I can barely believe that spring is here, although I am excited about warmer weather and hopefully some beach time in my near future. Once a quarter I like to pause from my normal cadence of explaining, exploring or contemplating life’s great personal finance topics and do some inward reflecting. I think it’s important to celebrate wins both big and small, and also reflect on both the good and the bad. Life is a journey and it’s important to enjoy the ride! Here’s what’s been going on this past quarter for me.

Income

The big change here is the fact that I got a nice annual raise in February! As discussed in “what I’m personally doing about inflation”, essentially if your salary didn’t increase by 7% last year you’re effectively getting paid less than you are today. So I knew going into career/salary conversations that I would be asking for a healthy raise, one above 7% as 7% was almost table stakes. My boss (shout out if you’re reading this) fought hard for me and got me a raise that exceeded my expectations! Mrs. Money continues her teaching gig and side hustle (which has proven to be more time than the money feels worth but still it’s income coming in).

On the side hustle front this blog continues to have a few sponsorships keep the lights on and maybe a takeout meal or two each month. My crypto earning continues to trickle with my miner (did I every tell you about that?) mining apprx 1 vertcoin each day (currently valued at around $0.25).

I’m happy to have both gotten a raise and to have some income via side hustles still coming in!

Expenses

I’m pretty sure I start every quarterly expense update this way but wow kids are expensive. It seems the older they get the more money we spend on them and as a reader you should know we’re both quite frugal with our spending! SegundoMoneyFinance continues to transition from bottles to real food, which is better for time spent feeding and washing bottles but more food to be bought!

I’m sure you’re feeling it to but I’ve really noticed inflation in the past month or two. Our normal grocery bill seems to have gone up $10-$15 each week, every time we order food I feel as if it’s a few dollars more than it should be and I know we’ve all felt gas prices hurting our wallets. It’s even getting to the point where we’re starting to try to cut back on spending here and there, at least trying to be more thoughtful in our spending and avoiding less impulse purchases.

Saving/Investing

2022 hasn’t been great for the stock market, which means my investment portfolio has been hurting too. I try to not get too caught up in the daily down motion and focus on the big long-term picture. I’ve not sold any of my stocks or mutual funds, I feel confident they’ll come back. I don’t try to time the market in anyway and instead focus on dollar cost averaging (DCA), which means just continually buying in little chunks. I’m still contributing 15% to my retirement and 15% to my employer stock purchase program. Saving outside of these buckets has proven difficult with more expenses and a pretty tight budget as is. I set a goal this year to have a more ‘realistic’ budget for us, meaning one where we actually save a little each month rather than spending it all on the variety of good/services/bills that come up.

The other investing update to share is that we’re still on the hunt for a rental property(ies). The real estate market in our area continues to move super quickly and at super high prices. We’re currently 0/7 on buying a house and as disappointing as that can be, I look at it as 7 houses we didn’t overpay for or rush into. Houses are not cheap so we’re determined to buy the right one at the right price. We did close on a lot in a tiny house community in Tennessee so that’ll be a fun new adventure for us!

Giving

I think it’s important to give back of both your time and finances to help those around you. It’s great to in your own way try to make the world a better place and also it helps you have an attitude of gratitude and hopefully enjoy and be more thankful in your own life. We did increase our giving as we typically do at the end of the year with some small gifts here and there to a few charities. My company also matches $2,500 of my charitable contributions so that’s always great too!

Overall

We live in some challenging and confusing times, and although I feel like we’ve been saying that for the past 2 years, it almost feels to have gotten worse this spring. In times of uncertainty I try to stick to the fundamentals – find and work a solid job and continue to advance my career as best I can, have a budget, save/invest (dollar cost average!), don’t read the news too much (it wasn’t good for my mental health), and focus on the long term plan.

Blog

It wouldn’t be a quarterly update without a blog update too! Here are a couple of the top hits this quarter along with some personal favorites that I wrote. How to invest in index funds was a great primer on what index funds are and how you can easily invest in them. Mrs. Money and I refinanced our house (again) to save on interest long-term. Probably my favorite article was My Experience with BlockFi, in which I shared how I was earning crypto on my crypto holdings, but it was poorly timed because the week before I posted is when they settled with the SEC and stopped offering that product to new clients!