Budget Check & Cash Flow Update - April 2020


Budget | Cash Flow | Personal Finance
Budget Check & Cash Flow Update - April 2020

The saying goes that cash is king.  While that's true, a more accurate saying when it comes to finances is that CASH FLOW is king.  Whether you're retired, still working or just starting out the only way you can improve your financial house is to have positive cash flow.  

If you're in the accumulation phase then that positive cash flow allows you to save and invest to build up your future cash flow.  If you're already retired, or FIREd, then congratulations because I'm sure your cash flow is well above what you need.


When it comes to personal finance it's rather simple: income - expenses = savings and savings x investing x time = financial independence.  There's obviously two main levers there and while we'd all like to increase our income, many times reducing expenses is some of the low hanging fruit that you can go after to increase your savings.

Budget Check

Total income for April came in at $9,314.54 which is well above the TTM average of $8,056.05.  The bulk of my income, ~76%, came from my day job, le sigh; although that should come as no surprise since we're still in the accumulation phase.  Approximately 5% came from dividends, 0.4% from interest on cash in my savings accounts and unfortunately 0% from my side hustle.  However, the COVID stimulus check came through during April and accounted for an additional 19% of total income.
Budget | Income | Passive Income
Monthly Income Breakdown - April 2020

Total expenses for April were very encouraging at just $2,800.87.  That was due in large part to the COVID lockdown that we experienced during the month as well as me being home and working in the office as opposed to away from home.  I knew there were a lot of leaks with me working away from the house, but man I didn't expect that much.  Of course the big thing is the efficiencies in food spending.  The TTM average for our total expenses now sits at $4,903.50.  

Looking at just core expenses, April's total came to $2,259.56.  That's well below the TTM average of $3,608.68.

For the month we ended up with a net positive cash flow of $6,513.67 when looking at all income sources.  Based on just work income, but including all expenses, the net positive cash flow came to $4,286.14.

Our savings rate from all income sources came to 70% while our savings rate from work income alone was 60%.  The savings rate calculations are based off work income only and all expenses.
Budget | Cash Flow | Savings
Cash Flow Check In April 2020

*A few notes about the cash flow check in.  All income is only income that I receive and does not include my wife's income likewise for the expenses.  We've found it's easiest for us to just keep separate accounts since I'm gone most of the time for work.  Also, pre-tax withholding for the 401k (I currently withhold 6% in order to get the full 5% employer match) and the ESPP through my employer (4% post tax withholding) are not included in the above savings amount.  

Net Work Cash Flow

While my net cash flow from above includes all income and all expenses, I wanted to get a more granular look at the cash flow that is available each month.  So I started calculating my Net Work Cash Flow which is calculated at post-tax income only from my work and core expenses.  

The above might be the true cash flow each month; however, it's not really representative of our "free cash flow" each month.  The idea is that all other income sources outside of work income are already going directly into savings or investing or in the case of dividends remaining in the brokerage account.  On the expense side the majority of our expenses fall into the core side and most of the other expenses are extra debt payments rather than further discretionary spending.

Moving forward, I believe this gives a better idea of our cash flow each month that can/will be used for debt reduction, saving and investing.
Income | Expenses | Cash Flow | Savings | Financial Independence | Personal Finance
Net Work Cash Flow April 2020

My net work cash flow rebounded nicely in April to $4,827.45.  You won't hear me complaining about that at all given the big trade-off of being home every day even if it means less income.  Our 6-month moving average for our net work cash flow is holding strong and if we can keep this up then we'll be back to regular investing soon.  The 6-month moving average for our net work cash flow comes to $3,087.97.

Non-Work Cash Flow

Each month I like to examine the state of our non-work cash flow.  Since our goal is to become financially independent the monthly cash flow has to come from somewhere in order to cover our expenses.  I break our non-work cash flow into 2 categories: (1) Passive Income: dividends from taxable accounts and interest, and (2) Non-Work Income: all income from outside of my day job.

Passive income for April totaled $498.78 and covered 22.1% of core expenses.  Meanwhile, non-work income totaled $2,227.53 thanks to the COVID stimulus check and covered 98.6% of core expenses for April.





Conclusion

While I know that many people have been effected by COVID and the ensuing economic lockdown, we have luckily just been inconvenienced.  That doesn't mean we're not being effected by it though as the O&G sector especially the upstream side is seeing massive disruption.  There's been massive layoffs throughout the industry and a lot of good people that I know that have lost their jobs.

That being said, I'm quite encouraged by the reduction in spending that was seen in April.  Especially since that's come at a time when I've been home the hole time in a new job role.  I have to admit that I was a bit worried about the possibility of having to find a new job since the required income was higher than I'd have liked; however, without any real changes to our spending other than me being at home there's been no noticeable change to the quality of our lifestyle with the reduced spending.

We're at the point where I think we need to focus more on debt reduction rather than continuing to build up our cash.  The rough plan going forward will probably look something along the lines of whatever savings I have each month being split to 1/3 cash, 1/3 additional debt reduction, 1/3 brokerage account.  Although that's a plan in progress at the moment.

Make sure you sign up to receive new posts to your email so you don't miss anything.  And be sure to follow me on Twitter @JC_PIP to get up to the minute news of purchases for my portfolio or if you prefer Pinterest or Facebook I'm on there too.

What are you doing to improve your cash flow situation?  Are you working on reducing expenses or increasing income?  Any concerns regarding your work situation due to the corona virus slow down and possibly prolonged recession?

Comments

  1. So now that you get a peak at what your expenses would be if you did retire (assuming they would be similar to working from home) does it change any retirement planning goals?

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    1. It's definitely moved the timeline up but as far as having the investments cover everything there's still a good ways to go. For the time being my work situation is much more attractive as in I can still make a good income and I'm home every day with every 3rd week off so there's no immediate plans to change anything. We still have quite a few other things that we'd like to do mainly get some land somewhere and possibly build a house on it. The good thing is that assuming income stays relatively in line with how it's been some of those projects have a better chance of getting under way sooner rather than later.

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