Expense/Income Tracking

My annual expenses in 2018 were almost $4000 higher than my annual expenses of $13,697 in 2017. My annual expenses for the past few years were $16,431 in 2016, $16,999 in 2015 and $15,775 in 2014. That makes 2018 my highest spending year of the past few years. I’m hoping I will be able to reduce my expenses this year a bit. I do have some travel and dental expenses planned that will make it difficult to reduce my expenses much this year.

My total expenses for 2018 do not include the $4105 I paid on my student loan. Since those were voluntary payments that I was not required I consider them to be more in the nature of savings then an expenditure. This year I am required to make $132 monthly payments on my student loan. Those required payments will be included in my expenses for 2019 which will make it tougher to keep my 2019 expenses lower than my 2018 expenses.

My biggest expense for the year was $4655 for rent. That was a fair bit lower than the $5490 I paid for rent in 2017. This year I expect my rent to be even lower. I’m paying a very low rent while staying at my mom’s house. When I’m in Thailand I’ll have a very low rent there as well.

My second biggest expense was $4861 for medical, dental, and medicine. This was way more than I paid in 2017 and is the main reason my total 2018 expenses were quite a bit than my 2017 expenses. I’m hoping to lower this expense in 2019. However, I have a $130 monthly health insurance premium this year compared to a $0 monthly premium for most of 2018. I also need to get my dental bridge redone and probably get a dental implant. With all of that my 2019 expenses probably won’t be much lower than in 2018.

My household expense for 2018 was $477. This category includes things like clothing, utilities, gifts, and anything I buy that doesn’t fit in one of the other categories. I expect this category to be about the same in 2019. I rarely buy clothes, I don’t currently have a utility expense, and I don’t buy much random stuff so this expense doesn’t add up to much.

I spent $317 for the year for phone service. That works out to about $26.41 a month. I expect this expense to stay about the same this year unless I have to buy a new phone. The battery in my current phone seems to be losing power quickly so I might go ahead and replace my phone this year. Even if I get a new phone I don’t expect this expense to go up much.

I spent $2352 on transportation expenses for 2018. That included $770 for maintenance, $831 for gas, and $750 for insurance, registration, a speeding ticket, and other miscellaneous car expenses. Barring a major repair this expense should come down quite a bit this year. Since I’m working from home I’ll be spending very little on gas and when I’m in Thailand I won’t be spending anything on gas.

I spent $2084 on food in 2018 compared to $1957 in 2017. Many people would consider this a low total already, but I think I can reduce this quite a bit. I spent $547 on groceries and $1537 on dining out in 2018. If I can reduce the dining out and eat at home more often this expense will go down. Also, since I’m still about 45 pounds overweight I need to eat less food in general. Less food eaten should equal less money spent.

I spent $1707 on travel last year compared to $1057 in 2017. My travel consisted of a two-week hiking trip and a two and a half month trip to Thailand which included three-day stay in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia as well. The trips included numerous hotel nights, a train ride from KC to Massachusetts, a one-way car rental from NY to KC, round trip airfare from Los Angeles to Asia, round trip airfare from KC to LA, a business class ticket from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok, travel visas and other miscellaneous travel expenses. For that amount of travel I think this expense was pretty low. Just the round-trip ticket from the U.S. to Asia could have cost $1700 if I didn’t plan ahead and use credit card rewards.

This year I will probably spend about the same on travel. I’ve already purchased a round-trip ticket from the U.S. to Shanghai, China and a round-trip ticket from Shanghai to Bangkok. I’ll be in Thailand for about 2 1/2 months. If it is financially viable I will take a second trip to Thailand later in the year.

Other expenses were $91.36 for fitness, $584 for movies, and $308 for entertainment. The total of those expenses should be about the same this year. I plan to spend less on movies which will probably be offset by spending more on entertainment.

That covers all of my expenses for 2018. If you have any questions about what I spent on certain categories of expenses or are wondering where some expenses are feel free to ask questions in the comments.

It isn’t quite the end of the year but it is close enough that I am going to make this my end of the year net worth update. This is my first net worth update since last year. I’ll probably continue to just update my net worth once a year unless something happens to significantly affect my net worth during the year.

2018 Year End Net Worth

Assets

• Cash – $4017
• Stocks – $2162
• Misc – $174
• Solo 401k – $3778
• Trad IRA- $37,918
• 401k – $10,552
• Roth IRA – $1609
• Property – $1000

Liabilities

• Student Loan – $121,003
• Credit Card – $7200

My total assets of $61,210 minus my liabilities of $128,203 results in a year-end net worth of -$66,993. I managed to improve my net worth by a little over $4000 this year.

That is a poor result considering I added $6500 to my IRA and a little over $12,000 to my 401k accounts. The stock market decline resulted in a large portion of this year’s contributions disappearing.

The student loan continues to be a drag on my net worth. Although I paid several thousand dollars on the student loan this year it wasn’t enough to keep up with the interest. The loan accrues over $500 a month in interest which makes it impossible for me to make progress on paying down the loan. Unless my income at least doubles I am not going to be able to pay off the student loan.

I made another mistake of taking a 0% balance transfer on one of my credit cards. I used the money to top off my IRA contribution for the year and invest in some individual stocks. The market decline erased almost all of the money I contributed from the transfer. Nonetheless, the credit card still needs to be paid off before next November. Lesson learned – do not use debt to invest. Actually, I’m going to take that lesson a bit further and state that I will not take on any new debts at all. The only possible exception would be a mortgage and I don’t foresee that happening in the near future.

This year’s results were rather disappointing. The increase in my net worth did not reflect my high saving rate. Looking at the bright side, I now own more shares of the stocks and funds I invested in this year than I did last year so if the stock market rebounds next year my net worth should get a nice boost.

How did your net worth do this year?

Here is a breakdown of my income for November.

Interest	$5.64
Amazon FBA	$0
Job	$0
Cash Back	$0
Dividends	$3.83
Online Income	$10
Total	$19.47

November’s income was quite pitiful. Before I return to Thailand I need to find a way to earn an income while I’m there. Although my expenses have been quite low the past couple of months I am still going in the hole since my income is almost non-existent.

I thought I would be returning to work the last week of November. However, my start date to return to work has been changed to the end of this month. I wasn’t super pleased about that change, but it wasn’t something I had any control over.

I’m hoping I will be able to work a couple of weeks on a document review project before I return to the tax job at the end of the month. That way I will at least have a little income this month. Otherwise, I won’t get my first paycheck from the tax job until January which would result in another very low-income month.

I might also drive for Uber or find some other way of generating income this month while I’m waiting to resume my tax job. I still have plenty of savings to get me through until the tax job starts, but I am getting tired of seeing my savings dwindle. I would like to start building my savings back up.

I’m hoping that my income will improve quite a bit this month. It can’t get much lower.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for November.

Household	$133.59
Rent	$123.36
Entertainment	$75.37
Transportation	$78.30
Food	$161.94
Travel	$149.66
Phone	$5.17
Health	$11.21
Total	$738.60

My November Expenses were very low due mainly to having very little rent and no other large expenses.

The main household expenses were $52.21 for utilities at my Chiang Mai apartment and $53.17 for five weeks rent on a storage locker in Kansas City.  I was responsible for paying electric and water for my apartment in Chiang Mai. The first month they screwed up my bill and I was only charged about $6 for utilities. As I expected, they rectified their error the following month so the $52.21 bill is really for almost two months of utilities. Considering I ran the aircon all night long and took long, hot showers every day that is a bargain.

Upon my return from Thailand I was going to move in with my ex-girlfriend as a roommate.  That didn’t work out so I needed somewhere to store my stuff while figuring out where I was going to live.  Thus, the $53.17 charge for a storage locker. I have figured out where I’m going to live. More on that in a later post.

The rent was for 9 days in a hotel in Uttaradit, Thailand. When my monthly rental in Chiang Mai ended I moved to Uttaradit for a few days so I could be closer to my girlfriend.  The room was a great deal at a little over $13 a night. I actually could have gotten a monthly rental for almost the same price. Since Uttaradit is a smaller city rent is even cheaper than the already cheap Chiang Mai prices. I’m considering living here when I return to Thailand next year.

Entertainment was mostly for movies and dinners with my girlfriend. This category was down because my girlfriend often didn’t feel like going out and just wanted to stay in the room. That was fine by me since staying in the room was usually more fun for me anyway.

Transportation was for gas for my car. I drove from KC to southern Missouri, back to KC, and then back to southern Missouri again. The cost of all that driving wasn’t too bad due to cheap gas, a discounted gas card, and fuel rewards.

My food expense was slightly lower than the previous month. Since all of my other expenses were so low I didn’t worry about trying to keep my food expense low. I consider this to be a slightly high amount for food for a month, but I think a lot of people would consider it a low amount. My food bill doesn’t get too high even when I’m not trying to keep it low since many of my favorite foods are really cheap. I also spent a few days at my mom’s for the Thanksgiving holiday and had a Thanksgiving feast and lots of leftovers which kept my food expenses minimal during that time.

I’m not going to worry about my food expense this month either. I plan on eating at home a lot more this month so I think my food expense will go down anyway.

Travel was for Uber/Lyft rides, airport parking, taxi, gas money for my GF, a bus ride from Chiang Mai to Uttaradit, and some other small incidentals. I don’t think I’ll have any travel expense this month unless a super bargain airfare to Thailand for next year or something like that comes up.

Phone was for 1 week of phone service in Thailand. I switched my phone back to Google Fi during the month, but I wasn’t billed during the month. The new Fi bill will be due this month so this expense will be higher although it will still be quite low.

Health was for my fitness club membership and some medicine.  That expense will be going up a lot this month.  I had to enroll in new health insurance for next year and my premium has gone up substantially. The cost has gone from $0 a month to $123 a month.  That is after subsidies.  The real cost is a lot more. Since my new plan has a low deductible and a low out-of-pocket max I intend to have a couple of medical procedures done next year that I’ve been putting off due to the cost.

My November expenses were very low and I expect my December expenses will also be very low.  How was your month?

 

 

Here is a breakdown of my income for October.

Interest	$5.93
Amazon FBA	$1.78
Job	$0
Cash Back	$10.33
Dividends	$5.38
Online Income	$150
Total	$173.42

October’s income was better than September’s although still a tiny amount. Since I don’t have a job while I am in Thailand my income does not add up to much. If I want to come back to Thailand next year I need to get a lot better at generating online income or finding another source of income to replace my job income while I’m out of the country.

This month my income will probably about the same. I’ll be returning to the U.S. the week of Thanksgiving. My tax job won’t resume until sometime in December though.  If I’m lucky I will be able to get a temporary document review job to work until my tax job starts. If not I will drive for Uber and see what else I can do to make some money.

Since I won’t be returning to work until at least the last week of November I won’t actually receive a paycheck in November.  Thus, my income earned in November won’t be received until December so it won’t be until next month that my income will get back to a reasonable level.