Expense/Income Tracking

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for November.

November was a another good month for expenses. I would have made my monthly goal of $1000 if it were not for the $111 doctor bill I paid during the month. When I switched to employer insurance in September my deductible reset which was bad for me since I had already met the deductible on my marketplace plan. If I still had my marketplace insurance the doctor visit wouldn’t have cost me anything. Even before meeting the deductible on my marketplace plan doctor’s visits were a set $35 a visit.  On the plus side, my employer insurance is an HDHP which will allow me to open an HSA and put some money in there before the end of the year giving me a tiny bit of tax savings.

My monthly food expense was way too high again. If I had kept that expense to a reasonable $100, I would have made my $1000 goal. I ate out nearly every day and sometimes twice in a day. My plan was to cut back on my food expense in November. Obviously, I didn’t follow through on that. I’ll make that my plan again for this month and I intend to actually follow through on it this month. I don’t have any travel planned this month and I have a fair amount of food in my apartment so it would be easy to keep my food expense low if I just don’t go out to eat too often.

I had a little bit of travel expense this month due to my four night trip to Las Vegas. I had already paid for one night hotel.  This month I paid for another hotel night and had two nights comped. I also had a Lyft ride to the airport, a bus pass from the airport, and paid to select my seat on my Spirit flight to Las Vegas.  Added to the expenses I previously paid I still paid well under $100 for four nights in Vegas, including round trip airfare from Kansas City.  I won about $40 gambling so the trip ended up costing me about what I would have spent if I had just stayed in KC during that time.

How was your month?

Here is a breakdown of my income for October.

September’s income was pretty good. My job income went down quite a bit, since October had the usual two paychecks rather than the three I got in September. I was able to make over a $1000 from my non-job sources of income which helped get my income almost back to September’s level. I won’t complain. Having income that is about three times as much as your expenses is pretty good. Although I’m not including my house purchase expenses in my current expenses, when you add those in the reality is that I’m spending all of my income and then some. Once the house purchase is through I will have an actual surplus again.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for October.

October was a fairly good month for expenses. I would have made my monthly goal of $1000 if it were not for the two dentist appointments I had during the month.

My monthly food expense was way too high. If I had kept that expense to a reasonable $100, I would have made my $1000 goal. Since I ate out about 25 times during the month it is no surprise that my food bill was high. I plan to cut the food budget way back this month. I’ll do a post about that next week.

I also have spent about $1000 on an appraisal and inspection of the house I’m buying. I’m leaving those costs out of the monthly budget since they will skew the numbers. The closing costs and down payment I’ll have to pay later this month will also be left out of the monthly budget. Once the house purchase is complete I will have high expenses for the next few months as I buy stuff for the house (I’m living in a 120 square foot apartment right now so I don’t have much stuff) and do a little remodeling. I think those expenses will be worth it. Once I’m a homeowner the $1000 monthly expense target will no longer be realistic so I’ll adjust that accordingly.

How was your month?

In order to keep track of my financial progress or lack of progress I have decided to calculate my net worth a few times a year. I’ve been doing it every month, but I think after this month I’ll return to doing it quarterly or semi-annually.

My net worth as of 10/1/2017 is as follows.

Assets
Cash – $3264
IRA – $29,176
Roth IRA – $1684
Solo 401k – $3165
Car/Stuff – $3200

Liabilities
Student Loan – $115,846

Net Worth = $- 75,357

My net worth improved almost $1000 last month.   This was mainly due to receiving three paychecks from my full-time job. It seems like it should have improved more with the extra paycheck and all my investment accounts making at least a little money. It is better than going backwards so I won’t complain. Hopefully, I can keep the positive trend going the rest of the year.

I’ve been using Personal Capital (affiliate link) to help track my net worth. It keeps track of all of my financial accounts and my student loan making it pretty easy to calculate my net worth each month. It is free to sign up. If you would like to sign up I’d appreciate you using my link. All blog income, including affiliate income, goes to paying down my student loan.

Personal Capital

Here is a breakdown of my income for September.

September’s income was really good due to having three paychecks during the month. I didn’t make much outside my job. This month will return to normal and I’ll only receive two paychecks. I hope I can increase my other sources of income at least a little this month.  Without the third paycheck this month’s income will be down, but it still should be pretty decent. Now that I’m making almost all of my money from a regular job there isn’t much interesting to read about in the income reports. That won’t change for a while.