September 2018 Financial Progress Report -

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Welcome to our monthly Financial Progress report series. Ever since we became more serious about our journey to Financial Freedom in February 2018 we have been reporting on our personal financial progress. This has allowed us to document our journey and hold ourselves more accountable. We are amazed to see the progress that can be made by finding different ways to decrease our debt, make more money and save more.

Each month after we have received all our financial statements and updated all our financial data, we then compose our financial progress report for the previous month.

In our Financial Progress reports, you can expect to see an outline of our debt, savings, expenses, and income. Also, we will 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 and cultivating our money.

Budget

We have continued to use Dave Ramsey’s Everydollar website as our main budgeting tool. We have continued to use the categories that were broken down back in April. The trends in our spending habits are becoming more prominent as we continue to use this new category system. A couple months ago we shared our new budget category system with our readers. This will always be included in each Financial Progress Report moving forward. Let us know how you have your budget categories set up!

Recently, we have been discussing changing the way we view our budget. We are considering fine-tuning our budget to mimic either the budget category percentages suggested by Dave Ramsey or through the 50/30/20 rule. We are currently learning more about these budget types and deciding which seems most feasible for our life at the moment. We would love to hear feedback from anyone who uses these budgeting techniques or others!

As we mentioned in our June Report we continuing to use manual methods that aid in tracking our budget and spending. Each month we use the art of list making. There are two different prominent lists that we use. One list is composed of all our bills with due dates and the second list breaks down our bills and their due dates by the week. This allows us to stay on track with our bills being paid on time and making sure that we use the correct paycheck for each billing period. These are just extra steps we take to provide checks and balances and give us peace of mind.

Now that we have provided you with an update on our budget, let’s take a look at our progress!

Debt

August Total Debt: $127,925.52

September Total Debt: $127,693.16

Credit Card Debt: $17946.84

Car Loan: $0.00

Student Loans: $109,746.32

We are not going to lie, September was a tough month with staying on track and making large progress. We continued to use the debt snowball method this month. However, we had many unexpected expenses that prevented us from putting that maximum amount of our debt snowball payment. While we made an extra payment, we were not able to pay off the smallest credit card balance that we had. However, we are staying positive that we will be able to do this in October. We do want to celebrate that we are now officially in the 17k club in terms of our credit card debt!!!!! This is a small win but a win nonetheless.

The next couple of months we to see faster progress with debt payoffs as we are still tackling credit card debts that are under $1,000. Once we get to the debts that over $1,000, we will start seeing payoff’s further apart. However, the hope is that we will keep increasing our income and finding different ways to save money to speed up this process.

By the end of September, we were able to pay off a total of $232.36 in debt. This amount is has decreased compared to the previous months’ debt payment. However, we are becoming that much closer to paying off the next smallest debt. We continue to look forward to making more progress toward our debt as we get creative with extra income and saving more.

Savings

August Total Savings: $4042.21

September Total Savings: $4799.47

Emergency Fund: $3738.81

C’s Retirement Fund: $1060.66

As we mentioned in our August Financial Progress report we saw a decrease in our savings but overall ended with a surplus in our maternity leave. That surplus in the maternity leave sinking fund was moved back to our emergency fund in September. We originally planned to setup up a couple sinking funds in September, but we never got around to getting the accounts set up and the money moved. We definitely plan to take this on in October and can expect to see our money become a bit more dispersed into different types of savings.

Overall, we saw a bigger gain in September to our savings. This was due to receiving an unexpected check due to the sale of inherited property and contributions beginning again to my retirement accounts. We are excited to see our savings growing again. We hope in October, to continue to see this growth as we begin our own contributions again to savings.

Expenses

Total Expenses: Largest Spending Categories

Food: 23%

Debt: 16%

Utilities: 9%

Housing: 8%

Our Debt continues to be our largest spending category, however, we are starting to see this percentage decrease slowly each month. Our food budget still continues to be an area that we need to work on. We are hoping that with me returning back to work and our daughter back to getting free school lunch, we will see this category decrease by a few percents in September.

In August, we also saw a slight decrease in our utilities and housing cost. During the summer months our gas bill decreases to below $15.00 a month, but typically our electric goes up as we start using the central air. This past month, we tried having the windows open more and using fans to cool the house down. This proved to help slightly with our monthly bill. We are hoping that with all of us gone during the day in September, that we will see a dramatic decrease in our electric bill. Stay tuned for our next financial progress report to find out!

Income

August Total Extra Income: $71.08

September Total Extra Income: $752.88

We saw quite the increase in our total extra income for the month of September. A property that I inherited a percentage of after my biological father’s passing was unexpectedly sold. Due to the sale of this property, I received a small inheritance that I put into savings until I decided the best way to use it. Along with this unexpected check, our savings from using Ibotta mainly contributed to our increase in extra income made in September.

My earnings through Ibotta increased even more in September as I was able to take advantage of different bonuses! Ibotta has been a great way for our family to receive cash back on our everyday grocery shopping. We have already earned over a $150 since we started using Ibotta a few months ago. Are you interested in learning how you can maximize your Ibotta’s earning potential? If you decide to start taking advantage of cash back through Ibotta, we invite you to join our team here. By joining our team and redeeming one offer within the first month, you will earn $10.00!

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Ibotta: $37.15

Mystery Shopping: $5.00

User testing: $10.00

Online Surveys: $5.14

Misc: $695.59

Monthly Goals

In July, we started sharing our monthly goals. This was done to create a visual of our goals as well as to hold ourselves accountable. We try to aim for at least 5 different goals that range within financial, personal, physical and life goals. Currently, we have been posting these goals to our Instagram. Last month, we began highlighting our monthly goals and their end results in each financial progress report.

We decided to do this because many of the goals are small actionable goals that are contributing to our bigger goals of financial freedom. In our monthly goal visual, you will find a green checkmark on those we completed 100% and red cross marks on those we did not complete below 99%.

In September, we failed to complete four out of the five goals we had originally set out to achieve for the month. We managed to pay a small portion to D’s Citi Credit Card but were not able to pay it off completely. There was also progress made in writing new blog posts as we published one and started drafts of two others. I was able to successfully spend 30 minutes each day working on self-development such as reading my current book or reading emails and articles on blogging.

We are still proud that we are setting goals in the first place. While there are many red x’s on last months goals, we expect to see less on October’s goals,

We have really enjoyed using this process to commit to monthly goals. It aids in keeping us on track and allows us to break down those big dreams into smaller achievable ones. We look forward to continuing to do this each month. Check out our Instagram feed if you’re interested to see where our focus is going in September!

Recap

September is a month that proved that progress can still be made even when we experience higher expenses and a decrease in income. We contribute the ability to stay ahead on progress due to our diligence in planning ahead in the previous months. Along with planning ahead, we ended the previous month with a surplus that left us in a better position to handle the financial setbacks that we had. While our progress was small, we still are moving forward in the right direction.

Previous Financial Progress Reports:

Overall, our progress towards Financial Freedom in September was fairly positive even during a time when unexpected expenses outside of our budget arrived and the expected income was lower. With the support from the debt-free community and having these reports for accountability, we have remained determined and confident in our abilities to keep meeting goals. We continue to expect to see our progress gain momentum in October. We look forward to our continued progress towards Financial Freedom.

Did you make any progress towards financial freedom in September? Do you set monthly or weekly goals that help you reach your bigger financial freedom goals? Comment below to share more about your progress or your strategy behind goal setting.