A week of FIRE spending

The Basics:

Industry: Entertainment, writer
Position: Self employed serial writing
Salary: Varies. Projected for this year is $42,000
What Banks do you use and Why: PC bank (no fees), TD (for investment accounts), credit card.
Savings: 13% of the way to FI.
Assets: None
Liabilities: None
Age: 32
Gender: Male

Monthly Expenses:

Rent: $800
# of Roommates: None
Utilities:
Heat/HW/Internet/Electricity: $0/40/60/40 a month
Cell Phone: $8.33/mo ($100 prepaid card lasts me one year)
No Spotify, No Gym
Car Insurance: No Car
Student Loans: None (paid as I went)
Health Ins.: None (Canadian)
Transportation: Virtually None (I walk/bike)
Car payment: None (No car! It's so nice to not have a car!)

Other expenses: 103/mo average work expense, 60/mo average medical (dentist, stuff re: my disability).
Fun Money: $22/mo average across 2015-2016.

3 Financial Goals:

  • Financial independence by 45. Plan to continue working after that. But income varies & is hard to predict, being FI gives me security.
  • Get first series edited & released. Expect this to be financial windfall.
  • Owning a house might be nice in the future, and/or having a cabin. By and large though I'm pretty happy with the status quo, and it's just not very cost efficient to buy a house vs. rent atm. Maybe once I know where I want to settle down.

Money Diary: How I spent my money last week

Monday
No expenditures. Tried to go to bank first thing, but was national holiday. Worked 12pm-2am.

Tuesday
Grocery store. I go on Tues because the local store sells cooked whole chickens for $5 and that lasts me three days. Also grabbed greens, onions & mushrooms, pepperoni, some portions of meat, nuts, cheeses, $80 bill or so. Visited bank & finally remitted collected service tax for 2015. Was a 20 day nightmare of getting registered, getting it figured out despite unusual 'business' setup on my end and lack of cooperation from outside parties where I needed their help to comply with gov't, was finally over. Spent more hours trying to get this thing worked out than I remitted to the gov't in dollars ($58). Bought train ticket to Ottawa (Less than $40) - wouldn't normally count this as other relatives pay me back if I travel to help them out, but my mom never does. Voilà ma mère pour vous.

Wednesday
Hit pharmacy for snacks ($20) and hearing aid batteries, withdrew $40 for incoming trip to Ottawa, be able to get food on train, etc. Didn't really have to do either, just wanted to get out and walk. Wrote from ~1pm to 2:45am.

Thursday
Caught train. Bought lunch & drink on train. Bought dinner for self & mom who picked me up ($20). Half of purpose of visit is unpaid dogsitting.

Friday
No expenses. Wrote from ~10am to 3am. Took up more of my day than usual, started early and finished late due to hyperactive puppy.

Saturday
Put dogs in kennel, went downtown to meet up with fans at board game cafe (second half of my purpose for visiting Ottawa). $18 spent at cafe, stopped by grocery store on way back, $60 spent at grocery store, raising total to a bit more than I'd normally spend for a week. Reason was I was restocking my mom on some things.

Sunday No expenses. Rest day. Organized trip back to my place on Monday (for morning, wrote across afternoon), so I did some laundry and spent time with dogs. Was actually pretty exhausted from accumulated weeks of tax stress, insomnia, late finishes to writing and then travel + puppy + socialization.

Expenses/amount earned

Not going to calculate this; I do know from general budgeting that I managed to save 40% for the month despite the general expenses and hassles (and higher food expense due to moving around/socializing) of the trip, so I did just fine this month. Most months this year I've been hitting 50%, which really helps assuage worries re: unsteady income as a writer.

One week doesn't really capture things, especially given that last week was something unusual. Still, most weeks are unusual, and I spend maybe a sixth or a fifth of my time at relatives' houses, dogsitting? Or being away on holidays. Being able to work from home means I'm very flexible in being able to stay elsewhere and still maintain my routine.

Areas for Improvement

Food expenses. I've been working on it, but I like good food and the costs rack up, especially when I'm going from place to place.

/r/financialindependence Thread