Expense/Income Tracking

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for April.

My April expenses were pretty low. I came close to making my monthly goal of $1000.  I had a $245 car repair and almost $200 in medical bills. Without those I would have easily made the $1000 goal. Both my car and my body did need some maintenance and putting that off could have resulted in a much larger bill in the future so I”m okay with those bills.

My monthly food expense was slightly lower than the previous month. This was mostly due to some free meals at work.  I didn’t do much myself to bring the food total down. At this point, I should expect my monthly food bill to be $150 to $175. Rather than worrying about the total I will concentrate on eating healthier.  This month I will be hiking most of the month which will mean I’ll be eating a lot of snack foods and at whatever restaurant is most convenient to the trail. The food probably won’t be too healthy, but at least I’ll be getting a lot of exercise. I expect my food expense while hiking to be about the same as when I’m at home.

My transportation expense consisted solely of a car repair. I didn’t have any gas or other car expenses in April. The car maintenance I had planned was quite a bit more expensive than I was expecting so I only got some of the maintenance done. If I get the rest done this month it will be an expensive transportation month. If I put it off until I’m back from the hike, then this will be a cheap transportation month.

Since I’ll be hiking most of this month it is difficult to predict what level of expenses I’ll have this month. Since a lot of my travel expenses have already been paid I think my monthly expenses should be close to normal. It will just depend on whether I spend more on travel than planned or some unexpected expenses pop up. Now that I’m no longer working I will need to keep a close eye on my spending for the next several months.

In order to see how well I am or am not doing on saving for retirement I will document my savings once a quarter. I think my current retirement savings is about double what I had last year, but it is too much of a pain to look up what the values were at this time last year so this is just a guess. In the future, I’ll be able to look up my past balances on my blog which will be much easier.

• Traditional IRA $36,307
• Job 401k          $7356
• Solo 401k        $3694
• Roth IRA          $1744
• Total                $49,101

Despite the stock market declining this year my totals have gone up a fair bit this year.  My IRA was at just under $39,000 before the market started going down. My job 401k has less than I contributed, but it is only 1% down. I’ve saved more than 1% in taxes and I’ll get a 4% employer match so that will still be a profit at the end of the year. If the stock market doesn’t go down too much I’ll easily get the total over $50,000 next quarter. My goal for the end of the year is $60,000. Since I’ll be off work from the beginning of May to the end of November that should be a challenging.

I should have a lot more saved at my age. Considering it has just been the past few years that I’ve really started saving I don’t think I’m doing too bad though.  I’m doing my best to make up for lost time.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for March.

My March expenses were a little high. I did not come close to making my monthly goal of $1000.The high expense total this month was due to making a $500 payment on my student loan and having over $500 of travel expenses. The travel expense includes the annual fee on credit card that will provide me with over $500 of points towards travel, an Amtrak ticket from KC to Massachusetts, airfare from KC to L.A., airfare from Boston to KC, $50 of Uber credit, and a business class airfare from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok. Some of the domestic airfare was paid with a gift card I got as a gift. In addition to the travel I paid for in March, I also booked a free round-trip ticket from Los Angeles to Kuala Lumpur, a free night at a LAX hotel, and two free nights at a Kuala Lumpur hotel. I think I got a lot of value for the money I spent on travel.

My monthly food expense was too high once again.  March’s food expense was a couple of dollars higher than February.  I say this every month, but I still think I can do better.   I have quite a bit of food to eat at home and I’ll get several free meals at work this month so it really shouldn’t be too hard to reduce my food expenses.

My transportation expenses were a little high due to a couple of Uber rides, paying for 6 months of insurance, and buying a gas card. I shouldn’t have any gas expense in April or May.

I’m planning on having a car repair performed this month. Other than that I don’t plan on having any unusual expenses so my expenses should get back down to around the $1000 level. Although my expenses were higher than normal in March, I’m okay with that since I got a lot for what I spent and the money spent this month will reduce what I spend in future months.

Here is a breakdown of my income for March.

March was an amazing month for income. Last month I said February was probably the most I’ve ever made in a month in my life. March was definitely the most I ever made in a month. It will be a tough one to top.

I made $7743 from my job. That was the product of working about 20 hours a week overtime and having three paychecks during the month.  I’ve been allocating most of my paycheck to my 401k. This helps boost my income a little by reducing the taxes taken out of the check.

My other sources of income didn’t add up to much. I’m okay with that. Since I’m working so many hours at work there isn’t much time left to spend on other things. For now it makes sense to take the guaranteed return from OT at work and neglect my online and FBA businesses. During my time off later this year I will work on building them back up.

My FBA income wasn’t too bad due to finding one product that made me almost $200 in profit. Online income was actually a loss due to having to pay to renew a domain name and still not making any money this year. I’ll eventually get an Adsense payout so my online business will make at least a little money.

This month will be a good month for income. It will be a lot less than in March though due to only having the normal two paydays this month. April will be my last month for big paychecks with lots of overtime so I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

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.