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 June 2018. You can see all my monthly budgets here.
Income
Wages remain my primary source of income by far. Dividend income made an all-time high!
Here is a chart of my dividend income by month for the past 13 months:
Total dividends for the trailing twelve months: $17,638.30, up 19.14% 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 $296.36, not bad. The $0 housing cost this month is not a misprint; see my previous post for details.
Food expense was $73.33 this month, which is typical for me. I manage to keep my food expenses low by foraging (I love dandelions and clover), buying cheap produce on sale (such as cabbage at 49 cents per lb), buying oatmeal in bulk, buying dried beans in bulk (pinto beans tend to be fairly cheap), and buying inexpensive sources of fat such as peanuts and canola oil.
I had to drive a lot this past month, hence the gasoline expense of $70.50, which should go down significantly next month. The $6.44 other expense is for a new inner tube for a busted bike tire (got to pay more attention to nails on broken glass on the road!!). All other expenses are fairly typical.
Total after tax expenses for the trailing twelve months: $8,007.61, down 20.91% from a year ago. I expect this downtrend will continue as my housing expense went down.
Dividend to expense coverage ratio = 2.20, 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.
Thanks for reading!
Below are my income and expenses for June 2018. You can see all my monthly budgets here.
Income
Wages remain my primary source of income by far. Dividend income made an all-time high!
Here is a chart of my dividend income by month for the past 13 months:
Total dividends for the trailing twelve months: $17,638.30, up 19.14% 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 $296.36, not bad. The $0 housing cost this month is not a misprint; see my previous post for details.
Food expense was $73.33 this month, which is typical for me. I manage to keep my food expenses low by foraging (I love dandelions and clover), buying cheap produce on sale (such as cabbage at 49 cents per lb), buying oatmeal in bulk, buying dried beans in bulk (pinto beans tend to be fairly cheap), and buying inexpensive sources of fat such as peanuts and canola oil.
I had to drive a lot this past month, hence the gasoline expense of $70.50, which should go down significantly next month. The $6.44 other expense is for a new inner tube for a busted bike tire (got to pay more attention to nails on broken glass on the road!!). All other expenses are fairly typical.
Total after tax expenses for the trailing twelve months: $8,007.61, down 20.91% from a year ago. I expect this downtrend will continue as my housing expense went down.
Dividend to expense coverage ratio = 2.20, 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 98.08% (a new high!) for the month of June, 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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