Success!! Another stellar month, but I see storm clouds on the horizon. This month was a 5 pay day month, meaning at my job I got paid 5 times, rather than the typical 4. The problem is that I should have blown by my goal of the low 70% savings rate for after tax income. However, I only came in at 70%.
While this is still phenomenal I should have been closer to 75%. What's the big deal, it's only 5%? 5% on a monthly basis can mean the difference of 3 years for retiring early.
I've acquired some new expenses that I won't be able to get rid of and are also larger than expected. One being my Hoa fee which I now have to pay on a quarterly basis. I paid up through last year at the closing, so I was incurring it for the past 3 months.
I may have to go on the minimum wage diet from now on in order to make my numbers. That and my cell phone bill are going to need some serious adjusting.
Here's how the numbers turned out...
Income:
Salary - 67%
Real Estate - 33%
(No dividends from investments were received)
Expenses:
General - 0.57%
Tv/Internet - 4.01%
Medical - 2.3%
Pet - 4.68
Charity - 3.11%
Transportation - 1.3%
Insurance - 4.85
Home - 6.54%
Mortgage - 33.63% (FUCK! MY MORTGAGE NEEDS TO GO AWAY!)
Gas - 8.02 (way too high)
Personal - 3.68%
Eating out - 7.39% (Jesus!)
Phone - 7.42%
Utilities - 4.05%
Food - 8.13%
Entertainment - 0.32%
A few quick observations. My freaking mortgage disgusts me. To show what a big burden this is. I could retire decades early if just that wasn't in my life. Another thing is food costs. While eating from the grocery store was cheap I spent a ton on eating out. Which is mind blowing because for almost an entire week I didn't eat out since I was on the minimum wage diet. I spent almost as much eating out as I did on all of the other food from the grocery story. This just illustrates how freaking espensive it is to eat at restaurants! And since all of you know I don't drink it's not like this number includes alcohol or appetizers.
The one good thing about February is that it's a short month, so hopefully I can keep my expenses low enough to meet my goal. That or I need to find a way to make more money.