This month I’m crunching expenses a couple of days early.
I’ve got a full tank of gas, plenty of groceries at home, and I’m stuck at work all week in meetings with free lunches, which leaves me with virtually no doubt that I won’t be spending money until the weekend hits.
So let’s take a look at how we did for July.
| Category | Total | Notes |
| Mortgage | 793 | |
| Taxes | 320 | |
| Groceries | 198 | We bought some luxury-ish items this month, mostly seafood. |
| Restaurants | 124 | 12 meals total:bought $5 lunch out 6 workdays. Plus three meals out with friends, three with wife at about $15 per. |
| Utilities | 363 | Electricity, Oil bill, quarterly town water bill, yearly oil service contract |
| Cable | 75 | Phone, ISP, Cable |
| Cell | 17 | Ting |
| Medical | 0 | |
| Pharmacy | 3 | Exciting: emergency toothbrush and floss purchase |
| Clothes | 0 | |
| Café/Coffee Out | 22 | |
| Entertainment | 76 |
|
| Gas | 36 | |
| Other Auto | 52 | oil change |
| Vitamin A(lcohol) | 0 | |
| Gifts | 30 | The wife and I split the $60 cost on Super Mario 3D world for a nephew. Yeah, totally anti-frugal. It was his birthday and he specifically asked for it. |
| Total | 2109 |
I came in at just about my average monthly spend. I don’t see any serious issues with the rate — the increased grocery and restaurant bill is a normal part of enjoying summer and the warm weather. We associate the season with seafood, and I’ll make scallops and lobster with homemade french fries. And yeah, we went out a couple of nights. I’m confident that dining out expenses will go down next month.
Oil bill finally came due and that added some cost as well.
Our electricity bill nudged up a bit (20% increase) due to some use of A/C. We do try to avoid it unless it’s very humid and uncomfortable in the house.
As always, PITI eats up the lion’s share of our monthly spending. Numbers will look a lot better with a paid-off, and cheaper, residence.
Yearly Total
| January | 2106 |
| February | 2013 |
| March | 2305 |
| April | 2043 |
| May | 1876 |
| June | 3036 |
| July | 2109 |
| Total | 15588 |
Net Worth Update
| Taxable Mutual Funds | 279K |
| Taxable Cash (CDs) | 40K |
| Retirement 401(k) | 302K |
| Retirement Roth | 97K |
| Home Equity | 125K |
| Total | 840K |
I took 40K out of my taxable accounts and tossed it into a CD in preparation for leaving my job — my strategy is to hold a couple of years of cash in retirement.
Sticky notes on expense tracking
- The expenses listed represent half of our total household expenses. I’m 50% of a DINK couple. The same is true for net worth. I only list my personal stash — my wife has her own and I’m not tracking it on this blog. Yeah, we’re completely spoiled.
- You’ll notice that there is no mention of car insurance here. I pay my premium annually in June. There’s a 10% discount for paying 12 months in advance, which is a pretty good return on investment.
- Similarly, there’s also no mention of home insurance. We pay the yearly premium annually in full every March.
- I’d love to cut cable but my wife really doesn’t want to. We have a $150/mo cable/phone/isp package, so my share is $75. It’s something I’ve agreed to live with because she gets a lot of value out of it and she’s pretty good overall.
- There are menus at the top of the blog (Finances->2014->Month) if you are interested in additional reports.
- I’ve also logged an account of my financial history
Living a FI 
By the looks of it you don’t need to cut cable. Well done, I might add!
Hi DD, thanks for stopping by. My current take is that it tough to save a whole lot of money cutting cable anyways, since most service providers include it in a bundle deal along with ISP and phone. (We need a landline for work-related reasons so going with internet only service isn’t an option for us.) The ‘cable’ part of the bill probably amounts to $30 a month — a bit of money, sure, but not enough to make it worth the resulting relationship friction. I’ll remove that sticky note in future updates, since it’s no longer really accurate.