DFG February 2018 Frugalmaster Results

Using the Frugalmaster machine (your mind) often results in a happier life and a fuller wallet.  You use this machine every time you decide to delay gratification of stuff and instead focus your energies on what makes you happier.

My wife and I recently did an exercise together where we list 5 things that make us happier.  What was not on the list was our home, stuff, or money.  What was both on our lists was spending time together as a family.  There was once a show called Growing Pains with the theme song of As Long as We Got Each Other.  Social connectedness is one of the things humans need.  So as always I am trying to retrain my mind to focus on family and less on stuff.

I admit though that I am not perfect (as is evident in my monthly expenses).  Let's have a look and see where improvements could be made.

Category	Spent	FrugalMaster Notes
Housing/ Insurance	$2,260	Still paying extra $700 in principle
Food	$715	$102 per person per month.  Slightly higher than planned as I picked up a bunch of organic chicken and beef on discount and froze it.
Utilities	$657	It would be nice to live in the country again with minimal utility expenses and lots of nature
Home Maintenance/ Supplies	$263	Purchased another low flow toilet for the master bathroom.  I will be working on it in March.  Other than that just the usual stuff to keep a home going.
Shopping	$248	Winter clearance clothes shopping.  Also as a gift bought my son's senior year book.  Much debate was had between me and the Mrs. on the purchase.
Gifts/Charity	$194	Last month's dispute was resolved so the gift was charged back to our credit card (plus our usual giving)
Transportation	$112	One college visit and normal local driving
Health & Fitness	$70	Dr. and Dentist visits
Personal Care	$47	Toiletries and some hair color for the Mrs.
Entertainment	$20	Parking for the Home & Garden show at our local convention center
Everything Else	$12	Domain name renewal
Kids	$11	Diapers
Total	$4,608
Minus mortgage	$2,348	Based on this spending, social security tells me we will be able to live off of that alone.  Not bad but not counting on getting that full amount.

If we could erase our mortgage and drop our utilities the DFG family could easily live off of 24k a year.  Probably even less as we would only need one car if we no longer needed to commute to work. 

The best way to get that 24k a year is with dividends provided by the many companies of the world.  And how do we get that money?  Well by saving and investing in dividend growth stocks.  With that said I was able to save 40% of my net income (does not include 401k which I max out).  Most of that was from my yearly bonus but I am not complaining.

I hope you all had a great February!

Dividend Family Guy