Expense/Income Tracking

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for August.

In August I was finally able to get my expenses back down under $1000.  I didn’t have any car repairs or semi-annual bills in August so I was able to keep my expenses down about as low as I can get them.

My only transportation expense was gas.  That would have been under $100,  but I had to make a trip to SW Missouri.  Also, my gas mileage has gone way down since I got my A/C fixed.  That may be something I need to look into.  If my gas mileage is still down once I’m not using the A/C anymore then I’ll now something else is the problem.

The food expense was low because I have moved in with my girlfriend and I ate a lot of her groceries.  Most of the food expense was from having fast food almost every day I worked.  I should be buying more of the food I eat this month.

The entertainment expense included buying a Kindle Fire.  I got a really good deal on a refurbished first generation model and I had some Amazon credit so this only added about $60 to my entertainment total.  This expense should go down some this month.

My other expenses should stay about the same.  I will have an added travel expense this month.  I plan to do some hiking, but it will be in state.  That should keep the travel costs reasonable.  I’m hoping I can keep my expenses under $1000 again this month.

July was not a great month for savings. My SWR slightly decreased to 58.13% from 59.41% the month before. It was an improvement, but I’m not seeing the big changes that I had earlier this year.  My expenses should be a little lower again this month which will help.  The biggest help will be the fact that I’m working a job that pays decent money which will allow me to save aggressively again.

My goal is to save 50% of my income each month and I didn’t come close to meeting that goal in July. I made $955.36 and managed to save $100. That amounted to a 10.46% savings rate. The main reason for the low savings rate was the low income.  I need to save a lot more than 50% of my income this month to keep my overall savings rate at over 50% for the year since there will likely be at least a couple more low earning months this year.

The 4% SWR translates into having 25x your annual expenses in savings or 300 months of expenses in savings. I have 20.40 months of living expenses saved now. That is just a tiny bit higher than the month before and still below the 24 months of savings I had earlier this year.  I expect to save a lot of money this month so the SWR and months of living expenses saved should improve quite a bit.

Here is a breakdown of my income for July.

My July income was a bit low, but it was about what I expected.  Unfortunately, my income was a little lower than my expenses.  It wasn’t too bad considering I only worked the last half of the month and I haven’t gotten paid by that job yet. Having several sources of income does help. I got another random class action suit check.  This one was from Sprint for an early termination fee suit.  I’m pretty sure I never paid them an early termination fee and I don’t recall joining the suit, but I’ll take the money.  My online income was down a bit.  Since I haven’t really been putting too much effort into my online endeavors lately, I can’t complain about what I am making.

My August income will be good since I will have two paychecks from my current job.  The other sources of income will probably not be dramatically different.

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.