So Let’s take a sneak peek at how July 2020 health looked like — My expenses won’t vary as much unless I go on vacation… or School starts
** Cue Scary Tuition Payment Music **
July 2020 Expenses
- Rent: $800.00 (-) – 68.9%
- Credit Card Expenses: $361.74 (-) – 31.1%
- Netflix Subscription: $15.99 – (1.04%)
- Groceries: $229.66 + $32.16 (snacks) -19.8%
- Shopping: $65.31 -5.6%
- Uber eats – $50.78 – 4.4%
Ahh! Once again… we are over that acceptable $150-$200 range! Somehow, I can’t seem to stay in the range during this time 😦 I need to figure out the problem.. But seeing that I will be going to vacation in August — I might need to wait till October to get to the bottom of this. Detective Caroline is on it’s way!
These days I’m not really in the mood to buy stuff from Amazon — but my boyfriend had just gotten this cool automatic stand up desk, and I wanted to surprise him with a balance board, to help decrease his fatigue, and let him stand up and work for longer. Happy early birthday 🙂 Also! We were craving Peruvian food and decided to order in… something that just doesn’t really happen. It was definitely a treat!
Expense Total: $1161.74
July 2020 Savings:
Okay, my favorite part of this article!!! As you may already know — the goal is to get to $300,000 by 11:59 pm December 31, 2024. Haha, every minute counts! Stay tuned for a whole article on why I’ve chosen 300K as my money goal number.
I touched on this in my previous article [JUNE 2020 article here] but I have another $18000 of schooling left. So I’ve come up with a way to split my paychecks into two parts — 70% savings — 30% expenses. Aggressive. I know.
Let’s check out how the month of July 2020 did:
Savings
Automatic & Reoccurring: $2457.22 ← the 70% of my check!
**High yield Interest: $4.45
** Nothing out of the blue for me 🙂 I think the interest from the high yield savings is a nice touch — I’m not reliant on it — but it’s the cherry on the cake — so to speak.
So some background here — when I was in college I had a total of 8 paying positions throughout the four years. I had three jobs three years in a row. It was exhausting but also paid off. Through that time I stashed away $400 in a savings account and $10,000 into a Roth IRA account.
If you take anything from this article it’s COMPOUNDING INTEREST. Because my goal of 300K is short term, I need to be super aggressive. But if I just put 10K and let it sit in a mutual fund for 30 years, I’m sure with market rates, it would be easy for it to reach 300K.
Investments
**Retirement Account: +4% gain
**Individual Stock Account: +25% gain
** Wooooo Hooooo! When it’s positive at the end of the month I am as happy as a clam. Haha, that 25% gain makes me feel confident that my money is in the right places — but also shows me how volatile the market really is!
Stay tuned for a whole article on investing!
Overall Financial Health Pulse
I really really want to contribute to my roth IRA. I’m trying to figure out how that works into my plan since I can only touch the principle before I turn 59.½. When this master’s degree is finished — I’ll be so ready to start saving tons of money. TO THE ROAD of 300K! The journey consists of three things: savings, individual stock, and retirement. With the power of all three working together, it gives me flexibility now, and in the future. (Whispers: Compounding Interest)
Drum roll everyone! I have saved a grand total of $41564.40 by the end of July 2020. That means I’m 13.8% closer to my goal of $300,000. Round of applause please! Can’t wait to see this piggy’s percentage get closer and closer to the 100% mark.
My goals for August — don’t spend so much money (again)! But It’s not going to happen — because I love to be extra generous when I’m on vacation…. So…. NO SPEND SEPTEMBER HERE I COME!
Stay tuned for next months’ update!
Simply Prepared 