My Cost of Living in the Austin, TX Metro Area-March 2022
Okay, I know the I skipped a month. Sorry! I’ve been slipping but I also have a toddler and a full time job. Trust me, I’m going to try to not skip a month again. Every month I like to go over my monthly budget and review what I spend, save and invest so I can be conscious of my actions and see if I’m spending money in areas that aren’t helpful towards me paying down debt and achieving financial freedom. If you’d like to check out my last monthly budget blog post you can find that here. Now, let’s get started!
Investing $2026 USD
I keep my monthly investments exactly the same when I don’t get any monthly commission. My job has a 4% 401k match and I am also investing in my Vanguard brokerage account and a new Wealthfront brokerage account.
About $626 is invested into my Roth 401k, $1,000 into my Vanguard brokerage which completely goes into the Total Stock Market ETF, and $400 into Wealthfront that is in an aggressive investing fund mostly made up of stocks.
Savings $0
I didn’t save this month at all. I plan on saving money again next month to increase my emergency savings in anticipation of our house being completed soon and our bills going up a little bit. It’s best to get ready now instead of waiting until after we close the house.
Rent & Utilities $1151
My husband and I now split the rent and utilities of a 3 bedroom/2 bathroom apartment in the Austin Texas metro area. This total includes my portion of our rent/sewage/water as well as our electricity bill and apartment insurance. This month’s bill was $3 more than last month’s but that’s okay.
Groceries $366
I’ve been ordering meal prep kits with Hello Fresh for the past two months. I have to honestly say that I’ve been enjoying it. I pick mostly vegetarian meals that can be prepared in under 30 minutes which is great because I often forget to thaw out meat during a workday. 🙁 Most importantly, I love eating a variety of different foods and the changing menus each week help make cooking at home much more enjoyable. If you’ve ever thought about trying them out, feel free to use my code for $120 promotion towards your first box of fresh ingredients and delicious recipes. There are still some food and pantry items that we have to buy at a grocery store such as food for breakfast, drinks, and food for our young daughter. For those items, we shop at H-E-B.
Charitable Giving $136
This month I made a monthly donation to a child I’m sponsoring in Kenya. This is something that I’ve been doing for over two years and I write the young girls letters throughout the years.
Subscriptions $55.78
This covers my two YouTube creator subscriptions as well as my subscriptions to Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime and Patreon for another creator I love to support. They are all worth it to me.
General Merchandise $374
This spending includes nail polish and too many items from Amazon including shampoo, beard oil for my husband, baby diaper trash bags, and a plethora of other house hold goods.
Restaurants $0
Thanks to Hello Fresh sending me new recipes to cook every week I didn’t go out to any restaurants this month. Yay for me!
Debt Payoff $300
This goes toward my low-interest personal loan. I have increased the monthly payment by $60 to chop down this debt much quicker. I’m still considering paying it off completely by the end of this year with my commission money.
Hobbies $86.36
I’m running a 10k race in April, the Austin Cap 10k race. I originally wanted to run it in person but due to COVID still being so unpredictable, I decided running with 20,000 wasn’t the best decision so I will be running it virtually. This was the cost or registration and mailing my running packet to my class.
Clothing & Shoes $360
This is quite a bit but I bought some proper running equipment such as dri fit shirts, shorts, a running fanny pack and a pair of shoes. I’ve been running every week consistently for the last 5 months so I know that I will put it to good use.
Insurance $66
This category isn’t very exciting. It covers our apartment insurance and my term life insurance.
In conclusion…
In the entire month of March, I invested and spent a grand total of….$4921.14 USD. I’m happy with this number but I admit I need to keep a close eye on my Amazon purchases. 🙂
Do you track your spending? If so, tell me how you do so and I’d be happy to hear from you!
