My belated (and thus combined) February financial update/spending report

Well, I continue to be completely unorganized about many things lately. Including getting around to my financial update and spending report for mid-January to mid-February. Sigh.

Since I’ll need to do my next update/spending report soon, I’m combining the Jan/Feb ones into a single post. And if it works well, may do that moving forward.

So let’s see where my money went this month!

Financial update

Rather than explain every category, I’m just going to make a list of my various accounts and large expenses.

Quick explanation

For anyone new, you should know the following:

• B’s fund: A small amount I’m putting aside each month for a teen transfemale relative until she’s ready to have the surgery. It’ll be a drop in the bucket compared to overall cost but… it’s something.
• Termite: Saves up for my Orkin termite protection yearly premium.
• Mint: I prepay my cell service for a year to get the best rate ($15 for 4 GB of data)
• HVAC: My unit could die next year or a decade from now. So I’m saving for a replacement.
• Taxes/credit cards: Obviously, these aren’t savings. But they’re where a fair amount amount of money goes. So worth noting. If the taxes seem high, it’s because, in addition to individual state/federal taxes, I pay both halves of FICA on the amount I pay myself as an “employee” of my company.
• Savings rates only include long-term savings. I don’t consider any amounts that will definitely be paid in less than a year to be true “savings.” I’ll put an asterisk by each long-term savings amount so that you know which ones were counted.

So let’s see how the categories/saving rates broke down.

Where my money went

• Taxes: $1,551.75
• Credit cards: $1,670.09 (ouch)
• Car fund: $300*
• Car insurance fund: $93
• Emergency fund: $209.08*
• Roth IRA: $500*
• House loan repayment: $600
• Property taxes/home insurance: $257.50
• B’s fund: $50
• HVAC: $145*
• Termite: $27.67
• Mint: $16.78
• Savings: $300*
• SEP IRA: $1,398.34

Saving rates

All of this results in the following rates:

Pre-tax: 32.8%

Post-tax: 40%

While these are obviously darn good rates compared to the general populace, they’re well below the 50% post-tax rate that I normally shoot for. The credit card balance was high this month due to a few things, including two months of my health insurance being in the same billing cycle. If it had been closer to normal, I’d have been pretty close to my goal.

Reminder

As always, I want to remind people to try not to compare saving rates. If yours are lower than mine, remember that I have some benefits many don’t.

Specifically, I have no kids (huge savings), no longer have an expensive spouse, and most importantly, I have a high income. No student loans and no car loan help quite a bit too.

So I just have a lot more money to put aside than many folks. Which is why I’m reminding you that it’s rare for any two people’s finances to look similar enough to actually compare them apples to apples.

Spending report

Here’s the overall breakdown of spending. (Asterisks will be explained in each category.)

Category	Projected	Actual	Difference
Miscellaneous	200	299.84	-99.84
Home	200	174.36	25.64
Laundry	22.5	24.5	-2
Gas	85	36.3	48.7
Pet	39.95	56.23	-16.28
Groceries	180	321.58*	-141.58
Takeout	100	62.85*	37.15
Going Out	200	140.1	59.9
Healthcare	600	681.39	-81.39
Beauty	80	80.56	-0.56
Personal Care	50	60.97	-10.97
Utilities	250	178.50	71.50
Total	2007.45	2117.18	-109.73

Well, for me this is pretty close to on-target. If my groceries hadn’t been so out of control, I’d have been under budget. Which would’ve been a nice change of pace, but $4.35 over projected spending is still not too shabby.

Anyway, in case you’re curious what these amounts were…

Miscellaneous

I’m pretty far over here mainly because I hit some Victoria’s Secret sales.

After the divorce, I hit a great Black Friday sale at the store. Specifically, I paid less than $25 (after tax!) for each of four different bras. Then I kept getting coupons and cardmember rewards enough to combine with sales for extraordinarily cheap undies.

But while I have plenty of undergarments right now, bras’ lifespans exceedingly hard to predict. And I don’t want to have to replace multiple ones when there may or may not be a good sale. So I’m slowly adding to my collection as sales and coupons hit.

And I decided to do that twice during the last VS card’s billing cycle, so my spending in this category jumped.

Beyond that, the amount was mostly from a few instances of saved savings for about $5, my Netflix charge (the last month of it being under $10), the as-yet-uncancelled life insurance ($52.60) and a sleep mask ($19.99 before tax and worth every penny). (As an Amazon affiliate, I’m compensated for purchases made through my links.)

Home

I pay for Orkin to come out bimonthly to spray for termites and deal with any groundhog activity. It’s about $86, but very worth it.

There are also the two $15 HVAC protection plans for the main house’s unit and the guest house one.

I also had to call a guy out to deal with the weeds in my yard. He’s exceedingly affordable, so I only paid $60.

Laundry

Technically, this is only “spending” in that it leaves my main account. Whenever I do a load of laundry, I put $3.50 into a Washer/Dryer fund. And this month required more laundry than usual.

Gas

Somehow I only had to fill up once this month, it seems. Not that I’m complaining.

I think it’s due to having fewer far-flung trivia nights. Previously, I was scheduling my trivia MeetUp group to have fairly regular events in Tempe (25 miles from me) and Scottsdale (18 miles from me). But attendance isn’t great, so I’m cutting way back on those.

Pet

Normally, the only expense here is Josie’s Banfield plan for $39.95. But I heard about the FurZapper and decided to try it. These are slightly sticky discs (with a paw print cut into them for cuteness) that help remove pet hair.

I’ve been very happy with the results, and a two-pack at Home Depot is only $14.99 plus tax. (I’d link to Amazon, but it’s a much worse deal there.) Highly recommend this product, but it did put me slightly over budget.

Groceries

Oof, so far over budget here!

As I’ve discussed before, January was spent stressed and thus in a low-level manic state, which didn’t help my eating habits. And having to isolate twice meant two Instacart orders when I wanted to eat my way to happier feelings. Which bumped up spending.

But a lot of it was just consoling myself with food. Not great, plus I gained back three of the 10 lbs I’d lost in December. Sigh.

So this month I’ve been trying to be more careful to get less junk food. (Even if that has meant a spendthrift grocery store trip that included — gasp — full-price strawberries.) Hopefully, that gets my spending back in line.

I have an asterisk in this category, because the amount doesn’t include the $80ish of protein bars I buy from Target. Those aren’t included because I pay using discounted gift cards that have been included in other months’ spending reports. Don’t want to count the expense twice!

Takeout

Now that I’m not seeing He Who No Longer Wishes to be Named, there’s a lot less takeout in my life. So even dropping my takeout amount significantly, I spent less than expected.

I had takeout eight times, one of which was a two meals for a night when Movie Buff Guy came over. Another was a double order to help amortize the cost of a delivery app’s fees.

The asterisk is there because one of the eight times isn’t counted in the total. The $10.75 for that meal was paid for with a gift card.

Going Out

This category includes both dates and trivia nights.

About $60 was spent at trivia venues, since I try to buy something to help support the bar/restaurant holding the event. The rest was spent on drinks for dates or Ubers to/from dates.

Still, the total isn’t so bad.

Healthcare

Most of the overage in this category is due to paying $75 for the rapid test the first time I thought I’d been exposed to COVID.

Beyond that, it was fairly normal stuff. Three prescriptions totaling $57.29, my insurance (which went up to $444, sigh) and a massage. Since I increased my massages to 80 minutes after I got a raise, I pay $105 per session. But that’s after tip, so still an excellent deal.

Beauty

Being only $0.56 over budget here is pretty good, considering a coupon and Extrabux made me decide to buy a beauty product unexpectedly.

The standard expenses were $20 for a haircut at the beauty school, $40 for a beauty service and a little under $9 for hair dye to cover my gray. And I’m glad I decided to try True Match Hyaluronic Tinted Serum. It goes on very light even compared to my lightweight foundation. (Again, as an Amazon affiliate, I’m compensated for orders placed through my links.)

Personal Care

Be prepared to be wowed by my rock ‘n roll lifestyle.

I went on Amazon and bought a huge pack of Q-tips for about $7.50 plus two large bottles of fiber gummies for about $38 after tax.

Then I added to the whirlwind fun with some lotion and Cetaphil face wash for $15.64 after coupons and my $10 CarePass credit.

Utilities

I was only under budget here because I seem constitutionally incapable of paying my water/sewer/trash bill on time each month. (No, there’s not an automatic payment option.)

So all I paid this month my averaged-out electricity bill ($132.50, yay living in Arizona), $5.38 for my Ooma VOIP service, and about $42 for the natural gas that heats my water. Winter is, for obvious reasons, always much higher than the rest of the year.

But wait, there’s more

Of course, this isn’t the only amounts I paid. Not included here are my business’s Internet bill, my home loan repayment/property tax/home insurance or my charitable donations.

Once you include those, I spent about $3,433. Which I’m pretty happy about, since it’s been coming in closer to $4,000 lately. My goal is to keep my yearly spending under $45,000 to practice for a leaner budget in retirement. (Which of course will be easier in a few years, once I’m done paying Mom back for the home loan.)

So all in all, a pretty good month!

How did everyone else’s expenses go last month?