Monthly Money and Munchies: Finance And Food

Monthly Money and Munchies: Finance And Food

Okay. So I’ve been slacking with the posts. It’s not for the lack of ideas or post topics. In fact, my interests are so varied that there’s a ton of potential topics I could write about. Truth is: I just haven’t had the writing inertia lately. Between my roles as a husband, father, and physician… there is limited time, energy, and attention to do it all. To gain back some inertia again, I’m going to kickstart my writing momentum with something easy– a monthly money report.

In 2018, I wrote monthly updates with respect to our buy nothing challenge. These posts were so fun and easy to write because they were basically stories about things we spent money on and pictures of food we ate. The food porn was quite popular with some folks too, which makes me really happy because I’m always trying to inspire people to eat a more healthy and mindfully.

The buy nothing challenge of 2018 is long gone and I miss writing those posts. So I decided to a revive them with a different spin. These monthly money and munchies posts will be similar to last year’s buy nothing updates. Except this time we’re not going to be as strict with respect to frugality and minimalism.

Don’t get me wrong. My wife and I still value being conscious consumers. And we’re still relatively minimalist and frugal. Especially when you compare us to other high income professionals. We’re just not quite as hardcore as we used to be.

 

So Why The Change?

We are loosening up the purse strings for several reasons.

Earning more money

First of all, I am earning quite a bit more money per hour compared to last year. Starting January 1, 2019, my salary increased by 15%.

I’m not trying to brag. But at my income level, it’s a huge increase. I’m just telling you like it is. Not trying to sugar coat it.

Personal finance is pretty simple: earn and save much more than you spend, then invest the difference.

Because I earn more money now, it allows us to relax our frugality a bit. We can afford to go from hardcore beast mode frugality to a level that is a little more chill. I’ve lived like a resident for a few years as a young attending. It’s time to live it up.

Having enough assets to pay off (most) debt

Excluding our mortgage, we have enough money in cash savings and after tax investment accounts to pay off our debt.

My medical school student loans are completely paid off.

Our only consumer debt is the car loan for my Tesla and my wife’s law school student loans. The car loan is about $41,000 and with an interest rate of 3% APR. We are in no hurry to pay it off sooner.

My wife’s law school student loans are a different story. It’s about $213,000 with an interest rate of 7.38%. We are less than five years away from expecting public service loan forgiveness. Can’t wait for these loans to be gone!

As a result of our self-imposed frugality from last year’s buy nothing challenge, we were able to save and invest a good chunk of money. After fully funding our tax advantaged retirement accounts, most of our excess income went directly to a PSLF insurance side fund. (Our strategy is detailed in my investor policy statement.) Sure, I fully expect our loans to be forgiven. But it doesn’t hurt to have a back up plan. All this hard work has paid off because now we have enough money to pay off my wife’s loans outright if we wanted to.

Having the ability to pay off all our debt today (if we wanted to) is huge.  With funding secured, we don’t have to be as hardcore frugal.

Taking home another paycheck

My wife’s fourteen month long maternity leave is ending soon. She definitely has mixed feelings about it. A big part of her would like to stay home and continue caring for our baby. It’s understandable. I can’t see anybody else taking better care of our baby than my wife. She’s such an awesome mom. But ultimately, she also sees the value of going back to work.

When we first became parents, deciding who should stay home was a no-brainer. I make considerably more money than her and her parental leave benefits are astronomically much better than what my employer offers. So she stayed home and I went back to work. For me, it worked out great. Not only did I get to go back to a job that I like, it also gave me meaningful adult interaction and a mental break from the exhaustion of helping to care for a baby. And coming home was the best part. The baby goes absolutely nuts with excited happiness when I come home from work. I love that feeling! And with my wife going back to work soon, she’ll experience that joy too.

Anyway, back to the point. My wife going back to work means that we will be taking home two paychecks again. The extra money allows us to be less frugal and spend more money (of course intentionally on the things that we love and value).

 

Monthly Spending

Needless to say, we have upped our spending in 2019.

Because I didn’t write a monthly spending post for January, I’ll just include both January and February in this post.

Taxes

Taxes were due in mid-January, so this was a huge expense (as usual). The pain of paying more than $20,000 in taxes a quarter always hurts. But the sting is lessened when you can get some it back or make a profit by using rewarding credit card that returns better than 1.87% back.

For taxes this quarter, I used the American Express Blue Business Plus credit card. It earns 2x membership rewards points for every dollar spent up to $50,000 annually. I value these points because at the minimum they can be redeemed for 1 cent per point. They can potentially be worth even more if you transfer them to travel partners.

Baby Stuff

The baby is almost a year old now. We continue to buy new clothes for her as she outgrows her old ones.

Personally, we try to buy clothes made of organic and natural materials. Usually not the cheapest option, but it’s worth it to us. We spent about $50 on clothes of her. Nothing too crazy.

Clothes

I still haven’t bought any clothes for myself. This isn’t necessarily intentional. I’ve actually wanted to buy a new pair of running shoes. And if I see some clothes that I like, I’m not opposed to buying it. It’s just that I haven’t gotten around to it. I guess it’s not really a priority at the moment.

My wife, on the other hand, has bought new clothes. She has lost all of her postpartum “baby weight” and decided to buy a few items that flatter her body. I was not opposed to that. I’m not sure how much her clothes were, but my best guess is around $100. Overall, she’s still pretty frugal with her clothes.

Home Improvement

My wife and I really like our house. Our home decor is minimalist with a touch of comfortable luxury. The style can be described as transitional with both traditional and modern elements. I have posted pictures of our home that reveal bits and pieces of what it actually looks like, such as our minimalist pantry.

So far, our home decor has been DIY (mostly my wife). This year, however, we are taking our home decor to another level by hiring an interior designer. The only fee we have paid so far is an initial consultation, which was about $300.

We also spent $2000 on installing frame casings and moulding in all of our hall ways as well as other carpentry work. My wife and I love the new look.

Piano

This purchase was a total luxury.

Both my wife and I played the piano when we were kids. Neither one of us had the talent to be really good at it, but it was something we enjoyed. However, we stopped playing because life tends to get too busy to play when you grow up.

My wife wanted to play again and she wanted our daughter to be exposed to music. I thought it was a great idea. So we bought a used (but in brand new condition) Kawai upright piano. We spent about $3500 (retail is supposedly $8000).

It wasn’t cheap. But I can already see the value it has in our lives. Our baby daughter likes to dance whenever we play. And so far, I could sorta play All Of Me by John Legend. The value of making music and having fun is priceless.

Kitchenware

In January, my wife bought a new cast iron skillet for $40.

It’s great because after we seasoned it with flax seed oil, it’s naturally nonstick. A great alternative to teflon and other nonstick pans with chemical additives that could  potentially be toxic to our health.

We have used it to make a variety of delicious things such as pancakes and crepes.

Food

This is one area where we totally loosed up the purse strings. Our spending on food has doubled. Last year, we managed to spend an average of $500 a month on food. $300 on eating out at restaurants and $200 on groceries.

This year it’s closer to $1000 a month primarily because we have been eating out a lot more. In fact, we probably ate out an average of three times a week, which is quite a bit for us.

This is due to a few reasons:

• There are several new vegan restaurants in town that we’ve been wanting to try
• My wife is eager to get out of the house after staying at home for eight plus hours taking care of the baby
• The baby is crawling everywhere now and so we have to keep an eye on her all the time, which means less time (and attention) available to cook.
• My birthday was in January and Valentine’s day was last month, both perfect occasions to go out to eat
• One of my favorite credit cards, the Citi Prestige card, now offers unlimited 5x points for every dollar spent at restaurants

Here’s some of the food that we gobbled up.

Restaurant food

This is one of our favorite dishes served in the local vegan restaurant that we frequently visit.

Yes, we did a lot of eating out in January and February.

But of course we still made most of our meals at home.

Here’s some of our homemade dishes

Here’s another one.

And another gem of a dish.

Of course we made some healthy dishes too.

Not all of our homemade food was healthy, though.

My wife made a cake for my birthday. A once-a-year treat.

 

 

Final Thoughts

We decided to loosen up our frugality and allow ourselves to spend a little more in 2019. This is mostly because I recently got a raise, my wife is going to earn a paycheck again, and we currently have enough money to cover our debt.

Even so, we will still remain relatively frugal. I’m projecting that our annual spending will continue to be less than half my take home income. And because I am making more money this year, we will likely be able to save and invest even more money compared to last year (despite allowing ourselves to spend more).

While frugality has a floor, earning has no ceiling.