This was a fairly somber summer as far as summers go. It kicked off with us having to put down our dog Maeby on the last day of June. The bill for that came this quarter, which you will see below. We spent the 4th of July at the grandparents’ house down on the farm, and went cherry-picking as normal. Then at the end of the summer, one of our tenants had to move-out to due a personal tragedy, and we were suddenly back looking for tenants. Supposedly we have people moving in this week.
We usually work through the summer while everyone else at work takes time off, so I look back at my photos to remember the big events, but I have zero photos from August. We did go to Saratoga to meet my parents. I spent most of the summer pining for our annual week-long camping trip to the Thousand Islands. I hardly took any photos this summer except while on this trip, so that might be all the photos you see this time!
Just as a reminder, these expense entries do not include any income or expenses related to our rental apartment. That gets its own separate entry!
Total Expenses: $10,447.60
Avg Per Month: $3,482.53
Without Debt Payments Total Expenses: $8,363.86
Avg Per Month: $2,787.95
Savings Rate: 47.8%
Summary
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Serious Stuff | $4,145.27 | $1,381.76 |
| Food | $1,986.24 | $662.08 |
| Transportation | $1,002.06 | $334.02 |
| Utilities | $534.63 | $178.21 |
| Fun Stuff | $1,313.77 | $437.92 |
| Pets | $862.14 | $287.38 |
| Miscellaneous | $603.49 | $201.16 |
Details
Serious Stuff :
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Mortgage | $2,083.74 | $694.58 |
| Home Insurance | ($223.80) | ($74.60) |
| Property Taxes | $2,075.34 | N/A |
| Medical | $178.96 | $59.65 |
| Home Maintenance – DIY | $31.03 | $10.34 |
Nice refund on our home insurance since we changed companies. The property taxes comprise all of our school taxes for the year. Medical expense includes new contacts for Marge. Home maintenance include supplies to repair our back gate which fell apart. (Look up how to build these things on YouTube instead of just improvising!)
So much bad vacation food
Food:
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Groceries | $1,440.67 | $480.22 |
| Wine & Beer | $168.63 | $56.21 |
| Dining Out | $253.08 | $84.36 |
| Takeout Food | $123.86 | $41.29 |
| Total Food | $1,986.24 | $662.08 |
Groceries expense is higher than normal basically because Marge is experimenting in eating a lot of meat.
Wine & Beer includes some mail order beer recipes I’ve been making. The local homebrew store closed, so I basically have to order online. I’ve made a porter, hefeweizen, and coffee stout. Promise I’ll write an cost analysis of homebrewing one day!
Dining and Takeout were on par for what I like to see: under $1,000 each for the year.
Transportation:
| Quarterly Total | Month Average | |
| Auto Maintenance/Other | $565.89 | $188.63 |
| Gas | $355.17 | $118.39 |
| Car Insurance | $0 | $0 |
| Parking | $1.00 | $0.33 |
| Bus Tickets | $80.00 | $26.67 |
| Total Transportation | $1,002.06 | $334.02 |
I took my 2005 Honda Civic in for annual service. They found the light over the license plate was out and, since I was trying to get my state inspection done at the same time, they wouldn’t let me complete the inspection without fixing the light. So I decided to just get it done then and there, and that tiny light ended up being very expensive. And to add insult to injury, the old plan I had through the dealership giving me free oil changes and tire rotations for life (the only reason I go to the dealership anyway) was eliminated! Guess where I won’t be going to have the car serviced next year!
Utilities:
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Cable | $144.97 | $48.32 |
| Electric | $192.47 | $64.16 |
| Gas | $86.60 | $28.87 |
| Telephone | $20.00 | $6.67 |
| Water & Sewer | $90.59 | $30.20 |
| Total Utilities | $534.63 | $178.21 |
Utilities are very nearly identical to this quarter last year. Cable internet expense is up another $5.00 a month. We managed to spend less on gas and more on electricity. We had a few disgusting heatwaves which required some heavy-duty air conditioning, so I’m not surprised.
Dog Ear Books, Hoosick
Fun Stuff:
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Entertainment | $462.15 | $154.05 |
| Recreation | $64.63 | $21.54 |
| Travel | $786.99 | $262.33 |
Entertainment includes Netflix and Hulu subscriptions, books, movies, music and live shows. I’ve basically been listening to three musical acts this summer: Superorganism, who I also saw perform live in Albany, Razika, who have a new album coming out soon with a perfect pop single, and Jessy Lanza, because I like to ride my bike and pretend I’m in this video:
In theaters, we saw Sorry To Bother You, Incredibles 2, and Three Identical Strangers. I also bought ten discounted tickets through my union for future use. I got tickets to see Todd Barry, one of my favorite stand-up comics. He’s coming to my town, so you know I have to go. And I picked up a few books at my favorite bookstore, the crammed-full barn Dog Ear Booked in Hoosick.
Recreation includes some serious upgrades to our camping situation! If being frugal means delaying satisfaction (purchases) our method of cooking over fire for 13 years has been very frugal. But we upgraded this year with one of those little Coleman stoves and a coffee percolator. I was able to make pancakes, eggs and coffee by the river, a great way to start the morning.Travel expense includes four credit card annual fees to get the bonus miles, and all of our hotels in Malaysia next January, less the refunds we got for our home rental over Memorial Day. We booked six nights of hotels in Singapore and Hong Kong using points, so those are free!
Pets:
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Boarding | $116.64 | $38.88 |
| Food | $77.58 | $25.86 |
| Medical | $567.15 | $189.05 |
| Other | $100.77 | $33.59 |
| Total Pet | $862.14 | $287.38 |
This is mostly Maeby’s euthanasia and subsequent cremation. We had an in-home euthanasia (highly recommended for pets who hate the vet) and a separate cremation. All told, it was $525. It was about as gentle a process as you could hope it would be, although the memory still haunts me sometimes if I think of it, so I have to watch it. That might be because, although I’ve put them down, I’ve never actually watched a pet die.
Comorant
Miscellaneous:
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Bank Charge | $23.32 | $7.77 |
| Cash (Untracked) | $46.00 | $15.33 |
| Charity | $150.00 | $50.00 |
| Clothing | $25.40 | $8.47 |
| Gifts Given | $11.56 | $3.85 |
| Home | $175.61 | $58.54 |
| Personal Care | $164.90 | $54.97 |
| Postage | $6.70 | $2.23 |
Clothing expense has been very good this year. Through some kind of system snafu, I get a $10 coupon to Eddie Bauer every month or two, despite not having an account at Eddie Bauer, and maybe never even shopping there before. I’ve used five of these so far this year to get cheap hoodies, shorts, and t-shirts. Soon my entire wardrobe might be Bauered
Charity is my bi-weekly payroll deduction of $25 to various charities.
We actually had to re-order checks, so we have a bank charge this quarter. Checks! Can you imagine? Various taxes on our rental properties can only be paid with checks.
Goal Progress
Total 2018 Spending of $30,000:
- Spent so far: $29,053.36
- On track to spend: $38,737.81
As usual, we are on track to overshoot the $30,000 goal, but it’s good to have goals, right?? Every year for the past three years, we have strangely ended up just short of $36,000, so keep your fingers crossed that hopefully that is where we’ll end up again this year.
Savings Rate of 65%:
- Savings Rate so far: 36.9%
This isn’t happening. Last year’s savings rate was 47%, so maybe we’ll come close to that? Our method for calculating our savings rate is shown here.
Max Out 457 Plan and Roth IRAs
- Goals: $18,000 in 457 Plan / $5,500 in each Roth IRA
- Saved so far: $12,556.28 in 457 Plan / $2,535 in each Roth IRA
I delayed putting any money into our Roth IRAs until the second half of the year to help our with a short term cash flow problem brought on by the rental property purchase in March. So we should have all of these maxed out by the end of December.
Read 24 Books
I got caught up on my goal this quarter by reading ten books. Hmmm… definitely only a few themes represented there: hiking/survival (2), politics (2), death industry (2), comedy (2), and country living (one fiction, one non-fiction). If I had to recommend one, it might be Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, Caitlin Doughty’s memoir of working in a crematory, but it’s really only for people with a very dark sense of humor. The Road To Unfreedom is probably the best book of the bunch. It finally clearly explains this particular moment of Russian and American political history, but it could also bore your eyes out.
Years of Savings:
This magical calculation demonstrates how far we could get if we kept living every month like this ones listed above. We take our investable assets and divide them by our monthly expenses above. The number to shoot for is 25, because at that level of savings, you could afford to live forever on your money stash. According to our monthly average non-debt expenses and our investable assets, we have…
10.9 years of savings
Retirement Location Possibility!
If we take that number of years of savings above, and divide by 25, we can figure out where in the world we could afford to retire right now by dividing another country’s cost of living price index by our own cost of living. I used Albany, NY, for our own cost of living.
Our International Retirement Cost of Living Number is….
65
According to Expatistan’s index, that means we can immediately retire in a few places, few of which I’m familiar with. Aguascaliente, Mexico looks nice, and after reading the aforementioned Road To Unfreedom, I am really feeling Kiev, Ukraine. But just looking at pictures of the mountains around Almaty, Kazakhstan, maybe I’ll go there!