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 inspiration for your own budget.
Below are my income and expenses for January 2018. You can see all my monthly budgets here.
Income
Wages remain my primary source of income by far. Dividend income of $1,040.37 was pretty good and enough to cover my expenses.
Here is a chart of my dividend income by month for the past 13 months:
Total dividends for the trailing twelve months: $16,181.94, up 17.85% from a year ago.
Here is chart of my dividend income by month and year since inception of the blog in 2014.
Expense
Expenses were kept low this month, limited to essentials. Electric was higher than usual this month due to a few very chilly days in December/January.
Total expenses for the trailing twelve months: $9,187.19, down 8.11% from a year ago!
Dividend to expense coverage ratio = 1.76, making a new all-time high!
The chart below shows my TTM dividend (red line) versus TTM expense (blue line) since I started tracking in 2014. One is financially independent when the the dividend (red) line exceeds the expense (blue) line, which happened around June 2015 for me. Ideally, the dividend line should stay well above the expense line and increase with time at a faster pace than the expense line. On this metric, I have been making significant progress, but would like to put some more distance between the two lines in order to afford me more freedom and room for error.
Savings
My after-tax saving rate was 94.46% for the month of January, exceeding my 90% saving rate target. This is a propitious start to the new year.
Thanks for reading!
Below are my income and expenses for January 2018. You can see all my monthly budgets here.
Income
Wages remain my primary source of income by far. Dividend income of $1,040.37 was pretty good and enough to cover my expenses.
Here is a chart of my dividend income by month for the past 13 months:
Total dividends for the trailing twelve months: $16,181.94, up 17.85% from a year ago.
Here is chart of my dividend income by month and year since inception of the blog in 2014.
Expense
Expenses were kept low this month, limited to essentials. Electric was higher than usual this month due to a few very chilly days in December/January.
Total expenses for the trailing twelve months: $9,187.19, down 8.11% from a year ago!
Dividend to expense coverage ratio = 1.76, making a new all-time high!
The chart below shows my TTM dividend (red line) versus TTM expense (blue line) since I started tracking in 2014. One is financially independent when the the dividend (red) line exceeds the expense (blue) line, which happened around June 2015 for me. Ideally, the dividend line should stay well above the expense line and increase with time at a faster pace than the expense line. On this metric, I have been making significant progress, but would like to put some more distance between the two lines in order to afford me more freedom and room for error.
Savings
My after-tax saving rate was 94.46% for the month of January, exceeding my 90% saving rate target. This is a propitious start to the new year.
Thanks for reading!
Your savings rate is pure joy! Congrats on busting through $1k in dividends for January.
ReplyDeleteDD: Thanks for stopping by and the kind sentiments. Yes, my >90% savings rate does give me joy, the product of a happy combination of relatively high income and low expenses. It is the key to my ability to retire early when I wish to.
DeleteWow... an amazing savings rate! I can't say I've seen anyone report one at even 80%, let alone sustained over so many months. Kudos to you. You should really be able to create some good separation between those dividend and expense lines in your chart at that rate.
ReplyDeleteI really like your website as well as examining the actual remarks as well as solutions, discover a lot clarification -- very useful. We have not had the opportunity to locate something concerning set up all computation enables the decrease with regard to expense administration costs from the expense earnings? It might appear sensible as well as apparent although not detailed within the explanations.
ReplyDelete