"Behold the Carnage" from The Mighty Thor - August 2016 Financials

Behold the Carnage of the Mighty Thor

Well if you read our blog post last week The Mighty Thor presents "One of those Months" you won't be surprised to read that we had a horrible month of August.  Since we have started this blog it has been a rude awakening of our monthly spend vs. the high level budget we had before.  We have missed our budget every month so far and by quite a bit from our original projections.  Even after we reset to a new reality with a focus on reducing we have missed horribly.

In August The Mighty Thor rained thunder and lightning down on our finances hitting us with high expense after high expense.  Furnances (yes plural) broke, air conditioner, trees falling everywhere, car repairs, school bills and more.  It really hasn't ended yet.  It has slowed down but we will be digging out of the repercussions of this month for some time.  Quite depressing I might add.  Not the greatest way to start a financial blog aimed at saving money and speeding up our path to early retirement.  However I am coming back from the depths of despair slowly and am realizing these eye opening events are just the kick we need to really get serious and ask the tough questions.  Our spending has been somewhat on auto-pilot even before Thor's visit.  One of the blessings / curses of my career is that I have always found a way to make more money to disguise and pay for our lifestyle creep.  Funny thing is you can't retire with the type of monthly spending we have... ever.  I won't share the specifics but let's just say I am so jealous of those that have monthly budgets in the $2,000 -$4,000 range.  It would take a major lifestyle change for us to hit that.  One I'm not sure I am ready for but can guarantee you Mrs. iFreebies is not ready for.  That's ok, we can keep plugging along and retire later with a higher need range but there is a limit to how high is really achievable.  So we need to banish Thor and cut expenses drastically.

Enough pontificating... on to the depressing month of August.

It's easy to see the mess that was our August.  Actual expenses finished 47% higher than our projection and a whopping 81% above what we thought our budget was just a couple of naive months ago.  Thanks to Personal Capital we now have our eyes open and can see the truth, although sometimes I wish we would have taken the blue pill (in reference to Cypher from the Matrix).

Our biggest misses came from the categories of Home Maintenance, General Merchandise, Clothing, and a big Other category.  

Our original starting point or 1.0 has been blown away with our most recent months spending.  When we started this blog my intent was to watch us bring our spending down to a .63 level from the 1.0 and have our Passive Income raise up to .63.  Speaking of our passive income we are continuing to see stable to slight increases here.  This currently is made up of 4% of our portfolio and other passive income sources we have.  While this is an important area to focus on, it is obvious the expense side requires immediate attention.

So off we sail into September, severely scarred from the ravages of Thor's attack on us.  We still have expenses that will have to be paid for in future months from this attack.  We need to heal and focus on stopping the financial bleeding.  Time for the iFreebies family to go on a financial diet.

If you are reading this drop us a comment.  This is a new blog and I am seeing our visitor activity slowly growing but it would be nice to know I'm not just typing into a vacuum.  Onto better days!

Photo credit:  Kostic Dusan 123rf.com