Andy Hough

Here is a breakdown of my income for January.

January’s income was pretty good even though I didn’t make much from my non-job sources of income.

January was the start of the tax season allowing me to have overtime hours available the second half of the month. Only my second paycheck had overtime hours so the full impact of the overtime hours isn’t reflected in my income yet. My February paychecks will each include about 30 to 35 hours overtime so the job income should go up a bit this month. The other sources of income will remain small since I”m spending all of my time on the job. Even though February is a shorter month, this month’s income should easily surpass January income.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for January.

My January expenses were very high. This was due to having to pay an over $2500 medical bill. Otherwise I easily would have made my monthly goal of $1000.  I have another medical bill of $165 this month and hopefully there won’t be anymore for a while after that.

My monthly food expense was too high once again.  I was going to keep my eating out expenses to a budgeted amount, but abandoned that plan once I hit my budgeted amount early in the month. This month I will once again be targeting my food expenses and I expect to have success this time.

Other than that my expenses this month should be about the same as last month.

My expenses in 2017 were almost $3000 less than in 2016. My expenses for 2017 were $13,697.14 compared to $16,431.20 in 2016.  My total expenses in 2015 were $16,999.41 and in 2014 they were $15,775.65. That makes 2017 my lowest spending year of the last few years even though 2017 was my highest earning year. My income the previous years was roughly 33% to 50% less than it was in 2017.

My total expenses for 2017 only includes $505 that I paid towards my student loan although I paid about $15,000 total towards my student loan during the year. Paying so much towards my student loan helped reduce my spending since it left me with less money to spend elsewhere.  Since I wasn’t required to make any of these extra student loan payments I’ve decided to leave out the extra payments since they distort what my spending looks like.

My biggest expense for the year was $5490 for rent. This amount will be even less this year as I’m only paying $435 a month for rent now. That is about as good of a deal as you can get in Kansas City.

My second biggest expense for the year was $1957.56 for food.  $1322 of that was for dining out, which I consider to be way too high. The dining out total was slightly inflated due to eating on vacation, but even considering that I think the food spending was way too high. I plan to significantly reduce food spending this year.

Two other big expenses were medical expenses of $1527.06 and household expenses of $1090.57. The medical expenses will be way up this year as I have an over $2000 medical bill due. Plus my health insurance premiums are higher. That will be slightly offset by lower household expenses this year. The 2017 total included $300 for lifetime internet and larger than normal expenses due to buying some furniture and other stuff when I moved into my new apartment. I don’t anticipate any big household expenses this year so this expense should be a few hundred dollars less this year.

My car expense was $1254.40 which is probably about what it will be again this year. The total included $570.45 for gas with the rest of the expense being for repairs, insurance, license, registration, and tax.

The rest of my expenses were $314.13 for my cell phone, $500.65 for movies and entertainment, and $1057.22 for travel. The cell phone expense should be about the same this year.  The movies and entertainment might be slightly lower now that I have Moviepass to save money on movie tickets.

The 2017 travel total included round trip airfare for two from Kansas City to Paris. It also included over two weeks of hotel, hostel, or Airbnb nights in Europe. That included the Park Hyatt Vendome in Paris which would have been about $800 a night if we had been paying cash. I also had a short four night trip to Vegas. The use of credit card points, discounted gift cards, coupons, and travel deals allowed me to get an excellent amount of value for the amount of money I spent on travel. I’m not sure how much I’ll spend on travel this year. It will depend on where I decide to go and what kind of deals I can find.

My guess is that my expenses will go up this year. Last year was a pretty lucky year that mostly didn’t have any expensive surprises. I’m sure there will be some surprises this year, but hopefully they won’t be too expensive and I can keep my spending in the same range it has been the last few years.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for December.

December was a another good month for expenses. I would have made my monthly goal of $1000 if it were not for medical expenses. That is getting to be a recurring theme.  I have a very large medical bill that I need to pay over the next couple of months so the theme of medical bills making me miss my target expense level will continue for a while. There is nothing I can do about the medical bills I’ve already incurred, but I’m going to be much smarter about medical expenses this year.  I need to stop incurring these medical expenses which never seem to improve my health.

My monthly food expense was too high again. The total was a little lower at least.  This month I’m setting a budget of $50 for eating out. I have a fair amount of food in my apartment so it will be easy to keep my food expense low if I don’t spend more than my allotted amount going out to eat.

The entertainment expense was a little high due to buying a discounted Hulu gift card to prepay for a few months of Hulu. There was also a dinner expense that I put in the entertainment category.  Other than that my expenses this month should be about the same as last month.

2017 Year End Net Worth

Assets

• Cash – $3139
• IRA  – $35441
• Roth – $1743
• Solo 401k – $3306
• Stuff – $2000
• HSA – $1100

Liabilities

Student loan – $117,743

My total assets of $46,729 minus my liabilities of $117,742 results in a net worth of $-71,013.  I managed to increase my net worth by about $15,000 this year.  With the stock market contributing 20% returns the result should have been better, but the roughly $7200 a year interest on my student loan makes it difficult to make progress.  A $15,000 increase on about $40k income isn’t too bad I guess.  I plan to do better this year.