Finance Review: January 2022

Happy year of the Tiger! 2022 is an even-numbered year so it’s gonna be extra good 🙂

I’m writing this during my second week of winter break, and it is glorious! The first week my daily step counts were in the hundreds, centred within a 20m radius around my bed, hahaha! The second week I’m making up for it by doing something active every day and it’s showing in my spending, oops.

I said I’d do my best to make a vlog and while it’s not finished, I’ve finished filming the raw footage for it! Filming it took an entire day so mad respect to videographers who write scripts for their own videos. I know absolutely nothing about editing videos so the vlog will probably take…like a month or so with me working on it during spare moments, it’s a fun project with low priority.

Spendings Report: 1,936

Lots of staycation spending, more than a typical month but less than other winter vacation times because all the places I want to go to have a 7-day quarantine…I have lots of choice words to say about that but this is a child-friendly blog.

According to Excel, this is about $700 more than my long-term average and that sounds about right. Off the top of my head, some unrestrained purchases I made that I wouldn’t usually make:

  • $200 getting massages
  • $100 fitness classes
  • $150 hot springs
  • Eating out everytime I go out for the day, $20-30 each time.

Once work starts again I won’t be spending every day outside and buying all my dinners. It’s nice to not watch my own spending for the three weeks of the break though, thanks to me being careful about saving up during all the other times of the year. Good job, past me!

Net Worth Update: pretty good!

The market dipped for a bit at the end of January (something about crypto and Russia?) and sadly I was not able to take advantage of it. I have maxed out my tax-advantaged accounts and since I’m currently living in China it takes a while longer and more paperwork to open a new account, and by the time that’s sorted the market will likely have recovered.

Originally my goal for the end of this school year is to reach 250k which I think I’m going to fall short of. I would need to save my entire paycheck every month to reach it and yeah, not happening. I’m still pleased with where I am currently however, 250k was always the stretch goal, and an equally important outcome is building up my good financial habits.