November Budget Review
Monthly Review: November 2021 - 70% Savings Rate
Let’s quickly hit the notable moments from November:
Dad comes to Austin for 10 days
Thanksgiving in the Hill Country
CHVRCHES Concert
Garrison Bros Distillery Tour
Cancer Benefit Event
25 person Friendsgiving (including FI friends)
House Improvements
Veteran’s Day Freebies
****As always, every category depicts what I spent, what I made, and how my net worth changed. Just me, not our household****
The absolute highlight of my month was having my dad come down to Austin to visit. I’ve lived all over the country and 99% of my family live right where I grew up. I’m always encouraging them to come visit and am always so happy when they do.
As part of his journey down, we did some sightseeing and a few days out in the Texas hill country to do a big family Thanksgiving with Leslie’s family.
We also had a big Friendsgiving at the new house which included 5 folks that I met exclusively thanks to the financial independence community.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a normal month without also tossing in some live music, good food, and a project or two.
Want to see how this month shakes out? Well, keep scrolling for the full breakdown.
After-Tax Income: $14,098
This month’s income was normal pay plus a nice little chunk of my Restricted Stock Units vesting. These are shares of your companies stock that are given to you but don’t become tradeable or truly yours until you’ve held them a certain amount of time.
Generally, these shares are slowly handed over to you quarterly. If you have multiple allotments, then you could be receiving them every month if those cycles aren’t lined up.
On to the expenses
Expenses: $4,277
Not gonna lie, even though my savings rate is still golden, seeing numbers this high gives me some anxiety.
The major reason for the giant increase is certainly the house. Good news? I strongly believe that once we get it set-up as an Air BnB that we can spend large swaths traveling the country/world and have it pay for itself.
Even more good news? I’m also very confident that if we realize it just isn’t for us and we want to break ties, we can just sell it.
Even with this increase in spending, I’m still financially independent, I’m just not as way out in front as I used to be. So yea, I’m a little nervous, but I also must remind myself that I am not locked into being a homeowner for life.
Let’s break down the expenses in detail.
Going Out: $84.82
There was very little going out that is going to show up on my budget this month for a few reasons.
My colleagues grouped up in Austin to plan out changes for the upcoming year. That meant meals on the company card.
My dad was in town and covered a few meals for us. We hooked him up with a place to stay and tickets to the activities we did so it wasn’t completely a one-way street.
The dinner below (delicious but might look odd) was for Leslie's sisters birthday which her mom picked up the tab for.
I always try to be as transparent about that stuff as possible and I hope y’all can appreciate that.
I did pick up some meals from one of my favorite food-waste-saving apps called Too Good to Go and a batch of Kolaches to feed the Thanksgiving crew for breakfast one day.
The total break-down for eating out this month was:
too good to go: $11.98
too good to go: $11.98
Specs for party: $11.34
Lustre Pearl: $10.36
Subway: $3.41
Kolaches: $28.22
Groceries: $97.93
This month had some negatives and positives as far as impacts to the old grocery budget.
Starting off with the things that kept it low was all the Veteran’s day freebies out there. My mode is generally to hit up places that do to-go orders.
Then I go to my random cash jar (I never use cash) and use that for tips.
So what to do with all this bounty?
Make pizzas of course!
Above you can see some pizzas I made including a yellow curry boneless wing on the right and a bbq brisket pizza in the middle.
I did a terrible job of taking pictures from Friendsgiving. It was the most random assortment of my friends which is exactly what I love about this time of year. Just bringing folks together.
I made some bomb sliders, an awesome cornbread casserole, some sweet potatoes crustininis and even some air-fried turkey skin (sorry to my vegan friend).
While I didn’t capture my sous vide turkey sliders, I did grab a photo of my grilled turkey legs from some of the left over turkey that I didn’t cook for the crew.
Every location we’ve lived in has called for adjustments to the way I like to cook and at the new house, I’m really digging my ninja foodi grill with the temperature probe. It cooks things like this turkey leg just as good as a normal grill and with much easier precision.
The home cooking didn’t stop there. Internet, I give you my mom’s sweet potatoes casserole.
Some recipes have a marshmallow top, some have a pecan/brown sugar crust….the recipe has both. Hiding under that marshmallow top is a hefty amount of roasted pecans, butter, brown sugar and of course, sweet potatoes.
Maybe it’s a side, maybe it’s a dessert…all I know, it’s delicious.
Full grocery cost breakdown:
Randalls: $5.00
Walmart: $13.16
Walmart: $4.35
HEB: $22.23
HEB: $36.47
HEB: $11.18
HEB: $5.55
Bills: $1,866.92
Ok, now we’re settling into what I see as our long term bills. Well long term until I have my truck payment pushing it up and then hopefully some Air BnB income to offset the mortgage and bring it back down.
The full set of bills were:
Mortgage - $1,473.29
Internet - $10
Spotify - $10
Utilities: $81.63
Travel & Entertainment: $330.43
Most of the travel and entertainment was free this month. Hanging out with some work friends doing things like top golf and going out, being with friends and family, and jumping in on concerts when a ticket from a friend pops up last minute.
I’ll go over the expenses incurred this month at the bottom, but first let’s step through the more memorable moments.
Thanksgiving in Rural Texas
Almost every year, Leslie’s family convenes in a very (VERY) rural part of Texas where her aunts own some deer hunting land. It’s normally 20+ people across two properties.
With my dad visiting we ended up in a little AirBnb 30 minutes away instead of our normal camper in the yard arrangement.
There’s a ton of eating, football watching, and just catching up. This year, we also did some cacti foraging including this “horse crippler” cactus in the pic below.
It’s always a welcome escape to get away from the city and work and sort of reset towards the end of the year.
Garrison Bros Bourbon Distillery
I’ve progressively gotten more passionate about collecting and comparing bourbon this year and it just so happens we have a great distillery within a reasonable drive of the house.
I snagged some distillery tour tickets for my dad and I which made for a nice day away from work.
I’ve been to a ton of different brewery and distillery tours and I highly recommend this one. Honestly one of the better ones I’ve been to and they also make fantastic bourbon.
This is their dip room where they dip the necks of the bottles into the wax with different colors for different variants.
The tour guide was top notch so head out to Hye, Texas and indulge.
Live Music & Good Causes
While most of the month was spent related to Thanksgiving type events, there were some other fun events sprinkled in.
One of my friends in Austin always hits me up when he finds himself holding an extra concert ticket. I’m not always a regular listener to the band but I always try to say yes because live music is almost always enjoyable regardless of genre.
The concert this month was CHVRCHES and they put on an incredible show.
The next show I caught was much less of a production but still a memorable night. I’ve mentioned before that we have seven locations within walking distance to catch live music.
Most of them are larger somewhat new venues but there is one absolute hole in the wall. It’s called Sam’s Town Point. If you’re ever in Austin and looking for some old school Austin vibes, this is your spot.
The last event had music but it wasn’t the main attraction. This was a big event called Fork Cancer. It featured tons of high-end local restaurants providing unlimited samples.
There were also unlimited samples of local liquors and beer. Tickets were $60 and it all went towards the American Cancer Society.
I found out about this event thanks to Leslie finding a free workout class hosted at a local retailer who was helping sponsor the event. It’s just a great reminder to get out to community events because it can domino into meeting new people and more events.
The full list of expenses for travel and entertainment were:
Austin Parking: $10.00
Cancer Benefit: $65.00
Mavericks Concert: $56.38
Luke Combs Concert: $93.26
Garrison Bros Tour: $21.20
Philadelphia Flight: $84.58
Miscellaneous: $2,187.37
With the new house comes lots of room and reason to do projects.
The first one up was building some shelves for the bottom of my closet just to make it a bit more efficient.
Don’t judge me for the height being higher on the middle bottom shelves. It was actually on purpose to make room for my cowboy boots.
Staying on the storage front, I wanted to build in some hefty built in storage to this part of the garage that isn’t as useful because it’s behind the gap for the garage tracks.
These shelves are rock solid, custom sized to my needs and cheaper than going to just but some rack from home depot, plus they’re larger.
Ok, so maybe I went a little storage crazy this month. I found someone giving away this wall cabinet for free. I took it and routed some power strips inside to give me a little battery charging station/power tool storage area.
Outside of only storage, I also hung up some string lights that a friend gave me once they realized they weren’t going to work for their space.
Some other random things brought on expenses such as covers for our outdoor furniture, adjustable dumbells for our at-home gym, upgrading some power tools, and a sweet new fire pit that we can use on our deck.
It was obviously an overloaded month of random expenses but these things ebb and flow. I’m confident that this is just natural for when you are first moving into a house and once we have things setup how we want, things will calm down.
Here’s the complete list of random purchases this month:
Home Depot: $43.53
Lowes: $51.85
Leslie: $140
Ceramic Coating: $816.75
Madison Pictures: $23.10
Home Depot: $38.70
Home Depot: $31.02
Lowes: $45.68
Power Tools: $308
Solo Stove: $200
Smart Plug: $17.31
Seat Covers: $55.17
Neighbor Gift: $15.23
Shane Gift: $100
Dumbells: $146.13
Speaker: $58.44
Target: $28.10
Blankets: $20.81
Gas: $49.76
We were fairly local except for the drive out for Thanksgiving.
Big Picture: Net Worth Increased $34,018 to $1,079,909
Another month, another solid jump. I won’t lie, I was really hoping for another good month to give me a little breathing room across that double comma milestone.
I know it’s part of it but I didn’t want to get there and then regress behind it the first month so I was thankful to see a nice return from the market.
Even with the big-spending month, I have to give myself credit that I still saved $9,820 and the market was kind enough to through in $24,198 for a solid increase of $34,018.
Sometimes I get a bit behind with these updates but look forward to getting the next one out for you all soon!