Expense/Income Tracking

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for July.

My July expenses were a little higher than I prefer. I was hoping to get my expenses way under $1000 for the month which I didn’t come close to doing.  I did at least keep my expenses under my other goal of $1274 a month.

My transportation expense was way too high.  This was a result of driving from Harrisburg, PA to KC and getting my A/C fixed.  The gas from PA to KC probably should have been counted as a travel expense, but it was simpler to count it all as a transportation expense.

The travel expense of $113.85 isn’t too bad, especially considering I was gone for 9 days.  The total is somewhat deceiving though since some of the travel expenses were absorbed by the food and transportation categories.

Food was way too expensive.  I’m not going to worry about my overall food bill in August.  I’m just going to make a goal of keeping my dining out portion of the food bill under $50.  Since I count dining out with my girlfriend or friends as entertainment this goal shouldn’t be too difficult to meet. It will be a major adjustment to my usual spending though so I expect it to be somewhat of a challenge.

I hope to keep my August expenses a little lower.  That may not be possible since I will leave on another trip at the end of the month.  I’ve gotten a little lazy with my spending and plan to tighten up my spending this month. Even if my overall spending isn’t much lower, hopefully I will at least get more value for my spending.

June was another bad month on my progress towards financial independence.  My SWR has increased to 59.41% from 55.15% the month before.  Some of that is because I am setting money aside for my hiking expenses and another reason is I haven’t been saving much.  And in June my investments actually lost money to make things even worse.

My goal is to save 50% of my income each month and I didn’t come close to meeting that goal in June. I made $1902.65 and managed to save $100. That amounted to a 5.25% savings rate.  My June expenses were once again too high.

The 4% SWR translates into having 25x your annual expenses in savings or 300 months of expenses in savings. I have 20.19 months of living expenses saved now. I had my monthly expenses up to 24 months earlier this year, but the combination of higher monthly expenses and low savings has caused me to go backwards. I probably won’t be able to reverse this trend until I return from my hike.  My monthly expenses should go way down though so maybe that will help reverse the backwards trend.

Here is a breakdown of my income for June.

My June income was a little better than in May.  The online income was surprisingly strong.  I’m hoping that will continue while I’m hiking.  The bank bonus of $150 also helped out a bit.  I planned to sell a lot of stuff in June but I didn’t get around to listing much for sale and ended up only selling one item.  I can work more on selling stuff when I get back from my hike.  It was a decent month for income although I didn’t make much from my job. Having various sources of income is helpful.  Although my expenses were high in June my income was still more than my expenses so that was good.  I don’t expect to make a lot in July but hopefully my income will at least be higher than my expenses.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for June.

My June expenses were much higher than I’d prefer. I missed my goal of keeping my monthly expenses under the minimum wage level of $1274 a month for the first time this year.

My food bill was under my $100 goal. Even though it was pretty low it could have been a lot better.  The total includes over 20 fast food meals.  The only reason the bill was lower than normal was because I ate a lot of the food I had previously purchased.

My transportation expense were the budget buster. I spent a little over $500 in repairs. I went ahead and replaced my catalytic converter which was a little over $500.  That was a lot less than the $1000 I was quoted at the first repair shop but still a lot more than I liked spending.  I also had my six month auto insurance bill which was about $200.  I’m looking forward to having transportation expenses of well under $100 in July.

I’m making a stretch goal of keeping my total expenses under $500 in July.  That will be pretty hard to do but it isn’t impossible.  My expenses should definitely be a lot less than they have been the last couple of months.

May was not a very good month on my progress towards financial independence.  I was hoping that I could still decrease my safe withdrawal rate slightly every month even without my tax job income, but my SWR actually got worse, it went up to 55.15% from 49.50% the month before.  The high expenses for May sent my average monthly expenses quite a bit higher and thus made my SWR worse.  The small amount of savings I managed for the month wasn’t nearly enough to offset the increase in my average monthly expenses.  I’m determining my SWR by tracking my trailing 12 months of expenses divided by the amount of my investments.  Since I don’t think the preceding 12 months accurately reflect my expenses going forward I am using my monthly expenses starting in November 2012 to set the average so having a high expense month makes a big change in the average right now.  Unfortunately, June will also increase my average monthly expenses.  Starting in July I should start knocking the expenses back down again.

My goal is to save 50% of my income each month and I didn’t come close to meeting that goal in May. I made $1462.34 and managed to save $200. That amounted to a 13.67% savings rate.  My May expenses were actually higher than my May income so managing to save any money was good. The only reason I was able to save a little was because I had extra money from the month before that had not yet been allocated to savings. Unless I get an unexpected windfall I won’t be saving any money this month since I had another large car repair and will only make a small income.

The 4% SWR translates into having 25x your annual expenses in savings or 300 months of expenses in savings. I have 21.75 months of living expenses saved now. It was a little over 24 months of expenses the month before.   I don’t like going backwards on this goal but I will most likely go backwards on this goal again in June.  I should start making a little forward progress in July.  I won’t be able to make substantial progress though, until I return from my hike and find a new job.