So one thing Money Mustache has done for me is to take a hard look at how I spend money. Especially on bills. It took a long time, but I set up an awesome excel workbook to track my little Mustachian empire, such as how my 401k has grown, what my index funds are doing, but most importantly to track my monthly expenses like gas, water, cable and all that, and compare them to what they were the year before. Its been an eye opening experience. My goal is for my monthly expenses to be less than the year before. And even though some naturally go up, like auto insurance, some I have managed to bring down, like electricity and cable for example. So far I have done really well.
The one thing I haven't been focusing on very well is saving cash. I did put some of my emergency money into the dip we just had, so I wanted to replenish my emergency cash fund, rather than cash out what I just put in. So for 2018 I have been aggressively cutting back on spending and moving everything I can into savings and then in turn buy more VTI as I go. Keep in mind, the tax cut, a raise, a bonus, all have helped, but I havn't blown any of that money on anything. My only debt is my home, and while I do use my credit card, I rarely carry a balance from month to month. So this is really money being saved, not saved and then spent. My 2017 savings rate ran about 19% a month including 401k contributions and after tax take home pay. But I am not sure if and how often I might have skimmed off that to be honest. I didn't track it like I am now.
So for 2018, my month savings rates:
Jan: 65%
Feb: 58%
Mar: 43%
April Expectation: 39%
and I expect the rest of the year to be in line with what I expect April to be. I am not expecting additional funds coming in other than my salary job. And this also assumes nothing major breaks in my house or in my car (knocks on wood).
At any rate, I am stunned, really. And I have you guys to thank for motivating me.