March was a busy month for me. I had a trip to Ukraine to visit my fiancee, and the total cost of that trip was about $2800, not including my flight since I used frequent flyer miles for it. A large portion of the expenses come from having to have a dog/house sitter while I am away.
Another big expense this month was $1,000 needed for my step-daughter to get some dental work done. The work won’t be until sometime April, but I went ahead and set gave the money to my fiancee this month. I had some other expenses as well, which I’ll detail down below.
My Net Worth increased just under $11,000 this month. My 401k and HSA investments again did horrible, and most of the gain this month came from a tax refund and bonus from work I received and immediately put into savings.
March 2018 Financial Statement
| Account Name | Previous Balance | Balance | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cash | $8.00 | $0.00 | -$8.00 |
| Savings - Personal | $4,000.12 | $4,000.21 | $0.09 |
| Savings - Personal (CU) | $3,005.86 | $14,006.95 | $11,001.09 |
| Checking - Personal | $3,492.15 | $1,538.98 | -$1953.17 |
| Checking - Business | $2,823.54 | $1,515.94 | -$1,307.60 |
| Retirement - 401k | $178,051.99 | $177,991.68 | -$60.31 |
| Credit Cards | -$14,300.00 | -$14,704.60 | -$404.60 |
| Retirement - Pension | $24,265.52 | $25,840.15 | $1,574.63 |
| Retirement - HSA (Investements) | $7,595.83 | $7,467.62 | -$128.21 |
| Retirement - HSA (Cash) | $2,048.29 | $2,291.31 | $243.02 |
| Asset - Vehicle 1 | $14,225.00 | $13,925.00 | -$300.00 |
| Auto Loan 1 | -$15,373.00 | -$15,008.32 | $364.68 |
| Asset - Vehicle 2 | $6,500.00 | $8,500.00 | $2,000.00 |
| Asset - Precious Metals | $500.00 | $400.00 | -$100.00 |
| Asset - Home | $143,068.00 | $142,545.00 | -$523.00 |
| Mortgage - Home | -$139,658.84 | $-139,106.30 | $552.54 |
| Net Worth | $220,252.46 | $231,203.63 | $10,951.16 |
A few things to note this month:
- I got an appromiate $8,300 after tax bonus this month. It was about 1/2 of what I was expecting, but I’ll take it nonetheless. It went straight to my emergency fund!
- I did much better keeping my spending under control this month and was able to save a bit more than I had previously been doing!
- I had a bit of a scare at work which gave me the extra kick I needed to get my ass in gear on better savings / reduced spending!
- My tax refund was approximately $3,400.
Side Business Income
For March, my side business did about $2,300 in revenue – our best month out of the 13 months we’ve been in business! I also spent an additional $2,000 on the website redesign, but it should mostly be all paid for now. I haven’t been advertising pro-actively at all, I’m waiting for the new website to be finished sometimes in May and then I will hit sales and marketing hard!
Retirement
Again, March was not a good month for my retirement accounts. My 401k went down over $500, despite having contributions of about $2,000 during the month. My pension does update every quarter, so we did see a slight increase in that amount this month.
With retirement accounts totaling $203,831.83 and using a 3.5% safe withdrawal rate (SWR), that would allow me to take $594.51 as income each month. Still not enough to live on, but at least we made forward progress again this month.
Safe Withdrawal Rate (3.5%) monthly income: $594.51
This will ideally be at $4,500 before I even seriously consider being close to “FIRE”, but I have time! I feel like that first $1,000 is going to be the hardest and then we should start seeing better momentum from there each month.
Spendaholic Ways
So, there were 2 areas I really overspent this month, Vacations and Eating Out. I spent $776 eating out, which is crazy. I’m attempting to restart my diet, however, so perhaps I will do better by the end of April. Eating out is my biggest splurge that is hard for me to control. For vacation, it was my quarterly trip to spend time with my fiancee and I spent $2600 in total this month for it. Not counted, as I believe it will be counted in April’s figures is a deposit I put down on a family trip for November as well, planning ahead for when everyone is here and we’re going to do an indoor water park trip.
Emergency Fund
My personal and credit union savings is now at $18,000, due mostly to my annual work bonus. I was thinking a good 6 month emergency fund would be $24,000 but in looking at my expenses now my real expenses are about $4,500 a month so I might need to increase that to $27,000. This is honestly the most I’ve had saved outside of my retirement plans ever, so I’m actually really proud about that. As soon as I hit my number I will go back towards knocking out my credit card debt (thankfully it’s at 0% interest for another 14 months).
Looking Ahead
Over the coming months, I will continue working on the personal finance aspects of my journey, but there are some key points I must consider going forward:
- I have $18,000 of my $24,000 emergency fund goal set up, so really exciting about that! 3-4 more months!
- Another $1,000 will be needed in April for my step-daughters dental work.
- The side business website redesign should be completely paid for now, and should launch next month!
- I will continue paying down my mortgage faster than normal by doubling my ‘principle’ part of the payment
- I’m still cosigned on $29,000 debt from an ex’s student loans that I will try to get her to refinance this year
- My employer is swapping the pension, for additional 401k deposits come 2019