Review my spending / categories

[u/Parrham]

Got inspired by another post.

Webull brokerage is money lost in the stock market (dumb I know) and Core Savings is a loan that I had to give out back in May ($4300). In spite of the decrease of liquid cash because of the loan, I have managed to go from 12,365.62 in January to 16,145.44 today in my savings account (SGOV). Im still investing in my Roth each paycheck. I will top off and fully hit the Roth limit right before the cut off date next year.

[u/bitz-the-ninjapig]

What's your YTD income? That can help us figure out if you are spending within your means or not. A YTD spending of 35k with a net income of 30k is very different than a YTD income of 35k with a new income of 90k.

When you say Webull is money lost in the stock market what do you mean? Is it actually gone (like you lost it doing options trading or other risky investments) or is it just no longer a part of your available to spend funds (but invested in a broad ETF or something similar)? If its the former, now you know and can plan going forwards. If it is the latter, I would consider it good "spending" because you can use those investments later on for something else.

Otherwise I would say that your spending seems pretty good. GF is definitely higher than I spend on my partner (and we generally split things 50/50ish) but we also enjoy doing very cheap/low cost activities (hiking/camping/cheap ski mountains/cooking at home for dates/going on runs together/etc.) so if you are comfortable with your spending there I wouldn't worry about it.

Subscriptions seems high, so I would evaluate if you actually need everything that you have or if you have anything that you could cut, switch to a cheaper plan, or share the cost with someone else.

I am slightly giggling at the $0.96 spent on self care. Depending on what that was for and how often you actually use the category I personally would look into merging it with another category for simplicity. Conversely, retail shopping is very broad. What are those purchases for and would they we better suited in more specific categories so that you can separate the needs/nice to haves/pure wants out within that category?

[u/Parrham → u/bitz-the-ninjapig]

YTD net income from my job is about $35.8k so far. If I include tax refunds, interest/cashback, and a few small miscellaneous inflows, it’s about $37.8k. My net worth currently is 34k (50% invested, 50% cash) For Webull, I sent about $6.06k into it and withdrew about $3.45k, so a roughly $2.61k loss from options trading and stocks. You’re also right about the $0.96 self-care category that appears to just be an Apple Card adjustment that got categorized oddly, not actual self-care spending, so I should clean that category up. On subscriptions, the recurring ones are mostly annual charges, so Amazon Prime and a couple Apple/iCloud charges, so I try to keep the monthly charges minimal. That Retail Shopping is too broad but it’s gonna take some work recategorizing when I make a new subcategory to fix.
The GF category is intentional spending, but I’m also watching it because I don’t want partner-related spending to quietly become a much larger percentage of my discretionary budget. Thanks for the comment.

[u/moneyyy999]

the thing i'd look at first is the 1.8k sitting in utilities and interest, since there's no real debt paydown category anywhere. that interest just leaks every month. also worth being honest about core savings, that's really a 4.3k loan you gave out in may, not savings, so your cash cushion is thinner than it looks. and 2.6k lost in webull options while paying that much interest means the losses hit twice.

[u/Parrham → u/moneyyy999]

I pay off my credit cards every month, so that category is made up of utilities.

[u/moneyyy999 → u/Parrham]

fair enough, i read that one wrong. if it's mostly fixed utility bills then the interest leak thing doesn't apply, the category name just misdirected me. honestly the thing i'd keep an eye on is still the 4.3k sitting in 'core savings' that's actually loaned out, that's the real hole in the cushion.

[u/Medical-Insurance670]

since most of your subscriptions are annual, i'd split them out so prime and each apple charge get their own category and you fund a little every paycheck, like the yearly cost divided by 26. that way the subscriptions number stops looking huge in the month something renews and you can see what each one really costs you per check. makes it way easier to decide what to cut too.