January 2015: Income & Expenses

Savings rate of 25.7%
    The month of January has most certainly come to an end, and I was very happy to recently post about my new dividend record! That record helped to keep my income for the month up and my savings rate as well, those dividends equaled 5.1% of my income for the month! Its pretty amazing to see the progress that my modest portfolio has begun. With $53.94 more in dividends than last year, I am eager to see it continuing to grow and pump out the dividends.

   I am also very happy with myself on keeping expenses down quite a bit this month, especially compared to Decembers heavy spending.

Income	$
Work	1250.49
Other	136.02
Dividends	75.17
Total	1461.68

    Overall income this month was slightly below my 2014 average, although not by much. Income from actually working this month was pretty light, but I used my free time to see family, friends, relax and do some extra effort in job hunting; which are all things I value quite a bit more than slogging it out at a near minimum wage job! My Other income this month was quite good as the share of tips was high from extra tips during the Christmas time that got paid out, as well as I included a small tax rebate of $78 into that category.

    That brings to question on how I will record my upcoming tax rebate in the next month or so. I will probably record it as income in that month, but do savings rate calculations both with and without it; similar to how I included and excluded my trips expense in the December post. For my last years incomes, I did not included any of my tax rebates in the income category so by including it this year the data will be a bit inflated against the 2014 information. But I guess I got to start somewhere on that front, especially since eventually a tax expense will need to be amortized in.         

Expenses	$
Rent	750
Phone	27
Travel	44.9
Groceries	119.82
Restaurants	33.45
Entertainment	61.25
Other	49.95
Total	1086.37

   
    As I mentioned, expenses were pretty 'great' this month at $1086.37. Particularly my Travel, Restaurants, Entertainment and Other categories were nicely low; although there is some room for improvement. Groceries were a bit higher than I'd like for January but there were some pretty good sales on meat so the freezer is now nice and full! So hopefully those extra buys will reflect in a lower February grocery cost. The Other expenses this month are very avoidable as they consisted of printer ink and a haircut :)

    Overall, a good month. I'd have liked to have made more this month, but certainly can't complain too much about have more free time of my own and dividends pulling 5% of that income. With overall income of $1462, and total expenses of $1086, my savings rate was 25.7% for January, which is much nicer than last months -90%!! So a good start for the year, but short of my 2015 goal of reaching a 40% savings rate. Luckily, there is still 11 months to go!