Income & Expenses For April 2016

Since 2014, I have been tracking my monthly income and expenses. You can see a breakdown of every penny I earn and spend. For perspective, this budget is for a household of two in a small US city. By documenting my journey, I aim to demonstrate the feasibility of saving a significant portion of your income and provide some ideas and inspirations for your own budget.

Below is my income and expenses for April 2016. You can see all my monthly budgets here.

	Apr 2016
Income
Wages	$8,676.82
Dividends	$805.19
Other Income	$1,201.36
Total Income	$10,683.37
Expense
Federal Tax	$380.00
Federal Tax Pmt/(Refund)	$3,609.15
FICA-SS	$371.89
FICA-Medicare	$86.97
Rent	$450.00
Student loan repayment	$159.53
Grocery	$95.98
Gasoline	$54.78
Cell phone	$12.90
Electric	$36.20
Clothing/laundry	$12.00
Other Expense	$35.95
Total Expense	$5,305.35
Ex-Tax Total Expense	$857.34
Surplus/(Deficit)	$5,378.02
Before Tax Saving Rate	50.34%
After Tax Saving Rate	86.25%

Income
Dividend income fell back down to $805.19 from all time high last month. Wages remain my primary source of income by far. Here is a chart of my dividend income by month for the past 13 months:

Total dividends for the trailing twelve months: $12,369.26, up 1.53% from $12,182.74 last month.

Expense
Expenses went up significantly due to $3,609.15 tax payment after filing my tax return. Grocery and gas also went up due to a road trip. All other expenses are typical. 

Total expenses for the trailing twelve months: $9,485.08. 

Dividend to expense coverage ratio = 1.30. If this ratio gets above 3, I would be comfortable retiring. If it gets above 5, retirement relying on dividend income would pretty much be bullet proof. I still have a long way to go.

Savings
My after tax saving rate was 86% for the month of April, which marks the first time in 14 months my saving rate has dropped below 90%. This is attributed to the one-time large tax payment. I expect to meet or exceed my 90% savings goal this year. 

How's your budget? Did you save as much as you wanted to? On track to meet your savings goals for the year? 

Thanks for reading.