The State of My Finances – 03/2015

Hallelujah, I am back! With my taxes paid off, and a brand new addition to my portfolio, I finally feel like the old DividendDeveloper. But before we look at the future, let’s close out March. Here’s the state of my finances – 03/2015.

Net Worth

• Taxable portfolios (includes cash in money market accounts): $65,326.46
• Tax-deferred portfolios (my IRA; includes cash in money market accounts): $40,214.22
• 401(k) (includes employer match): $21,648.90
• Hard assets/commodities: $2,968.00
  • Listed at purchase price, not appraised value
• Cash and cash equivalents: $8,043.53
• Debt: - $0.00

Total Net Worth: $138,201.11

This is a 2.29% decrease from the last time I calculated my net worth, which was $141,442.42 at the end of February 2015.

Income/Expenses

• Rent: $975.00
• Bills: $278.26
  • Includes: cell phone, electric, gas, internet, and my FAST Graphs subscription
• Car maintenance: $0.00
• Gas: $65.00
• Groceries: $183.82
• Medical expenses: $22.95
• Discretionary expenses: $719.81
  • Trip to girlfriend: $170.98
  • Food: $127.65
  • Gems: $321.49
  • Everything else: $99.69

I saved 49.69% of my income this month.

Dividend Income:

• 03/02/2015, WFC – $11.43
• 03/02/2015, CMI – $15.68
• 03/10/2015, TGT – $55.19
• 03/10/2015, NSC – $10.19
• 03/10/2015, JNJ – $20.69
• 03/10/2015, CVX – $28.59
• 03/12/2015, MSFT – $32.24
• 03/16/2015, MCD – $8.65
• 03/16/2015, HSY – $6.49
• 03/16/2015, O – $23.71
• 03/24/2015, BLK – $6.54
• 03/25/2015, QCOM – $26.05
• 03/27/2015, NOV – $6.95
• 03/31/2015, BBL – $27.28

This month, I earned $279.67 in dividend income.

Thoughts:

For net worth, I am satisified. My taxes took over $8,000 from my cash balance, but I still have enough that I can pay my bills. The rest of my accounts went up a bit, which I am happy about. To only lose $4,000 when my tax bill was double that is actually pretty impressive.

For income/expenses, I was a bad boy this month … First off, my expenses were about $750 higher, due to a business trip. I haven’t been reimbursed yet, but I am supposed to be, in full. Therefore, I didn’t include it in my totals. The trip to my girlfriend was cheap, since I paid for my tickets back in January. My food bill was a bit high, but whatever. Where I really “slipped” was in gems. What a month for gems. Like many of you know, I love to collect gems and mineral specimens. I even include an allocation to emeraldss as part of my total portfolio! So my girlfriend and I went exploring Madison, and we found a new gem store. I didn’t know it existed, so naturally we wanted to check it out. And holy shit was that place awesome! Trays full of diamonds, rough sapphires and rubies the size of my fist. They had an emerald specimen that must have weighed 3 pounds! And my personal favorite, they had a display case dedicated to fluorescent and toxic minerals. Stibnite (the primary ore of antimony), realgar (an arsenic ore), orpiment (another arsenic ore), cinnabar (the primary ore of mercury). Like, wow. It’s rare to see any of those being sold. I was told by at least one mineral dealer this past month that they refuse to stock many of those because of their toxicity. Definitely not common to see. Naturally, I bought a lot of them. I mean, I’ve been looking for cinnabar for literally years, and haven’t found anything worth buying. So of course I’d want to pick some up Then we found out they had a new store, but that was mostly jewelry. After my girlfriend left, there was a mineral show I went to, and I discovered another store at a mall I frequent. I don’t know why I’ve never seen it, but I’m glad I found it. Equally awesome stuff. What’s really impressive is that this new place had the only rough alexandrite I’ve ever seen. Alexandrite is a really rare gemstone, famous for being the personal stone of the Russian tsars. It is known for changing colors, from green in bright light, to red in incandescent light. Russian specimens are very rare, as the high-quality mines were mined out over a century ago. There are other sources out there, but finding a natural specimen from Russia is very uncommon. I bought the shit out of it.

So what did I buy, all told? Titanium-treated quartz. Coloradoite (a mercury/tellurium hybrid, which is extremely toxic). As much high-quality cinnabar as I could buy. A beautiful aquamarine gem specimen in quartz. That rough alexandrite. A carved apple made of onyx. I came this close to getting watermelon tourmaline and silver. Caught myself just in time though. Don’t want to go into debt over my collection. And knowing me, if I wasn’t careful, I’d do it without a second thought

Beyond that, I am happy with how I spent. I almost forgot to mention that my girlfriend is moving in with me in mid-May! Naturally, I’m really excited. A bit nervous too, because I don’t know how things will change yet, in terms of minutiae of my daily life. Or how my girlfriend and I will handle constant daily exposure, especially since we’re long distance now. I’m also happy to see how my expenses change with two people, as that tells me how much I can expect to invest inn the coming months.

For dividend income, there’s not much to say. I just started tracking it. I used to rely on my monthly statements, which project my income annually. This may be useful to look back on though, in case I want to see how I need to budget once I start cashing the dividend checks.

As always, a decent month. I’m glad to have the tax burden behind me, and glad I added to my favorite collection of gems. A bit pricy, but worth it!

Anyone have any good advice on moving in with someone, what to expect or whatever?

Disclosure: Long all listed above. My Income/Expenses and Net Worth archive pages have been updated accordingly. Image source is available here.

Tags: dividend-income, income-expenses, net-worth, update