🌟 In this blog, I’m going to share, in detail, how much money we spent in December 2021.
Before I get into the numbers, I just want to share how I track our finances.
I’m using this awesome app called, Copilot.
The user interface is super friendly and it’s so easy to categorize all your transactions across multiple accounts.
I have all of our brokerage, checking, savings, and credit cards linked so I have a complete view of our personal financial position.
This app helps me keep track of our net worth, our investment performance, and our income and expenses.
It does, however, cost $70 per year. The old me would have never paid $6 per month to track my finances, but I actually like spending money on things that make my life much easier. If you want to try Copilot out for free, use my code in the description below.
Alright, let’s dive into the expenses. We’ll start with the smallest categories first and work our way up to where we spent the most in December 2021.
🖥️ Subscriptions
The first category is subscriptions. We spent $10.65 on Spotify, Hulu, and Showtime. This is actually a student rate. One of my best friends from college is getting his MBA and he has a student email address so I used that to get this awesome deal. I have to share the Spotify account with him, but he’s in LA so we hardly ever listen to music at the same time.
🧴 Water
The second category is our water subscription. We spend $40 per month on water getting delivered to our door. I think it’s 20 gallons a month, which comes out to $2 per gallon. Water at Shoprite or Costco is $1 per gallon so we’re paying a 100% markup to have the water delivered to us, which is SO worth it. I used to break my back transporting cases of water from the store to the car then from the car to our apartment. I grew up drinking sink water and I’d love to continue, but the water in our building is foggy and hard so we don’t want to drink it.
💄🪒 Personal Care
We spent $45 on personal care items in December 21. I bought this fancy pack of double-edged razor blades off Amazon for $10 and Dia spent $35 on some skin-care products.
🎁 Donations
We ended up donating $50 to a GoFundMe. This was an impulse donation, which we typically don’t do. We’re very structured in our charitable contributions.
However, the owner of an account we follow on Instagram lost her house to the Marshall Fire in Boulder, Co.
This account has provided us so much value in terms of feeding Luna, so sending some money was a quick and easy decision. It’s amazing to see how many people Judy impacted. As of mid-January, 9,000 people donated just under $300,000 to help her family rebuild their home.
👚 Clothing
Ok moving on to clothes. I spent $100 on clothes in December. I think I bought 2 hoodies from Zara and 2 or 3 joggers from Uniqlo. Those are literally the only two places I shop and I likely won’t buy more clothes until summertime.
💪 Gym
Dia just suspended her gym membership because of #Omicron, but her Orange Theory Fitness membership hit in early December for $109. They’re going to save that month of membership for her whenever she decides to go back.
💊 Healthcare
We spent $133 on healthcare in December. I think we went a little crazy buying at-home rapid tests. They were sold out everywhere and then a friend texted me one day saying the local CVS just got a huge shipment and they were only selling two per person. So we went two days in a row and bought 8 kits at $11 each. We also ordered a test through Everlywell that cost us like $30.
🚕 Transportation
Moving on to transportation. Dia and I share one car so she had to take a lyft or uber to and from work about once or twice a week in December.
That came out to about $343. Since the covid case count started to rise, she’s now fully remote until at least March so we should be seeing significant savings in this category.
🧹 Housekeeping
Our housekeeper comes every Wednesday and she charges us $75 per visit. She cleans, organizes, and folds our laundry. There were 5 Wednesdays in December so this came out to $375 for the month.
If I could spend more in this category, I would. My long term goal is to hire someone full-time for this role. Dishes, laundry, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, etc. Call me bougie, but I don’t want to think about any of this stuff.
🍜🍕☕️ Restaurants
We spent $450 eating out in December. That’s less than $100 per week, which is a total win for us. We usually spend much more than this. We got Pizza, Mexican, Vietnamese, Lots of bagels and coffee, standard stuff.
👶 Children
We spent $550 on Luna in December. $120 of that was her swim school membership. The rest of it was diapers, clothes, toys, etc.
The swim school is kind of expensive for 30 minutes of pool-time per week, but it’s awesome. It’s a great winter weekend morning activity that tires her out. And we always get bagels and coffe after so everyone wins.
🛒 Groceries
My goal is to spend more on Groceries than we do on going out to eat. In December, we hit that goal. We spent $592 on groceries. We shopped on Costco, Whole Foods, and Trade Joes. We also ended December by restarting our subscription to EveryPlate.
🎁🎄 Gifts
The gift category was disproportionately high in December because of Christmas. We spent $930 on gifts. Some of that was tips for our service providers, some of it was gifts for Dia’s coworkers, some of it was gifts for kids of friends and family.
🧒 Daycare
Luna’s daycare costs $1,320 per month. As far as I know, that’s a pretty competitive price. We used to pay a few hundred dollars more elsewhere, but we didn’t change schools because of price. We changed schools because Luna’s cousin goes to this daycare and we wanted them to be together. It’s also a Montessori school and we wanted to try that out.
🏠 Rent
Our rent is $2,750 per month. It’s by far and away our largest expense. People often question me for being a real estate investor that rents where he lives, but I honestly think my rent is cheaper than the costs associated with buying any house I can see myself living in. If you want me to do a video on how renting can be a better financial decision than buying, drop a comment down below.
🧾 Adding It All Up
So let’s add it all up.
We spent:
$11 on Subscriptions
$39 on Water
$45 of Personal Care
$50 on Donations
$100 on Clothes
$109 on a Gym Membership
$133 on Healthcare
$343 on Transportation
$376 on Housekeeping
$449 on Restaurants
$544 on Luna
$592 on Groceries
$930 on Gifts
$1320 on Education
and $2750 on Rent to bring our grand total to….$7,532.
Ahhhh. It feels kind of liberating to put that out there.
When I look at these numbers, the only thing I’d like to see go down is the money we spent on Luna. $550 sounds like a lot for diapers, clothes, and toys. $930 on gifts also kind of sounds like a lot, but hey.. it was Christmas and trick love the kids.
The only number I want to see increase is the housekeeping budget. We’re not there yet, but I’m looking forward to the day we hire a full-time nanny / butler person. I imagine they have an English accent and dress like the guy from monopoly. Basically I want Geoffrey from the fresh prince of bel-air.
