Journey to FI - November Update

Continuing on with my theme of monthly FI updates, here is November.

Income:  Income maintains steady from our day jobs this month, but we get a nice bump due to getting our newest rental filled.  We got a tenant in and they are paying $975/month.  Being that the house is paid off, I consider about $800 of it profit.  The $175/month is enough to cover taxes and insurance for the year.  I will save the $800 for a couple months for the emergency fund.

Expenses:  Again, spending for the month was high due to our rental renovation project.  Our total for the month was almost $9,400.

Remaining Money:  Still putting all remaining income toward our debt pay down.  I have gotten rid of all the outstanding credit card debt.  Now only my wife's care payment remains.

Debt:  Another month of good progress reducing our outstanding debt down another $5,000 this month.  As I mentioned above, all outstanding credit card debt has been eliminated so now only the car payment and our monthly expenses remain.  I actually added to our cash savings this month.

Savings:  Since I contributed to our savings for this month I will add this category.  For the month we accumulated a modest $2,000 or so in cash savings.  Our retirement investments are separate and are contributed every pay period.

Summary:  Another successful month in the march toward eliminating our non mortgage debt.  I will work hard to keep it this way.  I think I may just keep the minimum payment schedule on the car as it is on a 1.49% loan and I can get more return on my money if I do other things with it.  We will see.

Goals for the Coming Months:  My next goal will be to relax and accumulate some cash for a while.  It has been a stressful year working on 2 rentals so I need a break.  I also need to save up and decide what I want to do next.  I would like to move to our dream home in the next year or so.  I think I will push to set us up to do that.

I hope you enjoyed this update.  

Journey to FI - October Update

It has been another long stretch between posts for me.  I guess that's what happens when we are busy around the holidays.

I did continue to update my monthly tracker so I do have all the data.

I will be posting a few quick updates for the missing months over the next few days.

Here is October's update.

Income:  Still maintain our consistent income from month to month for budgetary purposes.  Our income does fluctuate based on my wife's sales.  She is very successful so we always make more than I budget.

Expenses:  Spending for the month was high due to our rental renovation project.  Our total for the month was a tad over $12,000.  At some point I should dive in and separate our personal vs. business spending, but I am not at that point yet.

Remaining Money:  From my original post stating that we have $5,425 in remaining money, that is strictly from a budgetary standpoint.    That money is all spent at this point because of our rental renovation and debt pay down efforts.  Don't worry, we have our rainy day savings in case of any emergency need for cash, but for the time being, all extra cash is paying for property renovation costs.

Debt:  Our debt was reduced drastically due to the fact that one of my 0% interest offers was expiring so I pushed hard to pay it all down.  That was about $11,000 alone.  Between that and our monthly mortgage and car payments, we reduced our debt by about $13,000 from September to October.  This is a huge impact.

Summary:  After my first month of tracking these metrics outside of Mint.com, I find it exciting to see our net worth grow.  The debt pay down is the big reason for the swing.  Another factor that drove our net worth to increase was the increase in home values.  I am simply using the Zillow value which I believe can be 10-15% off, but it is still a reasonable indicator, to some extent.

Goals for the Coming Months:  Continuing on from last month's goals, I am still working to eliminate the non mortgage debt.  It has decreased significantly from last month, but there are still some expenses from the rental renovation to pay off.  I believe we will be done quickly.

I hope you enjoyed this update.