As I’m sure is the case with many of you, December was a busy month. A medical procedure here, a vacation or two there, some family time over Christmas…good times, but we’re happy to be turning the calendar over to January. Oh yeah, and the stock market went bananas yet again. How did that all add up for us financially? Check out the details below in our December 2021 financial update!
In our inaugural blog post, I briefly introduced you to our goal of achieving financial independence (“FI”) by the age of 35 and shared that we are already over halfway to our target net worth of $1,250,000! Here’s last month’s update in case you missed it, and here‘s how we fared last year in total.
This post is the latest in a regular series of monthly financial updates to track our progress to FI and beyond. Bear with me – I’m a little obsessed with spreadsheets and track every penny we make and spend in excruciating detail. I’ll do my best to summarize that activity in a way that gives enough insight into our financial maneuverings without boring you to tears.
Net Worth
Here’s where our net worth ended up through December 2021:
| | BALANCE | CHANGE FROM PRIOR MONTH |
| ASSETS | | |
| Cash, Checking, Savings | $18,143 | $2,061 |
| Investments | $1,006,918 | $47,221 |
| Home Equity | $107,601 | $573 |
| LIABILITIES | | |
| Credit Cards | ($5,660) | $1,252 |
| Misc. Other Debts | $0 | $0 |
| NET WORTH | $1,127,002 | $51,107 |
Way to close out the year on a high note! A three paycheck month from Mrs. FIby35, combined with outstanding returns from the S&P 500 led to our third highest monthly net worth increase of 2021. We’re also 90% of the way to our net worth goal of $1,250,000!
Let’s check out each individual category:
Cash, Checking, Savings
This consists mostly of our emergency fund held in a high-yield online savings account at Ally Bank. The rest is held in a “big bank” for depositing our paychecks and paying bills. As we get closer to our FI number, I anticipate building this up a bit in the coming months.
Investments
Several different accounts are included here, most of which are true “retirement” accounts. It also includes our taxable brokerage account at Schwab. We contributed almost $8,500 to our various accounts this month and the market did the rest – $38,800 in dividends and market gains. When your entire portfolio is at the mercy of the stock market, you know that could easily be wiped out in a matter of days. But until then, we’ll take it!
Home Equity
Purchase price of our home, less the outstanding mortgage balance. I don’t worry about adjusting the value to whatever our Zestimate is on a particular day because it doesn’t matter until we sell. Having said that, new homes are being built and others are being sold in our neighborhood for well over what we paid for ours, so this is likely a conservative number.
Credit Cards
Just the balance on our various credit cards (we use these extensively to fund our travel hacking exploits) as of the end of the month. We pay these off on time and in full each month, so the change in this balance will usually manifest itself in the expenses below. We sent 2021 off with a bang, accumulating our second highest spending month of the year. You’ll see the damage in the Expenses section below.
Misc. Other Debts
Usually just my administrative accounting of who owes what for various fantasy sports leagues. I’m clear of all debts until baseball season starts back up in the Spring.
Expenses
Here’s a look at our expenses for the month of December:
| EXPENSES | Budget | Actual | (Over)/Under |
| Home (mortgage, property taxes, maintenance, etc.) | $2,259.05 | $1,646.92 | $612.13 |
| Utilities | $218.41 | $184.22 | $34.19 |
| Automotive | $480.21 | $115.10 | $365.11 |
| Groceries | $375.00 | $194.31 | $180.69 |
| Dining Out | $116.67 | $67.04 | $49.63 |
| Health & Beauty | $266.96 | $4,418.26 | ($4,151.30) |
| Cell Phones | $16.67 | $0.00 | $16.67 |
| Travel & Entertainment | $369.32 | $851.32 | ($482.00) |
| Pets | $119.17 | $14.00 | $105.17 |
| Work-related | $8.50 | ($125.00) | $133.50 |
| Merchandise (furniture, decorations, clothes, etc.) | $250.30 | $210.53 | $39.77 |
| Other Expenses | $269.75 | $208.80 | $60.95 |
| Total Expenses | $4,750.00 | $7,785.50 | ($3,035.50) |
Though we were $3,000 over budget for the month, the overages incredibly only occurred in 2 areas: Health & Beauty, and Travel (no surprise for us). Let’s take a look at some individual categories:
Home Expenses & Utilities
The budget is built to average the cost of property taxes over the year, so in all months other than May and October, we should be under budget. No big ugly surprises this month.
Groceries, Dining Out
Both of these categories were under budget, likely because we spent a good chunk of December traveling. Mrs. FIby35 had a work trip to Las Vegas (I happily tagged along), and we spent a week in Key West with her family. All of those meals are included in the Travel section if they weren’t reimbursed by her employer.
Health & Beauty
Here’s the main culprit of our budget woes, though it was completely planned. After 20 years of wearing glasses or contacts, Mrs. FIby35 finally convinced me to have LASIK surgery. The total cost was a little over $4,100, but so far it’s well worth it. As a side bonus, I now have less toiletry items to haul around when we travel, having replaced the glasses, contacts, extra pair of contacts, contact solution, etc., with just a small bottle of eye drops. High monetary cost, but a big win in the quality-of-life department.
Cell Phones
As I’ve explained previously, we both have cell phone plans through Mint Mobile that only cost about $15 each per month for unlimited talk, text, and 4GB of 4G LTE data. I receive reimbursement from my employer every few months as well, so my cell phone is basically free.
We love Mint Mobile and highly recommend their services for a much more affordable option than some of the big names out there. I’d be thrilled if you used this referral link and signed up with them – you won’t regret it! You’ll get $15 (basically a month free!) added to your account and I’ll get a small referral bonus as well. Mr. Rebates is also running a $10 cash back deal that you could use to stack your savings, and Rakuten is offering $5 cash back if that’s more your style.
Travel & Entertainment
As mentioned above, we spent some time in Las Vegas and Key West, FL in December. There wasn’t much in the way of travel hacking for these trips, since one was for work and one was with family that is more interested in convenience and comfort than snagging the best deal (no complaints though, the hotel outside Key West was awesome).
We did, however, take advantage of the situation to set us up for some pretty sweet travel perks down the road: the MGM Grand in Las Vegas is a Hyatt property, so Mrs. FIby35 was able to pay for her stay using her new Chase Hyatt Business credit card (referral link) to close out that sign-up bonus of 75,000 Hyatt points and get the hotel nights credited to her World of Hyatt rewards account, achieving Globalist status in the process! This means we will get some great perks when staying at Hyatt properties for the next year or so: room upgrades, late checkout, free parking, waived resort fees, and a free night at a category 1-4 hotel. Pretty sweet deal!
Conclusion
I’d say December was a highly successful month for the FIby35 household, both monetarily and otherwise. We did a bit of spending to close out the year, but I can’t overstate how life-changing LASIK has been for me so far. And of course, we couldn’t end the year without some warm-weather travel.
If you’re following along at home, you may have noticed our spending this year eclipsed our $57,000 budget. As much as I would have loved to come in under that number this year, there are a lot of moving parts as we prepare to depart the workforce in the near future, and some extra spending was a necessary part of those preparations. We’ve also more than covered the additional spending with unanticipated revenue sources (selling a car, stimulus checks, etc.), so it’s not a complete Spreadsheet travesty. I’ll post soon tallying up our 2021 year-end results.
How did your year end up? Any goals you achieved and want to brag about? Feel free to comment below!
