March 2022 Financial Update: Big News!

I’ve hinted vaguely at “moving parts” and “upcoming life changes” in previous posts and now it’s finally time to spill the beans.

We are quitting our jobs, selling our house, and moving to Florida.

Woof. It still doesn’t seem real, but March included a series of major steps in this process:

• Mrs. FIby35 put in her notice at work – her last day will be April 8
• Mr. FIby35 put in his notice at work – his last day will be May 6
• We listed our house for sale in late March and as of the time of this posting, we have accepted an offer!

A more detailed post (or several) is forthcoming to explain our decision-making process, the home sale, thoughts on quitting work, and where we go from here.

But this is a financial update post, so let’s check out how we fared this past month in our March 2022 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! Since that time, our net worth has climbed to over 90% of our goal.  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 March 2022:

	BALANCE	CHANGE FROM PRIOR MONTH
ASSETS		
Cash, Checking, Savings	$19,173	$2,992
Investments	$1,027,171	$74,220
Home Equity	$109,330	$578
LIABILITIES		
Credit Cards	($4,873)	($1,057)
Misc. Other Debts	$0	$0
NET WORTH	$1,150,801	$76,733

The stock market rebounded a bit from its dismal start to the year, so The Spreadsheets are significantly happier this month. 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’ve built this up to be able to accomplish some other goals in the first few months of 2022. Now that we’re a quarter of the way through the year, I will say that this has come in handy and is a factor in our ability to quit our jobs and list our house earlier than initially planned.

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 a whopping $41,800 to our various accounts this month (thanks to Mrs. FIby35’s annual bonus) and our investment accounts grew by an additional $32,400 on their own. The S&P 500, which nearly all of our investments track, made a nice rebound by the end of March after a sluggish start.

Home Equity

This is the purchase price of our home, less the outstanding mortgage balance.  I’ve noted before that 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. Well, that time is almost here. We will likely see the results of the “investment” in our home sometime in May when we close the sale.

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.

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 shortly.

Expenses

Here’s a look at our expenses for the month of March:

EXPENSES	Budget	Actual	(Over)/Under
Home (mortgage, property taxes, maintenance, etc.)	$1,114.27	$1,546.92	($432.65)
Utilities	$122.50	$392.84	($270.34)
Automotive	$350.77	$641.08	($290.31)
Groceries	$300.00	$287.17	$12.83
Dining Out	$116.67	$184.51	($67.84)
Health & Beauty	$337.50	$559.35	($221.85)
Cell Phones	$41.67	$0.00	$41.67
Travel & Entertainment	$1,386.67	$550.84	$835.83
Pets	$110.83	$48.41	$62.42
Merchandise	$141.12	$549.79	($408.67)
Other Expenses	$561.33	($273.38)	$834.71
Total Expenses	$4,583.33	$4,487.53	$95.80

Lots of large swings between the categories but we came in just under budget overall. Let’s take a look at some individual categories:

Home Expenses & Utilities

This year’s budget is built differently than in the past…previously, I averaged all expected costs over the course of the year so that most months we should come in under budget, while in May and October we would be over when our property tax payments were due.

However, 2022 will likely see lots of fluctuation in this category. Since we are selling our house and spending more time traveling later in the year, we’ve significantly decreased our housing budget for the year. This spending is also obviously frontloaded towards the beginning of the year. So for now, we’re likely to overspend the budget by a few hundred dollars each month (as was the case in March). This month included just our mortgage.

Utilities continue to exceed the budget as well. I expect this category to be a bit over budget for the first several months of the year, but we continue to have a chilly beginning of the year here in Minnesota (all the more reason to move to Florida!) so our heat bill has been high.

Automotive

We had some routine maintenance done on our vehicle in March, which included a new battery and replacing the windshield. The windshield developed a crack that spread the entire width of the vehicle over the winter, so it was finally time to be replaced. No other known issues with our car, so hopefully that continues *knocks on wood.*

Health & Beauty

The only significant expense here was to pay the bill for a doctor’s visit from earlier in the year. We budget for some out-of-pocket healthcare costs annually, so I’m not concerned about it financially or otherwise.

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 for another couple months while I am working.

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’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

We didn’t actually go anywhere in March, this just consists of some more pre-booking of travel later in the year. Overall, we’ve stuck pretty close to the budget we had set specifically for those plans, so I feel pretty good about it financially.

Merchandise, Other Expenses

Mrs. FIby35 continues to search for clothes and other items needed for upcoming travel, so there’s some buying and returning baked into this month’s activity. We also purchased some items to stage our normally minimalistically (is that a word?) decorated home for staging. Most, if not all, of those items will be returned in April.

Other expenses this month included reimbursement for work expenses paid for in previous months, hence the negative amount.

Conclusion

Overall, our spending was reasonable in March with the potential for some returns in the near future. Our stock market index funds were far more generous in March and we continued to pump large sums into those accounts while we’re still employed. We intentionally frontloaded the contributions to our retirement accounts as much as possible this year in anticipation of quitting our jobs.

We’ll continue to plug away at our plans (I’d be lost without our monthly to-do list) and hope that the market cooperates along the way. Next step: get rid of (almost) all our stuff!

Anybody make any significant life changes in March, or was that just us? Feel free to comment below!