Net Worth: End of May Update

Good morning to the west coast! I'm just back from what should be the most expensive component of my California trip -- a few days in San Francisco where I ate out pretty much every meal, went to several events requiring tickets, and did some shopping (little presents for my various hosts, and a hat and tshirt for myself.) All things considered it could've been worse than it turned out to be; the eating out was constant, but none of it was in sit-down restaurants -- a few dollars for a taco here, $10 for a sandwich there, $3 for coffee here.... It definitely added up, but put together it was still less than two or three sit-down meals.

Next year if I do this again, I will, my hand to God, have it all saved up for in advance!

Anyway, even though we still have a couple of days to go before the end of May, nothing should change between now and Saturday, so I'm going to go ahead and do a net worth update.

I put $2608 towards my remaining student loan in May, leaving it sitting, currently, at $2499.86. (It'll grow by about $12 over the course of the month.) Woo! I am on track to pay it off with my last big paycheck from my current job, so the end-of-June update ought to be pretty damn exciting.

I also paid $450.00 to my credit card (towards dealing with various moving/travel expenses.)

Now, as to spending....deep breath and in we go:

"Auto and Transport": $1528. This includes gas, car insurance, public transportation costs in San Francisco...and also the majority of the costs of my move.

"Food and dining": $402. This isn't as bad as I expected it to be given how much eating out I've done this month. On the other hand I've bought zero groceries and also eaten quite a bit at the expense of various parents and friends which is free for me, except the time I spend doing dishes!

Clothing and books: $79.44. A hat, a tshirt, a book. I also bought some e-books but they don't seem to have been actually charged to my card yet so I guess I'll count them next month instead.

Tickets: $177.50

Gifts: $34.23

Personal care: $197.05. This includes medical expenses (therapy; eye infection) and pharmacy stuff. And some waxing :)

Cash spending: $123 (including an ATM fee at the San Francisco airport, grrrrr)

Misc other: $274.13. Postage, moving supplies, utilities and phone bill (two months' worth actually because of an odd schedule). Oh, God, and also an embarrassing taxi ride in NY; I didn't leave myself enough time in the morning to get to the airport by less expensive shuttle bus and ended up having to take a cab. I don't even want to think about that one.

Totals:
 
Spending:
Money applied to debt: $3058.00
Money spent on everything else: $2815.35

Grand total of spending: $5873.35 -- or roughly $800 more than my paycheck+reimbursements. [The move is partially funded by my new employers and I should actually get another $350 from them eventually, which will help a little bit with paying down the credit card.]

  Debt
 -$4668, a change of +$2166 from the end of April

[Not included in the above, because I'm doing all this off budget, is the side hustling and Roth IRA shares I did this month. But for the record, my May side hustling income comes to $415, and that is partly reflected in the net worth total below, although it's a little complicated since some of that money has not yet arrived in an account that 'shows' on mint.]

Net worth total: 
-$954, a change of +$2389 from the end of April

Positive net worth is so close I can practically taste it! Should happen by the end of June unless something really drastic happens.

Being There: A Single Finances Post

So, I'm the middle of a trip to California that I sandwiched between the two parts of my move. I'm here mostly because my best friend is here, along with her husband, her dog, and her daughter -- my goddaughter, who is not quite 3 and a half.

The baby was born while I was in graduate school all the way across the country, and as far as I know, for the foreseeable future we'll live many many miles apart. Being 35 and not interested in signing up for solo parenting, I'll most likely never have children of my own; although she's not my child, she's more to me than just the random child of a random friend, in all sorts of ways.

Given the projected state of my finances (I'll make a low salary until the end, unless something changes radically in academia), I can't expect to do much for her in the way of financial help. (Although right now she'd be the beneficiary of half my tiny IRA if I died, with my brother down for the other half.)

But what I can do is to be there, as much as I can. Laundry, diaper changes, going to the beach with her, reading books, putting her to bed when her parents are at work, cooking, dishes, taking her to the park.... I've done all that and more in the last few years. And it's all free, except for my plane tickets. It's the kind of investment I can make -- so I do.

Waiting for Guffman

It's time for the monthly ritual of sitting around waiting for my paycheck to hit! This time's a little better because, while I normally get paid on the 25th, the 25th is on the weekend, so payroll goes out on the 23rd. It turns out this means they actually send direct deposits out on the 22nd. I split direct deposit this month, with 1/3 of my money going to one account and 2/3 to another. (Complicated, but it's because of a rewards thing.) And one account actually got paid already! But the money's apparently in limbo on its way to the other one.

Sooooo.... I made a student loan payment. $1447! God, that feels good. Only another $3553 to go (plus interest, blah blah.) Too bad the current amount sitting on my credit card is exactly the amount I'm putting towards student loans this month. There's something poetically hilarious about that.

I am a person who has had a retirement account for two months

This is the two month anniversary of my taking the *enormous* step of moving some money from savings (accessible) to savings (non-accessible, which means they won't get spent). As I wrote a few days later, this was something I hadn't felt so bad about not doing -- until all of a sudden I felt really, really bad about it.

I feel like a different person than I did at the start of the panic attack that impelled all of this change. I'm still plenty worried about my income (present and future) and I've taken only small steps towards reining in daily spending, but I have taken those steps and once my complicated multi-state move is over and I start my new job, I'm going to take more. I'm excited to see what happens next.

The week that was: expensive travel edition!

This week/weekend was very, very busy: I moved out of my apartment ($$$$$$$$$$$$) and returned to Very Large and Very Expensive Grad School City to walk across a couple of stages in fancy robes and shake various hands. It was a lot of fun, but it reminded me why I'm pretty glad to no longer live in VLaVEGSC, even though it is fun to visit. In four days I've packed in a museum visit (free!), spent hours on public transportation (not free!), and, uh, a large amount of money on food. (Though to be fair I didn't normally eat out three meals a day when I lived here.)

Blogging is going to continue to be pretty light this week as I'm still traveling, but here's the wince-inducing weekly update:

*First, the good news, to make myself feel better: I put together $250 and bought another round of Roth IRA shares! I'm up to $620 in Roth funds since late April, go me.

*Uh, now the bad news (everything else):

Moving expenses: $1225 (OW)

Public transportation: $30.50

Gas: $54.08

Food: $131 [not as bad as I thought; I guess my parents ended up paying for a lot of stuff this week. As usual, this doesn't include cash spent on coffee and the like, which would probably add another $20-ish]

Student loan payment: $108

Personal care: $128.75. This included a haircut, some waxing (I am in VLaVEGSC after all -- catching up on stuff I haven't done in nine months), some drugstore purchases, and expenses related to an eye infection I picked up yesterday. Who doesn't love wandering around looking for an optometrist who's open and taking drop-ins on Sunday morning? Thank the lord for Orthodox Jews; I found one who's closed Friday after sundown and all day Saturday, but opens Sunday morning. And he only charged me $30 for the visit, plus I paid another $16 for antibiotic eye drops. Fingers crossed that they work and I won't have to visit someone else in CA.

Weekly total: $1677.33. Eesh. Without the moving expenses, that's $452, which is better but not great. I do, blessedly, get paid at the end of this week, so I'm looking forward to a huge student loan payment and to making a small dent in the credit card debt as well.

ugh life is expensive

Part 1 of the move happened yesterday, so a big chunk of change (hundreds and hundreds and HUNDREDS of dollars) landed on my CC. Ouch. I knew it was coming and was able to budget for some of it, but not all. I'm too early in my journey to have had time to save up for it properly. It is what it is, but it's hard to swallow when I'm envisioning having to spend a lot of the rest of the year paying it down instead of redirecting that money to savings or whatever.

I may or may not get a windfall that would help -- trying to sublet my old apartment right now. If that works I'll get a month's rent "free" (it's budgeted, so if I don't have to pay it it just frees that money up to be redirected to the CC.) Keep your fingers crossed.

OK, enough of that, off to have tea with a friend and stop worrying for a few hours.

Weekend update

Things are liable to stay light around here for a week or two -- moving and traveling. But I've stopped long enough to look at "the week that was."

According to mint.com, over the last week I spent:

$103 on utilities (cell phone, electric)

$66 on food (restaurants, groceries)

$60 in medical (woo! This is because my insurance is paying for most of therapy, after all -- I was super worried it would be out of pocket, but instead it's just a co-pay)

$44 on moving supplies (tape, packing paper)

$17 on gas

For a total of $290. This is good -- I need some cheap weeks after all the expensive ones recently (and the expensive ones that are coming up as I go on my big west coast swing.)

I also did something exciting: I bought the first $250 of my side-hustling-Roth shares. On top of that, I'm only $20 away from being able to buy the second $250 worth! And I only started on April 22. Most of this has been from usertesting.com -- some from amazon and ebay.