January 2019 Expenses & Financial Update
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This is a new series I started last year, sharing a report of our monthly expenses. These posts let me take the transparency up a notch and start sharing monthly numbers, in hopes that it helps inspire and educate readers. You can check out last month’s expenses here.
Sharing our expenses involves vulnerability, but after contemplating it for quite some time it seemed important. The goal with these expense reports will be to keep ourselves accountable as we continue on the road of being mindful with our spending. It’s also my hope that it will help spark conversations and encourage others to examine their own budgets.
We use Mint to budget and track our expenses. If you’re struggling with starting a budget, be sure to join my email list at the bottom of this post to receive my brand new PDF, “A Beginner’s Guide to Overhauling Your Budget.”
Without further ado, here’s where we spent our money this month:
January 2019 Expenses
| Category | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Housing | $2452.91 | Includes rent + water/trash/sewage. The price of living in a high-cost of living area. |
| Utilities | $16.69 | The benefit of living in an apartment! |
| Auto Insurance | $259.00 | |
| Gas | $99.68 | |
| Mobile Phone | $90.13 | |
| Internet | $39.39 | |
| Entertainment | $159.72 | concert tickets, bowling |
| Groceries | $182.64 | |
| Restaurants | $36.82 | |
| Pets | $315 | Dog-sitter |
| Shopping | $226.19 | |
| Travel | $1885.68 | weekend trip, flight ticket, Airbnb's for upcoming Europe trip |
| Misc Expenses | $291.94 | passport renewal, haircut, flight change fee |
| Fun Money | $41.07 | |
| Gifts | $0 | |
| Total | $6096.86 | Doesn't include savings, investments, and giving. |
- Dividend Income: $27.42
- Interest Income: $35.52
- Side Hustle Income: $40.00
These past few years on our financial journey we’ve challenged everything and trimmed down our expenses, but our spending is still a work in progress.
With each paycheck that comes in, our investments and cash savings continue to grow, as we put the systems in place and now they just run in the background automatically. Once you get your money mapped out where you want it to go, it becomes a game of patience as your wealth grows.
We continue to look to cut back on the areas that don’t matter as much, so that we can put money towards the areas we truly value. Mindful spending is a big focus for us and we continue to improve at it.
Every month brings its own challenges and variances. If we happen to overspend one month, we shake it off and get back on track the following month.
Other Financial Updates
2019 is officially here! We continue to love the freedom of having no debt, and less monthly payments. It’s much easier to save and invest more when less of our money is allocated towards payments and subscriptions. That being said, since I’ve been publishing expense reports, this was our highest spending month to date.
Some categories of note:
- Travel – As expected, we spent a massive amount on travel this month. The bulk of this spending was booking Airbnb’s for our upcoming 2-week vacation to Europe at the end of March. We have been setting aside savings for this trip, so that money will help offset these expenses. We also had a weekend church retreat and a flight for my wife to visit Arizona.
- Pets – We booked a sitter through Rover for one of our dogs, for both the upcoming Europe trip and the weekend retreat for this month.
- Misc Expenses – This included a fee for a cancelled flight, my passport renewal, and some other small expenses. The fee for the cancelled flight is actually a great travel rewards story. We initially booked my wife’s upcoming flight to Europe a few months back for 60,000 United miles. While checking flights earlier this month I ended up finding the same flight on American Airlines/British Airways for only 34,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points. A quick phone call to resulted in cancelling the previous flight, a $75 fee, and all our United miles back.
We brought in $27 of dividend income this month. This is money that is being generated by our investments, and then gets reinvested right back into those investment accounts. As our investments grow, eventually we’ll reach the point where this dividend income will be used to pay for some of our living expenses.
Looking Ahead
We’re continuing to plan our two-week trip to Europe in March, so some of those costs will appear in next month’s update. Other than that, February should be back to our normal spending levels.
Thanks for reading this month’s expense report, and stay tuned for my upcoming post detailing our 2018 yearly spending!
Related Reading: End of Year Review & 2019 Goals
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