Another week down in My Early Retirement Journey. This week ended, thankfully enough, with a little spring in my step. Nice weather brightens my mood. It feels nice to leave the workday when it's still light out.
On with it...
Monday - Worked 9.5 hours at my day job. Came home; watched The Mindy Project; and ate some frozen Asian rice. If you're curious it's Ling Ling's Chicken Yakitori (<<my first attempt at affiliate linking!). It's about $6 a box and you get 2 bags in each box. One bag sometimes lasts me two meals; sometimes just 1+. Today it was 1+. I add some expired gochujang sauce on the side and it tastes like take-out. Side note- the frozen rice doesn't taste quite as nice the second day. I still eat it but day one is best. During some downtime at work, followed a comment from one blog to a list of other female FIRE/ Personal Finance bloggers. They're out there! Spent some time introducing myself.
Tuesday - I had a jury summons for today but my number was not called so I had to go to work. I actually wanted to see what it was like to do jury duty. I guess that will be for another day. Worked 6.5 hours at my day job. Including commute, gave 3.5 hours to side gig (teaching). I only get paid for 1.5 hours for the actual teaching but it's ending soon! Hallelujah!!
Wednesday - Another 9.5 hours at work. I helped train a new employee who didn't return to work the next day 😖. I got off work on time and told myself I'd watch TV (free streaming) and relax but of course I ended up checking blog stuff. I finally got approved for AdSense! It took about 2 weeks. Got stuck in a 4 hour AdSense loop trying to figure it all out. In the end, I ended up with one AdSense ad on one of my side bars and made $0.01. I also figured out how to make the Walmart ad (my first affiliate) click open in a new window. This girl did some coding! I felt pretty accomplished. Granted, it was 2 words of code, but still it took me at least 30 minutes to figure it out!
Thursday - Worked day job and side gig. Went to Walmart to run errands. Grand total was about $12 for: 3 mangoes, 3 plums, some frozen tilapia and eggs. Got gas during lunch break and that was about $23. Bought lottery tickets for work pool ($2) and 2 apples ($0.80). Total for the day (approx): $36. My first auto-deposit to my Build Wealth fund was set for today. I budgeted for it at the beginning of the year, but it took a while to get the exact number right; figure out how I wanted to fund that account; and set up the payroll direct deposit.
Friday - Working 9 hours today. Still at work as I type this. I felt a pep in my step this morning. It was light out when I woke up and it should still be light out when I get home! I want to get some take-out today but nothing really seems appealing. Did some tweaks to budget this week.
Tweaked my spending budget down from the original $600/mon, the current $560/mon down to $430/mon. Rationale: I have this bare bones monthly budget in my mind of 500/500/500 for housing/student loan/spending. Housing is not there yet/ student loan is $566/ so I took the $66 out of spending and rounded down.
Other highlights of the week:
- 2 days without spam calls from blogging
- Increase in spam emails about blogging after adding a few new plug-ins to my site to combat the slow load time (W3 Total Cache, Cloudflare, Auto-Optimizer)
- Health-wise, feeling better than I was last week
- Only spent about $12/week on food (food budget: $50/week)
- Found this link to calculate early retirement age; might share it with my students; and this blog post led me there
Calculated my savings rate in 2017: 25%
After perusing some random FIRE blogs this week, realized I don't know or never cared to figure out my savings rate pre-My Early Retirement Journey. These are the rough calculations I made.
401k: Used my 2017 W-2: Contributed about $11,000
Savings Account: Used the difference between statement balances Jan 2017 and Dec 2017: about $6,000
Total Savings in 2017: $17,000 (rounded)
After-tax Income in 2017: $67,000 (rounded)
Savings rate: 17/67 = 25% (not bad!; estimated savings rate in 2018 = 50%)
Where did $50,000 dollars? Expenses are estimated about $30,000 and I paid off $20,000 in student loans. I had to check my student loan statements to remember. One day I will post my zero balance letter. I may also do another post on my debt payoff story, since it's all the rage.
Where did $50,000 dollars? Expenses are estimated about $30,000 and I paid off $20,000 in student loans. I had to check my student loan statements to remember. One day I will post my zero balance letter. I may also do another post on my debt payoff story, since it's all the rage.
Simple wins for this week:
Personal: not late for work once this week; feeling much better
Blog: Adsense, Incorporated Affiliate Link into a post.
Simple goals for next week:
Personal: eat more vegetables (x > 1 serving)
Blog: submit a post to Rockstar Forum for their 3rd Monday shout out
[originally published Apr 14, 2018]
ReplyDeleteTuppenny
Apr 14, 2018tuppennysfireplace.com
Glad you had a better week, last week sounded grim on all fronts.
I’m impressed you only took 30 mins to work out a little coding. Not convinced I’d manage that under 2 hours, sigh.
I’d be interested in that list of female FIRE/Personal Finance bloggers if you were able to share or bung me an email? (Cheeky I know but if you don’t ask, you don’t get!)
[originally published Apr 22, 2018]
ReplyDeleteMr. Financial Freedom Project
Apr 22, 2018www.thefinancialfreedomproject.com
Ha, I used to watch The Mindy Project years ago! Though I couldn’t stand the Mindy character herself. My viewership was based more out of that strange fascination of the can’t-look-away variety… haha.
Sounds like you had a banner week! I can attest to the difference that leaving work while there’s still daylight outside to enjoy can make. There’s nothing worse than working 12 hour days in the winter months and both arriving to and leaving from work while it’s dark outside. Used to go better part of a week at a time without seeing the light of day! Talk about depressing!