Andy Hough

January 8-11 Spending Report

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January 8 – I spent $2.18 at Dollar Tree for a package of BBQ Kettle chips and a package of nutty bars for snacks. I spent $5.51 at Save-a-Lot for pack of peanut butter & cheese crackers, a bag of cheese curls, a Totino’s frozen pizza, and a Lunchable. I spent too much on junky snacks. I need to start buying healthier snacks.

I spent $42.45 for taxes and fees for a Premium Economy flight on Virgin Atlantic from Hong Kong to London. This also cost 22,500 VA miles which I got from signing up for the VA credit card. I think this is a fantastic value for my miles since this flight would cost about $1500 paying cash. This is about a 13 hour flight. It will be my first time flying a long-haul flight in anything other than economy. The increased comfort flying in PE should be well worth the extra miles spent.

January 9 – I spent 95 cents for on street parking for my dentist appointment and spent $70 for a cleaning at the dentist. I also spent $3.41 for a double cheeseburger combo at Burger King. Although I brought my lunch I still wanted more food and ended up getting fast food.

January 10 – I spent $8.25 for a double steakburger with cheese combo at Freddy’s. This is my favorite fast food place, but it is a bit more expensive. That is why I’ll be eating there less frequently and figuring out how to reduce the cost when I do eat there. This expense was unplanned. I thought my job was providing lunch, but I misread my schedule and it was actually the next Friday they will be providing lunch. I was planning on having Freddy’s on the weekend and moved it up to Friday instead.

I spent $14.13 at Save-a-Lot on 2 cans of vegetable soup, potato chips, French onion dip, break and bake chocolate chip cookies, a package of 40 pizza rolls, and a six pack of microwave popcorn. I really need to stop buying so much junk food and start buying healthier food. I’m not going to buy any more chips this month since they are unhealthy and I tend to binge eat them. The rest of the month I need to buy primarily fruits, vegetables and natural foods.

January 11 – Since I’ve spent too much on junk food and fast food the past few days I won’t be spending any money on food or anything else today.

Jan 6-7 Spending Report

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January 6 – I spent $2.35 at a gas station for a large soda and package of mini donuts. It was predictable that I would want a snack and soda when driving back to KC. I should have purchased something from the grocery store the previous day to save a little bit of money and perhaps have something a little bit healthier.

January 7 – I spent $3.41 at Burger King for a 10 piece chicken nugget and large fry. I had intended to redeem a coupon for a free Whopper I had in the BK app, but it had disappeared from the app when I was ready to redeem it. I made this slightly more expensive purchase instead. My plan for this month was to limit fast food to 3x a week. I had fast food 3x in the first 7 days of this month so I’m on track so far.

I spent $27.72 to fill up my tank with gas at Sam’s Club. The tank was almost empty from the drive back to KC. There won’t be any more long trips this month. I fill up my tank every Sunday to make sure I have enough gas for my weekly commute.

January 2-5 2020 Spending Report

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As I stated in my previous post I’m going to share here on the blog everything I spend money on this month. My January 1st expenses were included in the previous post. Below are my January 2-5 expenses.

January 2 – I didn’t spend any money this day.

January 3 – I spent $4.54 on a two bacon cheeseburger combo at Burger King. This purchase was planned ahead of time. The BK restaurant is right at the bottom of the steps to my tax job. Purchasing my lunch at the BK and eating it as I was commuting to my doc review job saved me some time compared to going elsewhere for lunch.

I spent $1 on peanut M&Ms from the vending machine. I was craving some kind of dessert and bought the M&Ms to satisfy that craving. I should probably buy some sort of small dessert to take with me to work to save a little money and a few calories.

I also spent $3.14 for a bag of Taco Doritos (the best flavor of Doritos.) This purchase should have been avoided. I had a three hour drive from KC to southern Missouri and I like to snack while I’m on a long drive. This desire could have been foreseen and a cheaper snack could have been purchased ahead of time. I don’t feel too bad about the purchase though since I did really enjoy the Doritos and I still have half the bag left to enjoy with tomorrow’s lunch.

January 4 – I didn’t spend any money this day.

January 5 – I spent $4.30 on a 4 for $4 meal at Wendy’s. This consisted of a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger, 4-piece chicken nuggets, French fries, and a Coke Zero. This purchase was also planned ahead of time. One of my simple pleasure in life is leisurely eating a meal while reading a newspaper or magazine. Since I knew I wouldn’t have time during the upcoming week to have a leisurely meal like this I went ahead and had it today.

I spent $20.01 on gasoline. Since my car was almost empty and I will need gas to return to KC tomorrow I went ahead and purchased gas today. I didn’t fill it all the way up since gas is about twenty cents a gallon more expensive here than in KC.

So far I think I’m doing pretty good with my spending with 2 out of 5 days having no spending. The fast food meals should become less frequent. I’m going to try to post these spending reports daily on days that have spending.

January 2020 Goals

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These are more actions that I will take rather than goals I will achieve. If following the actions results in me losing weight and saving money I will be happy with those results. I’m not concerned about shooting for a certain number for the month.

This month I will be strict with my intermittent fasting. I’ll do all my eating within an 8 hour window. I’ve had a bad habit the last few months of eating snacks or meals after I’ve finished working for the day. This results in me eating just an hour or two before I go to sleep. That isn’t good for my digestive system and it doesn’t help me lose weight since I’ve generally already had enough to eat for the day when I have my nighttime meal. This month I won’t eat after work. I need to learn to not always give in to my cravings and that it is ok to be a little hungry. Cutting out that meal will save me calories and hopefully lead to me losing weight. It should help me sleep

I’m also going to eat fast food no more than 3 times a week. That might sound like it is still a lot. Last month I had fast food 26 out of 31 days. Cutting back to 3 times a week will be a significant reduction. I’m also going to plan and prepare my food to take to work the night before. If I wait until morning I know I’ll get lazy and just buy fast food rather than taking food from home. This should also help me lose weight.

I’m going to try an experiment this month and do most of my spending with cash. I use my credit cards for almost everything so this will be a pretty big change. I want to see if using cash reduces my spending compared to using credit cards. I’ll still use my credit cards for my recurring online bills. I’ll also use a credit card for gas since that will get me 5% back and I don’t think I’ll buy more gas just because I’m using a credit card. Any other credit card usage must be planned ahead of time and there must be a reason for using the card.

Lastly, I am going to track and share on the blog every single thing I buy this month. I already track my spending down to the penny, but I don’t break down all of my expenditures. For example, if I buy groceries I would just list the expense as groceries in my monthly budget. This month I’m going to detail every single thing I buy. I think that sharing everything I buy will lead to me buying less. This would be due to me not buying something just because I don’t want the hassle of having to blog about it later and also I may not buy something because I’d rather not share it on the blog. For example, I bought a lot of junk food last month- chips, soda, snack cakes, cookies, etc. – and I’d be a little embarrassed to share exactly how much junk food I bought.

Today I spent $450 on rent. I also spent $11.25 to pay my rent with my credit card. I did that to meet a spending requirement to get a 60,000 mile bonus on my Virgin Atlantic card. That will be recorded as a travel expense. My $19.89 Regal Unlimited movie subscription was accounted for today. This allows me to watch as many movies as I want at my local Regal theater. I can’t cancel it until Summer. Lastly, I spent $2.21 to upsize a free small popcorn coupon I had to a large popcorn. This is the drawback to the movie subscription. I watch enough movies for the subscription to be a good value. Unfortunately, I have a hard time resisting the popcorn which is bad for my weight and my wallet. This year I intent to only buy popcorn when I have a free coupon. After today I hope to have a few days with no expenditures at all.

Some Goals for 2020

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I only have one definite goal for 2020 at this time. My current goal is to save $2500 a month for the first four months of 2020. That will be a difficult goal to achieve. Working in my favor is the fact that I’ll be working two jobs during that time. I’ll need to work 15 hours a week at my tax job while still getting 40 hours at my document review job. That will be difficult to achieve in January when training at my tax job will be during my doc review job hours. After January I will be able to work Saturdays at the tax job making it easier to get my full hours at the doc review job.

January will also be a 5 payday month with 3 of the paydays being double paydays. That should allow me to get off to a good start at saving money. I will also get my tax refund and sell some things during the first 4 months to help me reach my savings goal. Since I have basically unlimited work hours between the 2 jobs I won’t be spending much, if any, time on trying to make money from side hustles. It makes more sense to focus on the guaranteed income during this time.

Some of these savings will be in my 401ks. Both jobs have 401ks that I participate in. I’m planning on having 100% of my tax job pay directed to my 401k. I’ll also be depositing 20% of doc review income into that 401k. I’ll adjust that as necessary to still be able to pay my bills and meet my other savings goals. I also plan on maxing out my IRA. Once I determine how much I need to contribute to my traditional IRA to get my federal income tax to $0, I’ll contribute the remaining allowable contribution amount to my Roth IRA. Once I’m ready to contribute to the IRAs, I’ll have to dial back the 401k contributions.

After the IRAs are maxed out for 2019 I will start saving in a regular savings account. I plan on traveling several months in 2020 and I will need some savings to live on during that time. I will review how I’m doing at the beginning of April and adjust my retirement savings to ensure that I have enough savings for travel.

Some other goals I plan to make later in 2020 are to lose weight and increase my blogging/online income. I intend to start on my weight loss while I’m still working, but I’m not yet ready to make a concrete goal for the weight loss. Blogging/online income is something I’ll work on this summer. Once I have more free time this summer I might be inspired to pursue more goals. I’m leaving the option for more goals open at this time.

Later this week, I will publish a post with my tentative plans for 2020. What are your goals and plans for 2020?