Profile

I am twenty-nine years old. I work as an associate production manager and my yearly salary is $38,000. I live on a train most of the year and stay with my parents for free during my vacations, so I have no rent or utilities to pay other than a $50 a month internet fee for my Clearspot.

Saving & Spending 

This month was much better than last month.

#1 thing accomplished – I paid off ALL my student debt. That’s right. I am totally debt free. And it’s definitely made my net worth take a pleasant little bump this month.

My investments are all chugging along respectably and each made some cash. They’re still in that category that I don’t really think of as “real cash” – but it’s there, waiting for wrinkly-retired Mel in 33 or so years.

It didn’t hurt that we’ve been parked right outside of Chicago for 6 weeks, so I’ve saved a ton on travel costs, just like I was hoping. And there’s only one more jump to Indiana next week and then I’m headed to New Jersey and my car is staying with my parents for a few months.

As for the two big expenses this month –

#1 Typhoon Yolanda took a nice chunk out of my budget. It just seemed wrong to me to put such an effort into fundraising for the Philippines if I wasn’t willing to bite the bullet myself. But I did and I don’t regret it (and neither will the deduction on my taxes in April – if you’re still looking for some write offs before the end of the year, you can donate here).

#2 I decided to go “pro” with the website (and seriously, writing that just made me laugh, because if nothing else, taking the steps to invest in my website have taught me that I am a moron and have no idea what I’m doing on the internet). Either way, it was a slightly pricier endeavor than I anticipated. It could’ve been much cheaper, but, what can I say, I’m a bulk buyer. So I invested in brokeGIRLrich for the next three years to get the cheapest rates at GoDaddy and HostGator. I used Fiverr to find a terrific guy to transfer my wordpress.com website to it’s new self-hosted awesomeness (because I am moron – as mentioned above). And I hated how it looked, so I shelled out some dough for a chick who is way, way more talented than I am to design my new banner and avatar over at Etsy.

All in all, I’d consider it a successful month.

My goals for this year are still to max out my IRA (with my last paycheck this month) and have $5,000 in my emergency savings account (this one I’ll be cutting it really close on).