Budget – #MoneyGoals

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:

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?!)
Buying organic. In prior years, I stuck to organic options for a few foods, but nowadays 90%+ of what we buy is organic.
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)

My Personal Spending Report for 2021

2021 was a fantastic year for me, and might have been the best year of my life so far. There was one big change that impacted my spending this year, and that change was named Annie Peasley. I met her at a wedding in June, and by December we were engaged. We are planning on getting married summer of 2022, so there will be more changes to my yearly spending reports in the future.

All right, let’s jump into it — here is every dollar I spent in 2021:

Housing – $9,545 total // $795 per month (down from $9,659 in 2020, a $114 decrease)

Includes rent, utilities and any moving expenses. This was my third full year of living in downtown Dallas, and the second year of living in the same apartment, so housing expenses were about the same as last year. The ~$100 decrease was mostly due to a new roommate I got in March 2021, who was on board with not using heat/AC as much as possible, so our electricity bill was quite a bit lower than it had been previously.

My apartment complex did increase rent when I renewed my lease in September, but it was a ~2% increase (I negotiated it down from a higher amount, which consisted of sending one polite email that took less than 5 minutes to type out). This lease runs through September 2022, and my next home will likely be a 1 bedroom apartment with Annie after we get married.

Cell Phone – $100 total // $8 per month (down from $109 in 2020, a $9 decrease)

Another incredibly inexpensive year of phone service provided by the good folks at Tello. The $0 month in February was from one of my friends using my referral code to switch to Tello, and the account credit offset my entire phone bill for the month.

While my refurbished 2017 iPhone SE is still functional, it’s starting to slow down and have some issues after 4 – 5 years of use. I’ve also been shooting more YouTube videos lately (see Mexico City and G lacier NP trip videos if you’re interested in what I’m making), and would like to upgrade to a newer phone with a better camera. This will likely happen in 2022, so my phone spending should increase next year.

Groceries – $1,337 total // $111 per month (down from $1,420 in 2020, an $83 decrease)

My spending on groceries was close enough to last year that I’d call it virtually the same. The core of my diet has stayed consistent — rice, beans, lentils, veggies, nuts, peanut butter and coconut oil account for the vast majority of my calories. I did start buying more walnuts, pecans and cashews this year, which were more expensive than the almonds I’ve eaten more heavily in previous years.

It was interesting to see the variation from month to month on my grocery spending. The really high months (September/October), I was preparing meals for both myself and Annie, and stocking extra things like berries/other fresh fruit for Annie and my parents visiting Dallas. The really low months (June, November, and December), I was traveling a lot, so relying on restaurant meals or other people’s groceries for food (thank you other people!).

Dine Out – $432 total // $36 per month (up from $293 in 2020, a $139 increase)

This isn’t a complete picture of the amount of times I ate at restaurants this year — some of the restaurant spending was accounted for as Gifts, as I paid for meals for family/friends when I was out to eat with them. I think going forward, the Dine Out section will be whatever Annie and I eat at restaurants, and anyone’s meal we pay for will go into Gifts.

I expect this category to continue increasing in coming years as I continue to focus on spending more time socializing and connecting with people I love.

Travel – $3,988 total // $332 per month (up from $1,203 in 2020, a $2,785 increase)

2021 was a wild year of travel after very little traveling in 2020, and the over 3x increase in spending reflects that. I did not take a single flight for the first four months of the year, and then from May to December 2021 took 49 one way flights (roughly 1.5 flights per week, every week for the last 8 months of the year). Work travel ramped up quite a bit at first, then my personal travel increased with weddings, baptisms and trips to Mexico City and Glacier NP over the summer. I’d estimate that $1,500 – $2,000 of my yearly total was for personal vacations/events/family gatherings I was traveling to.

Then things got really crazy when I started visiting Annie in Phoenix consistently. For the last few months of the year, I was traveling during the week for work and then on the weekends to see Annie, which contributed to my low grocery expenses in November/December. I’d estimate that my Annie-related travel expenses totaled around $1,500 – $2,000 — well worth it! 🙂

Travel for work and to see family/friends will likely continue in 2022, however Annie has now moved to Dallas so I won’t be taking flights every 2 weeks to see her any more. I believe my travel spending will decrease in the next year, but I gained a few more family members to go visit in South Dakota, North Dakota and Minnesota, so we’ll see!

Transportation – $228 // $19 per month (up from $69 in 2020, a $159 decrease)

The vast majority of my transportation consists of walking, with some biking thrown in there when visiting friends a little further away. I still don’t own a car, so most of my transportation spending is either related to getting to/from the airport (Uber/Lyft/train rides) or the occasional transportation to/from faraway social gatherings.

While the financial benefits of designing my life to function without car usage are obvious, there are tons of less quantifiable physical and mental benefits as well.

Annie does currently own a car, but she has operated without a car for a year while she was living in San Francisco and is open to going carless as a couple at some point. This will be an interesting category to watch in the next few years after we get married.

Gifts – $3,695 // $308 per month (I didn’t track Gifts as its own category in 2020, but I estimated it to be about $800 last year, so roughly a $2,900 increase)

Most of the gift spending this year was in November and December, which consisted of purchasing an engagement ring and picture frames, candles, roses, etc to propose to Annie. That said, even after ring/proposal spending, my gift spending almost doubled this year.

The non-engagement gift spending included lots of wedding-related things (bachelor parties, tux rentals, wedding gifts, etc.), aforementioned meals bought for people, charitable contributions and Christmas gifts.

Other – $1,126 // $94 per month (down from $1,692 in 2020, a $565 decrease, but it used to include gifts so it was probably around $900 without gifts last year)

Big miscellaneous expenses this year included clothes and tailoring (~$400), tickets to sporting events (~$100), household supplies (~$200, upgraded a few things before Annie visited Dallas the first time :P), stamps/envelopes/thank you cards (~$150) and assorted other random things. I also spent $50 on my first ever pedicure in July with my dear friend Mai, then immediately went backpacking for a week and destroyed the prettiest toenails I’ve ever had.

TOTAL – $20,450 // $1,704 per month (up from $14,445 in 2020, an $6,005 increase)

By far my record for most money spent in a year, beating out 2019’s previous high of $15k by ~33%. It was obvious where the increases came from — every category stayed within ~$100 of last year’s totals except Travel and Gifts, which made up nearly all of the $6,000 increase from 2020’s spending.

I predicted in my 2020 report that my spending would increase quite a bit this year, and I am happy it did. The additional spending led to countless new experiences, new connections, new friends and a year full of memories I’ll be looking back on fondly for decades to come.

This is the first time since starting these reports that I don’t think I’ll be able to accurately predict what my spending will look like in the coming year. Once Annie and I get married in the summer, we’ll combine our finances, and 2022’s spending report will be 50% solo Greg living and 50% Annie/Greg combined living. With that in mind, I’m going to estimate my/our spending next year will be something around $27,000 – $34,000. Stay tuned!

As always, if you have any questions about what I’m doing/not doing, if you want to know more or if there is anything I can help with, feel free to reach out at hashtagmoneygoals@gmail.com. Happy New Year!

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)