Dan’s May 2017 Spending Report
This time, I am trying a slightly different format for this report since the graphics from my 2010 version of Quicken were not exactly… HD. I have since figured out how to export to Excel for some different graphical representation. (Way easier than I thought!) Not too many kinks with converting it other than it breaking out subcategories a bit incorrectly, but I think I have them fixed.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts – I’ve been crushing the loan payment. I had a $10,000 CD expire and I used most of it towards the auto loan. I won’t re-explain why I’m doing that in this post, but the continued positive results were detailed here. In short: with the market at all time highs, I figured “why buy high when I can instead make a huge dent in my debt while improving my credit score along the way?” I understand there is an opportunity cost, but one I am willing to take on this loan.
I also paid a bit extra (~$330 more than my normal) into the ROTH IRAs this month because I wanted to enter into a new fund, the Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF ($VYM). I made sure my automatic deposits into my ROTH IRA were adjusted to continue to max out the annual rate of $5,500 each for my wife and me, so in future months this year, you’ll see my IRA Contributions get a bit lower. This is on top of the ~$622 each that I put into ROTH TSP and traditional TSP (similar to civilian 401K plans) from an automatic withdrawal from the paychecks.
Other than that, I thought we did pretty well. We took a day trip to a nearby city which we dined out for 2 meals (well, 6 when you consider there are 3 of us), went to a minor league baseball game, and used a free hotel night I had collected. My wife had to buy several gifts this month, but received several nice ones as well at an “end of the school year” Secret Santa type thing she did with the other instructors. We also bought gifts for some graduation parties we went to for our neighbors. Outside of dining, and gifts (which is abnormally high and will go back down, I’m certain) – I’m not sure where to cut. That partially concerns me, but I feel confident in my long winded method of “pay myself first, pay my debts, don’t worry about spending, and have nothing left over – save it or spend it – don’t let it sit in checking” that I’ve been informally using for 7 years.
In total, we spent a total of $13,855.57 this month (not including my automatic withdrawals for ROTH TSP and regular TSP); we took in $6158.78 in net salary. We had some small income (less than $20) from various savings, checking, certificate of deposit accounts.
