Andy Hough

December Expenses – $855.15

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for December.

Household $405.89
Entertainment $80.92
Transportation $48.55
Food $130.67
Student Loan $106.00
Travel $0.00
Phone $26.81
Health $56.31
Total $855.15

 

My December expenses were very low. I managed to make my stretch goal of keeping my expenses to $1000 a month. Not having any travel expense in December helped a lot in keeping my expenses down. Not having a car anymore helped keep any unexpected expenses from popping up. The cheap gas prices helped too. I only spent $48.55 to fill up my GF’s car with gas twice and get an oil change. It is unlikely I’ll be able to keep my expenses as low this month. I’m returning to work which usually results in me spending more money on food. My health insurance will also be almost $30 a month more this year. Although I expect my expenses to go up this month I think I have a good shot of keeping my expenses under $1000. I can’t complain about that.

2014 Year In Review

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Since this is the last day of 2014 it is a good time to look back at 2014 and determine what went well and what didn’t go so well. I’ll start with what went well since I’d like to see the positives first.

Finances
This was a good year for me financially. I was able to max out my IRA and also put about $10,000 in my savings account. 2013 was my highest income year ever, but I think 2014 might have beaten it. Although my income was still fairly modest it was easily enough to support my spending habits and I didn’t have to worry about having enough money during the year. That is a big improvement from just a couple of years ago.

Travel
I was able to do a fair bit of traveling. I went to Las Vegas twice and Cancun once. I also went on a two-week hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail and had some shorter trips on the Katy Trail. I also earned a Southwest Airlines Companion Pass and have a stockpile of about 60,000 SW miles to use for travel in 2015.

Fitness
I was able to lose thirty pounds this year and win my Healthy Wage bet. When I made it down to 196 I did feel better and my clothing was loose. This was the lowest weight I’d been for a couple of years and the first success I’d experienced losing weight for several years.

Of course, there was also some things that didn’t go so well. Although I managed to lose thirty pounds this year overall I didn’t really improve my fitness. I’ve gained back twenty of the thirty pounds I lost. This is a result of going back to my old eating habits. I need to start eating better in 2015 and losing weight again.

Writing was something I was terrible at doing this year. I had writing goals for monthly goals several times this year and I don’t think I made any of my writing goals. There is a lot of room for improvement here. I don’t think I’m going to bother setting writing goals anymore. I need to just write.

I also regret cutting my A.T hiking trip short and not finishing the Katy Trail. I need to get better at dealing with temporary discomfort and sticking to my plans.

Overall, 2014 was an okay year. If I stick to the goals I’ve set for 2015 it will be a great year.

Cancun Trip Review

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Last month I had a five day vacation in Cancun with my girlfriend and my mom. The vacation was not quite as frugal as I had originally planned, but I do believe it was a bargain for what we got.  And I think we probably paid quite a bit less than most people who had a similar vacation.

The round-trip airfare from Kansas City to Cancun ended up costing about $70 each. The flight was free, but we still had to pay taxes and fees.  The flights were paid for with points I had earned for opening a Southwest credit card and for shopping through the Rapid Rewards shopping portal. I earned enough points this year to qualify for a companion pass. For the rest of this year and all of next year my girlfriend can fly with me for free, I don’t have to use any points for her fare.  If you would like to apply for the Chase Southwest Premier Card you can use my referral link to apply and you can get 2 roundtrip flights on Southwest with 50,000 bonus points once you meet up the easy promotion requirements. Please note that this card does have a $99 annual fee that isn’t waived.  If you use my referral link I’ll earn some points towards a free flight as well.   If that referral link doesn’t work or if you would like a referral email to Rapid Rewards leave me a comment and I’ll get an email out to you.

The flights on Southwest had both good points and bad points.  The good points were that we were able to check our bags for free and both the final leg of the flight to Cancun and the flight leaving Cancun were almost empty.  I believe the flight attendants said there were thirty-some people on the flight.  This was nice since it allowed us to all spread out in our own row. There was also free in-flight TV which helped pass the time.  The bad was that we had flight delays on both the outbound and return trip. They were able to make up a lot of time in the air so we didn’t arrive too much later than the originally scheduled time. Also, there are no direct flights from KC to Cancun which meant long layovers for us.  The flight delays had the effect of making our long layovers a little shorter so I didn’t mind them too much.

We stayed at the Riu Palace Peninsula and the hotel cost was $160 per night. That was more than I prefer to pay, but when you consider it is for three people at an all-inclusive resort it is actually a pretty good deal.  This room would normally cost over $300 a night, we got the much lower rate since my mom is a travel agent. The hotel and grounds were very nice and the view was great.  My big complaint about the hotel room was that the noise from the bands playing in the bar below made it impossible to go to sleep without earplugs.  I wasn’t impressed with the food at all. I thought the food we had on our cruise last year was much better.  We ate at the buffet most nights since you had to reserve the restaurants ahead of time and we were only able to make one reservation. The one night we were able to eat in one of the specialty restaurants was pretty good, but for the price I want every night to be good. Free drinks including alcoholic beverages were also included.  This probably makes the hotel a great deal for drinkers.  Since neither my GF or I drinks very much this didn’t really provide us with much value.  I did have a few frozen drinks while lounging by the pool. They tasted great, but I don’t think they had much alcohol since I never got even slightly buzzed and I’m a lightweight drinker.

The highlight of our trip was the visit to Xplor.  This is a theme park with zip lining, amphibious vehicles, rafting and swimming in underwater caves.  We were able to do the zip lining, amphibious vehicles, and swimming in the underwater cave and I enjoyed them all.  Since we explored the park at a leisurely pace we didn’t get to do everything.  I would have liked to have had more time at the park.  The park package included transportation by bus to and from the park which kept us from having the whole day in the park.  The park was a lot of fun.  The price of $135 was a little high, but I think it was a worthwhile vacation splurge.

The total cost of the trip came to about $600 each which is a pretty good deal for round-trip airfare for three and three people for four nights at an upscale all-inclusive resort.  I don’t think I would do a similar trip again, but I did enjoy it and I’m glad we were able to go.

November Safe Withdrawal Rate – 38.87%

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Since I was so lazy last month I didn’t get around to calculating October’s SWR. It probably wasn’t much different from September’s.  Since I’m not currently  adding anything to savings there isn’t much change in my SWR.

My SWR for November was 38.87%. That is a slight improvement from 39.48% in September. The improvement was due to value of my stocks increasing.  When I don’t add any money to my savings the only changes to my SWR and months of living expenses saved are from my investment performance and the average of my trailing twelve month’s of expenses going up or down.

My goal is to get the SWR down to 4% so the lower my SWR is the better. That goal is probably many years from being met. The 4% SWR translates into having 25x your annual expenses in savings or 300 months of expenses in savings. Once I reach that point I will consider myself financially independent.

I have 30.86 months of living expenses saved which is a slight increase from 30.38 months saved in September. I calculate my months of living expenses saved by dividing the average of my trailing twelve months of expenses by my total money saved.

There won’t be any big changes to these numbers until I start working full-time again in January and can contribute more to my savings. I’m hoping in the meantime they will at least stay about the same.

November Income $684.55

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Here is a breakdown of my income for November.

Online Income

 $0.00
Interest

$8.12

Cash Back

$32.23

Amazon FBA

 $10.00
Dividends $1.14
Jobs $633.06

Total

$684.55

 

My income for November was pretty bad.  Almost all of my income came from my job, I barely made any money from alternative sources of income.  I didn’t do much to earn extra income the first couple of the weeks of November since I was in Cancun and Vegas. I did work a week during the later part of the month, but that check wasn’t paid until this month.

My online income was actually negative.  I didn’t make any money during the month and had to pay my annual hosting bill. I knew a month like this would come eventually. For the year, my online income is still pretty good for the amount of time I have put into it.

My cashback income stayed about the same. If you haven’t joined Mr. Rebates yet you can get a $5 bonus for signing up through my referral link and I’ll make a little money for referring you as well.
Mr. Rebates

December  will be a better month for income. It shouldn’t be too hard to beat November’s tiny total. I keep thinking I must be missing some income, but I really don’t think I did. Since I have a lot of savings and my expenses for the month were fairly small as well I can easily afford to have a low-income month like this.  I’d still like to make more money though.