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Welcome to our fourth Personal Finance Report. We are entering into another month which is giving us even more of a chance to improve our Financial Freedom! It is now time to look back on May and see the progress that we have made in our financial lives.
In our Financial Progress reports, you can expect to see an outline of our debt, savings, expenses, and income. We will also include a small snippet of what we did or what we need to do to improve each area. As time goes on, you can expect these progress reports to evolve and improve as we learn more about taking control of our money.
Budget Update
In May, we continued to use Dave Ramsey’s Everydollar website as our main budgeting tool. As we mentioned last month, we did set up an account with Mint. We love having all of our balances in one place and we love that the balances update automatically. However, we have continued to experience the dissatisfaction with the budget side of Mint. While it is great that Mint records our transactions automatically, we have to go in and consistently move transactions to the correct categories. We have found that it is easier to just manually enter in our transaction into our Everydollar budget. Everydollar also allows us to split each transaction between different categories if needed.
We had mentioned in April that we broke down our categories even more in our budget. This had allowed us to have a better overall picture of our spending habits. We still love this setup for May and have found that it is easier to update our spending and see where we need to cut back in specific areas. Now that you know how we maintained our budget, lets take a look at our progress!
Debt
April Total Debt: $129,425.55
May Total Debt: $128,774.36
Credit Card Debt: $18,607.94
Car Loan: $420.10
Student Loans: $109,746.32
At the beginning of May, we had entered the month with $19,038.08 in credit card debt and $641.15 in a car loan. We were able to use the debt snowball method and a portion of the money I earned through extra income to pay off a portion of our next smallest credit card balance.
By the end of May, we were able to pay off a total of $651.19 in Debt. This amount of progress is double of what we were able to accomplish in April’s financial progress. We expect with the new baby arriving in June, that our debt snowball progress will slow down as our income with decrease slightly. However, we are beyond ecstatic of the progress we were able to make with our May debt snowball.
Savings
April Total Savings: $3,960.74
May Total Savings: $4,388.81
Emergency Fund: $1,286.84
Maternity Leave: $2,500
C’s Retirement Fund: $601.97
As we mentioned in April, one of our goals was to begin automating our savings. We are happy to announce that this trend continued in May. It is a great feeling to see our savings growing slowly. Another great impact of May was that I became vested at work for our 403(A) Retirement Fund. So now in addition to my contributions to my 403(B) Savings Fund, my employer is contributing 10% of my salary to my retirement fund. Overall, May was a positive month for increasing our all-around savings. We hope to continue this trend in June, however, we understand that the impact may not be as great as we are expecting me to begin maternity leave any day now.
Expenses
Total Expenses: Largest Spending Categories
Debt: 30%
Food: 19%
Utilities: 8%
Housing: 7%
As we seen in previous months, our Debt is still our largest spending category with food coming in second. We had been working on decreasing our food budget the last few months to at least 16%, but we have seen a slight increase in May. With both of us being so busy with work and more money coming in, we tended to eat out a lot more through the week. We also did not plan well enough for the Holiday weekend, as we attended a couple cookouts that required us to bring a dish. Interestingly enough, our debt category percentage decreased even with our debt snowball payments factored in which helped offset our increase food budget.
In April, our housing category accounted for 20% of our spending and we have seen quite a decrease in May to just 15%. Most of this is contributed to us having our utility billed amounts being lowered due to the changes in weather. However, we expect this to increase just a bit more in June.
In the month of June, we would like to continue decreasing our debt and food budget. However, we expect our utilities to increase slightly due to the need for using our central air more and me being home throughout the day with a newborn.
Income
April Total Extra Income: $89.70
May Total Extra Income: $250.35
We had quite an increase in earning additional income in the month to May. Most of this was contributed to the fact that we sold our non-running moped. This was immediately put towards our smallest credit card balance. I was able to earn a bit by completing some phone mystery shops and the rest through Ibotta and Swagbucks.
My earnings through Ibotta was not quite as high as previous months. This was due to us not being able to match up rebates as well to our food spending. I hoping June will have better options and I can improve my Ibotta earnings. I still firmly believe in Ibotta and invite you to join my team here. Join today and you can earn $10 within your first month. I also recommend Swagbucks as you begin considering your summer shopping. If you join Swagbucks, please use my code to begin earning right away here and you can earn free money!
Ibotta: $7.00
Mystery Shopping: $30.00
User testing: $0.00
Online Surveys: $13.35
Misc: $200.00
We are excited to see our overall progress towards Financial Freedom in May. While our family still has a long journey towards Financial Freedom, but we are far more confident that we will eventually reach that moment in our lives. We expect to see things slow down a bit in June as we approach our second daughter’s arrival. While the unpredictability of certain expenses is a bit of concern, we are definitely in a better position now then we were with our first daughter. It is the small things that make life grand!
Previous Financial Progress Reports:
How was your Debt free journey in May? Please share your progress below. We are all in this together!
