Expense/Income Tracking

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for March.

My streak of below $1000 monthly expenses came to an end in March. The total was just barely above $1000 so I’m still happy with my level of spending. The $1000 level of spending doesn’t allow me much leeway in my expenses. Our trip to Las Vegas at the end of the month increased my travel and entertainment expense and put me over the $1000 target. The total cost of the Vegas trip was just a bit over $100 which was a great bargain. I actually won enough gambling to cover most of that cost. My credit card allows me to erase past travel purchases so the cost of the vacation could get even lower. I might break down the cost of the trip in a later post if I’m not too lazy this month.

Meeting the $1000 target will be tough to do this month. We have a vacation to Niagara Falls planned. Airfare and hotel will be free, but there will still be a rental car and other expenses. My student loan payment has also gone up to $183 a month. This increases my fixed expenses and doesn’t leave me with much for discretionary expenses. I’m not complaining though. I get a lot of value for the money I spend.  Even if I don’t meet the $1000 target I think I’m doing pretty well at keeping my expenses under control.

My February FIRE (financial independence retire early) numbers were down slightly from the month before. This was disappointing since this is the time of year I am supposed to make the best progress on my numbers. Part of the reason for the poor performance was that I didn’t get some money moved from checking to savings. That money will get moved this month which will make this month look better.

My safe withdrawal rate declined slightly from 35.89% in January to 36.13% in February. Either way it is a long way to my goal of 4%.

I have 33.20 months of expenses saved which is slightly less than the 33.43 months of expenses I had saved in January. My goal is to have 300 months of expenses saved.

March should be a much better month financially and I expect to see significant improvement in both of these numbers.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for February.

My February expenses were fairly low. I managed to make my stretch goal of keeping my expenses under $1000 a month for the third month in a row.  The streak will end when I have to pay for my dental implants. I’m hoping I can keep the streak going until them.

My food expenses were low since I managed to keep my fast food expenses under $50.  There are also some dinners out with my GF that I put in the entertainment category. Those were kept fairly cheap with coupons and/or gift cards. I did pretty well in that category considering Valentine’s Day and my GF’s birthday were in February.

My health expenses were a little higher due to getting sick and needing some prescriptions. The total would have been much lower if I hadn’t paid $53 at CVS for a drug I could have gotten for $4 at Walmart. I won’t be filling any more prescriptions at CVS. I can’t complain about the overall cost of the sickness. My GF being a nurse managed to get me a couple prescriptions from her nurse practitioner and doctor without having an official doctor visit. I will have to pay some lab fees this month, but they won’t be too much.

March should be another low-cost month. We do have a vacation to Las Vegas coming up at the end of the month. The airfare was free and the room is free other than the resort fee so the vacation shouldn’t cost too much.

Here is a breakdown of my income for February.

February was a decent month for income, but not as good as I hoped. Missing three days of work due to being sick resulted in my job income being a good deal less than I planned. Online income went down by quite a bit. This wasn’t a surprise since it was unusually high the month before.  I didn’t manage to make any money from bonuses or Amazon FBA. I actually lost a little on FBA which I will take off this month’s total.  My interest income went up a little since I loaned my GF $10,000 to buy a car. I might write more about that later.

The job income should go up this month and hopefully I will be able to make a little more money from my alternative income streams. I’m hoping to not work at a job the rest of this year once I finish my tax job so I need to bump up this income.

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.

My FIRE (financial independence retire early) numbers improved a bit in January.  This isn’t too surprising since I started my seasonal tax job in January which allows me to put more money into savings. My safe withdrawal rate improved to 35.89% from 37.67% in December. My goal is to get the SWR down to 4% so the lower my SWR is the better.The 4% SWR translates into having 25x your annual expenses in savings or 300 months of expenses in savings.

I have 33.43 months of expenses saved. This is probably the better number to look at when calculating my progress towards financial independence. A SWR of 35.89% might not immediately seem like it is a long way from getting to a 4% SWR, but when I see have 33.43 months of expenses saved and I need 300 it is obvious I have got a lot more savings to do. I hope to also bring down my average monthly expenses which will help me reach the 300 goal faster. Even though the goal of 300 months of expenses is far away it is nice to know that if I suddenly stopped earning money at all I would have almost three years before I ran out of money.

February should be a low expense month and I plan to put most of my paychecks into savings. As long as the stock market isn’t absolutely terrible I should make some nice progress towards FIRE this month.