Expense/Income Tracking

My expenses in 2014 were a little higher than in 2013. I spent a total of $15,775.66 in 2014 compared to $13977.72 in 2013. The increase in expenses was mostly due to a little over $1000 of dental work and increased travel expenses. Dental expenses will be even higher this year since I’m getting dental implants. It will be well worth the expense to finally have a full mouth of teeth again. I’ll probably travel more this year so I doubt that will go down. Using credit card bonuses and other tricks I think I’ll get a lot of value for the money I do spend on travel.

Here is a breakdown of my main expense categories for 2014. I spent $4800 on housing. This goes to my GF to help with her mortgage payment on the house we both live in. I should probably start paying here more since I’m paying less than half. I spent $321.72 for phone bills. I spent $675.72 on health insurance. I did receive a subsidy on that so that expense could go up or down once I file my tax return. I spent $954 on my student loan. I’m planning on paying a lot more towards my student loan this year.

I spent $1630.53 on car maintenance, registration, and licensing. I spent $222.25 on car insurance and $1074.28 on gas. That is a lot, especially when you consider that I sold my car in September and had hardly any car expenses the last three months of the year. I probably will buy a car later this year. I’m hoping it won’t require much maintenance.

I spent just over $1600 on dental work and medicine. I’ll probably spend more than that this year. I have $2200 set aside in my HSA to cover these expenses. I’m hoping that will be enough and that my medical/dental expense will be much lower after this year.

I spent $807.34 on groceries and $892.81 on meals out. This year I want to reduce the total overall and groceries should make up more of the total than meals out.

I spent $508.24 on movies and $617.92 on other entertainment. I’m guessing that total will stay about the same.

I would like to reduce my expenses down to about $12,000 for this year which will be a stretch. Not having a car should save me some money and I think I should be able to cut down the travel total a little. I might have to make my goal $12,000 for the year not counting my dental expenses and buying a car.

My 2014 expenses of $15,775.66 allowed me to take two trips to Las Vegas, a 5 day trip to an all-inclusive resort in Cancun, a two-week hiking trip in PA/NJ, and some shorter in state trips. There were also almost weekly movie theater excursions and lots of restaurant meals. Even with a relatively low expense total like this it is possible to have a lot of fun.

December’s SWR was 37.67 compared to 38.87% in November. That was a slight improvement. My goal is to get the SWR down to 4% so the lower my SWR is the better. That goal is probably many years from being met. The 4% SWR translates into having 25x your annual expenses in savings or 300 months of expenses in savings. Once I reach that point I will consider myself financially independent.

I have 31.85 months of living expenses saved which is a slight improvement compared to 30.86 months of living expenses saved in November. I calculate my months of living expenses saved by dividing the average of my trailing twelve months of expenses by my total money saved.

Considering I didn’t make much money in December any improvement is good. I think I’m going to stop calculating these numbers for the next few months while I’m working full-time and do a post on the percentage of my income saved/paid towards student loans instead. Would you rather see that post? or both? or neither?

Here is a breakdown of my income for December.

My income for November wasn’t that great. Since my expenses for the month were also very low I still basically broke even for the month so I can’t complain.

My cashback income was a bright spot since I made over $50.  I guess that was from people doing their Christmas shopping. 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.

January should  be a better month for income. My full-time tax job starts this month which will likely provide the bulk of my income for the year. I’m not sure how the paydays fall so I might get only one paycheck this month. Even if I only get one paycheck it will be enough to make this month’s income larger than in December.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for December.

My December expenses were very low. I managed to make my stretch goal of keeping my expenses to $1000 a month. Not having any travel expense in December helped a lot in keeping my expenses down. Not having a car anymore helped keep any unexpected expenses from popping up. The cheap gas prices helped too. I only spent $48.55 to fill up my GF’s car with gas twice and get an oil change. It is unlikely I’ll be able to keep my expenses as low this month. I’m returning to work which usually results in me spending more money on food. My health insurance will also be almost $30 a month more this year. Although I expect my expenses to go up this month I think I have a good shot of keeping my expenses under $1000. I can’t complain about that.

Since I was so lazy last month I didn’t get around to calculating October’s SWR. It probably wasn’t much different from September’s.  Since I’m not currently  adding anything to savings there isn’t much change in my SWR.

My SWR for November was 38.87%. That is a slight improvement from 39.48% in September. The improvement was due to value of my stocks increasing.  When I don’t add any money to my savings the only changes to my SWR and months of living expenses saved are from my investment performance and the average of my trailing twelve month’s of expenses going up or down.

My goal is to get the SWR down to 4% so the lower my SWR is the better. That goal is probably many years from being met. The 4% SWR translates into having 25x your annual expenses in savings or 300 months of expenses in savings. Once I reach that point I will consider myself financially independent.

I have 30.86 months of living expenses saved which is a slight increase from 30.38 months saved in September. I calculate my months of living expenses saved by dividing the average of my trailing twelve months of expenses by my total money saved.

There won’t be any big changes to these numbers until I start working full-time again in January and can contribute more to my savings. I’m hoping in the meantime they will at least stay about the same.