January 2023 Budget Round Up

January was a hard month. I studied for, took, and failed the Professional Engineer Exam and it honestly pushed me down into a depressive episode. Mental illness is hard to talk about without making people uncomfortable so instead of telling you about how depressed I was, I’m going to tell you what I did to try to combat my depression.

I took time away from studying even though I scheduled a new test (which I might postpone), I started sewing and knitting again, I worked on planning our Europe trip, and I spent time in therapy. I cross country skied with my family and I worked on staying mindful about my hobbies. All to say as I’m writing this round up late in February, I am starting to feel better. I took time away from the blog, away from YouTube, and away from Instagram. I spent the majority of my time living in real life.

Even though my January was tough, Mr. Fipolar had a good January and spent his time working on his hobbies, helping plan our Europe trip, doing more than his share of chores, and making an amazing batch of fried rice one week for lunch.

How We Track Our Money and Budget

I use a budget template that I created over the years in Excel to track our monthly expenses. I track our paychecks, our spending, and our overall net worth (including our retirement funds). But, I don’t track what is traditionally thought of as net worth, instead, I track all of our cash (savings accounts, checking accounts, and high yield savings accounts), all of our retirement accounts, and all of our brokerage accounts. We don’t include the worth of our house or car and we don’t subtract the mortgage or the car loan. Instead, our net worth is what I consider to be our FI net worth.

We track so much because it gives us a wholistic view of what we’re bring home, what we’re spending each month, and if we’re living within our means. Even though the stock market contributes to the ups and downs of our FI net worth, we try to increase our net worth every month. This is proving to be more difficult as our investments take on a bigger percentage of our net worth.

We budget with last month’s money meaning that if our budget is for February, the money in it is from our January paychecks. This gives us one month’s buffer in case something happens and allows us to know exactly how much money we’re budgeting for. Mr. Fipolar has a variable paycheck and every amount is different. Mine on the other hand is the same every month. We operate a zero-based budget so every dollar has a home and a purpose. Even though not every month is perfect, this method works for us.

How We Spend

We spend almost entirely with credit cards and we use them responsibly. We pay off the balance at the end of each month after we input all of our expenses into the monthly budget.

We use credit cards to take advantage of travel rewards and cash back. We’re upping our game  little bit to offset some costs of our Europe trip later this year.

Right now we have:

  • 2 Alaska Air Credit Cards
  • 1 United Airlines Credit Card
  • 1 Delta Airlines Credit Card
  • 1 Chase Sapphire Credit Card
  • 2 Fidelity Cash Back Credit Cards (I previously thought we had 1 but it turns out we have 2!)

Yes, it can get complicated to track but we make sure to log into each account every month and pay the balance in full.

Our Incomes for January 2023

We brought in $8,136.51 last month which means we have $8,136.51 to save, spend, and invest in January 2023.

Our expenses:

Mortgage$1740
Groceries$645
Car Payment$311
Bills (Insurance, Internet, & Utilities)$635
Cell Phones$131
Subscriptions$24
Mrs. Fipolar Spending$297
Mr. Fipolar Spending$49
Combined Misc Spending$948
Dog$204
Eating Out$163
House Improvement Spending$40
Car Maintenance Spending$0
Medical$229
Travel$0
Our January 2023 Expenses

We live in a medium to high cost of living mountain town (undisclosed) and currently our household is comprised of 2 adults and 1 spoiled dog.

We stayed under budget in a few key categories but went over budget in our combined miscellaneous spending. This is because we had originally only budgeted for me to go take my Professional Engineering Exam and stay 2 nights in a hotel in the city I had to travel to. But since I failed, I decided to immediately re-schedule a new exam which cost $375 pushing us over in that budget category.

The other category we went over in was our medical spending. Mr. Fipolar booked an eye exam and needed new glasses without me knowing when I put the budget together for the month. In the future, we’ll try to be more on the same page. But since we were under budget in our dining out, dog, and groceries categories, we still managed to stay under budget for the month.

Our Savings and Investments:

Emergency Fund$1,119
Mrs. Fipolar IRA$500
Mr. Fipolar IRA$500
Mrs. Fipolar Brokerage$100
Mr. Fipolar Brokerage$100
Our January 2023 Savings and Investments

Additionally, I invest 15% into my 457b and Mr. Fipolar invests 8% into his 401k. We do not keep track of these numbers on a monthly basis nor do we take any matching contributions into account. Combined, our 401k and 457b contributions are somewhere in the range of $1,350.

Our FI Net Worth:

Our FI net worth increased quite a bit with the current market fluctuations and we’re sitting at around $243,000. This includes all of our checking accounts, savings accounts, HSA’s, retirement accounts, and individual brokerage accounts. With market fluctuations, our net worth increased by just over $18,000 since last month. This made up for many of the losses over the past year and helps put us back on track to reach out FI goals.

We expect the market to keep fluctuating along our FI journey, but it does feel good to know that it went up!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *