September-October Expenses

Thanks to the very kind and friendly JLCollins of the blog of the same name I experienced a slight bump in traffic recently.  I hope some interested eyes have perused my ramblings thus far.  Feel free to leave a comment if you have a question or just want to introduce yourself.  I'll start really quickly:  My names "The Kechi One."  It's a nickname I gave myself.  "Kechi" in Japanese means "cheap" but I'm taking it back and calling it for what it really is frugality.  I have lived in Japan for about five and half years and really enjoy it.  I work at a private high school where I teach English.  I also have a few side jobs.  Last December I paid off all of my debts including student loans, credit card, and car loans.  After, I made the decision to start investing.  This blog it about my journey towards building a portfolio that will allow me to retire by the time I'm forty. 

I like to blog about Japan and why it's a great place to work while going towards FI, biking, my investments and expenses, or anything else that just happens to catch my interest.  I hope you enjoy your stay.

Back to business: 

I get paid on the fifteenth of every months so I track my expenses from the fifteenth of one month to the fourteenth of the next.  In this case we are looking at September fifteenth to October fourteenth.  This was the first month back to basics in that I'm not trying to split expenses between yen and dollars.  In August I was back in the states and it was much more difficult to track.  Here we go!

Income:  ¥317,813

This is for my regular job and my part time job.  This was my second lowest income month for the year.  A big part of that is that I am now paying my city taxes which knocks about ¥20,000 off each paycheck.

Expenses:

 

Total Expenses:   ¥185,167

And as always expenses by day:

 

 Transportation jumped up this month as I was paying off my bullet train pass from the previous month on my credit card.  My bike expenses also were up this month as I purchased a really nice handlebar bag, a good pump with a built-in pressure gauge, and also a set of fenders.  I'm going to do a whole blog post soon on how much my bike has cost me and also how much it has made me.

Doing all of the math then that puts me at a 42% savings rate for the period of September to October.  This is below my annual goal of 65% and puts my average savings rate for the year at 46%.  My savings rates so far for the year have been:

January  58.66%
February  65.25%
March 50.68%
April  -4.40%
May  63.14%
June  39.87%
July 40.08%
August  48.32%
September  41.74%

Not to completely ditch my goal of 65% but I figure if I can pull this number up above 50% for the year I'd be very happy.  That would mean I saved/invested half of every single yen I made even while taking a very unmustachian vacation, buying a new $1000 cycolocross bike and accessories, and still enjoying quite a bit of going out.  I know I can do better however.

Thanks for tuning in!  How are you doing for the year?

3rd Quarter Dividend Update

My portfolio is not much when compared to a lot of the other bloggers I read.  Sometimes I get depressed thinking about how in the same amount of time people have made much greater strides than I have.  But my stache is my stache and I'm going to keep building it up.  If it takes me twice as long as the next guy so be it.  I'll still be ahead of 99% of people.

Almost all of my holdings pay out at the end of the quarter so rather than doing monthly updates (of nothing) I've been doing quarterly updates.  Here is how I finished the 3rd quarter.

AAPL:  $5.30
INTC:  $8.55
JNJ:  $9.32
MCD:  $16.18
PEP:  $8.23
KO:  $7.67
VNQ:  $7.41
VFINX:  $15.77
VBINX:  $14.76
VGSIX:  $22.01

Total:  $115.20

And my dividends for the 1st and 2nd quarter:

1st Quarter:  $44.17
2nd Quarter:  $71.90

1st-3rd Quarter Total:  $231.27

What I can brag about is the percentage increase in quarter over quarter growth!  My 2nd quarter dividends where 63% higher than my 1st quarter, and 3rd quarter was 60% higher than my 2nd quarter (thanks for checking my math fifighter).  That's quite a jump!  Sure this kind of growth won't be sustainable forever (oh if only!) but it keeps me motivated.

It's All Down Hill From Here

When I first came to Japan I was pretty heavily in debt.  I don't think I was any worse off than any of the other teachers around me were, but I I was the only person I know who treated my debt like an emergency.  I was probably about $40,000ish in debt and making about $2,500 a month.  The exchange rate wasn't so kind back then as the yen was trading about 117 yen to the dollar.  Not nice.

I did my best however saving up about 1/3 or each paycheck to send back when the exchange rate seemed to move my way.  It was tough but slowly the stars came into alignment.  2008 hit the US economy hard and the exchange rate opened up like a flood gate.  I continued to send back money and use it to pay off my debts.  I wasn't fully dedicated to the mustachian lifestyle yet so I was also spending on vacations, and gadgets.

One day in late December however I made my last payment on my student loans and that cleared all of my debt.  If felt really good.  The journey of climbing out of a pit of debt was not fun.

So what then?  Well actually the really fun part started.  Instead of using my money to pay interest and loans I now get to use my money to make me more money!

"But you still don't have that money!  It's locked away in some company!  It's just like when you were paying down your debts!"  Say the spenders.

I don't agree with that.  Sure the money that I put into investments every month is somewhat locked away but psychologically it is so much easier for me to put $2,000 a month into in investment that pays me dividends and will possibly go up 10%, 20%, or even 1000%.  I'd come to the top of the mountain and the ride is all down hill from here.  

My goal for this year is to invest $24,000.  I'm at about $17,000 so far and should be able to hit my goal by December.

The other part about investing is that it seems so much easier than paying down debt.  Although the processes are somewhat similar:  make some capital, transfer it to another entity.  But with my investments I really WANT to put my money in.  Of course with debt you HAVE to put your money in (or you don't pay it and well...)

I'm surprised it took me 4 years to pay off $40,000 when in less than a year I have built up almost half of that.  It's all about motivation and it's much easier to have on the down hill part of the journey.

Quick Bike and Blog update

I've been busy with work lately, but we all got Monday off in lieu of having to work on Saturday and Sunday for the school festival.  I had a great time and can't wait till next year when we move to a brand new school.

Okay, let's take care of some business.  Of the 21 days that I worked last month I biked 17 of them.  The other days I took my GF's train pass, which is paid for by her company, so I could take some rest days.  I put over 400km on my bike already and I feel great.  As I stated before I feel tired at night and get good sleep.  When I wake up biking is not exactly the first thing I want to do, but when I get to school I feel awake and ready to attack the day.  The weather is also starting to cool down which is nice.

As for the blog I was informed by a very nice reader (Mr. Collins of http://jlcollinsnh.wordpress.com/ fame) that when he tried to leave a comment on my blog he had to deal with some Japanese.  The Japanese language is a puzzle to me that I am constantly trying to untangle and the best way I have found is to surround myself with the pieces of that puzzle.  So my iPhone, computer, video games, TV, etc. are all set to Japanese language.  I did the same with this blog as well.  I see now that it might be creating some difficulty for my readers who might not be trying to put together the same puzzle as I am.  For that reason I changed the language of this blog to English.  It makes sense to me that if I were writing in Japanese I should have the blog in Japanese, and if I'm writing it in English it should be in English.  Don't know why I never thought of that.

All for now.