Budget Review for the First Half of 2024

It’s once again time to check in and document my progress! Besides my post last week I’ve been pretty quiet. And honestly, I’m not thinking about money or FIRE much these days. The months come and go, I try to save more than I spend, and most months my net worth goes up.

Some people call this the “boring middle.” I don’t like to think that way. Looking at my finances regularly might be boring, other than when I zoom out and realize that net worth curve is starting to look an awful lot like an exponential function, because I’ve been at this FIRE thing for over nine years now.

Besides that I’m out there somewhere, living and enjoying life. The money stuff is second nature at this point. I’m lucky I don’t have to spend too much mental energy focusing on it.

I didn’t set any particular goals for myself last time, other than the ever-present goal to try and keep my spending on target. Let’s see how I did:

After crunching the numbers it’s obvious I went over budget by quite a bit — $662.64, or about 18% of my target spending.

Notably, a large overage was in my fairly new Additional Housing Expenses category in which I spent $1,172.18, or $672.18 over budget. We ended up doing a few home renovation projects ahead of schedule due to getting good prices on the labor. I think this wraps up all of the most expensive things we will do in the near future besides a kitchen update.

It is certainly easier to budget in an apartment. If we isolate the overspending on housing, I would have been right on target; the overspending in some categories balanced out with underspending in others. Other categories of particular interest this time are all food-related.

I overspent by quite a bit on alcohol and bars; $75 per month over budget. Ironic since I track my drinking and I consumed about 1/3 less alcohol during these recent six months than the latter half of 2023. I tried out a bunch of non-alcoholic beers and “spirit alternatives” which I guess added up. I’m torn on this because I found non-alcoholic alternatives a great way to cut down on drinking, but they’re more expensive than regular beer and liquor. Overall it seems a small price to pay for a healthier lifestyle.

I also wasted probably around $200 in failed attempts to homebrew non-alcoholic beer, which I’ve learned is much more difficult to make than regular beer. There are a lot more variables to consider especially food safety related.

In other news I have barely been going out to eat at restaurants, spending on average just $50 per month to eat out. I wrote a couple of years ago how I felt that inflation was eroding the value proposition of restaurants and although inflation has mostly subsided it feels like the slow decline in restaurant quality has not. Nothing bothers me quite like going out to eat and paying exorbitant prices for food that I could have made better myself at home.

Budget Update, Net Changes, and Future Goals

I updated my permanent budget with adjusted numbers to try and create something I can stick to during the second half of this year:

Here’s the rationale for every value change explained in sequential order:

  1. Property tax increases.
  2. I both added money to my Groceries budget, and subtracted the same amount from my Restaurants budget to try and more accurately tune how I’m spending my money on food.
  3. I added more money to Alcohol/Bars to accommodate spending a bit more for non-alcoholic alternatives to reduce my alcohol consumption.
  4. A small raise at my job has me earning a bit more in monthly income.

I think that an average total monthly expenditure of $3,739 per month is something that I can stick to this time around, especially with no big home renovation projects planned for the near future. I will keep plugging along with labor-intensive but inexpensive DIY projects such as painting.

Savings Check-up

Let’s take a look at my total cash inflows to savings and investment accounts over the past 6 months:

Overall, quite pleased to see this number. Automatic deductions to max out one’s 401(k) sure can do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to saving!

I will be trying to focus a bit more on bank account opening bonuses to increase my savings, currently I am doing the $900 targeted offer from Chase. I have apparently churned too many credit cards recently as I have been difficulty getting approved for new cards with welcome bonuses, so I’m going to focus on jumping between bank offers as those are easier to get approved for.

I have already maxed out my Roth IRA for the year, so I should be contributing more towards my taxable brokerage during the rest of the year.

Net Worth Check-up

December 31, 2023 Net Worth: $410,711

June 30, 2024 Net Worth: $479,211

6 Month Change: $68,500

The stock market has obviously been doing well this year and my wealth continues to compound. I may be halfway to millionaire status some time very soon, which is a very exciting milestone.

Thoughts? Questions? Leave a comment below!