Evolving Personal Finance » month in review
January 2016 Budget Report
We made a few adjustments to our budget this month and are gearing up for more changes this spring. First, we are going to budget off of Kyle’s salary alone instead of his salary plus my contractor income as we were last fall. This month, in addition to Kyle’s salary I did have contractor income and I paid myself part of my 2015 business earnings. (I’m going to wait until we finish our taxes and have … Read entire article »
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December 2015 Budget Report
We took an extra long Christmas break this year because we skipped out on traveling for Thanksgiving. Kyle used up all but one of his vacation days! We spent several days up through Christmas Eve with Kyle’s family in California, took a Christmas morning red-eye, then spent Christmas and several days following with my family in Virginia, and returned to Seattle for New Years Eve. The month was fairly normal spending-wise except for the 11 … Read entire article »
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November 2015 Budget Report
Good things about this month: I had two speaking gigs and finalized one last booking for 2015 college basketball has started we celebrated Thanksgiving twice with local friends we saw a friend from Durham while he was in town for a conference there have been some sunny days We did a pretty good job with our spending, too, even with Thanksgiving! We booked our Christmas travel and are really looking forward to that trip. Sources of Income Our budget is based on two … Read entire article »
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October 2015 Budget Report
October was our third full month living in Seattle, so our expenses are becoming more regular/predictable, which is great. I traveled three times in October for my business, all three times to California. The weather in Seattle quickly transitioned in October from summer-ish to winter-ish (at least, that’s how it feels to us!), so my jaunts to warm, sunny California reminded me of the importance of our goal to move there sooner rather than later. Other than … Read entire article »
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September 2015 Money Puddle and Spending Report
This was our second full month living in Seattle and our spending is finally settling down. We have our apartment more or less fully furnished and stocked now. We have a weekly routine and we picked a church to attend. This was a very fun month as we are now starting to explore the city a bit. We are trying to figure out what our new hobbies will be, so we took a stand-up paddleboarding lesson. … Read entire article »
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August 2015 Money Puddle and Spending Report
I was wrong about this month being a bloodbath on the income side. I mean, I was right about that, but this month was also a bloodbath on the expenses side! We had to furnish our apartment with a few new items we didn’t need in Durham and also stock our fridge and cabinets with food and household consumables. Those expenses were all distributed across “Groceries” and “Furnishings” in probably not a very consistent manner, … Read entire article »
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July 2015 Money Puddle and Spending Report
This month was a BLOODBATH on the expenses side. (Get ready for a bloodbath next month on the income side!) Our actual accounts look even worse than this reflects, because we made a lot of expenditures that are going to be reimbursed. I’ve included the numbers for both the spending that we expect to be reimbursed and the spending we won’t have reimbursed, though I’ve only counted the spending we are responsible for against the … Read entire article »
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June 2015 Money Puddle and Spending Report
This month was pretty weird for us personally because of Kyle’s agonizing decision, but fairly straightforward financially. We kept within our budgeted spending for our monthly categories, but then we had a bunch of irregular expenses as well. They didn’t add up to much until the very end of the month! I thought we were going to come in reasonably under budget, but… you’ll see. Money Puddle Our money puddle represents our gross income from May, less taxes, … Read entire article »
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May 2015 Money Puddle and Spending Report
May was a very crazy month for us, actually – both financially and just for our life! 1) We walked in our graduation ceremony, so we had family come to town for the weekend. The associated costs included our regalia and extra food (though our family partially reimbursed us). 2) We attended a wedding in Kansas over Memorial Day weekend. It was a very fun but very un-frugal weekend. 3) Kyle applied for, interviewed for, and received offers for … Read entire article »
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April 2015 Money Puddle and Spending Report
This month, I transitioned from living in the DC area with my parents to living in Durham with Kyle again. So we had a half-month of my DC expenses (public transport, gas to get between the cities) and a half-month of our normal Durham expenses. We had a nice fat income because we were both working full-time in March and fairly low-ish expenses. We still were not focused in April on keeping our discretionary spending … Read entire article »
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