlantic miles from a credit card signup so I started looking at my options to use those miles to get home from Thailand. The drawback to using Virgin Atlantic miles is that they tack on huge fees and surcharges from most destinations. After doing some research I discovered that I could fly with them from Hong Kong to London for just 22,500 miles and about $40 in fees. That gave me the idea to make this trip an around the world trip and I booked that flight leaving in early September.

Later I booked a flight from Japan to Singapore in business class on Japan Airlines. After a six hour layover I continue on from Singapore to Bangkok in Cathay Pacific business class. I was able to book both of these flights as one business class ticket using 30k American Airlines miles I had from another credit card sign up bonus. I thought this was a fantastic deal since it would be my first time experiencing long haul business class and I’d get to experience business class on two different airlines with highly rated business class. Additionally, I’d get to enjoy the business class lounge in Tokyo and Singapore. I also wanted to see Singapore Changi airport since it is a tourist attraction itself.

When I booked the first two flights I hadn’t even heard of the coronavirus. When I booked the third flight the coronavirus was in the news, but it didn’t seem like that big of a deal yet. Now it is a pretty big deal and might derail my travel plans for the Summer. I’ve delayed booking any more flights or hotels. It is still over two months before my trips begins so perhaps the situation will be better by then. I still plan on going on this trip as long as travel as still allowed to Japan and Thailand and the spread of the disease isn’t significantly worse there at that time. By the time I leave the coronavirus might be a bigger concern here in the U.S. then in the countries I’m visiting.

Although many airlines have announced fee waivers for ticket changes, none of them have extended the fee waiver to June yet. If I do decide it is unsafe to travel and have to cancel my trip I’m hoping they will have extended the fee waiver by then. All I can do now is wait and see what happens.

If I do cancel my Asia trip, I intend to extend my hiking trip. Instead of going one month, I will hike for two months. If I hike for two months, that should be long enough for me to finally finish hiking the A.T. I’d be pretty happy if I accomplished that. Also, if I cancel my Summer Asia trip, I intend to make an Asia trip in Winter instead. It would be nice to be in sunny Thailand while it is freezing back here in Missouri.

My other plan for 2020 is buying a house. My mom wants me to buy a house with her. She would basically be giving me the 1/3 of the house that I’d one day inherit now. I’d have a small mortgage to get me from being a 1/3 owner to a 1/2 owner. This would be a great deal for me financially. There are still a lot of details we need to figure out. We were planning to do this in the Fall after I returned from my trip. If I end up canceling my trip, we will buy the house sooner.

Although buying the house would be a good deal for me financially, I’m not 100% certain I want to do it. One reason for that is that I don’t especially want to live in that small town or even in Missouri. I’ve been wanting to live somewhere warmer, like Florida, for several years, but have never made the move. Buying a house would ensure that it would be a long time before I made that move. Another reason is that my mom can be rather bossy, and I can see her unilaterally making all the decisions regarding the house and coming up with lots of projects around the house for me to do. Overall, I think the positives of buying the house outweigh the negatives, but I’m going to think about it some more before making a final decision.

That is my 2020 plans for now, uncertain as they are. What are your 2020 plans? Would you visit Asia this summer?

February Income – $4016.83

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Here is a breakdown of my income for February.

Interest$4.61
Amazon FBA($44.44)
State Tax Refunds$361.00
Cashback$5.73
Online $0
Dividends$16.59
Job$3673.34
Total$4016.83

My income for February was down slightly due to the shorter month and having four paydays compared to five paydays last month.

My Amazon FBA side hustle made negative income for the month. I had a return and I decided to junk the product rather than try to sell it again. I’m going to try to get Amazon to provide me a partial reimbursement for the item, but I doubt I’ll be successful. I did send a few items in last month and I hope most of those items sell this month so my FBA income can get back in the black. I’ll continue to devote very little time to FBA since it isn’t proving to be a very profitable use of my time.

Dividend income was up a tiny bit. I’m not currently adding to my dividend stock portfolio so dividend income will remain roughly the same. If you sign up using my Robinhood referral link we will both get one share of free stock. Thanks to anyone who signs up using my link. Every little bit helps.

I made $0 in online income which is currently my norm. I think I have a domain name up for renewal this month. If that is correct I’ll have a loss in this category this month unless I make some unexpected income.

The job income was great once again. Working two jobs is paying off. I’m already getting burnt out on working two jobs. I just need to remind myself that if I keep working a lot of hours the next couple of months I’ll have the rest of the year to enjoy as I want.

How was your month?

February Expenses – $1556.93

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for February.

Household$11.44
Rent$450
Entertainment$19.89
Transportation$754.67
Food$156.23
Travel$40.20
Phone$31.79
Health$92.71
Total$1556.93

My February expenses were quite a bit higher than January. That was due to some expensive maintenance on my car. Without the car repair my expenses would have been under the $1000 mark.

My only entertainment expense was my Regal Unlimited monthly membership fee. I saw three movies for that price and redeemed a coupon for a free popcorn so the membership was a good deal this month.

Transportation expense was for gas and $632 of repairs on my car. I had to get new back and front brakes, including new rotors for the front, and two new front tires. I think I could have gotten the repair done cheaper in southern Missouri where I will relocate at the end of April. It didn’t seem wise to put off fixing my brakes for that long though. My car still needs new struts, I’ll get that repair done sometime this summer. Hopefully, I won’t need any more expensive repairs the rest of the year.

My travel expense consisted of $40.20 in taxes and fees on an airline award ticket. I redeemed 30,000 American Airline miles for a business class ticket from Tokyo to Singapore to Bangkok. The cash price would have been thousands of dollars so that was a great deal. Now, I’m worried I won’t be able to travel to Japan due to the coronavirus. I’m keeping my plans the same for now.

My food expense was about $20 lower than the previous month and the previous month was the first time I got my food expense under $200 in many months. Towards the end of the month I could see that I was easily going to beat the previous month and splurged a bit the last couple of days. Otherwise, I would have had an even lower food bill. Having two fewer days in the month helped too. I intend to get my food expense even lower this month.

My phone bill was normal. It will usually be in the $28-$35 range and I expect it be in that range this month.

My health expense was for one month’s dues for a fitness center membership and $78 for a dentist visit. I have another dentist visit this month. I’m not sure what it will cost. I’m hoping it won’t be too much more expensive than the previous visit.

Household expenses were down quite a bit from the previous month since I didn’t have any big purchases for the month. The household expense consisted of doing my laundry at the laundromat and buying mouthwash and flossers.

This month I have a good chance of keeping my expenses under $1000. Assuming I don’t have any big, unexpected expenses like a car repair. How was your month?

SoFi Invest $100 Bonus

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When you open a new SoFi Invest account with at least $5000 through my referral link they will give you a $100 Stock Bit for free as a bonus. Stocks Bits are what SoFi calls fractional shares. You can use the account to invest in full shares of stock as well if you want.

I signed up for the Invest account a couple of months ago and my bonus was paid just a few days after meeting the requirements. I didn’t really need another investment account, but since the referral bonus provided a great return on my investment and there were no fees I decided it was worth the minimal effort to open another account. It should only take you a few minutes to open the account. Sign up using this referral link and you will get a $100 Stock Bit bonus when you meet the promotional requirements and I’ll get $100 for referring you. That’s a great deal for both of us.

They also have a $75 bonus for opening a SoFi Money account and making two direct deposits of at least $500 each. Once you have one SoFi account open it is easy to open another one. You can open both a SoFi Money and SoFi Invest account and receive both bonuses. I’ve already done that. The SoFi Money account is worth keeping open after you have received the bonus since they pay a competitive interest rate, have no account fees, and provide ATM fee reimbursements up to a monthly limit. If you open a SoFi Money account through my referral link and meet the terms of the promotion you will get a $75 bonus and I’ll get a $25 bonus for referring you. Do both bonuses and you could make $175 of easy money.

How I Lived on $16,826.37 in 2019

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My annual expenses for 2019 were about $500 less than the $17,433 I spent in 2018. It is good to have a downward trend in spending. My annual expenses for the past few years were $13,697 in 2017, $16,431 in 2016, $16,999 in 2015 and $15,775 in 2014. My expenses have been staying in the same ballpark for the past few years. Overall, I was pleased with my level of spending. I’m thinking I will be able to reduce my expenses a little more this year if no unexpected expenses pop up.

Before breaking down my budget categories I want to give a shout out to a couple of other bloggers that share their low annual expenses. A Purple Life lived on $17,896 in 2019. It is impressive that she can live in the high cost of living area of Seattle on that amount. Screw the Average lived on $7000 in 2019 as a couple. That is absolutely amazing. One way they were able to live on so little was by almost eliminating their housing expense through house sitting. I don’t think I’ll ever get to that level, but their posts show me I can improve. Check out their blogs for more details on how they kept their expenses low.

This year I won’t have the same level of detail as I usually have. The spreadsheet I use to keep track of my expenses in detail wasn’t being backed up to Dropbox like I though and I lost a few months of tracked expenses when my laptop died. This summary was completed by looking at my monthly expense blog posts for 2019. I also have a record of my expenses in Everydollar with a little more detail, but I can’t figure out a way to get an annual summary of my expenses from there other than manually adding them up. That was more work than I was willing to do so we will have to make do with this simplified summary. This year I’m keeping a detailed monthly summary in Google Sheets so I can share more details in next year’s annual expenses post.

My biggest expense category was rent. I spent $4051.74 on rent in 2019. Part of the year I had cheap rent when I was living at my Mom’s and I had even cheaper rent when I was staying in Thailand. I’ll be going back to Thailand this summer and plan to move back to my Mom’s house after that so this category should be low again this year.

My second biggest expense was for health where I spent a total of $3531.12. About $1700 of that was for a dental implant. Most of the rest was for health insurance premiums. The remaining amount was for prescriptions, doctor visits, and health club fees. I won’t be getting a dental implant this year and my health insurance premium this year is $0 due to my low income. This category should be much lower this year unless I have an unexpected health problem.

My third biggest expense was for food at $2359.23 for the year. Most of that was for restaurant meals. I need to cut way back on eating out so I can reduce this expenditure this year.

My fourth biggest expense category was transportation at a total of $1735.72 for the year. This consisted of insurance, gas, a speeding ticket, property tax, licensing, car washes, oil changes, and a couple of small repairs. There were two months that I had $0 transportation expense since I was in Thailand. There should be at least two months this year with $0 transportation expense as well. It will be difficult to reduce this category much since I’m commuting the first four months of this year and I have a couple of larger maintenance issues to take care of this year.

Next was student loans at $1590.96 for the year. I’m on an income-driven repayment plan and made payments as required last year.

After that was household expense at $1316 for the year. This category included utilities, clothing, paper goods, cleaning supplies, kitchen appliances and anything else that didn’t fit into one of the other categories. A new laptop and a memory foam mattress are a couple of the miscellaneous items that were included in this category. I’ll do a better job of breaking out things from this category this year. This category will go down this year because I’m not going to include as many different types of expenses in this category.

Next was travel at $1302.95 for the year. This included two transpacific flights from the U.S. to Thailand, hotel nights, local transportation, intra-Thailand air fares, and visa fees, I spent almost three months in Thailand on one trip and three weeks in Thailand on a second trip. Credit card rewards kept this category from being much higher. It is possible to spend $1300 just on a round-trip ticket to Thailand if you don’t know better. Using airline miles for my first trip and credit card rewards combined with a bargain airfare on my second trip I got each trans-pacific flight for less than $100. This category will probably remain about the same this year.

My entertainment expense was $597.43 for the year. This was mostly for movies and movie concessions. I plan to spend less on movies this year, but more on other entertainment so this expense will probably be about the same.

My smallest expense category was my phone expense at $341.22 for the year. I have Google Fi which allows me to have phone service and data when I’m abroad. The expense was a little higher than it otherwise would have been since I bought a new phone in April and rolled the payment for the phone into my bill. Google financed the phone over two years at 0% interest so I used their financing rather than buying the phone outright. I think I can get this expense down a little this year. If you sign up for Google Fi using my referral link we’ll both get $20 Fi credit after you have been active for 30 days.

That is how I spent $16,826.37 to live in 2019. On that level of spending I managed to make two trips to the other side of the world, eat out almost every day, and see about 30 movies in the theater. You don’t have to stay home and be a hermit to have low expenses. If you have any questions about any of my spending, let me know. How was your year?