How Much I Spent January 2016

I did better than I expected. In total I spent $3,226. My goal is to spend under $2,000 but I am not willing to push myself too much. Thankfully, I can make up for extra expenses by working extra.

I made nearly $12,000 in net income for the month of January. So for now I’m gonna make up for extra expenses by picking up more shifts. It will take me a few months in this new condo to ‘settle in’ and get back to my normal expenses.

Groceries made up $460 of my expenses. I was buying a lot of ready-made things because I just wasn’t comfortable cooking in the kitchen. Now that everything is well situated and I have my awesome $50 kitchen island I don’t have an excuse.

HOA Dues were $167 and even though I didn’t pay for property taxes I am counting another $175 that I set aside for property taxes. So let’s say a total of $342 in this category.

$287 in Financial fees for my financial adviser and  taxes and my subscription to a podcast that’s focused on personal finance.

Utilities of $87. This is my cell phone, home internet and electricity. I could have used the electricity a little less for heat but I was feeling lazy.

I spent $1,133 on the condo. Bought some furniture and fixed a few things in the place. I expect spending another 2-3k before the end of the year, hopefully not much more than that.

I spent $841 on entertainment. Yes, this is a lot and I can lean this out quite a bit. My gym membership, dining out, drinks with friends and my coffee shop addiction are all included in this category.

I always like to run this scenario: how much would I have spent if I could strike a perfect balance between comfort and luxury? Without having spent money on the condo and with a little less spent on entertainment I would have like to spend $1,793. This would come out to an annual expense of around $22k which I could passively make by investing somewhere around $540k.