Monthly Pandemic Balance Sheet: MCOL, 2 ppl (Sankey diagram, financial voyeurs!)

[Chris@TTL]

EDIT: Look below for the subsequent months (June, etc) updates.

I just got our first month (May, 2020) of transitional income and expenses done! Thought you all might like the Sankey diagram of our balance sheet.

I’m continuing to wind down business affairs and Jenni has spent about half the month doing part-time work.

The biggest takeaway was: 65% savings rate due to COVID.


Sankey Diagram (part-time work for Jenni and I balanced against May's expenses) with 65% SR [big image]

We tracked drastically reduced work hours (149 for the month), despite a fairly high income still. We're very fortunate to be FIREing in this way.

One standout category was gifts: we had a couple of birthdays we received some money for and then spent most of it on gifts for others. Lots of May birthdays!

Aside from the diagram "fun factor" along with a little financial voyeurism, feel free to prod me with any questions about how this or that expense is a particular value.

If you all like this, I'll try to post them monthly.

[2sk22]

Very impressive - I thought I was organized but this takes organization to another level indeed!

[APowers]

Every time I see this thread, I do a double-take, wondering what an 19th century hymn writer was doing inventing financial diagrams.

[Chris@TTL]

@APowers - haha!

I had to take a look to see what the deal is, per good ol' wikipedia:

Sankey diagrams are named after Irish Captain Matthew Henry Phineas Riall Sankey, who used this type of diagram in 1898 in a classic figure (...)

Seems Ira had Captain Matt beat, but not by much!

[DadJokes]

I really dislike Sankey diagrams.

[secondcor521]

Any way to avoid the $130 annual CC fee?  Even with that, pretty impressive numbers!

[Chris@TTL]

@DadJokes - I feel like some people love, some people hate :) What bothers you about them? Readability? No legend/key? BTW you can read the actual breakdown (with tabular data!).

@secondcor521 - Good question! We discussed that in our breakdown (link in the comment to DadJokes). Here's the snippet:

"The fast-food budget was much higher than normal. Although we did get take out a couple of times for a "special evening", $120 of this is actually 48% of Jenni’s annual fee on a credit card. The card has a monthly credit for Grubhub. Because those Grubhub pickup orders aren’t reflected in our monthly expenses (as they're hidden by the associated credits), we simply attribute a portion of the fee to fast food. The other $130 of the annual fee shows up under "Credit Card Annual"."

Following up on that, Jenni went and canceled the card earlier in June anyway so a $250 credit should appear in our June review. :)

[DadJokes]

@DadJokes - I feel like some people love, some people hate :) What bothers you about them? Readability? No legend/key? BTW you can read the actual breakdown (with tabular data!).

They aren't pleasant to look at, as they appear too chaotic. I prefer simple, clean charts. I'd rather use two different pie charts in that situation, one for income & one for expenses.

But I was just being silly. Your choice of chart is fine. Even if it's wrong.

[Chris@TTL]

(...) Your choice of chart is fine. Even if it's wrong.

Perfect Dad joke. Laid me out. X-O

Yea, I've thought about documenting them in that way (couple pie charts - like Root of Good does) but then I find trying to read the little slivers of the charts difficult. *shrug*

[GreenToTheCore]

Put me in the camp of liking these diagrams. During last month's money date, we were talking about how neat it would be to make one :)

[Chris@TTL]

@GreenToTheCore - definitely give it a go! Check out http://sankeymatic.com to make it easy!

[GreenToTheCore]

Ah! That's the site we found :)

[Chris@TTL]

It's July so I'm back with our June balance sheet! It seems like there was some interest in the topic.

Here's the Sankey diagram (sorry @DadJokes - it's slightly cleaner this month though).



Full details and category breakdown.

I added in our dividends this month to paint a fuller picture, even though they just flow back out as DRIPs.

I think the most interesting element is probably the credits for my fellow mustachians. Here's some detail:

"While $448.10 is reflected as our total grocery expense for the month, $219.25 was credited back (of the $731.35 in total credits for the month). Ultimately, that means our grocery cost for the month was just $228.85. The credit came from the fact that Jenni’s Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card switched its $300/year travel credit to also work with grocery expenses. That helps make up for the large annual fee and the fact that we’ll have a little more trouble maxing out the credit with travel expenses this year."

---

"American Express, as part of their COVID-19 relief, doubled the DELL bi-annual shopping credit amount to $200. In addition, they were running 10% back in credit at DELL. I purchased a new graphics card (about $150) and a solid-state drive (SSD – about $60). I added a $5 gift card to make sure the total after the 10% credit would still be more than $200 in order to max the $200 shopping credit.

The credit math ended up being:

$22.30 (10% on the total balance) + $5 (gift card) + $157.94 (graphics card) + $37.06 (balance of $200 credit towards the SSD) = $222.30"

---

"AMEX’s Business Platinum card also offered a COVID-related credit for shipping expenses up to $20. I purchased 36 stamps (36 * 55¢ = $19.80). They’ll get used up for various notes and cards over the year."

---

"AMEX also offered a wireless phone bill credit up to $20. I reached out to a friend that could use the help and paid their wireless bill. They’ll reimburse me for the difference between the $42.62 bill and $20 credit by the end of the year."

===

Always fun to find neat little tricks with credit cards like that! How did June turn out for you all?

[Zikoris]

I'm not making a diagram, but June was kind of expensive. I don't know what our income was since I only figure that out quarterly (boyfriend is self-employed), but out spending was $1,957, usually we're in the $1,400-$1,600 range.

$847 - Rent
$403 - Food ($358 groceries, plus some donuts and sodas)
$175 - Video Games
$143 - Pet Stuff
$112 - Health (some dentistry and prescriptions)
$94 - Personal Care
$79 - Bills (internet and two cell phones)
$55 - Transportation (public transit + a bike repair)
$47 - A couple of new bras

I believe our year to date savings rate is somewhere around 70%.

[Chris@TTL]

@Zikoris - woo $175 on video games! I'm assuming that's for sort of one time software purchases? Loaded up for the pandemic? Maybe a console purchase?

Either way, 70% SR means you can afford it ;)

Usually, these summer months are steep for us, and I think most folks, as it often has a lot of travel.

[Zikoris]

@Zikoris - woo $175 on video games! I'm assuming that's for sort of one time software purchases? Loaded up for the pandemic? Maybe a console purchase?

Either way, 70% SR means you can afford it ;)

Usually, these summer months are steep for us, and I think most folks, as it often has a lot of travel.

$140 of it was buying Ring Fit Adventure, a really good home fitness game that requires peripherals - and I bought it at a slight markup from a reseller due to it being completely sold out everywhere. It's an AMAZING pandemic purchase because it's both really entertaining and great exercise, and it sucks up as much time as you let it.

[Chris@TTL]

Anything that can make fitness (or any health-related activity) more fun, and therefore more repeatable/routine seems like it's easily worth it. Smart move.

For me, it made buying us each an Apple Watch and easy decision. Even at ~$175/piece, if it encouraged us to "close our rings" (get a solid 30+ minutes of exercise), more often daily, it was easily worth it.