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 April 2018. You can see all my monthly budgets here.
-->Below are my income and expenses for April 2018. You can see all my monthly budgets here.
Income
Wages remain my primary source of income by far. Dividend income of $1,428.26 is pretty good for this month.
Here is a chart of my dividend income by month for the past 13 months:
Total dividends for the trailing twelve months: $17,269.65, up 21.80% from a year ago.
Here is chart of my dividend income by month and year since inception of the blog in 2014.
Expense
Tax remains my top expense by far. Since tax is proportional to my earned income, there is nothing I could do about that. After-tax expenses came in at $429.96. No longer having rent payment after buying a home is great. My home expense this month was an amazing $0! This won't always be the case though, as maintenance and repair will eventually be needed, as well as annual property tax, which is inevitable to come. Buying a home, however, will likely triple my utility expenses, as I now have to pay for water with garbage disposal fee included and natural gas as well, in addition to electric. The amounts spent on utilities this month included one-time connection fees and those amounts for water and gas were prorated. The $16.20 clothing expense was for a pair of like new boots from a thrift store. I had to shell out $60 this month for office party, mostly wasted money, but virtually had to give. Consider that an extra work tax.
Total after tax expenses for the trailing twelve months: $8,804.71, down 14.94% from a year ago. I expect this downtrend will continue as my housing expense went down.
Dividend to expense coverage ratio = 1.96, making another 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 96.72% for the month of April, far exceeding my 90% saving rate target. I am confident I will meet or exceed my savings goal this year.
Thanks for reading!
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That is one freaking insane savings rate right there!!! Holy freaking cow. I love you have played excellent defense here in terms of keeping your expenses low to maximize your savings rate. I may need to get some tips from you about how you keep your food expenses so low.
ReplyDeleteBert
Thanks for stopping by! To keep food expenses low, I forage wild edible plants and buy in bulk and on sale. I don't eat out and don't buy expensive grocery items like meat. Foraging alone could potentially drop food expenses to zero or close to it. My backyard is full of clover. When I lived up north before, I ate lots of dandelions and nettles. Wild edible plants are healthy, organic, fresh, local, and, above all, economical. They are delicious too once you adapt your taste buds to them. Take care!
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