Tag: Saving

Our Personal Spending Report for 2022

This was a special year, with the most special moment being marrying my lovely wife Annie in July. While a fantastic development in my life, it does make accounting for this year tricky.

For the purposes of this post, January through June/July includes just my expenses, while July onward includes combined spending for both of us. In reality, we started combining a lot of things in the months before we got married, so the numbers may not be perfect, but close enough. Also, I’ll be calculating an average per-person-per-month (pppm) figure for every month, helping to compare to prior years and illustrate some of the efficiencies of combining finances1.

Let’s get to the juicy stuff – here’s every dollar we spent in 2022:

Housing – $14,990 total // $1,249 per month // $832 pppm (up from $9,545 in 2021, a $5,445 increase)

Includes rent, utilities, moving expenses and random other apartment fees. Pre-marriage, I lived in the same apartment in uptown Dallas I had been living in for the last 2 years. A 2bed/2bath, ~1,000 sq ft for ~$1,600 all in, split with a roommate. For single Greg, this was an incredible set up.

Then, in August, we moved to Denver. We wanted to live within walking distance of the Barre3 studio Annie is an instructor at, so ended up paying a little more for a prime location. For a ~700 sq ft 1bed/1bath we spend ~$2,000 all in. The sticker price is still a bit shocking to me after a few years at about $800 per month, but 1) we won’t live here forever and 2) per-person-per-month comes out to $1,000 which isn’t too different from my Dallas living situation.

Cell Phone – $705 total // $59 per month // $39 pppm (up from $100 in 2021, a $605 increase)

I bought myself a used iPhone 13 mini for ~$500 in February, and my friends at Tello continued to provide wonderful service for $9 per month. Annie also hopped on a Tello train with a higher data plan for $10 per month, and she had a $10 Spotify membership that we paid for a couple months. Then, we found out that my employer would cover a family Spotify plan for us (thanks RH!) and that expense went away.

I decided to go with the higher data $10 plan towards the end of the year since we were road tripping and using navigation a lot. We’ll probably be at $20 per month for both of us for the time being, but Annie is due for a phone upgrade sometime soon here, so this category may be similar in 2023.

Groceries – $3,665 total // $305 per month // $204 pppm (up from $1,337 in 2021, a $2,328 increase)

This was the second biggest change from last year, going from just over $100 pppm to over $200. There are a few driving factors behind this increase:

  1. A greater variety of foods in my diet, including more animal products (mainly eggs and chicken), largely influenced by Annie’s preferences. Turns out normal people eat more than rice/lentils/beans (did you know this?!)
  2. Buying organic. In prior years, I stuck to organic options for a few foods, but nowadays 90%+ of what we buy is organic.
  3. We have a weekly dinner party with our Denver friends, which we host on average once a month. Our weekly grocery haul is typically doubled on the weeks we host.

I’d categorize all of these as optional luxuries. I’m confident we could live off of $100 per person (or less) still eating healthy food if we needed to.

Dine Out – $952 total // $79 per month // $53 pppm (up from $432 in 2021, a $520 increase)

Mainly date nights and going out with friends. Any meals we shared with friends/family that we paid for were categorized as gifts. This category has consistently increased over the years as I’ve prioritized spending quality time with the awesome folks that make up our family and friends.

Travel & Entertainment – $3,736 total // $311 per month // $208 pppm (down from $3,988 in 2021, a $252 decrease)

This year we’re including entertainment for snowboard expenses. Snowboarding accounted for about half of this category’s total, with season passes, used gear and gas to get to/from the mountain shaking out around $1,900 total for both of us. Other big travel expenses included a bachelor party in Denver (before moving there), flights to SD/MN and road trips to SD/MN for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Transportation – $3,341 total // $278 per month // $186 pppm (up from $228 TOTAL in 2021, a $3,113 increase)

Those $0 months in the front half of the year marked the final hurrah for my lack of car ownership, which lasted almost 8 years. Annie brought Patty the Nissan Pathfinder into our marriage, and while I have enjoyed the freedom a car brings, I’ve also received a 6 month crash course in the financial horrors of car ownership (warning: rant inbound).

Before it takes us a single mile in a given month, we need to pay ~$100 for insurance we hope to never use, $40 for a parking space in our apartment’s garage and it depreciates simply by being an older vehicle. For easy math, let’s say it depreciates $1,200 per year or $1oo per month. Just for sitting there, it costs us ~$240 a month or $2,880 a year. For comparison, I spent $1,869 on cell phone bills, groceries and dining out combined in the entire year of 2021.

Then you add on some variable expenses like gas and the killer, maintenance. That $2.4k in November was mostly from one quick visit to the mechanic. YIKES!2

Gifts – $ 1,119 total // $93 per month // $62 pppm (down from $3,695 in 2021, a $2,576 decrease)

No engagement rings were purchased this year, nor were any Christmas gifts purchased this year. Both of our families are starting to lean more towards shared experiences/spending time together rather than giving physical gifts, which Annie and I are alllll about.

Most of our gift giving this year consisted of wedding gifts and paying for other peoples’ meals while dining out.

Other – $2,064 total // $172 per month // $62 pppm (up from $1,126 in 2021, a $938 increase)

Mainly apartment supplies/furniture after moving to Denver, experiences (concerts, musicals, sporting events, float tank/massages, pickleball gear/court times), clothing and hair/skincare products. Coolest transaction of the year was landing tickets for a Broadway musical called Come From Away for $9 per person.

TOTAL – $30,573 total // $2,548 per month // $1,699 pppm (up from $20,450 in 2021, a $10,123 increase)

The $10k increase this year mainly came from housing (+$5k), food (+$2k) and transportation (+$3k). I expect all three of those categories to be even higher next year, since it will be 100% combined Annie & Greg expenses instead of 50% Greg/50% combined like this year.

Even with the sharp increase in total spending this year, the pppm figure actually went down ($1,704 with just me last year). I’ll make a bold prediction for next year, and say that our per-person-per-month expenses will decrease even further.

In last year’s report, I estimated our spending would land between $27 – $34k, and was right on the money. That was a pretty wide range though, so I’ll give us a tighter range for next year. I think we’ll spend between $35 – $38k in 2023 (roughly $2,900 – $3,200 per month or $1,450 – $1,600 pppm).

2022 felt extravagant. Between dining out more regularly, living in a fancy neighborhood in Denver, buying snowboarding gear and season passes, traveling and road tripping, owning a car, attending concerts, sporting events, musicals, weddings… we did a lot and spent a lot. However, even if we were both earning minimum wage in Colorado3, we would still be able to maintain the lifestyle we are currently living.

If you have any questions, if you want to know more, or if there is anything I can help with, feel free to send me an email at hashtagmoneygoals@gmail.com. Happy New Year!

1PPPM=Monthly Expenses/1.5 (one entire year of Greg monthly expenses and half a year of Annie expenses)
2I might put together an analysis of whether we’d be better off financially taking Ubers/using shared cars (there are a lot in Denver) since we don’t drive all that often. Look out for a future blog post.
3Minimum wage in CO for 2022 was $12.56 per hour (roughly $2,000 a month pre-tax, $1,650 a month post-tax)

Related Reading:
2021 Spending Report
2020 Spending Report
2019 Spending Report
2018 Spending Report
2017 Spending Report

Don’t Buy a New iPhone

Smart phones are undeniably life-changing. The first iPhone will probably go down in history as one of the defining inventions of the early 21st century. Can you imagine going back to even  2002 and showing someone who had a giant box for a computer that a little touchscreen in your pocket could do everything their box CPU could do and faster?

And now smart phones have become more than just a super computer that fits in your pocket. They are fashion statements, luxury items, customizable expressions of self.  People lose their minds whenever Apple introduces a new iPhone, and I have to say, almost everything about them is attractive.

Everything but the price tag. The least expensive version of the iPhone 8 is $699.

As a proud owner of an iPhone, I will not tell you to go and buy a $10 flip phone. All I’m asking is to consider waiting. Wait one year. Maybe two if you can handle the gut-wrenching agony ;). With some minimal Craigslist searching, I found an iPhone 7 for $200.

Now, you won’t be the cool kid on the block, and you won’t have everyone asking to hold your phone. You will still have the second most advanced, beautifully styled, hand-held supercomputer made by Apple, and more importantly you’ll have an extra $499 in your pocket. Invest those leftovers, and now you have a more affordable phone and an extra $7,400 in forty years.

Nobody is going to care who was the first person to have the iPhone 7 in forty years. But you will definitely care about seven grand in the bank. #MoneyGoals

 

P.S. If you think you’re getting a phone for a cheaper price because you have a contract you’re not. You’re just paying for it over the life of the contract.

Why I Don’t Use a Budget

The vocabulary word of the day is gamification. For my fellow millennial friends, I’m talking about Snapchat streaks. For anybody who doesn’t know what Snapchat streaks are, gamification is the use of game characteristics (point scoring, competition, etc) to incentivize an action.

The power of gamification is unquestionable. If you have sent someone a Snapchat every day for the last 147 days, despite not having anything to tell them you’re going to send another one to bump your number up to 148 the next day, guaranteed. Even though that number doesn’t actually mean anything.

The good news is that you can harness the power of gamification to improve your life. Many people have already done this, competing with friends to take the most steps in a day.

I personally use spending gamification instead of a budget. I understand that budgets are useful tools, but I also think they lock you in to a specific spending level, and there’s no incentive to improve further.

I track all of my spending each month, and each month I try to spend a little bit less than I did the month before. I spent $40 eating out last month? Let’s see if I can spend less than $30 on eating out this month! This reinforces my spending goals with an exciting challenge, instead of the boring, “How much is in my budget?”

This gamification technique also requires less work than a budget. All you have to do is keep track of what you’re spending, and usually your bank or credit card company does that for you!

So I challenge you to give it a try. Bonus points if you compete with a friend, and see who can spend the least amount on eating out/gas/groceries/clothes/alcohol for the next month. Good luck, and enjoy the game! #MoneyGoals

 

(Pictured: A young Greg lost in Great Sand Dunes National Park and Reserve, Colorado. Summer 2011)