1 Year of FIRE -
My Spending for the past 12 months.
I thought this would be a good place to post, not too many others around here, and most of you are in a similar place. I officially FIRED in March 2018. The goal was to NOT TOUCH the investments until they grow into gigantic mushrooms in future years. Instead, we would work to pay for our monthly / annual costs as we go, and stop saving. I had also presaved enough to completely be off work for 2 years, as I am trying to start my side business... and the intent was for the side hustle to eventually make up any difference needed.
Aug 2017 - Aug 2018
INCOME
Goldielocks salary, take home: $14,200
Surprise extra work for old employer in December: $1200
Work for part time instructor at college : $12,000 (6 classes taught, and I now get health benefits based on 2016's extra work pre-FIRE, it is starting to be worth it, now).
My new business that I procrastinate about: Income of about $1000, and all offset by various expenses, like licensing.. I need to get this going but I am crap about marketing so far.
DH Salary, take home: $43k
He recently returned to work and needs to get his 10 years of pension credits in to start getting decent payouts. He likes work, and never works more than 40 hours, and it is only 6 miles from home.
Did not include any investment income as it is all re-invested.
EXPENSES:
In all, we spent $3k less than we earned/ brought in, in 2017/2018.
We took a small vacation to Las Vegas (all vacations cost under $1.5k due to travel hacking, camping), took family fun days with teens, supported 2 teenagers, both living at home and sometimes expensive, have a large mortgage on our home, and DH and I have a date out at least 3 times per month (and he likes dinners out and $$).
I did stop insuring / driving one car to save money, and we reduced our term life insurance.
Part of me is cringing, as I am so used to putting more $$'s away net into long term savings. Part of me is sad that the part time income on my part is less than I thought it would be. ( I need to send the form to reduce the taxes I am paying, I am no longer in the 30% plus tax bracket for goodness sake). BUT, I was surprised that NET, we are not spending the pre-savings like I thought.
Instead, what happened this year is that we added substantial amounts to DH's retirement funds, while draining a similar amount from the pre-savings pile of cash. We did have a huge tax return, above normal, that helped net us out this year that I can't count on in future. I also did not track or monitor expenses, other than trying to be wise about groceries.
Moving forward -- I will need to find more ways to cut expenses (as the mortgage and utilities continue to increase with rates), or earn more income to pay for all the fun things, if we don't touch the retirement stash. I need to create a new budget for the next year, based on the spending in the last 6 months, one that includes savings for another car as ours is 13 years old and has a lot of undercarriage rust..
Doable --? I hope so.
I hope all of you are having a similarly successful FIRE year.