Welcome to the Month 8 FIRE Report!
If you just wandered in from who knows where, this report tracks my monthly efforts towards achieving FIRE – Financial Independence, Retire Early.
So far, I’ve been keeping it simple. Savings, extra income, debt repayment, and expenses. Sometime soon, I hope to add charts and graphs and other fancy analytics measuring my progress to FIRE on some kind of nifty timeline. For now, you get what you get. Which is what I can pull together in the span of my lunch break.
Stats for Month 8
Saved: $325. Not great….but par for the course during our debt repayment extravaganza.
Extra Income from Side Hustles: $35. Eyeroll. When will I get my act together? That’s still to be determined.
Debt Repayment: $3172. A pretty decent month. June is pretty tight because I decided to pay my entire home insurance policy up front to get cash back on my credit card (the only way), so this debt repayment will go down next month.
Expenses for May
| Expense | $ Amount | Relevant Notes of Notey-ness |
| Mortgage & Property Tax | 1368 | |
| Interest & Bank Fees | 44 | |
| Child Care | 360 | |
| Parking | 115 | |
| Auto Insurance | 95 | |
| Electric | 256 | |
| TV, Home Phone, Internet | 158 | |
| Life Insurance | 156 | |
| Netflix | 14 | |
| Mobile Phones | 95 | |
| Home Insurance | 184 | Will go down in June when i pay for the full year up front! |
| Groceries & Home Supplies | 1091 | Ouchie. I counted groceries purchased on vacation which were slightly indulgent. |
| Fuel | 239 | Low due to vacation gas going into the vacation category. |
| Medical, Eye care, Dental | 26 | |
| Auto repair/maintenance/registration | 165 | Good month. includes $98 registration renewal. |
| Vacation | 1084 | Not bad. Went slightly over budget for the trip. |
| Home Improvement, Maintenance | 59 | Propane for the BBQ, and a new hose. Gotta review those summertime expected expenses once again in advance for next year! |
| Education | 5 | Books for M. |
| Health & Fitness, Sports | 104 | Bicycle repair, Healthy eating program dues. |
| Gifts & Holiday Expenses | 35 | Flowers for my Mom <3 |
| Clothing | 10 | Socks. I was desperate! |
| Charitable Donations | 10 | |
| Memberships, subscriptions | 144 | Roadside Assistance. I plan to track down less expensive options for this! |
| UNKNOWN EXPENSE | 181 | I think some of this is groceries. Need to keep better track of Hubs spending. If only I could get him to save his receipts OR enter transactions. Sigh. |
| Fun Money! (Includes allowances) | 604 | A bit high; a chunk of this is my allowance which went into my savings for future investing. |
| Total Expenses | 6602.66 |
Overall, I’m really happy with the month, considering we spent over 1k on vacation. June won’t be under the 6k goal due to the large home insurance payment, but this will be offset by future months with no home insurance payment, so I’m not going to freak out about it.
Priorities for June
- KEEP ATTACKING EXPENSES! Don’t get lazy about meal planning and prepping, because that can significantly lower costs! Try to stick to the budget as much as possible! Follow up on those minor money-saving wins that will save me month over month.
- Get rid of excess stuff. Sell items where possible.
- Continue to discuss with Hubs to keep FIRE top of mind.
- Focus on educating myself further on the best ways to achieve this goal. Read, absorb, take notes, and take action!
Have a great month y’all!
I will be interested to see how much your grocery bill will go down now that you have the CSA box.
Oooh good question. I will try to track this closely! The best would be to track produce costs specifically against the CSA cost. Too bad I didn’t do this last year.