Andy Hough

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for August.

My August expenses were nice and low. I actually made my target of less than $1000 in expenses for the month.  I think using the EveryDollar (not an affiliate link) budget app did help me keep my expenses even lower than normal.

My household expense consisted of $50.29 for an Ancestry DNA kit and $11 for a gift.

Rent is self-explanatory. Utilities are included with my apartment rent. I don’t have to pay for them separately.

Entertainment was completely for movies and for food at the movies. I should stop getting food at the movies since it is a terrible value and not healthy.

Transportation was entirely for gasoline. My document review job was about a 30 minute commute each way which results in a larger than normal gas bill. Also, I visited my Mom in southern Missouri which used up a little over a tank of gas.

Food consisted of $30.42 spent on groceries and $82.09 spent on fast food. This was a lot lower total than the previous month as I cut way back on my fast food spending. I still ate fast food 15 times in August which is way to much. I need to cut that back to once or twice a week at most. This month I’ll be traveling in Malaysia and Thailand so I’ll be eating out all of the time which will likely result in a larger food bill.

Travel was for a cheap flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai.

Phone was about $24.66 for my usual Google Fi phone bill. I used a little less data than usual since my phone wasn’t working for a few days of the month.

Health included $25 for a doctor visit co-pay, $19.38 for 2 prescription refills, and $10.35 for my monthly fitness center fee.

This month’s expenses will probably be a little higher since I’ll be traveling in SE Asia. I won’t have any rent or gasoline expense though so maybe everything will balance out to be about the same.

I’ve decided to start keeping track of my saving rate. This will provide me a record of how well I’m doing at saving my money and should also motivate me to keep the saving rate high.  After this month I will include my saving rate with my monthly income or expense report.

In July I managed a saving rate of 60.5%. That is a pretty good rate but it could have been even better. I also made a contribution to my Health Savings Account in July. I don’t consider this year’s contributions to my HSA to be savings since I will be withdrawing them later this year to cover medical expenses.

I calculate my saving rate as the percentage of my monthly income that I put in my retirement accounts or in dividend stocks.

In July I contributed $1850 to my traditional IRA, $400 to my solo 401k, and $238.97 to my dividend stock portfolio. I also transferred $833.88 from my emergency savings account to my checking account. I subtracted that amount from my total contributed to savings for the month since this was money I already had and not income received during the month. Without subtracting the amount my saving rate would have been 91% which I felt wasn’t an accurate reflection of my saving rate for the month.

This wasn’t the best time to start tracking my saving rate. August should also have a good saving rate. After that though my saving rate will be low or zero during September, October, and November since I’ll be in SE Asia and probably won’t have any income to save.

Going forward I want to shoot for a 70% or higher saving rate for any months that I work full-time. My low expenses should allow me to easily save over half of my income and I’m interested to see how high of a saving rate I can achieve.

Here is a breakdown of my income for July.

July’s income was pretty good. I got 4 paychecks from the job I started at the end of June. I plan to continue to work that job until one week before I leave for Asia.

I had a total of 10 different sources of income in July. I think that might be the most sources of income I’ve ever had in a month.  The 9 sources other than the job weren’t much compared to my job income. The roughly $600 of non-job income is approximately 60% of my targeted monthly expenses of $1000. I think I’d be able to get my monthly expenses down to $600 if I relocated to Chiang Mai. That makes the $600 of non-job income seem more substantial.

This month won’t have as many sources of income so the total will likely be down a bit. I expect my income will be at least double my expenses so it will be a good month.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for July.

My July expenses were a little high. This was due to paying $839 towards my student loan. Without that expense my monthly total would be just a little over my target of $1000.

Starting with this post I am going to provide more detail on what expenses were incurred in each category. I just started using the everydollar budget app which should help me keep track of what exactly I spent my money on. Although my expenses are already pretty low I think the budget will help me tighten them up a bit.

My household expense consisted of roughly $2 for a can opener and $34 that I have no clue what it was for. I don’t buy most of the things that are common household expenses so my household expense is often used as a miscellaneous category for items that don’t fit in any other category. I think the $34 was probably for a miscellaneous expense but I can’t remember what it was.

Rent is self-explanatory. Utilities are included with my apartment rent. I don’t have to pay for them separately.

Entertainment was almost completely for movies and for food at the movies. I also bought a couple of newspapers. I need to stop getting food at the movies since it is a terrible value.

Transportation was entirely for gasoline. My current job is about a 30 minute commute each way which results in a larger than normal gas bill.

Food consisted of $63.40 spent on groceries and $143.65 spent on fast food. I need to shift the fast food expense over to healthier groceries since the fast food is terrible for my health.

Phone was about $26 for my usual Google Fi phone bill and a little less than $40 for a cheap prepaid phone with airtime. My Nexus 5x died on me. Although it was out of warranty, it died from a known issue (bootloop) so it was repaired free of charge. A little web searching saved me a lot of money since otherwise I would have just bought a new phone. It did take a little over a week for the phone to be repaired. Not wanting to go without a phone for a week I bought a prepaid phone to use for the week. That was a bit of a frivolous expense.

Health included $43 for a dental bill, $34.55 for three prescription refills, and $15.50 for about a month and a half fees to a fitness center.

The student loan expense was for a voluntary payment on my student loan. I’ve now paid the $2500 amount of student loan interest that is tax-deductible for a year. I’m not sure if I will make further payment this year.

This month’s expenses should be a bit lower since I won’t make a student loan payment. I’ll probably spend some on travel preparing for my trip to Asia. The other categories should be roughly the same.