Thriftism

2019 is here, which means this is our 2018 year end budget recap.  For a quick reminder, we run our budget solely on my income of $2,400/month which gives us a gross income of $31,200. We do not include health insurance in our budget as ours is currently covered by our jobs, but if this was our household income we would also be taken care of by insurance subsidies. We do not include all discretionary spending such as traveling or major home renovations, but we do include all entertainment, grocery, dining out, and every day expenses. It is our essentials budget that we live on before adding in trips! If we can do it, so can you! The Budget Our goal budget is balanced with total income minus expenses equal to zero. Numbers in red are expenditures, while black is income. The green background indicates under budget. Red squares point out our overspending.  We did change up the budget a bit to reflect that the student loan is paid off...

Happy New Year! We missed last month, but we are back will the final update on our 2018 goals. Some have fallen short and some have surpassed expectations.  How did you do on your 2018 goals? Financial Goals Gain Employment (Race) ☑ Done - Race started working in February. Save 50% of our income ☑ We rocked this goal. It did bounce around quite a bit throughout the year, but we finished much higher than we planned with a total savings rate of 84% for the year! We focused the most on this goal to set us up financially to be better prepared for future years and to focus on our other goals as well.  Increase passive dividend income by 25% We didn't quite make this one. As of December 31, we increased our dividends by 23%. This wasn't quite where we wanted it to be, but still a substantial increase. The main culprit behind us missing this number was due to diverting investment savings contributions towards paying down the mortga...

Quick turn around from the September update to the October update, but we're getting back on track. Are we still staying within our thrifty budget?  For a quick reminder, we run our budget solely on my income of $2,400/month which gives us a gross income of $31,200. We do not include health insurance in our budget as ours is currently covered by our jobs, but if this was our household income we would also be taken care of by insurance subsidies. We do not include all discretionary spending such as traveling or major home renovations, but we do include all entertainment, grocery, dining out, and every day expenses. It is our essentials budget that we live on before adding in trips! If we can do it, so can you! The Budget Our goal budget is balanced with total income minus expenses equal to zero. Numbers in red are expenditures, while black is income. The green background indicates under budget. Red squares point out our overspending.  We ...

Happy November! We missed last month, but we are back will another update on our 2018 goals. Some are falling short and some have surpassed expectations.  How are your goals coming along? Financial Goals Gain Employment (Race) ☑ Done - Race started working in February. Save 50% of our income ☑ We are back on track with this goal. While April was a rough month and we were a bit low in June, we definitely made up for those months in July. We actually saved over 100% of our income (carry over from June). Both September and October were great savings months. This brings our annual total savings to 85% - much higher than the 50% we were aiming for. I am not posting both with and without mortgage anymore as the extra payments on the mortgage are increasing our net worth and should therefor count as savings. We are also planning on paying off the mortgage this year and will then start putting money back into our regular savings.   Increa...