Our money went where? July 2016 Update

Ahhh, another month and another budget update. Although budget is such a non-term around here, since it’s really more of a spending tracking update. Overall, the numbers look good though! No big surprises anywhere, which is always awesome. So, without further ado, here’s our July recap.

Lots of good things to see here!
Lots of good things to see here!

Let’s talk about the “positives” first!

It was a great month for investments, right?! Those were up over 4%, woohoo!! We’ll just assume this trend will keep going for eternity… Kidding, clearly, I’m kidding.

It was a good month for groceries, and that was even having fellow blogger Nick over at The Money Mine and his wife over for a cookout. It was great meeting them and getting to hang out in person!

Utilties are down, cell/tv/internet is lower and next month should be even lower than that. I renegotiated our Direct TV bill to our “discount days” which lowered it almost $50/ month, and it will stay that way for 2 years, allegedly. I also ditched ATT for internet and went with Entouch, where we are now getting 3x the download speed for $10 less per month. So far, that’s a Win too!

Car note and insurance – since we paid off the remainder of Mrs. SSC’s car, and only pay insurance every 6 months, this is a nice breath of fresh air. It’s like money going back into our account.

The house upkeep is low this month, with the only purchase being a new mower blade. Good bye old worn out blade!

Daycare is lower and will be even lower in August as our oldest begins free public school! Yeah free! We’ll still have some after school care costs, but they’ll be significantly lower than full time daycare.

Also, Pets and maids are in the lower than usual category.

An even nicer positive is that we got a windfall from my work as well. One of my incentives paid out this month adding about $4k bring home to the kitty and $6k of stock. Yeah free money/stock!

Now, for the not so positive items!

Auto category jumps out as negative, when this is actually a great win! Mrs. SSC had to pay $725 for her yearly parking pass on campus. I know right?! That’s frigging expensive! BUT, if you take the $725 out of the $882, then we’re actually at ~$160 on gas and tolls down from our usual $460 monthly avg. from last year. That’s a BIG drop! Yes, it will go up some when the school year starts and Mrs. SSC is driving more, but I’ll enjoy the lower costs while they’re around.

Gym is another category with a big jump. We got a family plan membership since Mrs. SSC is no longer able to go to her corporate gym. My work subsidizes a small part of it, but I have until next January to apply for that. The way oil prices are going, I think I’ll start submitting them monthly, so when that perk gets axed, I can at least be caught up, lol. Also, swim lessons bumped it up $100/month for both of the kids to take lessons. Our oldest can now swim about 20’ and tread water, so that’s a great win there!

Mortgage is up, but that’s for house taxes, when we had to pay an attorney $304 to lower our tax bill. They lowered it $612 and we pay them half. Our stupid neighbors don’t contest the 10% increases in home valuations thinking it means their house is worth more. Ugh… This year we had to go around and take pictures of things that would drive our price down to help with the lowering of the cost. Stupid taxes…. Next year we’ll just fight it ourselves and see how that goes.

Back to school supplies cost a little bit between clothes, shoes, and the weirdo list of supplies they have for a kindergartener. That kid is growing like a weed and can’t seem to stay in a pair of shoes very long. We (well, mostly Mrs. SSC) saved a lot of coin on the supply list though by shopping around.

 

FFLC (Fully Funded Lifestyle Change) UPDATE

All this points to a year of projected spending around $47000, again, barring any financial boondoggle left to jump out and get us this year. If you want to give it a whirl and see what you may need for your FIRE plans, here’s a link to our spreadsheet that you can use.

We are also getting ever closer to our FFLC/FIRE goal as we’re now at 89% of the way there!

Almost there! image adapted from fimspotting.net
Almost there!                                                                       image adapted from fimspotting.net

Fingers crossed that the economy doesn’t tank, war ensues, and/or the stock market gets wiped out. Always a ray of sunshine around here!

 

Well, that was our July.

Hopefully yours was also more positive than negative!