Profile

I am thirty three years old and the Performance Director at Big Apple Circus. I make $70,000 a year and live in a show provided RV. I also have health insurance through this job that’s deducted straight from my paycheck, so I don’t really count it in my bills since it’s never money I see anyway (it’s roughly $150/month).

Saving & Spending

This has been a weird month. Total burn out at work. I’ve been chanting two and a half more months most of the month. I finally reached total breaking point in the middle of the month when two more people in my department had yet another argument and my brain malfunctioned and I couldn’t figure out how to get them to stop and work together.

So I ran away to visit my cousin in Vermont over the weekend. After getting away from everything here, I actually felt a little refreshed and like I could make it to the end of this year’s tour.

But man, am I looking forward to July 3^rd, when we go into a month of just staff fixing things and organizing for next year.

In stupid money mistakes this month – I lost $300 of work receipts in an envelope that I’m pretty sure fell of the floor when my RV flooded and turned into a pile of mush.

In money miracles, because I didn’t complain about it at all to our office and just turned in $300 of my own dollars for losing the receipts, our absolutely amazing office staff figured out the cost of all the tolls and average gas spent by everyone else and gave me back $280 of that $300.

In other semi-stupid money mistakes this month, I paid a $95 renewal fee for a travel credit card that I didn’t have a chance to use the points on yet. I did a little math and realized $95 now was fine as long as I spend the $200 reward some time this year and then close the card. But still a bummer to lose essentially $95 of that reward.

I used the Gold Delta SkyMiles Credit Card to help churn my way to Vegas last year. If you’ve got $2,000 in expenses coming up in the next three months, you can pick up 50,000 bonus miles using this link and an additional 10,000 miles if you spend $1,000 more in the first six months.

On the winning side though, I finally opened an HSA. I’ve been meaning to do it for months and realized I’d just missed out on saving like more than three grand by not getting my act together and doing it before the tax day cutoff for 2017. I was initially overwhelmed, but I read some good comparison articles and found The Old Dominion Bank’s HSA Authority kept popping up in all of them.

In an effort to not drown in analysis paralysis, I just decided to go with that. So yay for good financial decisions. I’m still struggling to figure out how to link an external account to it to contribute, but I’m hopeful I can probably fund it by the end of the year. My down payment for a house savings goal might take a hit, but we’ll see.

I got a nice, large reimbursement from work this month, most of which went into my travel saving fund for an end of July trip to Iceland with two of my best friends.

Anyone got any Iceland tourist tips?

• Food – $458.80
• Transportation – $61.20
• Gifts – $168.49
• Lifelock – $9.99
• Medical – $149.74
• brokeGIRLrich – $2.99
• RV – $142.52
• Clothes – $23.21
• Entertainment – $160.26
• Candles – $65.18
• Work Related – $281.05
• Travel Card Fee – $95

Total Spending in April: $1,618.43 

Hustling

My income this month was from performance directing at Big Apple, and brokeGIRLrich. I also got a reimbursement at work.

• Stage Managing – $2,886.79
• Work Reimbursement – $2,500.00
• brokeGIRLrich – $408.84

Income This Month: $5,795.63

Most Popular Post of the Month: 114 Side Hustles: Ways to Make More Money

My Favorite Post to Write This Month: Set It & Forget It Finance 

Goals 

• Max out my IRA. – Done
• Max out my 401k. – On track to max out by end of year.
• Buy $5,000 in stock. – Done
• Contribute $3,000 to my New Car Fund – $1,000 to go.
• Contribute $5,000 to my Down Payment Fund.
• Go on a family vacation.
• Go on a best friend vacation. – In the works, Iceland July 2018.
• Develop 2 new resume skills.