Expense/Income Tracking

Here is a breakdown of my income for February.

February was a great income month. It was probably the most I’ve ever made in a month in my life.

I made almost $4000 from my job. That was with one of the paychecks only having a little bit of overtime. Now that tax season is in full swing I’m working about 60 hours a week every week. My last check of February had almost 40 hours of overtime making it more than twice as big as my normal paychecks.

I also got a nice refund of $2400 from my federal and state taxes. I claimed “0” for withholding during the year since I wanted to make sure I had enough withheld to cover the SE tax from blogging and FBA income. I guess I didn’t need to withhold that much. Even with having to repay $750 of the Premium Tax Credit I still got a big refund on my federal refund.  Although I had a big refund my tax liability wasn’t $0 as it has been in many years. The government got to keep about $3000 of the taxes I had withheld from my check. I’m not complaining. I’m going to leave my withholding as it is. Since I wouldn’t earn much interest on the extra income anyway I’d rather play it safe and have taxes withheld at the same rate.

This month is going to be another great month. There won’t be a tax refund but there will be three paydays. And these will all be paydays that I have about 40 hours of overtime. I should make over $6000 again.

I am beginning to burn out from working all these hours. Tax season will end next month so I can make it through. I definitely wouldn’t want to work these kinda hours all year. The big checks give me enough motivation to keep working overtime through tax season though. I should have been working overtime like this in previous tax seasons.

My other sources of income are being neglected during tax season. It doesn’t make much sense to spend time on them when I have unlimited overtime available right now that will pay me a guaranteed rate of return.

I’ll be a little sad in May once my paychecks go back to normal. For now, I’ll enjoy the big checks while they last.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for February.

My February expenses were very high. I came fairly close to making my monthly goal of $1000.

I got a speeding ticket that set me back $143.50. That was the first I got a speeding ticket since the 90’s. I was unpleasantly surprised at how high the fine was. I will be watching my speed a little more carefully now. Without that ticket my transportation expense would have been super low. I only had to get gas once in February. Since I live close to work and am working so much that I rarely go anywhere besides work and home I’m not using much gas. My gas expense will go up a little this month. I’ll also be taking the bus or Uber to and from work for a few days so I don’t have to deal with the traffic caused by the Big 12 tournament. Even with the addition of those expenses, my transportation expenses should be way down this month since I don’t plan on getting another ticket.

I also had a $165 medical bill.  Without that medical bill I would have made it under my $1000 goal. My medical expense should go back to normal this month. There shouldn’t be any expense other than my health insurance.

My monthly food expense was too high once again.  This is getting to be a broken record. I am starting the month with a lot of groceries. If I start eating at home more and eating out less I can cut the food budget down quite a bit. It will be a little healthier for me as well.  This really shouldn’t be too hard to do.

Other than that my expenses this month should be about the same as last month. Barring any unforeseen expenses, March will be the first month this year I hit my $1000 monthly spending target.

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.