Dan’s April 2017 Spending Report
This is my first time giving you all my spending.
Sure, it’s weird discussing money, but since I work in the public sector, my pay is publicly available for all of you to see already. I’m open for critiques anyway, so for all the financial bloggers out there, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Of note, I am not trying to do early retirement, and I by and large feel like I have mostly achieved financial freedom outside of a very manageable mortgage and car loan. While I have worries of job security in the future, I am not overly concerned about my ability to find a job if I leave the public sector.
Numbers to know:
Taxable Income: $6,317.10 (mine) + $391.25 (my wife’s part time income)
Non Taxable Income: $1,825.63
Automatic Savings Deductions: $622.28 to Traditional TSP (comparable to a private sector 401K and reduces my current taxable income) and $622.28 to ROTH TSP (similar to a Roth IRA in terms of benefits – future earnings are not taxed, but this $622.28 was taxed going into the tax shelter).
Automatic Spending: $5.00 to my college class’ gifting program to our alma mater; $29.00 for life insurance that expires when my public service ends; $5.00 for life insurance on my family that expires when my public service ends and $28.87 for a dental insurance supplement.
Taxes/Medicare/Social Security: $1,049.02
Total Take Home Pay: $5,771.28
Overall April 2017 Spending
Now, onto the meat and potatoes of this report – my spending. I track all of my spending from my and my wife’s take home pay down to the penny using Quicken. (In fact, I use Quicken 2010 Deluxe. It’s worked for me since I graduated college in 2010 and I haven’t ever had to update it).
Couple of notes here on Quicken: In this version, it doesn’t show my mortgage payment (which is currently $1,118 per month including home insurance, escrow, taxes, etc.) as a total spend of $1,118. Instead, it shows the estimated interest portion as spending since the equity I am paying off is just a transfer of net wealth from cash to real estate. So, the green “Interest Exp” is my estimated interest payment (I also didn’t break out all the different taxes, so it includes that. Simply put, it represents the amount of money from my mortgage payment I am not putting towards equity). The household expenditure is higher than normal because I had to buy new blinds for a large window in my house and I decided to purchase a cooking smoker that I’ve been saving for. Another outlier: my Dining this month. I was on a 5 day business trip where I received per diem and was required to eat out for most meals. All told, that accounted for $144 in my dining out, so the dining out that I enjoyed for pleasure was a total of $166, which, still isn’t ideal, but dining is one of our guilty pleasures. Final outlier: travel at $477ish – we are attending two weddings this summer – one of which we are turning into a vacation. There’s a portion of that cost reflected here. That’s certainly not a normal monthly spending.
What you should note is that we pay ourselves first. In addition to over $1240 per month going into a version of TSP, I max out my wife’s and my ROTH IRA. I also currently can only afford to put $50 per month into my daughter’s 529 plan, which is noted in the “other” category. I reduced both this and my non-tax sheltered spending in order to pay of the car as quickly as possible. You can read all sorts of information regarding the pros and cons on the 529, and we can probably discuss that at a later date here, but for now, I figure I should be contributing at least something to it. The auto payment is also high – we bought a new car and financed roughly $17,000 of it. We are way ahead of the car payments because of such an aggressive payment plan. Every extra cent (after my tax-sheltered saving) is going towards that car. Since January 12th,which is when I started making payments, we have taken the loan on the car from $17,000 to currently $11,295.70. An economist describing a “rational spender” would suggest to just pay it off on timeline since I could get a better return in the market with a loan interest rate under 3%, but I want it paid off as quickly as possible in case I change my job in the next 3 years so that the only debt I’ll have at that point will be my mortgage on a house I expect to appreciate in value.
“Other” Category Spending Breakdown from the Previous Chart
I am happy to hear where you all think I could adjust! I’ll respond to all comments – I may not be seeing something, and I’m happy to answer questions!
