My Income, Expenses, and Savings from 2021

 All the money I spent, saved/invested, and earned this year. Well for the most part. It's only Dec 29 and although I've tried waiting until the end of the month, anxiety and boredom got the best of me.

I think expenses will only be off by about $50 if I get some snacks Thurs and Friday which I probably will because it's New Year's and well, why not!

Here are my financial goals from 2021.

Here's where we landed. Mostly rounded. 

Income: ~$140k

Gross Salary: $139k

(Take -home pay: $46k)

Other income: $3.5k

Notes: Gross salary includes base pay plus a bonus for half of 2020 for performance. Take home pay is pretty low compared to what you might expect. This is due to maxing out 401k and contributing to an after-tax 401k. So the money that actually came through my checking account was pretty low. It was my first year doing it this way, and I think I'll probably keep it up for 2022 with some minor modifications.

Other income is the COVID stimulus check and Bank Bonuses! I didn't try very hard this year for bank bonuses but I still was able to cover over 1 month's expenses with low effort.

Expenses: $14k

My target spending started at an aspirational $26k at the beginning of the year then when I got desperate, I tried to aggressively save on a COVID spending target of $15k.  (Also, I just realized this is about 10% of my gross income this year!)

Here's the breakdown from Mint:

Speaking of budget apps, this was the first year I tried it. I was very apprehensive about sharing all of my data but it definitely made tracking way easier. And for someone who loves spreadsheets, I still manually updated my spreadsheets. It was a good way to double check what Mint was categorizing and I could just do a quick once over of where my money was going. I caught a couple of rogue fees and increased charges that went unnoticed. So that was good! 

I so loved how easy it was to visualize my spending, that I went back and manually added transactions from the first part of the year before I signed up with the app. 

Nothing too surprising here. 

Gifts and Donations are large amounts I sent overseas this year to family. I gave a few dollars to charity and bought a couple gift cards for family members for milestone events. 

Travel - those were some semi-last minute trips to meet up with family. I had some extra time in Q4 and a little breathing room in the budget, so I took 2 road trips. Yay for leaving the house! 

Fees and Charges - are something Mint tracks, but I don't. It's mostly from my advisor fees. I'm still working on what I want do to there. 

Housing is a little lower than it will be in future years because I didn't have to pay my mortgage for about 4 months due to COVID. 

I like clicking around in Mint because it can categorize by vendor so I know I spent a lot of money at McDonalds and Food Lion. That tracks. It's really easy to go there. I can go in my housedress and not feel judged. The basic perks of living in my neighborhood. 

Savings

Goal: was about ~50k

This includes contributions to pre-tax 401k and after-tax 401k. Note with after-tax you can go over the annual max to the IRS max of all sources which is closer to 50-60k/yr. 

What I actually invested: ~$97k

I almost doubled my original goal. A lot of this was leftover cash from our first COVID year and then a reduced Spending Target and a performance bonus that is not factored into my budget. 

That is amazing! That is more than I made my first year at Call Center #1 and pretty much what I made Year 2 and 3 at Call Center #1.  Money is amazing!

When I was crying and anxious and sad most of the year it didn't seem worth it. I couldn't see progress. I just saw this long never-ending road that I was sure I would never see the end of. I'm still not at the end but look how far we've come!

I am thankful. 

I still don't know what to do after I reach FI when before I was sure I would quit working. We still have to see what happens when I'm working independently in my new role. The progress is nice. The reflection is nice. 

I don't think I've fully processed all this so this is just mostly a numbers report card without much reflection. I needed something to do with my night because Mean Brain is trying to drop-by. 

Happy New Year!