August is always a crazy month for us because my birthday, our anniversary, and other family & friends have birthdays in August.
This month was extra hard though, particularly the week of my birthday. I got Covid for the first time and it hit me really bad right when my friend was staying with us after not seeing her for over 3 years. It was rough. I had every Covid symptom, a terrible cough, sore throat, aches, fatigue, fever, loss of smell & taste, just terrible. I think it was the sickest I’ve ever been. I can see how people who smoke or are elderly can die from it. As I’m writing this, I STILL have a cough left over. Also my mom’s household had to put down their dog and my other close friend’s cat died unexpectedly young. There were some other major challenging things that happened, but I’m not comfortable sharing those things with the internet. Overall, the week of my birthday was one of the hardest weeks of my entire life so far. Not all bad, but difficult.
As for our finances, I’ve started making more money this month, and the week after my birthday I’ve finally found a great work routine to maximize my income in the smallest amount of hours! I basically just work the lunch rush Monday-Friday delivery driving; Roughly 9:45am-1:30pm, and then at the farmer’s market on Saturday mornings. It’s going great! My new income is going to be around $2,000/month even though I only work about 20 hours a week.
As always, as a home owner, another unexpected home expense came up! Who would’ve thought??? Our kitchen sink got clogged and it was way down in there deep so it’s costing us $210. We tried to fix it ourselves (by ourselves, I mean Brandon) and it was just too deep, our snake wasn’t long enough and Draino didn’t work.
And as someone in the U.S. we of course have medical bills!! Yay!! *eye roll* We owe about $400 in random medical bills over all now. There is a delay in when we receive services, then receive the bill. We just got these bills in the mail so will probably pay them in September.
Our main financial goal right now is to beef up our savings account & future HSA until the balance between the two is $20,000.
Our Partial Financial Independence Goals:
- $0 Debt.
- Brandon works part time at his job.
- We need $2,000+/month in income, whether that comes from investments, Brandon’s part time job, my blog, etc. it doesn’t matter.
Our Current Numbers as of August 30th, 2022:
- Roth IRAs (Betterment -SRI Sustainable): $26,507 and $24,075
- My small Traditional IRA (From an old 401(k) rollover -Betterment): $1,723
- Tesla: $820 (gambling)
- Bitcoin: $545 (gambling)
- Total Invested: $53,670
- Savings: $4,316
- Debt: -$116,254 (Mortgage only) -On track to be paid off by end of 2034, will most likely be paid off sooner.
- Brandon is working 38 hours/week and I am working 15-20 hours/week.
As many of you know, the stock market didn’t do well in August, again, I expected this. It will come back someday & continue its steady growth. At least our savings account balance went up a decent amount & our mortgage balance went down. That’s mainly what we’re focusing on for now.
Thank you for reading! And hopefully I’ll get back to streaming on Twitch again & writing more, but no promises! Life has been crazy so I’m just doing what I can and have mostly been in survival mode. And the little energy I do have, I put it towards taking care of my self, my basic needs, and caring for my relationships. If I’m lucky, I’ll get some cleaning done, but that’s rare right now.
My Links:
- My Financial Planning Workbook!
- ThriftBooks -I LOVE them as a company & order all of my books from them now! They ship super fast, great service, books always show up as described, super cheap, & good for the planet because they’re second-hand, but you get to choose the quality!
- BetterHelp -A week of Therapy for FREE!
- Betterment -Invest your first $5,000 for FREE!
- Back Market -My referral code: 6888f588d6f85083 -$10 off your order! Refurbished Tech! My sister & I both got “new” phones from there. They’re awesome, great quality, so much cheaper than buying new (by up to 70%), came super fast, was super easy to buy, AND we saved 123 pounds of carbon emissions, each!
Ease Your Financial Payne 