February Expenses – $1136.14

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for February.

Household $57.47
Rent $435
Entertainment $19.55
Transportation $170
Food $176.89
Travel $0
Phone $14.04
Health $263.19
Total $1136.14

 

My February expenses were very high. I came fairly close to making my monthly goal of $1000.

I got a speeding ticket that set me back $143.50. That was the first I got a speeding ticket since the 90’s. I was unpleasantly surprised at how high the fine was. I will be watching my speed a little more carefully now. Without that ticket my transportation expense would have been super low. I only had to get gas once in February. Since I live close to work and am working so much that I rarely go anywhere besides work and home I’m not using much gas. My gas expense will go up a little this month. I’ll also be taking the bus or Uber to and from work for a few days so I don’t have to deal with the traffic caused by the Big 12 tournament. Even with the addition of those expenses, my transportation expenses should be way down this month since I don’t plan on getting another ticket.

I also had a $165 medical bill.  Without that medical bill I would have made it under my $1000 goal. My medical expense should go back to normal this month. There shouldn’t be any expense other than my health insurance.

My monthly food expense was too high once again.  This is getting to be a broken record. I am starting the month with a lot of groceries. If I start eating at home more and eating out less I can cut the food budget down quite a bit. It will be a little healthier for me as well.  This really shouldn’t be too hard to do.

Other than that my expenses this month should be about the same as last month. Barring any unforeseen expenses, March will be the first month this year I hit my $1000 monthly spending target.

 

Finally I Have a 401k

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Earlier this there was a lot of press covering the 401k millionaires.  The long bull market combined with steady savings in theirs 401ks resulted in the largest number of 401k millionaires.  A 401k can be a great way to build wealth, but many people – including me until this month – don’t have access to a 401k.  A lot of smaller employers don’t offer them and many larger employers make you wait a few months or a year before you can contribute.

My employer has offered a 401k since I started working there. However, as a seasonal employee I wasn’t eligible to contribute. After switching to a 10-month seasonal position last year I finally amassed the 1000 hours in a year needed to qualify for the 401k. Even though I qualified last September I wasn’t eligible to enroll until the beginning of the year. And then for some reason I had to wait 30 days to actually set up the account. It wasn’t until last Friday that I finally had a contribution come out of my paycheck. It would have been great if I could have contributed last year as soon as I met the hourly requirement. Although, I maxed out my IRA and also contributed to an HSA and Solo 401k I wasn’t able to reduce my AGI as much as I wanted. That resulted in a larger amount of taxes owed than I planned on and having to repay $750 of the advanced premium tax credit I received.

Now that I have a 401k I will be doing my best to max it out. Since I’m 50 I can contribute $24,000. Being over 50 also allows me to contribute up to 100% of my paycheck. Those under 50 are limited to contributing 75%. I had 50% held out for my first contribution. Since I’ve been working so much overtime my paycheck was just a couple hundred dollars less than normal. For the next paycheck I have increased the contribution rate to 76%. After that paycheck I’ll see if I need to adjust the contribution rate up or down. My health insurance and taxes do have to be paid out of my check so I’m not sure what would happen if I increased the contribution rate to 100%. Maybe I have to pay my employer on payday? There are three paychecks in March so I might experiment with having one at 100 and then I’ll know how it works.

After tax season is over and I no longer have overtime I will have to move my contribution rate back down. I think a 50% rate will be sustainable, but we will see.

I wish I would have had access to a 401k when I was younger. I actually did have a 401k at one casino I worked at, but I moved and quit about a month after I started contributing. There may have been other companies that had them and I didn’t know since it wasn’t something I was overly concerned with back then. I switched jobs a lot so I probably wouldn’t have been eligible at most places anyway. There is nothing I can do about that now. I’ll just contribute as much as I currently can.

January Income – $2893.67

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Here is a breakdown of my income for January.

Interest $1.86
Amazon FBA $112.33
Cash Back $17.02
Online $0
Credit Card Bonus $25
Credit Card Other $200
Job $2537.46
Total $2893.67

 

January’s income was pretty good even though I didn’t make much from my non-job sources of income.

January was the start of the tax season allowing me to have overtime hours available the second half of the month. Only my second paycheck had overtime hours so the full impact of the overtime hours isn’t reflected in my income yet. My February paychecks will each include about 30 to 35 hours overtime so the job income should go up a bit this month. The other sources of income will remain small since I”m spending all of my time on the job. Even though February is a shorter month, this month’s income should easily surpass January income.

January Expenses – $3377.77

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for January.

Household $18.93
Rent $435
Entertainment $62.45
Transportation $46.21
Food $178.50
Travel $0
Phone $25.74
Health $2610.94
Total $3377.77

 

My January expenses were very high. This was due to having to pay an over $2500 medical bill. Otherwise I easily would have made my monthly goal of $1000.  I have another medical bill of $165 this month and hopefully there won’t be anymore for a while after that.

My monthly food expense was too high once again.  I was going to keep my eating out expenses to a budgeted amount, but abandoned that plan once I hit my budgeted amount early in the month. This month I will once again be targeting my food expenses and I expect to have success this time.

Other than that my expenses this month should be about the same as last month.

 

Working and Comments are Fixed

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This year I am working a slightly different position at my tax job. Although I’m doing a lot of the same things I was doing in previous years I also have a bit of a supervisory role. The new position didn’t come with a raise, but it did come with unlimited overtime during tax season. I’m currently scheduled for 10 hour days M-F and 7 hours on Saturday. I can usually take off an hour or so early on one weekday. There are other days that I end up working over 10 hours. It ends up with me working about 60 hours a week. For me, working 60 hours a week isn’t much worse than working 40 hours a week. Either way I am not going to feel like doing anything except relaxing after work. The plus side of the 60 hours a week is that I get paid 20 hours overtime for the week. Friday will be my first paycheck with the 60 hour weeks so I’m looking forward to seeing how much that will be.

Since I’m working so much I don’t feel like spending much time blogging after work. Not that I was doing a lot of blogging before.  I’ll keep the usual monthly income and expense posts coming and try to get more other posts published the next couple of months.

I also wanted to let people know that if they had problems commenting on the blog in the past couple of months they should be able to comment now. The comment spam plugin I was using seemed to block everybody. It only took me a couple of months of no comments to figure that out. I’ve gotten a few comments since removing the plugin so comments seem to be working correctly now.