July Budget Review
Monthly Review: July 2020 - 91% Savings Rate
Lets quickly hit the big events from July:
Decided to move to 375 sq. ft apartment in Austin
Went on a selling spree
Colorado-Texas-Mississippi-NY-Boston
Cape Cod Beach Trip
New (to me) furniture for future place
A lot happened this month. We finished up the last two weeks of a month in the Van. But the biggest thing by far that happened was a decision we made on that road trip.
We’re Moving Into a 375 sq/ft Austin Apt!
We decided to ask our bosses for the ability to go full time remote forever and relocate to Austin, TX. This was in no way planned before we headed out. The thought never even crossed our minds.
Luckily our bosses were both cool with the idea and now the clock started. Our lease was fully complete, so the sooner we could move, the more money we could save.
We cut our trip a couple days short and headed to Boston to prep for the move. We would arrive back in Boston on July 14th.
The goal: Move out of our apartment by August 30th.
Now time to break down the details of this life-changing month
After-Tax Income: $10,828.66
This month was a little extra because I received some of my variable compensation for meeting some objectives.
Expenses: $935.98
The pandemic takes and gives. It impacted this months expenses largely based on what we weren’t able to do. Since so many trips had to be cancelled, we ended up with a lot of refunds.
$661 I wish I had spent
The first of these refunds was for Chris Stapleton tickets at Wrigley Field. Live music is one of my big splurges and to see such a performer at such an iconic venue was devastating to miss. I bought mine and Leslie’s premium tickets ($289) but it was not to be.
The second was for a multi-week trip to Portugal, Amsterdam, and more. We had booked flights ($372) that were to Amsterdam but included a 5-day layover in Porto, Portugal. It was our last shot at taking advantage of Boston’s close proximity to Europe but it just wasn’t our year.
Luckily it did push us to really enjoy more local activities around Boston like the beaches on Cape Cod.
Now on to the budgetary details…
Going Out: $1.07
McDonalds: $1.07
Another month where people may read this and think I’m either lying or crazy. Consider though that we’re moving out of our house and needed to really burn through groceries. Next month we’ll get out and hit some iconic places like the North End for Italian food.
Groceries: $37.00
As I mentioned in the spot before, we needed to focus on burning through all the food we already had in the house so this month was especially low.
The $37 as a reminder is for myself only.
Full grocery cost breakdown:
Star Market $2.97
Stop n Shop $4.30
Stop n Shop $29.73
Bills: $995.22
Standard Bills + Website Hosting
Rent - $837.50
Internet - $27
Spotify - $10
Car Insurance - $49.32
Website Hosting - $71.40
Travel: $-645.10
At times my budget for travel may seem extremely low for the amount of traveling I actually do, but this is going to be hard to beat.
As I mentioned in the beginning I had some expensive Chris Stapleton tickets refunded ($289) and some flights to Porto / Amsterdam ($372) for a total of -$661. Also some of the costs related to traveling I put in my gas category since we did drive from Texas->Mississippi->NYC->Boston.
The travel sections costs include:
Chris Stapleton: -$289
Amsterdam: -$372
Tolls: $10.00
Lyft: $5.91
Miscellaneous: $433.04
I may have one of the weirdest expenses ever this month.
I bought a phone booth
Why in the world would I buy a phone booth you might ask? Well I fell in love with these little work pods we had in our office. These pods are roughly the same size as a phone booth.
The pods are popular in open concept working environments. They allow you to have a call without everyone having to hear you talking or give you a little break from your coworkers.
The problem, those pods cost $4,000! That is not Sherpa approved. So instead I of course found an old metal phone booth located in West Virginia that will be on our route down to Texas from Boston.
Spoiler alert… It turned out amazing but you’ll have to wait until the August / September updates to see the finished product.
The rest of the expenses were:
Home Depot: $14.84
Home Goods: $8.50
Autozone: $9.70
Everything Must Go!
As part of our move we had to sell or get rid of almost everything. The main reason was that we were significantly downsizing. The second reason was that we didn’t just need to reduce, but also replace.
When you’re moving to 375 Sq Ft, every thing you put in it requires some thought and that meant new bed frame, couch, etc and a lot of selling!
The items on the list with an asterisk are things I sold and only show half the value for me because the other half went to Leslie. Similarly, everything in the buy section is half the actual price because we split the cost.
The great thing are items like The couch set, outdoor glider, planter, and desks which got for free!
I’ll end up being able to offset moving truck costs next month with the extra money I pocketed by selling off things I really didn’t need anyway.
Gas: $114.75
Ton of extra miles put on Vanna White but not too shabby.
Big Picture: Net Worth Increase $25,199 to $496,032
I can’t control how my shares perform, all I can do is keep buying more of them.
This month I saved $9,892.68 while the market brought in $15,307.28 for a total net-worth increase of $25,199.96.