Nov 22

Nov 22 April Budget Review

Justin Taylor

Monthly Review: April 2020 - 88% Savings Rate

Lets quickly hit the big events from April:

Van is structurally complete!
Quarantined
Quarantined
Yep….Just Quarantined

Welp I saw $103k drop from my portfolio last month and the world is on fire. Nowhere to go but up from here!

Luckily I have the van project to stay sane. I purchased the van in February before Covid or Coronavirus were part of our dictionary and I’m so glad I did. This month we literally did nothing except cook food, work from home, and finish the structural parts of the van.

Now it’s time to break down the details.

After-Tax Income: $9,602

Is what it is.

Expenses: $1,156.87

I’m not surprised we were well below average this month. There was literally nothing to do.

I did a fair amount of sourcing from Facebook/Craigslist for free items to finish out the van build which kept me to $250 total for the conversion before electronics. That help me meet my goal of making more money selling plasma than the conversion cost me.

I can’t remember a month ever with zero expense for travel, but here we are in Corona world.

Going Out: $1.51

Uber Eats: $1.51

I know that probably seems fake but I get $15 Uber credit every month from my Amex Platinum credit card which can be used for Uber eats. So the order was $16.51 and my expense was $1.51

Free Food

Even though I didn’t have airport lounges or office snacks to provide some free food, I did have some folks in the neighborhood looking to offload groceries before they moved.

Groceries: $88.87

Almost all restaurants in Boston were shut down for April. You could get some delivery but that takes away most of the reason we ever eat out. Obviously our dining out expense was super low so we saw our grocery budget increase a bit.

We also took turns surprising each other with date nights. One night Leslie planned an Italian dinner where she even took my order in costume as an Italian chef. One of my favorite meals were some nachos I made for a fake concert night.

We got dressed up like we were going to a country concert and streamed some live performances from some of our favorite artists. Sometimes keeping your sanity during a pandemic requires some creativity.

Full grocery cost breakdown:

Star Market $10.19
Stop n Shop $12.06
Dollar Tree $6
Dollar Tree $3.50
Aldi $15
Target $6.28
Walmart $35.85

Bills: $914.82

Standard Bills

Rent - $837.50
Internet - $18
Spotify - $10
etc

Travel: $0.00

The only travel we did was drive the van out one night to a remote area and camp in it. It was really pretty driving around New Hampshire but with the pandemic, we just stuck to the car and enjoyed nature.