Income/Expenses For September 2011

Each month I will post my income/expenses for the previous month. I track every dollar in and out, so what you see is exactly what I earned and spent (rounded to the nearest dollar).

Income from September 2011:

$3,686–Regular Paycheck
$138–Dividends
$170–Bonus and Spiffs

Total Income: $3,995

Expenses from September 2011:

$537–Rent
$160–Student Loans
$108–Restaurants
$88–Groceries
$74–Fast Food and Pizza
$39–Pharmacy
$40–Mobile Phone
$103–Internet
$31–Public Transportation
$30–Gym

Total Expenses: $1,213

As always, in the interest of full disclosure I like to display my income and expenses from every month for public view. This will catalog my journey to financial independence and prove that it is possible to achieve early retirement on relatively modest means.

This month held a few surprises. I would have really liked to have had expenses land below $1,100 but it just wasn’t meant to be. For one, I purposely had a high food bill to cure a little frugal fatigue and spent quite a bit of money on a nice sushi dinner early in the month. I also splurged a bit in the other food categories. This is higher than my average and I expect this to settle back down toward the end of the year. One note for my upcoming food expenses is that I plan on an expensive dinner out late in October due to my 2-year anniversary with my girlfriend. November and on should have lower food expenses as I target the $180 area for all food expenses combined. This month was much higher with total food costs at $270.

Rent will also be lower going forward. This month’s rent totals included my usual $450 monthly rent as well as a small pro-rated portion for moving in the last week of August. Going forward it will be the normal monthly rent costs of $450 plus water.

My internet expense was extremely high this month. I didn’t have any internet expenses last month due to moving. Comcast had to forward my small remaining internet charges to my new account and there were set-up fees for the new apartment due to some outlet issues. Also, this includes two months of usage. This expense will also be lower going forward. One note is that I was paying fairly low costs for my internet before. That “special” is apparently over and I’ll be paying a bit more now. We’ll see where the dust settles, but I’ll likely call and threaten cancellation unless we can lower the fees. Of course, on the other hand, I’m OK with paying $40-50 a month for internet as it’s my lifeblood!

Expenses were a little high, but the great news is that income was relatively high this month. I was very happy to almost his the $4K net income figure this month. My income is completely commission based, so it’s quite erratic and will vary from month to month. $4,000/mo. is on the higher end of my potential.

I managed to save 69.6% of my net income this month, which is great. I hope I can improve on this number in the future, and would like this number to trend closer to 70% going forward.

My goal is to average a 50% savings rate of my net income, monthly. So far, I’ve hit rates of:

52.5%-January
54.4%-February
39.9%-March
61.8%-April
35.9%-May
72.9%-June
50.0%-July
64.3%-August
69.6%-September 

I am now at an average of 55.7% for the year. I’m ahead of my goal and am confident I will meet and exceed a 50% savings rate average for the year.

How are your budgets doing?

Thanks for reading.

Photo Credit: RambergMediaImages

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14 Comments

  1. WOW! Nice work. Even though expenses were higher than what you see going forward, it’s still your highest net savings rate year-to-date. Great work and thanks for the continued inspiration.

  2. DM,

    Another great month of budgeting. My savings rate is still in the 25% range. I am going to begin tracking it closely starting in 2012. I have too many expenses going forward with a vacation to the Philippines and Christmas parties etc. If I start tracking it now I’m gonna stress out…lol…

    I also noticed a new gym expense. How’s the new gym working out? I guess your kinda psyched it’s literally next door. I think it’s a good call and falls inline with your investing philosophy. You have to maintain your health, or your gonna pay higher health care costs down the road. Why incur an unnecessary expense when you can prevent it? Prevention is the key, don’t wait for your body to be in crisis, it’s super costly.

    Thanks for inquiring about my investments. I’m down a little overall in my account, but I’m not worried because my holding period is forever. I just keep dollar cost averaging with my positions and compounding my dividends…

    Income Pirate

  3. Mantra,

    Good work as usual. I’ll offer my usual encouragement to not make money the focus of our lives. 🙂 (On a side note, I read your ‘Time’ post and hope to get some time to comment on it soon).

    My one question for this article is – if your goal is 50%/mo, which is already huge, why do you consistently, and significantly beat it each month? Perhaps you could spend more, still save 50%, and retire by 40?

    Hope all is well!

    Dividendpartisan

  4. Pey,

    Thanks buddy!

    I would agree with you. I have the kind of motivation and tenacity that I feel is kind of rare. That’s not to be boastful..just saying I have a real fire inside me.

    Best wishes!

  5. IP,

    I wish I could join you on the Philippines vacation. I have a large desire to visit there one day!

    The new gym membership is working out great. I think I’m getting good value on my money. $30, as you put it, is a small expense to limit risk of high health care costs later down the road. Besides that, I really enjoy working out and looking/feeling great. Thanks for asking!

    I’m sorry to hear about the investments. So far, my only real loser is TEF as it’s trading fairly significantly below my cost basis. But, I’m always in it for the long-term, so I’m ok as long as they can get their debt under control.

    Best regards.

  6. Partisan,

    Thanks for stopping by.

    You have a great question! There is always a method behind my madness and I’ll explain. When I first started this blog and the 50% goal back in March, I still owned a car and saving 50% of my net income was a real challenge, but I was doing it. Now that I’ve cut my car and some other expenses down it’s not as hard. I’ll be boosting this goal by quite a bit next year…probably to around 65%.

    I could certainly increase spending and probably still retire early, but I’m not torturing myself or living an impoverished lifestyle. I’m pretty happy and I’m on track to exceed all my goals. I couldn’t be happier.

    Best wishes for your goals as well!

  7. inq,

    All income reported is all income I receive. I’ve only received one check from Google so far, and it was reported under “Bonus and Spiffs” for August income. I don’t actually make much money from this blog, and I think I’ve averaged around $20 month or so since inception.

    Hope this answers your question. Thanks for stopping by inq!

  8. Wow D. Mantra!, I respect your investment input but I am especially impressed w/ your savings and keeping expenses low. I don’t think I can acheive what you have here but you are certainly an inspiration for me to better track my spending, reduce expense and save more.

    Anyhow, I think there was a question on your previous post RE: an emergency account. I know you said you will post a more detailed article in a bit and you mentioned the amount you maintain currently but I’m very interested in how much in cash equivalents you intend to maintain once you achieve your dividend income goal and “retire”. I ask because I’m intensely debating this myself. I guess I’m not necessarily thinking it terms of absolute dollars but instead in terms of x number of months of expenses in emergency reserve. Any thoughts are appreciated (as usual).

    -Rock the Casbah

  9. Rock,

    Thanks. I’m glad that these posts serve as inspiration, because that’s exactly why I publish them. I hope it serves you well.

    I promise a post on the emergency fund soon. I will almost certainly have a larger cash cushion once I no longer work. With working, some of the cushion is in the excess cash flow generated by your incoming paychecks. Once you no longer have that, it would be a good idea to have a larger fund to draw from in case something happens. I have a fairly large amount of credit, so I won’t go crazy with cash…as I don’t like it as an asset class, but having some in an emergency is extremely important. Cash is certainly King in emergencies.

    Best regards!

  10. Woah! 70% (I rounded) savings rate for September is astounding!

    Awesome stuff DM. I’m sure many of us can learn a thing or two on your frugal ways.

    Keep up the great work.

    Cheers,
    TWC

  11. TWC,

    Thanks. I appreciate your support. 70% is difficult if you don’t make a lot of money. I could only imagine what my savings rate would be if I made $80k a year or so.

    I hope I can keep it up and get this savings rate up to past 70% on a permanent basis. We’ll see how it goes! I’m blessed that I’ve had no major setbacks and things have gone pretty smooth for me. I’m lucky and thankful.

    It sounds like everything is going fantastic for you as well. Keep it up!

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