Finally FINALLY FINALLY we are in the black for this month! What a difference having two incomes makes! I had half a month of income from my fellowship (1/6 of the total for the 3-month period since I started on January 20) and all of my December contract work income, which was my highest ever at $1,208 for the month. Kyle had his normal postdoc income.

just after getting on the Metro one day – it’s been cold here!

While our spending was higher than was typical for us when we were both living in Durham, we didn’t have any crazy high one-time expenses like we seemed to have every month of my funemployment. It feels so nice to have money to put into our short-term savings instead of having to pull money out!

February was our first full month living apart so we are finally able to get a good sense of what our new monthly expenses are. (Of course, I’m already halfway through my fellowship, so that new knowledge won’t apply for long!) Transportation is very, very expensive. In February, we spent about four times as much on gas and Metro fares as we did on gas in a typical month in Durham.

I am chalking up our high grocery spending last month to start-up costs for my food at my parents’ place since our grocery spending this month was much lower. It turns out that 6 lbs of ground beef lasts a pretty long time when you’re the only person eating it!

I have a confession to make, though. I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’m posting quite infrequently here, and that is because I feel I am so short on free time now. Another area that is getting short shrift is our financial bookkeeping. We’re still on time with our bills and using Mint so the basics are taken care of, mostly by Kyle. But I’ve gotten behind/confused with the transfers I wanted to make between our checking account and our General savings account, like moving my lump sum paycheck into savings and paying us monthly. Basically, at this point we are not zeroing out our checking account and in fact are keeping a buffer of a few thousand dollars in there. So while I am still calculating how much money we had “left over” this month, instead of going into saving it’s going to stay in checking. That’s not wrong or anything, but it is a change in our personal practices that I’m trying to get used to.

But to end this section on a positive note, our investment balances topped $100,000 for the first time this month! Thanks, federal student loans!

Money Puddle

Our money puddle represents our gross income from January, less taxes, our tithe, and savings into our Roth IRAs. This is the source of all of our spending money for the month (before dipping into savings).

February 2015 Money Puddle: $2,915.53

Sources:

• Kyle’s postdoc paycheck
• Emily’s contract work paycheck
• Emily’s fellowship paycheck

Spending

Housing and Utilities

• rent $910: This is our rent for our Durham townhouse, which Kyle is currently living in alone. My parents are not charging me rent or utilities to live with them during my fellowship.
• electricity $134.09: Yikes! Winter finally set in, I guess.
• internet $34.99
• cell phones $89.41: I’m still with Republic Wireless and very happy with it. Kyle paid his final bill with Verizon this month but has switched to Cricket Wireless. We paid a bill for them at the end of January and the next one wasn’t due until the beginning of March. Switching between post-paid and pre-paid has resulted in a couple months of higher expenses for his cell, but it will work out to be much lower cost starting in March.
• water $0: We paid two water bills in January so none in February.

Transportation

This category really kills right now when I’m living in the DC area between my daily Metro commuting and three trips to Durham.

• gas $143.51
• Metro $250
• car insurance $131.28

Food

Phew, reasonable grocery spending, though likely a bit below average as we were eating down January’s stock. Very high eating out spending for us, but I think we’re going to accept this for a while until I’m back in Durham.

• groceries $266.17: We used to call Costco the hundred-dollar store, but we’ve definitely broken that habit as we’re each shopping for only one. We made only three Costco trips this month, with the lowest-spending on at only $8.58!
• eating out $174.82: Surprisingly, most of our eating out spending has been during our weekends together. We went out to one nice dinner together and shared three other restaurant meals together (two were take-out). I ate out with other people three times and Kyle did once plus he walked with a friend to the Krispy Kreme that recently opened near us for a donut on one of his snow days.

Shopping and Personal Care

• clothes $27: I bought some tights thinking it would eventually start to warm up, but no luck so far.
• book $17.90: I bought a study for the church small group I’m attending in northern Virginia.
• electronics $43.04: Kyle bought accessories for his Raspberry Pi.

Miscellaneous

• student loan payment $98.46
• dry cleaning $6.97
• half-month gym membership for Kyle $15
• drug store purchase $5.61

Reimbursed from Charitable Giving

• missionary support $50: This went to our second missionary.

Assessment

Money Puddle: $2,915.53

Total Spending: $2,348.25

Difference: $567.28

We have three ways of assessing how successful we were in terms of living within our means this month.

1: Did we spend within our money puddle+$176?

Simple question – did we have money left in our checking account at the end of the month or did we need to transfer money in? (This is after accounting for the smoothed retirement contributions from my last two paychecks, which come out of savings.)

Yes! Finally this question was simple to answer. We lived within our means this month.

2: Was our deficit, if any, less than the amount we saved to our Roth IRAs?

No deficit!!!!

3: Did our net worth increase?

I think I’m going to take a pause on answering this question for the duration of my fellowship since I was only paid once at the beginning. But it all looks good, really.

I would be very happy to have months like this one in terms of its bottom line many times in the future. 🙂 In the weeds, though, there is a lot of room for improvement.

Have you gone through a period in which you couldn’t keep up the bookkeeping you had done in the past? How much can your grocery spending vary month-to-month? How would you try to mitigate high transportation costs?