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 July 2018. You can see all my monthly budgets here.
-->Below are my income and expenses for July 2018. You can see all my monthly budgets here.
Income
Wages remain my primary source of income by far, especially this month which included a 30k annual bonus.
Here is a chart of my dividend income by month for the past 13 months:
Total dividends for the trailing twelve months: $17,865.24, up 17.57% 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 $291.07, not bad. The $0 housing cost this month is not a misprint; see my previous post for details.
Food expense was $60.19 this month, which is typical for me. Pinto beans and oatmeal help keep me and my budget slim.
The $1.10 for cell phone is a prorated amount. Starting next month there won't be a cell phone bill. Freedompop is good enough.
Also starting next month there won't be a gas/heating bill. I suspended my service after figuring out I don't really need to pay $30 or more every month just to have hot water.
Stupid $40 "donation" is more more like loss to robbery, as one of my coworkers strong-armed me to donate for going away parties to several folks this month. And don't ask me why so much money is needed from each person. There never is any accounting of how the money is spent. I won't be surprised if she collected $800 from 20 people, and spent just $100 for the food and going away gifts. I am too weak to say no, but next time I might just give her $10 and say that is all I have for now, or, better yet, say I'll get it to you later, and never do. Readers: help me out here please. What do you do in similar situations?
The $75 other expense was on a refurbished chromebook using Amazon gift cards earned from online surveys. It is working wonderfully and appears to be a good buy.
All other expenses are fairly typical.
Total after tax expenses for the trailing twelve months: $7,655.01, down 24.30% from a year ago. I expect this downtrend will continue as my housing expense went down and I continue to find ways to cut costs.
Dividend to expense coverage ratio = 2.33, 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.
My after-tax saving rate was 99.21% (a new high!) for the month of July, far exceeding my 90% saving rate target. I am confident I will meet or exceed my savings goal this year.
Thanks for reading!
Wages remain my primary source of income by far, especially this month which included a 30k annual bonus.
Here is a chart of my dividend income by month for the past 13 months:
Total dividends for the trailing twelve months: $17,865.24, up 17.57% 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 $291.07, not bad. The $0 housing cost this month is not a misprint; see my previous post for details.
Food expense was $60.19 this month, which is typical for me. Pinto beans and oatmeal help keep me and my budget slim.
The $1.10 for cell phone is a prorated amount. Starting next month there won't be a cell phone bill. Freedompop is good enough.
Also starting next month there won't be a gas/heating bill. I suspended my service after figuring out I don't really need to pay $30 or more every month just to have hot water.
Stupid $40 "donation" is more more like loss to robbery, as one of my coworkers strong-armed me to donate for going away parties to several folks this month. And don't ask me why so much money is needed from each person. There never is any accounting of how the money is spent. I won't be surprised if she collected $800 from 20 people, and spent just $100 for the food and going away gifts. I am too weak to say no, but next time I might just give her $10 and say that is all I have for now, or, better yet, say I'll get it to you later, and never do. Readers: help me out here please. What do you do in similar situations?
The $75 other expense was on a refurbished chromebook using Amazon gift cards earned from online surveys. It is working wonderfully and appears to be a good buy.
All other expenses are fairly typical.
Total after tax expenses for the trailing twelve months: $7,655.01, down 24.30% from a year ago. I expect this downtrend will continue as my housing expense went down and I continue to find ways to cut costs.
Dividend to expense coverage ratio = 2.33, 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 99.21% (a new high!) for the month of July, 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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