Site icon Spills Spot

January 2019 Expenses & Financial Update

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more information.

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

CategoryAmountNotes
Housing$2452.91Includes rent + water/trash/sewage. The price of living in a high-cost of living area.
Utilities $16.69The benefit of living in an apartment!
Auto Insurance$259.00
Gas$99.68
Mobile Phone$90.13
Internet$39.39
Entertainment$159.72concert tickets, bowling
Groceries$182.64
Restaurants$36.82
Pets$315Dog-sitter
Shopping$226.19
Travel$1885.68weekend trip, flight ticket, Airbnb's for upcoming Europe trip
Misc Expenses$291.94passport renewal, haircut, flight change fee
Fun Money$41.07
Gifts$0
Total$6096.86Doesn't include savings, investments, and giving.

 

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:

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

Thanks for reading! Be sure to get updates on all of my latest posts by subscribing via RSS, following me on Twitter, and liking my page on Facebook!