March Madness: My money mindset for 31 days, Days 11 – 19

Times they are a changin’

I’ve decided to switch up the frequency and structure of my reporting. The first 10 days kept me in the habit of writing and committing to my budget. It even pushed me to tell a few coworkers about the habit I’m looking to build. Now that repetition has set in, I think it would be a better reader experience to have an easier to digest weekly structure with more interesting experiential callouts rather than me commenting on the daily grind of eating Amazing Turkey Sandwiches. After the callouts, I’ll follow up with a quick summary of my spending. This week I’ll start by explaining my favorite financial tools and then launch into the new structure.

The tools of my financial life

I’ve linked to the tools I use to track my budget and plan my investments (I know investing is a little out of the scope of my previous posts), in case any readers are interested in using them. They are described below based on how I use them most regularly.

• Mint: A strong desktop platform and simple mobile UI focused on budgeting. I highly recommend Mint over Personal Capital for those solely interested in a budgeting use case. Mint allows you to create specific categories for every transaction to fine tune your budget and allows you to set and track different goals. The advice section can get a little annoying to see as it’s basically advertising, but it’s a small price to pay for an otherwise free piece of software.
• *Personal Capital: A strong mobile UI with a decent desktop platform for reviewing your investments. Personal Capital’s mobile experience is by far and away better than anything else I’ve seen out there. The cash flow, income, and expense section of the app breaks down your financial life in very clean looking charts with a great navigation experience that lets you explore every spike or dip with accompanying data at the slide of a finger. While it does have a budgeting tool, it’s only in the aggregate amount spent each month, which is why it takes the silver for budgeting purposes. However, Personal Capital’s strength is really in its breakdown of your investments and recommendation of your portfolio. For those of you interested in a human interaction for advisory service you can gain access to these professionals fairly quickly.
• *Digit: A SMS / mobile based automatic savings app. Digit keeps me focused on my money every morning with a proactive daily text message about my checking account balance. It adds a spark of humor to your finances with jokes, fun gifs, and emojis to an otherwise a stressful topic for people. It’s a great first step for those looking to be only a little more mindful about their savings by providing them with a just set it and forget it model for various goals. While I think I’ve outgrown it at this point and may liquidate my account soon, I can’t argue with the results I achieved by using it. Digit helped me automatically save ~$3k last year to put towards a vacation to Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia without me ever noticing (during that time Digits couldn’t be linked to another tracking platform).
• *Wealthfront: A low fee automatic investment platform. Humans have lost and the machines have taken over. All hail our fee reducing overlords! More seriously, I can’t find a cheaper way of indexing or tax loss harvesting outside of doing it myself. It also has a pretty neat retirement planner called Path, which forecasts your retirement needs and outcomes based on a few variables. Since I prefer to be ultraconservative with my assumptions, I’ve set mine to assume I wont be receiving social security.
• *Acorns: As the name suggests, Acorns is about small investments. I linked it to my credit cards, so now every purchase rounds up to the nearest dollar and deposits the change into an investment account, which is managed by a robo-advisor. One of the cooler features of Acorns is its Found Money referral system, which showcases businesses that will drop a few bucks into your investment account when you buy from them. The business listed are fairly limited at the moment, but it’s still a cool idea. The one thing to watch out for is the fees. Unless your Acorns account is $5k or higher you are going to be paying $1/month to have them manage your money (it drops to .25% after that). Since I’m having fewer credit card transactions each month, thanks to better budgeting and cooking at home, I may be outgrowing this platform.

Spending callouts this week

Farewell to a friend and bon voyage to my budget

On the 15th I went to a going away party of a coworker that is moving on to bigger and better things. We all ended up at Houston Hall, and I decided to have one drink in my friend’s honor, and another, and then an Uber to Brooklyn, and then a 1 am dinner at Sweet Chick, and then another Uber back home…shit. My budget is going to feel this tomorrow.
Let’s take a look at the damage:

• Houston Hall: $34.50 (Face palm)
• Uber #1: $0 (Someone else paid)
• Sweet Chick: $38.11 (I think the food was delicious?)
• Uber #2: $3.91 (At least I pooled it…)

Total: $76.52 (I never knew how much it hurt to say goodbye)

Groceries are still costing me less than I expected

My weekly groceries have been pretty reasonable and below my estimate of $160/week.

Order from the 11th: $99.35
Order from the 18th: $90.75

Even if you include my larger order from earlier in the month, I’m still only averaging $107.43/week. Digging through my pasts Instacart orders shows me that salmon and shrimp can cost me up to $50/week! Combine that with the switch to eating more vegetables and my grocery bill has been put on a pretty significant diet. Saving almost $60 on average a week is some serious cheddar.

Oh yeah…taxes: The $295.00 unexpected expense

I forgot about my taxes. Well more accurately, I forgot that I had hired someone to handle them for me back in January and on the 19th the bill came due $295.00. I guess the good news is that I’m unexpectedly getting money back on my taxes this year (yes, I’m aware that I’m just getting back my own money from the government). While $300 is a pretty high price for tax guidance, over the last few years I’ve had to account for the “tax stuff” that came from exercising options, and I want the peace of mind that comes with a professional. The question still remains. Do I move my goal by $295.00 to account for this unexpected expense, or do I tighten my belt, even more, to try to make it to $2,220.00 for the month?

The numbers: Days 11-19

Budget remaining on day 10: $754.32
Less this week’s expenses

• Bon voyage: $76.52
• Groceries: $190.10
• Tax services: $295.00
• Being a good boyfriend and Ubering my GF and I back from a dinner party: $16.75

Total weekly expenses: $578.37

Budget remaining: $175.95
Days remaining: 12

I have to live off of less than $15 a day for the rest of the month, and I still have some bills to pay.

Thanks for reading and wish me luck…

Days 20–26: (Coming soon)

←Day 10: Lobsters, foie gras, and friends on the cheap

*In full transparency links to Digit, Wealthfront, and Acorns are referral links that equally benefit both me and new users that sign up and save / invest on their platforms.