The State of My Finances – 06/2015

Another good month down. Things have changed little since my last update. My girlfriend and I have pretty smoothly transitioned into living together, and our expenses have started to stabilize. Just got some major expenses to plan for, but they should be done very soon. And although I haven’t been able to put away as much as I used to pre-moving-in, I think I’m still doing pretty well for myself, especially with our new attempts at living on a budget. Here’s the state of my finances – 06/2015.

Net Worth

• Taxable portfolios (includes cash in money market accounts): $70,344.25
• Tax-deferred portfolios (my IRA; includes cash in money market accounts): $40,586.53
• 401(k) (includes employer match): $25,373.90
• Hard assets/commodities: $2,968.00
  • Listed at purchase price, not appraised value
• Cash and cash equivalents: $4,692.54
• Debt: – $0.00

Total Net Worth: $143,965.22

This is a 0.63% decrease from the last time I calculated my net worth, which was $144,877.61 at the end of May 2015.

Our Costa Rica fund total: $0.00

Income/Expenses

• Rent: $975.00
• Bills: $204.86
• Gas: $150.52
• Groceries: $585.60
• Medical expenses: $197.91
• Discretionary expenses: $514.43
  • Trip to Wisconsin Dells: $272.77
  • Food: $66.09
  • Gems: $64.88
  • Everything else: $110.69

 

• Total budget: $2,500.00
• Total expenses: $2,628.32
• Result: Fail

I saved 41.05% of my income this month.

Dividend Income:

• 06/01/2015, CMI – $15.77
• 06/01/2015, GWW – $3.51
• 06/01/2015, WFC – $12.32
• 06/09/2015, JNJ – $22.33
• 06/10/2015, CVX – $28.88
• 06/10/2015, XOM – $8.76
• 06/10/2015, NSC – $10.25
• 06/10/2015, TGT – $55.56
• 06/11/2015, MSFT – $32.48
• 06/15/2015, O – $24.05
• 06/15/2015, HSY – $6.53
• 06/15/2015, MCD – $8.73
• 06/15/2015, PX – $0.72
• 06/19/2015, VFC – $0.32
• 06/23/2015, BLK – $6.58
• 06/24/2015, QCOM – $29.95
• 06/26/2015, NOV – $7.01
• 06/29/2015, GILD – $8.17
• 06/29/2015, PCP – $0.06
• 06/29/2015, TROW – $10.65
• 06/30/2015, PEP – $14.75
• 06/30/2015, BDX – $0.60
• 06/30/2015, DLR – $0.85
• 06/30/2015, VTR – $0.79

This month, I earned $309.62 in dividend income. My yearly total of dividend income is now $1,610.12.

• Percentage of personal expenses covered: 11.78%
• What can I purchase/pay for this month? All normally recurring bills and half my gas.

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Thoughts:

For net worth: Hold up a sec, what’s the Costa Rica fund? Well, my girlfriend and I both love wildlife and nature. I’ve been to Costa Rica twice and absolutely loved it. Apparently my enthusiasm is contagious, so she wants to go too. We’ve decided to put a set amount away every month to save up for a trip there, hopefully in mid-2016. I’m not putting that into my net worth calculations since this is money we explicitly want to spend sometime, not invest or use to pay off debt. But of course, we can use this money to pay off debt if we really need to. Guess it’s like a emergency fund for my emergency fund. Anyway, we want to track it publicly so we don’t manage to spend it on something that’s not as important to us *cough*gems*cough*. Keeps us honest. Contributions have started with my July paycheck, and will be tracked starting next month.

For income/expenses: Even though we technically exceeded our budget, we are pretty darn happy. Why, you ask? The reason we went over was due to one single purchase on my end, which we know will never be replicated again.

On our trip to the Dells (nice place, if you have a chance to visit), we customarily stop by the Dells Mining Co to mine for gems. We basically buy a bucket of dirt, which has been “salted” with gems like emeralds, rubies, sapphires, garnets, amethyst, and even a cut and polished 0.5 carat sapphire, emerald, or ruby (depending on your luck). Whatever we find in that bucket is ours to keep. It’s a staple of our trips, most of the time. However, this trip, my girlfriend was insistent that we stick to the budget, knowing that bucket would probably set us over. But me being me, I’m all like “Fuck that, GEMS”. So we did it. It was fun, as usual, but we noticed something. The company is starting to cheat us! Before this trip, the best buckets would often get something called the “Find of the Day”. This would be a bigass chunk of mineral, normally weighing in the hundreds or thousands of carats. We’ve gotten a 255 carat ruby, a 1,670 carat amethyst, and literally handfuls of emeralds (and we know I love those). But we realized that this time, the only really big chunks of stuff we got were lower-end, like amethyst and quartz. And they’ve now planned each bucket so that the Find of the Day is pretty much guaranteed to be a low-grade garnet, amethyst, or rose quartz. Basically nothing like the former sapphires, rubies, and emeralds that used to be the Finds. So the good shit we get is small, and the really big stuff is “boring”. And the fuck-you icing on the asshole cake? The bucket sizes have noticeably shrunk. She and I felt cheated, and we have mutually agreed not to go back. Dells Mining Co, fuck you.

So yep. If we had realized what would happened before buying, we would have saved $145. And $2,628.32 – $145 = $2,483.32. That would have been perfect. Oh well, now we know.

Our next budget amount is $3,600.00. This is composed of ~$2,000.00 in essential living expenses, like rent, food, and various bills. We also have three known bills coming due for a total of ~$1,350.00. And because neither of us are boring and useless human beings, we have a do-whatever-the-heck-we-want fund of ~$250.00. This would have been higher, but due to my indiscretion, we’ve deducted the cost of the gem bucket from our fund this month. That’s a fair compromise, we think.

And before I forget: we got a cut ruby and a 1,855 carat garnet, about the size of an apple. We use it as a paperweight.

How’d June go for you?

Disclosure: Long all listed above. My Financial Stats archive page has been updated accordingly.

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