2022 Income and Expenses

 Hi, friends.

I was waiting till I felt much better to write this, but here it goes anyway.

The summary:

Gross Income:  ~$164K

Net Income (passed through my bank accounts): ~$66K

Total Expenses: ~$44.6K

Total Invested: ~$80.5K (incl 25k in CDs/bonds)

Notes:

This is the highest gross income to date. This is awesome! This doesn't even include about $9k of employer 401k contributions that I like to conveniently forget about.  And things like a handful of free EAP sessions. And a free cell phone! 

Because of my heavy 401k contributions, my net pay was just a fraction of my gross income. That's okay by me. The general rule is to take advantage of tax-advantaged accounts first, so that's what I do. Even when I grapple with it, I end up just sticking with maxing out my 401k every which way I can. 

This is also my highest year of expenses except for maybe the year I paid off a $20k student loan. I invested or actively saved about $80k which is awesome, thanks to my really high salary! Last year I saved/invested closer to $100k, but this is pretty good too.

My core expenses still hover around $20k/yr but I spent a lot on lifestyle and keeping myself alive as you'll see below. Not sure how to factor in huge lifestyle expenses in FIRE to either fit within $20k/yr or increase, but we'll see. I've mostly been following A Purple Life but travel is a bigger passion for her than me. And although I'm interested in travel hacking, still haven't made huge strides in it. I'm thinking around $5k would be an okay place to start on a lean budget. Meh, for now, I'm just living pretty cushy with that.

Overview of Expenses:

○ Housing: 10.7K

○ Everyday: 5.3K

○ (subtotal,core: 16K)

○ Giving: 6.9K

Extras (dating, traveling, etc): 20.4K

Listing of Expenses by Category

Travel	$14,931.02
Home	$9,170.62
Gifts & Donations	$6,921.01
Entertainment	$2,882.77
Food & Dining	$2,739.00
Bills & Utilities	$2,320.50
Auto & Transport	$1,841.70
Health & Fitness	$1,498.33
Personal Care	$544.01
Taxes	$516.00
Shopping	$404.71
Fees & Charges	$349.01
Business Services	$259.28
Misc Expenses	$201.67
Education	$15.00
Total	$44,594.63

This is how my budget app aggregated my totals. I did a higher level overview above using a personal spreadsheet that categorizes things in bigger buckets. My everyday expenses go on a debit card that doesn't charge overdraft. So I know if I go over, the card will decline. That has been working for me since professional school. 

As you may have seen in my Seattle expenses post, I spent quite a bit living in Seattle for almost 4 months this year. So that probably skewed my regular food expenses a bit, but that's what happens. It was not the frugalist spend, but that was not my goal. Even still, I found ways to minimize the things I could - like food, really. Airfare was all over the place this year, and I plan to do better next year - one by just taking fewer flights, and 2, I hope to travel hack at least 1 leg of travel. 

Thirdly, I have a better idea of what to expect for housing costs so I can identify deals faster. In my mind, I have a $5k/mon target for each experience but we shall see. For now, I think my target spend is around $20k for vacations this year. Notably, my desire to live full time in Seattle has waned. I already have a pretty pricey trip to Egypt in my brain for my birthday, so we shall see how this all shakes out.

So yes, I tried to spend more this year, and I did not disappoint. 

Home- Cost of mortgage, HOA, tax, insurance, and maintenance. Includes pest control and a one-time cleaning service (that I will  use again!). 

Gifting - I sent over $6k to family overseas. This is something I plan to do this year as well. Notice, I say plan and not hope. I used to be afraid of jinxing "plans," but now I'm learning to accept that plans can change and that's okay. 

Entertainment - mostly another trip to Seattle to see a boy. 

Food and Dining - normal groceries and eating out; I think the app did not separate some vacation eating so it seems a bit high, but I've increased my food budget from $200/mon to $250/mon for next year due to inflation and keeping up with the government allowances. 

Bills and Utilities and Auto - Nothing too out of the ordinary. Even though my car is paid off and I only drive it to get around town for errands, it still costs to fuel and maintain it. I don't plan on going carfree ever. 

Health- almost exclusively for therapy appointments at $40/session. This year when they extended our open enrollment, I upped my FSA to pay for 1 year of weekly sessions in 2023. So this likely won't get tracked since it's pre-paid through payroll. 

Personal Care - hair and makeup.

Shopping - bought some clothes for my trips and dating this year and next. 

Business Services - a few different office chairs; I'm hoping to get around to getting a new desk and couch this year, but furniture shopping is not my favorite thing to do so, we'll see.  I also paid to renew my professional license. 

Education - was for an alumni event I didn't end up attending. 

Fees - brokerage fees. I keep wanting to switch my robo advisor over but I can't quite commit to one broker or one index fund. I'm still in a mix of robo-advised ETFs, target date funds, and index funds. Groan. I'm convinced I'm going to hit a 52-week high in some of these target date funds and make it rain. Ha! 

My overall balance is in my FIRE Tracker, and I'm pretty much where I started at the end of 2021. I'm not too fazed for a couple reasons - I hit my 500k number in the Spring and that felt amazing. I have a background goal of saving just $36k/year to make it to the next $500k. Which as long as I'm employed should be easy to do. And I don't have any real plans of what happens after FIRE since I reached my goal way ahead of schedule! So I'm enjoying the spend part of the journey. I'm happy about that.

So even though I  actively saved/invested about $80k this year to be right where I started at the beginning of the year, I'm not discouraged. I remember this happened near the beginning of my journey and I was so frustrated. But now, it doesn't faze me. I'm not setting anymore extreme goals for really any other part of my life. 

I'm done with looking and/or waiting for the next big thing.